My true cents worth

"earing" with an "eish!"

2011-09-03T00:03:00.000-07:00

We're live flogging from the CTICC on the august occasion of the Judicial Services Commission hearing. A'ight?

09:06 Ten minutes to kickoff. Your humble scribe is seated behind Judge Mogoeng's proud family, who sit right behind the judge. The room is empty. Some eager students to my left. NGO-looking types to my right. Cavernous hall. Fake proteas, you get the mood.

09h25 The commissioners trickle in. I was wrong about kickoff time. I've just had the honor of shooing Mudene Smuts, former FairLady editor and occasional Justice Shadow Minister from the family seats. The ersatz proteas are eclipsed by a phalanx of queer activists with technicolor banner.

Suddenly a surge of chanting lefties (and Mark Heywood) fills the room.
Spirited toyi-toying rocks the house.

09h57 Dikgang Moseneke, The Ousted One, enters. The chamber chokes with gravitas.

10h05 Kickoff. The Ousted One (To1) introduces advocate Smith, but the Deputy Minister sticks a spoke in the wheel. Her attempt at filibuster is parried by To1 and buttressed by Ngoako the crook, and derailed and now my head hurts. But the Minister Jeff is putting his foot down... Here follows lengthy fireworks, in which a majority evolves against an incidental motion on the agenda. There's alarming disquiet at the idea of public deliberations.

10h30 The nays have it. The DA lost (momentarily) a bid to reopen the nominations. Enter Mogae.

10h38 "I have been projected as 'this man who hates women', 'this man who hates gays.'" -Mogae Mogae (MM)

10h40 MM reads his CV. Parries published attacks. He sets a trap for himself by suggesting that the criticism of him is based on only three cases.

10h55 More fire. To1 reminds MM that he's only on page 9 of a 47 page reply. Bra Jeff rises to defend MM. Dikgang backs down.

11h15 MM continues to refute the claim the he is the mess-ogenistic spawn of Clarence Thomas and Sarah Palin. His logical grammar is consistent: "I'm not the worst there is." In this room's halogen glow, proof and refutation elide.

11h28 The fiddles flare. "I come from a poor background. My mother was unemployed..." And the man chokes up. This earnest display of emotion is followed by recollection of his struggle credentials ("labelled by government as communist", "my political position was known by my boss... so that not once wad I given a political trial to prosecute (by the apartheid government and the stoogely Bop kangaroo satrap.)

11h37 My blasted Android battery screws us all. Good night.

12h18: Question time. "we thank you for your dignified silence during what has been an onslaught." Judge Bernard Ngoepe.

12h42: My crap battery won't allow blow-by-blow through the questions. But the shape of the afternoon is clear: most commissioners will ask leading questions (like the bland one about access to justice he's fielding now), while the substance-based minority will be filibustered away.

OnePeeEm: Presidential proxy Bra Jeff layers on the sycophancy.

13h10 MM bucks under the first (moderately) challenging question: "i haven't done as much work as I would have liked" in considering the mechanics and wisdom of converging the apex courts.

14h10 Yummm. Boeber for lunch. You missed the part where Moseneke reminded Our Man that the job calls for intellectual leadership. Fortunately, the bumbling Deputy Minister with the fetching eye flutter saved him.
"The problem with the world is that the ignorant are cocksure, and the wise full of doubt." -Bertrand Russell
"I have no doubt, in my own intellectual depth." -MogoengX2

14h29 (It's not Moegoeng, but the paucity of the JSC that's the embarrassment.)

14h30 Divine Telepathy... MM raises the bigger point: briefing patterns are racially skewed. Even by the government. Well, this links with the tendency to protect weakness, rather than allowing (Black) excellence.
The reason why apartheid era briefing profiles have been preserved by the present government (MM's point and language) is that the government doesn't believe that technical acumen is the province of Black people. This is reflected in the timid questioning of the government appointees to the commission.

Indeed, technical questioning was largely outsourced to two geeky White folk, with most of the rest (and all of the government appointees) focussing on a medley of leading questions ("do you agree that improvement of the maintenance courts enhances women's access to justice?") and praise prose.

SometimeAfterlunch: The nerdful professor asked MM to speak the unspoken reasons why it's insulting to imply that someone's gay. Our man ducks like a goose.

To1: Why not just deal with it head-on...
MM: But how does one do that?
To1: If you listen you'll find out.
MM: There's no need for sarcasm, Deputy Chief Justice.
To1: (dignified silence and a panga-stare.)

This led to the afternoon's Van Der Merwe joke:
Oom Koos: Do you have a short temper?
MM. We all make mistakes.
OK: In fifteen years on this I've never seen such arrogance.

With which the Oom triggered an orgy of sexless apology.

With my battery to rude health restored let's add:

1. I can't cover the Sunday morning session as I'm leaving town.

2. I expect a 15/7 vote in favor of confirmation. But then math is not a Truecents virtue.

3. Twas a chilling contrast between Bernard Ngoepe's spirited defense of MM and his silent disinterest in the human rights concerns and evident lack of the candidate's intellectual rigour.
Given the shape of the Gauteng Judge President's priorities I'm relieved that my life of crime plays out eMzansi.

4. Something similar is true about the Minister and his Deputy. Favouring Mogoeng is perfectly compatible with defending human rights, but you do need to kick the tyres, which those two had zero interest in doing.

5. MM's opening statement ran into 47 pages in which he dealt with the criticism levelled against him.

6. Something needs to happen to transform the JSC from a rubber stamp into a tyre-kicker.

7. By his own admission, MM is not the intellectual type. "I've never really had a passion for publication," explaining why he's published not a thing. His answer about why he declined to explain his dissent in the gay-bating case was helpful:

A) "There was a minority judgement and I didn't see the sense I'm adding two or three sentences."
B) "It would have taken two/three days to pen an opinion."
C) "In hindsight I should have added an opinion, however superficial."

From which we conclude that our incoming Chief Justice dissents (and decides?) superficially, on the basis of reasons unavailable to him at the time, and writes at the breakneck rate of one sentence per day.

Divers Fan-quotes:

"I would like to refute any suggestion... that I am homophobic.

"That cautionary rule... has not been abolished."

"I fully embrace the Christian faith... My church... does not have at its core values... that homosexuality is... deviant. The church is not founded on homophobia."

"Protecting the rights of homosexuals is my duty... as set out in Romans 13."

"That I have not delivered a ground-breaking judgement is neither here nor there."

"At the time there was no certainty about whether a judge's spouse or child could appear before him."

"Perhaps, on reflection, I should have submitted an argument, however superficial."

"Honourable Chair, I feel there is no place for impatience here. I deserve a chance to state my case."

Zapiro Alert: "My concerns (about Freedom of Expression) are vindicated by some of the cartoons that have been published."

Sent from my HTC

Eid (non-Hosni) Mubarak!

2011-08-31T14:39:00.000-07:00

Ramadan 1432 - the month we felt the world shift axis. Let's relive the history:

Give us this day our DailyBeast

2011-08-25T04:30:00.000-07:00

Recipe: Tomasky post-hoc potpouri
Ingredients: time, a large weasel.
Method:
1. Wait for a foreign-policy crisis to arise.
2. See what Obama says.
3. Wait.
4. Keep waiting.
5. See how things turn out.
6. If it turned out well (e.g. Libya), credit Obama's speeches.
7. If it turned out craply (e.g. Bahrain) write something about Tea Party terrorists.
8. Stew a little.

What makes this recipe a fail-safe success is that Obama's foreign policy is a textbook case of Implausible Deniability (ID(TM)). ID(TM) works according to a simple formula:
1. Wait for a crisis to arise.
2. Wait for it to disappear as quickly as it arose.
3. Keep waiting.
4. If the clock runs out, then say/do something ambiguous.
5. Get senior staff to make unambiguous, mutually inconsistent remarks.
6. Wait and see.
7. If the outcome was favourable, interpret your speech/action in 4. to paint you as a causal factor.
8 If the outcome was unfavourable, interpret your speech/action in 4. to paint you as sufficiently removed so as not to be blameworthy.
9. Pick one of the statements in 5. to support the interpretation in 7/8. Since they were mutually inconsistent by design.

President Kgalema Petrus Motlante

2011-05-22T07:12:00.000-07:00

Since a lot of rubbish has been written about this week's municipal election, please allow me to break my silence on the matter (by the way, apologies for not telling the result in advance - I was uncharacteristically clueless.)

The election results can be viewed at the splendidly put-together website of the Independent Electoral Commission. The summary of the all-in Vote:

ANC 63.65%
DA 21.97%
IFP 3.94%
NFP 2.58#
COPE 2.33%
Independents 0.89%

Bottom line: This was a good election for the National Freedom Party, and a crap election for everyone else:

1. The National Freedom Party (NFP).
A party born three months ago to a woman (Zanele kaMagwaza-Msibie) whose name is totally unknown to South Africans, managed to tear in half the baby born to Gatsha Buthelezi in 1975, finishing fourth overall. This at a time when a KZN homeboy is national president. They'll continue to grow in the Eastern province, and will eclipse Inkatha unless Buthelezi is dispensed with.

2. The African National Congress (ANC).
Gone are the heady days of two-thirds majority. They're back to slightly better than 1994 levels. But 64% is a landslide in anyone's vocabulary, and they held onto the Nelson Mandela metropole in spite of everything. Enough for contentment, but nothing to cheer about. Just because you're big doesn't mean you should stop growing. The euphoric celebrations are largely theatre, but partly testament to the fact that at least some factions in the party have given up on ever attracting White and Coloured voters.

3. The Democratic Alliance (DA).
Supposedly the big winners on Wednesday, they've finally managed - after seventeen long years - of surpassing the 20% gained in 1994 by FW de Klerk, the custodian of Bantu Education (and my poor spelling), askaris and the Transvaal faction of the National party. Congratulations, I suppose. What's happened is that the DA has acheived it's dream of locking up the opposition, without denting the bedrock of ANC support. Do the math. The ANC is at slightly better than 1994 levels. The ANC is at its worst level of rudderlessness in democratic history. Its hapless leader is clearly at sea. It faces the greatest, most open resistance to its rule ever. That the DA failed to capitalise on these laboratory conditions is a shocker. The party can crash through the ceiling, but it will do so at the price of it's current identity and cohesion. And not soon.

4. The Congress of the People (Cope).
Mosioua Lekota has finally accomplished his ambition of driving his party into the ground. There was no need for potshots from the opposition - the terror inflicted by the president did it all.

5. The Inkatha Freedom Party (NFP).
For whom this election was like having on-stage tickets to a performance of that well-loved conjuring trick called sawing-the-lady-in-half. Paradoxically, this strengthens Buthelezi's hold on the party, as there's less to fight for, and in the NFP his party rivals have an alternative home with better growth prospects.

6. Helen Zille (Botox Belle).
She'll maintain her hold on the party amid rising tensions. As the belief persists that the party is growing, it will attract greater numbers of the knife-wielding careerist who stab their way to the top of party structures. There'll be pressure to promote black branch leaders to senior positions of real influence within the party, and in the same way that the ANC struggled to control its candidate-list process, the DA's cohesion will give way to resentment from stalwarts, and White voters who feel increasingly alienated from the leadership crop.

7. Mangosutu Buthelezi kaShenge (Gatsha).
Just because you're a party head doesn't mean that you've political influence. Since South Africans have grown to love his droning magniloquence, there'll be plenty of airtime for him yet. RIP.

8. Patricia de Lille (The Mother).
She's reached the height of her political career. Well done. She'll be an inspiring mayoral figure, and a fitting leader for Cape Town. Unfortunately, she lacks a base in her new party, which expects her to be an order-taker. This will create tension, which she'll lose. Don't be surprised when she resigns, although I can't imagine where she'll go to.

9. Gedleyihlekisa Jacob Zuma wamSholozi kaNkandla (JZ).
There is something in the breakdown of the ANC's results to provide ammo to his rivals (see my ANC remarks above.) Also, the conduct of this election, with party leaders forgetting to register candidates, and branch level uprisings against the candidate selection process, and manipulation of the lists, and the open boycott by traditional supporters augur ill for his reelection hopes next year.

10. Fikile Mbalula (Bra Fiks).
He took time off from the Sports Ministry to play senior campaign manager for the ANC, and he came through. His career goes up from here.

11. The Dagga Party (DP).
The audacity of Dope!

South African Press Association in a war against arithmetic

2011-05-19T05:18:00.000-07:00

And I quote:

"By 11.30am, the ANC had 11.9 million votes (63.31 percent) followed by the DA with 4.03 million (22.9 percent)...

There was a total voter turnout of 6 967 181 people." - Sapa

Let us pray

2011-05-17T04:12:00.001-07:00

I’ve always had a problem with the word Islamist. We don’t speak of Christianists, or Judaists. People who believe in Islam are called Muslims. But it's rude to make sweepingly hostile remarks about Muslims, so we invented the word Islamist (which really just means Muslim) as a veil for anti-Muslim insults. After all, when’s the last time you heard the word Islamist deployed in a favourable context?

Here are sentences you'll never hear:

1. The President paid a visit to leaders of the local Islamist community.
2. Moderate Islamists called for restraint.
3. In a special address, His Holiness the Pope called for improved relations between Christians and Islamists.
4. Controversy followed proposals to open an Islamist preschool near Ground Zero.
5. In a day of fierce clashes, innocent Islamist civilians were set upon by Zionist settlers.

Wikipedia quotes a 2003 article in Middle East Quarterly:

In summation, the term Islamism enjoyed its first run, lasting from Voltaire to the First World War, as a synonym for Islam. Enlightened scholars and writers generally preferred it to Mohammedanism. Eventually both terms yielded to Islam, the Arabic name of the faith, and a word free of either pejorative or comparative associations. There was no need for any other term, until the rise of an ideological and political interpretation of Islam challenged scholars and commentators to come up with an alternative, to distinguish Islam as modern ideology from Islam as a faith

Sweet as it is, that rationale just begs the question as to why ideologues like George Bush and P.W Botha should not be called Christianists. Check Jy!?

Black Hawk Drowns

2011-03-30T23:19:00.000-07:00

In the post-Christmas euphoria of that nice lady and the judge getting shot in Arizona, POTUS polled in the low 50's, and the pundits were over-the-moon (or rueful, depending) on his apparent unassailability. On the heels of His lame duck victories a regular (hence well-informed) reader of this blog was prompted to ask

Tax deal (yuck, but a success I guess), repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, the Zadroga bill for 9/11 workers, and the NewStart treaty all within a few weeks of POTUS being written off as useless ... will it go on?

As usual, the Truecents wet blanket was close at hand. In our SOTU note we remarked that

Last year saw the Republican's winning the battle of ideas, and consolidating their cooption of the Hope/Change strategy. The current political momentum is theirs to lose. I'm calling Barry at 47% on RCP (and a similar level on the rolling Gallup) by the end of March.

Today is March 31. The RCP average has Obama's approval rating at 47.2%. I say this as a prelude:

1. The downward drift confirms the oft-cited anomaly that people like Obama - except in his capacity as administrator. He did well at the New Year precisely because he wasn't doing anything, having handed over his legaslative agenda (DODT, Tax-Cut extentions) to Republicans. The bounce you saw then (as I may have pointed out at the time) was a reward for him faking not being himself. As soon as he'd get to act (which we'd predicted would have happened by the end of the first quarter) the kudos would be withdrawn.
2. I'm gonna stop calling the approval rating until closer to the election (i.e. not before 2012).
3. The Libyan misadventure has not been the fillip one would have expected. Remember, this poll was taken days AFTER Monday's over-hyped and belated casus belli.
4. The political momentum (remarkably!) stays with the GOP. In a weird sort of way (which I'll expound upon later, if I've not already done so) this is good for progressives. I mean real ones.

SOTU

2011-01-26T09:33:00.000-08:00

I missed it.

In both SA and the USA I tend to ignore the SOTN/U address, as I've learnt that there usually is a chasm between its rhetoric and the ensuing action. The test is what the shape of WH policy will be. Surprisingly, the following two reviews - form opposite sides of the US political spectrum, are similarly guarded in their enthusiasm:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/us/politics/26assess.html?_r=1
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/258016/what-crisis-yuval-levin

My own take (on a speech that I haven't, and won't view/read) is that Krauthamer's early definition of the "Obama three-step" is being played out, except with faster-paced music. Krauthamer's version is that Obama:
1. Begins with a fiery denunciation of Bush (read Republicanism)
2. Trumpets minor deviations from the Bush/Republican script.
3. Quietly proceeds with acquiescence to the core rightist script.

So, e.g, last night's soaring defense of progressive spending policy comes only weeks after the expansion of the Bush tax cuts. The continued rhetoric about Health Care reform (included in last night's speech) masks the reality that there hasn't been any (ignoring, of course, the lobbyist-friendly expansion of health insurance). And so forth.

Obama appears to be riding high on Tucson, but this isn't as good as it looks because:
1. This is an Oklahomaesque tragedy, which has propelled his ratings only back to the 50% mark. A 4% jump. Clinton's post-McVie jump was 5% (I quote Gallup, unless) - off the same base as Obama's - which he gave up two months later.
2. Tucson happened during a politically quiet period, when there wasn't negative news (barring the old-hat low joblessness figures) to counterveil.
3. Tucson happened right after Obama gained kudos amongst independents, by extending the Bush tax cuts (no-child-left-behind and NewSTART were relative grace notes).
4. As the normal post-holiday political season gets underway, the goodwill drag will resume.

Last year saw the Republican's winning the battle of ideas, and consolidating their cooption of the Hope/Change strategy. The current political momentum is theirs to lose. I'm calling Barry at 47% on RCP (and a similar level on the rolling Gallup) by the end of March.

Tosser

2010-11-02T11:08:00.002-07:00

Barring things that won't be barred, I'll be up live blogging the mid-terms. Since this is truly boring I've availed myself of the following shortcuts:

No luv, guv: I can't even spell g-u-b-e-r-n-a-t-o-r-i-a-l and am definitely not interested.
No House Call: Since the House of Representatives is falling by a clear margin, there's little interest in anticipating that. I know no better than to go with the RCP consensus of 224 seats.
Upper tossers toss-ups only: All seven of the RCP Senate toss-ups have Democratic incumbents. I'll call them as follows:

a. CA Boxer/Fiorini: D
b. CO Bennet/Buck: R
c. IL Gianoulias/Kirk: R
d. NV Angle/Reid: R
e. PA Sestak/Toomey: R
f. WA Murray/Rossi: R
g. WV Manchkin/Raese: D

Which, if you assume (as I do) that both parties win the seats that are at least leaning in their columns splits the caucuses 50/50. Connecticut and Nebraska will (initially at least) stay on board, making Joe Biden descend to keep the gavels blue. I have the toss-ups breaking as I do because I think that the GOP will have a turnout advantage today, which'll push their candidates outside their respective margins of error.

This is the perfect result for the Republicans, who are rewarded for being the better (more consistent, more disciplined, sharper communicators, more populist, better adapted) party over the last two years. They score the following:

The power to command show trials in Congress.
In the Senate Democrats, a partner to blame for obstruction (which will be handy in 2012 when little has happened.)
A cornhusker option - to be used when they get momentum in pushing their agenda through the lower house. They trigger the option by enticing a Democratic with offers of shared goodwill if s/he cooperates in the Senate. This will require eight months (at least) to realise.

Some races to watch:

Angle/Reid is the most sensational (and heartbreaking, on my count) race...
... followed by Boxer/Fiorini (but without the tears.)
It'll still be interesting to see with what margin O'Donnell is roasted at the stake.
Rasmussen/Shrum. After the latter's shrill recent remarks, I'd be keen to see whether Democracy Corpse is more or less (I'm betting less) accurate in calling the result than Rasmussen.

For those who care, this is my first misadventure as an RSS user. Time is EDT.

[16h42]
I see that Karl Rove differs with me by one seat (Washington, which he has in the blue column.) To my credit I never liked (or knew) him. A day-old post by Dick Morris paints it red.

By the way, Sage is a handy RSS aggregator, loaded as a Mozilla plugin (for Netscape and Firefox.)

[18h34]
ABC publishes a stunning exit poll showing high levels of voter dissatisfaction. 73% dissatisfied with the way that the federal government is working; two in three believe the stimulus hasn't helped; 62% believe the country is headed in the wrong track, etc. So now we no that the angry people have come to play. The next thing to find is turnout data, when we can see if they're large numbers of angryfolk. That's what my 50/50 hinges on.

[22h18]
I wake from a peaceful sleep. It's hard to read results when you're yawning. None of the tossups have declared, but with partial results it looks as if I'm coming unstuck in Illionois.

[22h19]
Seven minutes ago, Dick Morris left a podcast. "PA and Il continue to trend in our direction, though we trail in each." Then he talks about the the shrinking Republican minority in each, and concludes "who knows what's gonna happen there, but we're looking alright." MSNBC exit polling describes an older more conservative electorate.

NBC is calling the House 237 to 198.

[22h22]
Morris is on the verge of conceding Pennsylvania. This is weird as RCP has it 50/50 with 80% of the votes in. That sounds like a Republican advantage, as they dominate the late-reporting countryside.

[22h56]
The world awaits Jon Boehner's victory speech. Morris has retracted his concession, and now agrees with me about the outcome in PA and IL. All the polls have closed now. The inauguration of Jerry Brown (at last, and again) looms.

[23h06]
Russ Feingold passes away quietly.

[23:29]
This is officially bigger than '94.

[23h45]
Heartache. Boehner the crybaby cracks up during his victory speech. At one point in the jerk-and-sniff his wife responds with laughter. Barbara Boxer wins in California. This means that the Democrats have won both the Senate toss-ups I said they would. All they need do now is to lose the remainder.

[23h46]
In Pennsylvania Toomey comes through the hoop.

[0h05 - the next day]
Pumpkin time, and the Senate Democrats get to 50. In a devastating blow to Republicans, Dick Morris goes to bed.

[0h20]
As predicted Senator Obama's vacated seat goes to a Republican.

[0h37]
Harry Reid defies fate (and me) retaining his position at the Senate's helm. The fat laddie has sung. In a few hours we return for final tally.

Next week

2010-10-26T03:56:00.000-07:00

My opinions have been outsourced (but not to China). This from STRATFOR

By George Friedman | October 26, 2010

We are a week away from the 2010 U.S. midterm elections. The outcome is already locked in. Whether the Republicans take the House or the Senate is almost immaterial. It is almost certain that the dynamics of American domestic politics will change. The Democrats will lose their ability to impose cloture in the Senate and thereby shut off debate. Whether they lose the House or not, the Democrats will lose the ability to pass legislation at the will of the House Democratic leadership. The large majority held by the Democrats will be gone, and party discipline will not be strong enough (it never is) to prevent some defections.
Should the Republicans win an overwhelming victory in both houses next week, they will still not have the votes to override presidential vetoes. Therefore they will not be able to legislate unilaterally, and if any legislation is to be passed it will have to be the result of negotiations between the president and the Republican Congressional leadership. Thus, whether the Democrats do better than expected or the Republicans win a massive victory, the practical result will be the same.

I'm freeboot, and I support this message.

We sue history

2010-08-06T05:27:00.000-07:00

Following the successful repeal of Proposition 8, the confirmation of the fourth woman on the SCOTUS, and other stuff I can't recall, we (i.e. me) here at truecents are considering cashing in on the bouyance of the US courts by suing history. You heard right. We're taking Time (not the magazine, but the fourth dimension itself) to court for violating our sacred truecents IP by unfolding as predicted. In our Inauguration Special we warned that:

Unraveling: Obama's juggernaut-of-rivals will give way to a more focussed, coherent, administration. The peripheral elements (like Paul Volker) will give way to the core, so that within two years the administration will look a lot more trim. If this is well managed (gently picking off the elements one-by-one), it will herald an unremarkable transition from a campaign of transformative insurgence to a conservative administration. If it's poorly managed it could spark divisive revenge from the outgunned rivals. Either way, the implementors of Clinton's triangulation will reintroduce centreism as the animating theme of the adminstration. This time, the chastening effect of the economic fallout will double the conservatising impulse.

Greg Craig was damply squiby, but with Christina Romer's resignation the portents are clearer. This bit of deepthroatery from Hotline

"She doesn't feel that she has a direct line to the president. She would be giving different advice than Larry Summers [director of the National Economic Council], who does have a direct line to the president."

And you thought Bill was dead...

Florida comes to Whitehall

2010-05-07T01:27:00.000-07:00

Dear readers, you've been let down. Apologies to the thousands of surfers fruitlessly coming here for first sight of Gordon Brown's demise. I'd recommend the Guardian liveblog instead.

This morning the Ghosts of Gerhard Schroeder and Al Gore jet into the UK to buddy-up to the (outgoing?) prime minister.

Brown's strategy now is to convince the Liberal Democrats that their best shot ever is to work together on a tight package of reforms (electoral, immigration and Trident) over a two year period. As time marches on Brown's fortunes improve.

In contrast, a delay - even a two-year one - may cost Cameron his party leadership. This was his election to lose, and he may well have done this. So his strategy now is to appeal to public sentiment, by getting the papers to describe him as the victor, and ingrain the narrative that Brown's exit is inevitable.

The optimal Lib Dem strategy is to cave in to Labour. It's a game-changing trajectory for their party, without the costs of incumbency. Also, they won't be rewarded for the "noble" recognition of the Conservative victory.

Although it could go either way:

1. Conservative/Unionist coalition. [40%]
2. Labour/LibDem coalition. [30%]
3. Conservative minority government. [30%]

Crossover

2010-04-12T13:35:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-11T09:34:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-11T08:39:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-09T05:55:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-09T03:20:00.001-07:00

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?

Crappy Birthday, Barry!

2010-01-20T04:08:00.000-08:00

On the surprisingly solemn anniversary of the second coming, it's time to take stock. Some observations:

1. Waxwingsworkwonders: The cries of failure, while warranted, are overdone. The cool thing about being Icarus is that your version of crashing corresponds with (many) other people's versions of soaring.

2. It's a Truecents World: Our skepticism (see the truecents Inauguration Special) has now become mainstream. It's very gratifying to start as a wet-blanket and morph into an oracle. Today the cheerleading Guardian asks "Where did it all go wrong?"

3. Collective responsibility: This is the first anniversary not of one person's journey, but of Clinton mark II. It should be judged accordingly.

It'd be premature to call the remaining three years on the basis of the shaky first. But thin-ice diving is the truecents way...

1. The ghost of Dick Morris: Obama now (immediately, this minute) starts triangulating. The proposed bank tax was the first sign of the teabagification of his regime. It's toodeloo to hopeandchange.

2. Rabid Blue: As everyone's observed, the Blue Dogs will enter this November's election with increased panic. Ironically though, purple state senators will go canine, running on conservative themes in order to avoid the perceived Republican wave.

3. The implosion: The inaugural dreamteam disintegrates forthwith. Geithner is a likely first candidate. Emmanuel is a natural next, but he may be saved by his tenacious refusal to be killed. Then (ironically) Clinton may follow.

4. The GOP curve: To their credit, the Republicans have carried out all four key tasks prescribed in the Inauguration Special (latino fence-mending, pragmatic economic populism, candidate selection, tech savvy). In order to maintain the momentum, they have to keep the Tea Party on board. It needs to function as a grassroots movement, not a political rival. They also need to manage the chair of the RNC.

5. The rest of us: The world will be even less tractable to American foreign policy this year, than last.

As far as healthcare "reform" goes, there are four scenarios [with probability]:

Pick off a Republican senator (or three) with concessions. [60%]
Adopt the Christmas-eve bill in the House. [20%]
Ram a merged bill through both houses in ten days. [15%]
Fail. [5%]

It's gonna be a long three years.

The death of healthcare "reform"

2010-01-19T06:30:00.000-08:00

As I blog, the voters of Massachusetts are enacting a breathtaking irony. By voting in a Republican senator to replace Ted Kennedy, they're indicating that the hopes of healthcare reform have died along with their staunchest defender.

Shorn of their 60-seat supermajority, Democrats have little choice but to concede heavily to Blue Dogs and tractable Republicans (like Sen Snowe), producing a version of the bill that will, as several commentators have observed, be a boon to the insurance industry.

Tonight signals a slamming of the brakes on Obama's legislative agenda. This will lead to:

1. Early triangulation by a President who'll now calculate that his party's liberal faction is worth less than the cost of appeasing it.
2. Longer negotiation cycles on further reform.
3. More aggressive cost-sensitivity in the design phase of further legislation. This is a structural conservative concession, mandated by pragmatism.
4. A muted Democratic agenda for November.

The era of Change ends in Boston this evening.

3/3 isn't bad

2010-01-16T00:54:00.000-08:00

I appreciate that it isn't New Years Eve anymore, but I've had even less interesting things to do with my time. As for the bubbles of which we spoke:

1. The US treasury. As I wrote BubbleWatch, the JP Morgan US government bond index had just notched an astonishing 14.3% annual return. A heroic response to the (momentary) implosion of international capitalism. The previous year's return was 9.2%, and the preceding years averaged in the neighbourhood of 3%. Sadly, my warning that "Americans will learn the meaning of the Afrikaans post New Year phenomenon bubble-las," was lost in translation (or perhaps the fact that not even my mother reads this blog.) As warned the bubbled popped with the JP Morgan index registering -3.8% - the first negative year in a decade, and the largest drawdown in the (short-assed) life of the index.

2. Barak Obama When we wrote a year ago, his Gallup rating cruised at 68%. I deferred specifics to the Inauguration Welcome, when I wrote that "Ratings are driven by public ennui, and his biggest worry is that the American public will tire of their gut-curdling ride on the credit-coaster. 50-something approval points signals a bursting of the Obama-bubble, and a retreat to normalcy." As I write, Obama has the second-lowest end-of-first-year rating at 49%. The only worse performer was Ronald Regan, who scraped to safety when an assassin's bullet punctured his lungs. I warned at the time that V-shapes don't occur in the Gallup curves (American voters don't fall back in love with their exes.) So unless something 911-esq happens, these are the doldrums for Barry O.

3. China. They're holding onto (and topping up) their T-bills for now, but all the noise about securitising drawing rights paints a picture. Growth has been positive, but well below the required 8% minimum. The country's been doing well politically, but it was an investment, not a strategic bubble. And this is looking terminal. I'm open to debate on this one, but my sincere reading is that we're over the euphoria stage.

When I feel a little less lazy, I may just write my ten for '10.

Are you sitting comfortably...

2009-12-31T04:56:00.000-08:00

My ten best reads for the (past year). None of which were actually written in 2009. Anyway...

Guns Germs and Steel.

The selfish Gene.

The dragons of Eden.

Brain fiction.

Simulating Minds.

Naked and other plays.

How to build a great Screenplay.

Style Investing.

Breaking the Spell.

The Woman who walked into doors.

You can see my full shelf if you must.

Sharing is Caring

2009-11-27T07:14:00.000-08:00

Hopefully, I can lure the esteemed Dr Adam Haupt to respond to this faintly provocative article on file sharing.

Afghani-stunned

2009-11-23T01:18:00.000-08:00

Lucretius refers us to William Polk's "thoughtful, comprehensive, piece‏"

(Find "polk" after your browser has landed.)

Europe's looming truecent bent

2009-09-24T07:28:00.000-07:00

I didn't pay for this. Honest.

By the pricking of my thumb...

2009-09-18T07:07:00.000-07:00

... something in a kanga this way has come.

By the way - next time I bite my thumbnail, the very last bit of election stain will vanish from me. I fear that this'll happen soon, as I've manufactured some stress for myself. So here - without warning - are my warning flags for the "new" administration.

1. 100 daze - The first 100 days are a phoney marker, but by now we have a sense of how the rest of the first term will unfold. This is a list of things to look out for.

2. Red alert How Red will Zuma be? This question is exaggerated by several factors. First is the latent paranoia of those of us who still seek the red peril, after all these years. Second is the state of the Communist Party itself. The only Red pressure is from Blade Nzimande, so as long as he's onside, his party's under control. Conversely, when he's been sidelined, the phantom party he's been fronting can be safely (perhaps permanently) ignored. Which brings us to...

3. COSATU We don't know the nature of the pressure that COSATU will exert on the regime, since all we see of the union is its Secretary. Under the surface, there's a lot more support for centrist positions that Vavi's rambling would suggest. So COSATU needs to resolve. If Vavi's grip on it intensifies, there's the potential for increased pressure. But it's only potential, because union bargaining power is limited (by fatigue, largely.) If it loosens, then COSATU will democratise, and offer less of a coherent threat to government (largely because it will focus on the rather more boring bread-and-butter of industrial engagement.)

4. Style Zuma's style is based on survival, rather than advocacy. He doesn't stand for anything as doggedly as his predecessor. This makes him rather more prone to influence. And open to bargaining. At this point the ANC's internal king-makers are the chief candidates for the bending of the presidential ear. This explains why the succession debate has hotted up so quickly within the alliance. Under Mbeki, apparatchiks would get somewhere by convincing the big man of their attractiveness as hatcheteers. Under Zuma, you have to show that his survival is in your hands. COSATU is next in line.

5. Crime This will continue the trajectory of the last fifteen years. If there are silver bullets waiting to be executed, Zuma is unaware of them, and we shouldn't count on their immediate entry mshini yakhe (into the Presidential machine gun) upon discovery. The experience over the last decade and a half is one of spiraling crime, followed by a gradual downward management.

6. AIDS See "Crime" above. The chief constraint is money, and coverage will expand in line with a reduction in costs. So the trajectory of the last 15 years will continue: increased coverage in tandem with cost reduction and the building (first!) of administrative capacity. The focus, as always, will be on prevention, rather than treatment. The marker for all of this will be the evolution of the government's medium term treatment plan. Historically it's improved as it's become more doable. This'll go on...

7. Zimbabwe Two differences: Firstly, there will be some condemnatory rhetoric, outsourced to the ANC. Secondly, SA mediation will decrease. In regard o the first difference, boistrous rhetoric has never come easily to Zuma. In the (highly unlikely) event that he reverts to "hard diplomacy" this must be read as a sign of presidential weakness (i.e. he's caving in to pressure, rather than instinct). He is a skilled negotiator, with an impressive track record, and knows better than that. The second difference is largely because that mediation has run its course.

8. Foreign Affairs Same trajectory, but with less energy. Foreign policy was Mbeki's baby, but it isn't Zuma's.

9. Liberalism We've already seen the signs of encroaching conservatism. It's too depressing to elaborate. But the president surrounds himself with people to whom liberal rights are nice-to-haves, rather than necessities.

10. The opposition Zuma has done very well at not being Mbeki. The newer you are, the easier it is to play the difference gambit. But as you're steeped deeper into your own regime, the opposition forget about their grudge against your predecessor, and hone resentment focussed on you. Time passes between when you've offered to listen carefully to their concerns, and when you've (still not) actioned them. In the end it becomes clear (as it should have been at the start) that they weren't looking to be listened to. They wanted to be obeyed. You then have to break the news that this won't happen. The chats become less cordial.
I anticipate that within two years Zuma will have lost his reputation as an engaging listener. For action-oriented reasons.

I could go on, but my nails need biting...

Bubblewatch

2009-08-11T04:58:00.000-07:00

I missed the midpoint of 2009. My diary reveals that on June 30 I trotted off to the Centre for Conflict Resolution (Africa's premier think-tank) for the launch of Terry Bell's self published book on Moses Mayekiso. Both were in attendance. Barbara pimped the book loyally at the door. She also distributed postcards for Terry's no-VAT-on-books campaign. And so forth.

But I should have delivered an interim report on my "Whip out the Bubbly" blog. Well...

1. The JP Morgan US Bond Index is down 5% for the year. A fizz, more than a pop, but there's more of the year left yet. We were on queue with the order, as this one cracked even as the note was written. Arguably, the top was in the last week of December.

2. The presidential popping has been pretty well covered in recent weeks. Zogby had him breeching 50% (southward!). Who would've thought? (Actually, I did - see the Inauguration Special.) It's early, and you could see him tease 60% again, but that's going to require a special event. So I stick with my earlier remarks. Again, we were right in placing this second in order. The only thing I got wrong was that Healthcare woudld be implicated in the softening.

3. And then there was China. It's arguable whether this bubble is going to pop. Immediately this means that I was right on the order. But there'll be egg-eating unless something interesting happens between now and year-end. The data is mixed. China is at what I call the fore-hindisight phase: all the stuff we'd cite in an I-told-you-so are in evidence (e.g. export collapse, reserve risk) but the negatives have been tempered by positive data coming from reporting domains that the Chinese authorities are able to manipulate.

Spring threatens. Let's sit out the rest of the year.

By the way...

2009-06-04T07:04:00.000-07:00

I found this interesting:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/06/01/the_obama_infatuation_96768.html

State of the Notion

2009-06-03T00:36:00.000-07:00

I don't know what to expect, but I do believe that afterward you'll here the DA come as close as ever to effusive praise. This'll have little to do with the content of the speech, and lots to do with credit extension. Simply put, they'll be investing in future critique, when they'll be able to point out that they were initially supportive. It makes sense to do so early in the honeymoon, when there's little tangible substance for a fight (because Zuma can blame anything tangible on his last-but-one predecessor.) Also, it'll soften Zille's kanga blowback.

Awuleth'u polltracker wham.

2009-04-22T03:53:00.000-07:00

Sadly, this post was deleted in error. I await confirmation that it can be retreived from the server. On the upside, it was a very short post predicting the outcome of the SA election. It's essentially completely recalled below:

African Nation Congress 63%

Democratic Alliance 14%

Congress of the People 10%%

Inkatha Yesizwe Nonkululekho x%

The comments are original and, accordingly, still refer.

Chomsky to be sued for copyleft infringement

2009-02-19T01:28:00.000-08:00

"Obama's insistence that only Abbas and Fayyad exist conforms to the consistent Western contempt for democracy unless it is under control. Obama provided the usual reasons for ignoring the elected government led by Hamas." -Chomsky, January 26, 2009.

" Importantly, Obama will continue Bush's democracy boycott - failing to recognise the democratically elected Hamas government." TrueCents, January 20, 2009

Inauguration Special

2009-01-20T05:43:00.000-08:00

In a few hours, a tearful George Bush will wave the White House goodbye, as he's whisked to Texas from the presidential helipad. America will be plunged into an unprecedented crisis: how to deploy it's most malapropped president onto the lecture circuit. While it ponders that conundrum, Barack Obama will carve out the legacy of the 44th President. A preview:

Tone: Obama's tone will generally be much (much) more palatable than Bush's. The ugly stuff will be concealed, rather than trumpeted proudly.

Style: Just as the Obama campaing reprised themes from Bush/Cheney2000, there'll be similarities in style between the two. Don't expect Clinton-style micromanagement. Like bush, Obama will be a coordinator of people who do the actual work. He'll rule with decreasing authority over the camps, and focus his energies on projecting outward to the people (American and otherwise). He won't take month-long holidays.

the first 100 days: Barring a surprise crisis, we'll still be in honeymoon territory. There'll be softening of the approval rating, but nothing worrisome. The time will have been spent basking in goodwill.

The bubble: Obama kicks off with a staggering 86% approval rating. In constrast, Bush leaves with (according to CBS) a 22% rating. This is remarkable. After the biggest economic collapse in a lifetime, the failure of wars of aggression against two of the world's militarily most denuded countries, and the largest fiscal deficit in the history of the dollar, you need to select only five Americans to hear the opinion that Bush is doing a good (not just OK) job. The comaprison with the Bush's is interesting. W holds the record for the highest ever approval rating (92%) as well as lowest (19%). By implication he has endured the greatest bubble pop, with 73% of Americans going 180 on him. 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.
Ratings are driven by public ennui, and his biggest worry is that the American public will tire of their gut-curdling ride on the credit-coaster. 50-something approval points signals a bursting of the Obama-bubble, and a retreat to normalcy. I think we'll see this in the first year. After that, we won't see a sharp V, unless there's war or a significant terrorist attack.

The Economy: Obama's differences with Bush over the economy mirror the two's difference over the war in Iraq: the central pivot is not an in-princile difference, as much as the hindsighted confidence that Obama could have handled it better. Obama supporters will, no doubt, counter that he "opposed the war from the start", without considering his support for the no-fly regime, itself a unilateral act of aggression. Digressions aside, the convergence of opinion was elegantly demonstrated in the week of the first presidential debate, when Obama joined Bush in battling populist Republican resistance to TARP. The Obama team was pleased to point out that even John McCain, whose first interjection was timed forty minutes after the start of the discussion, was less enthused about TARP than his reformist rival. Much had been written long before about the conservatising influence of Obama's Chicago confidantes like Austen Goolsbee, foreshadowing a critique fleshed out following the staff announcements of the Obama shadow treasury (wisely postponed until after the election). Without rehashing too much of what's already been noted, Obama's management of the US economy will be difficult.

Foreign relations: For economic reasons, Mexico and China will overshadow Britain, and Iraq. In about a year David Cameron will be sworn in as the British Prime Minister. Any special relationship won't be based on hope and change. Obama will - very willingly and comfortably - deal direct with Europe, but will find it no more tractable than it was for his predecessor.

Bush. The reason that the rest of the world was happy to see Obama is that they believe him to be less threatening (i.e. more pliable) than Bush. Note that Medvedev waited until after the US polls had closed before announcing his European missile plans. He preferred not having that fight with McCain.

Israel/Palestine: Obama will deliver a speech, widely recognised as groundbreaking in it's recognition of Palestinian rights. it will criticise the tenor (but not the content) of past American involvement, and will invoke (probably explicitly) the two-state imperative. While the speech will promise an energised American engagement, it will stop short of imposing clear conditions on the extention of American diplomatic support and aid to Israel. Importantly, Obama will continue Bush's democracy boycott - failing to recognise the democratically elected Hamas government. This is not to say that Palestinian justice won't advance, but as in Iraq will be driven by internal dynamics. Under Obama, American influence will have a net retarding effect.

Africa: Obama will struggle to match Bush's factorfold increase of aid commitment, although he could (but probably won't) improve the gap between pledges and grants. Trade between the US and Africa will be increasingly marked by protectionist American concerns. Look out for an open resource war between the US and China, fought in Africa. The casualty of this will be African development. I exepect Obama to keep Bush's CENTCOM expansion plans on the backburner, as opposed to the dustbin. He is capable of authorign bombing raids a la the Somali raids during Bush's second term, but will do a better job of making the case.

Obama's war: The Status of Forces agreement signalled the end of American involvement in Iraq. The rest is mopping up. Obama will implement a surge strategy in Afghanistan, creating a temporary semblance of stability under whose cover he can execute a roughly dignified exit from a war which - bizarrely - he's invested in. So much for the inherited conflict. Obama will pursue agressive action in Latin America. Not a full-scale invasion, but a sovereignty-busting attack. The conflict triggered will not be of the scale required to resucsitate the economy (which doesn't preclude something else doing that).

Guantanamo Bay: On Day1 President Obama will issue a decree closing the site. This will signal a continuation of the Clinton-Bush approach to prisoner rights, for while Obama will reach for the theatrics of closing the site, he'll studiously avoid the issue of prisoner rights. This must include legal representation, habeus corpus (I expect Obama to be a more convincing salesperson of the Bush tradition of denyign habeus), full disclosure to human rights bodies, access to relatives, due process in a properly constituted court of law, desisting from arbitrary arrest, and so forth. These Bush-era elements will remain intact. The clue to this is the arithmatic around Guantanamo itself. A Brookings Institute report shows that two thirds of the Guantanamo detained prisoners aren't there any longer. In addition, we believe (the figures aren't disclosed, for obvious reasons) that Guantanamo inmates constitute a minorirty of America's illegally-held prison population, the rest of whom live in so-called black sites. Because these sites have been outside of public scrutiny, the President will have no cause to close them. Expect at least some of the newly liberated Guantanamo inmates to find new digs in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Diego Garcia, Afghanistan, and who knows where else. Even those transferred to America can't expect the sort of trial that Americans (like Timothy McVeigh who - unlike the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees - actually was a terrorist).

Healthcare: 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.

Black America: Black America will end it's tenure under Obama slightly worse off than it began. It's relative (to White America) exposure to social ills (poverty, prison, substance abuse, violent crime, HIV infection, etc.) will be slightly higher, and it's relative exposure to social benefits (wealth, health, security, employment) will be lower. This won't be Obama's fault; as America enters a period of diminished prosperity (i.e. negative real per capita GDP growth), long-standing social fissures are deepened. No one president can stem that in a single term (although perpetuation is a piece of cake). Neither will this imply the absence of signs of progress. A greater number of Black Americans will be receving a larger amount of healthcare covereage, quality education and (maybe) employment.

2012: Obama will face no Democratic challengers in the primaries. He may be Clinton-weak at his reelection, and will be helped by a lacklustre, ill-prepared republican campaing. The Republican frontrunners will be Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Piyush Jindall. It's way early, but I think that Romney's the candidate to watch. The next tier may include Charles Christ, Tom Ridge and rudi Gulliani. Whether the Republicans unseat Obama depends largely on their performance in the 2010 mid-terms, and their mastery of populist politics starting today. The four key tasks are:

fence-mending with Latino Americans
Pragmatic economic populism
candidate selection
repairing thetechnology gap.

At this stage, they're able to pull it off, although GOP knee-jerks threaten all four.

Unraveling: Obama's juggernaut-of-rivals will give way to a more focussed, coherent, administration. The peripheral elements (like Paul Volker) will give way to the core, so that within two years the administration will look a lot more trim. If this is well managed (gently picking off the elements one-by-one), it will herald an unremarkable transition from a campaign of transformative insurgence to a conservative administration. If it's poorly managed it could spark divisive revenge from the outgunned rivals. Either way, the implementors of Clinton's triangulation will reintroduce centreism as the animating theme of the adminstration. This time, the chastening effect of the economic fallout will double the conservatising impulse.

Success: Obama won't be considered one of the worst. It's unlikely that he'll be remembered as a one of the best (excluding Dem partisans). Remember that Carter presided over a closing of America's inflation problem, but was rewarded by losing his party's nomination for reelection. Presidential success admits a gap between perception and reality. America rarely falls over (a consequence of its long history of developed markets and civil institutions). In order to increase his shot at success, he'll have to be pragmatic about which promises he'll ditch at the outset, and which he'll focus on. I expect him to do this.

Gaza

2009-01-07T03:55:00.000-08:00

(* I attach the text of a received email*)

> Hi,
>
> I have been so disgusted by the Israeli action in Gaza but so confused
> by conflicting messages. It is hard to know what to think, and what to
> do.
>
> The most cogent account I have found, with context, especially about
> Hamas coming to power, and the sorry story of of Gaza after 40 years
> occupation and then the last two years in which it has been turned
> into a vast open-air prison, is this one from Avi Shlaim, an Oxford
> Professor:
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine
>
> Shlaim is one of the "new historians" like Benny Morris, who have
> questioned some of the founding 'myths' of the problem. He is maligned
> in places on the internet, but I suppose people who tell the truth (or
> even half the truth) will always have detractors. I am sure that much
> could be argued with in his account above, but much of it also rings
> true with me.
>
> I have been wondering what to do. Not just about this episode, but
> about the problem of Israel and the Palestinians in general.
>
> Some of my friends in the UK have been boycotting Israel for years
> (e.g fruit and vegetable products in UK supermarkets), and I am
> feeling that I should now do the same. This won't matter much, but a
> collective attitude would, and so presumably would enough people in
> the US calling their congress-people, etc. Interestingly, the leader
> of the opposition liberal democrats in the UK called today for a
> suspension of UK arms to Israel (more than 20 million pounds worth in
> the first three months of 2008), and of EU arms to Israel. [This is
> not to mention the several billions of dollars per year in US aid to
> Israel].
>
> Sanctions on south africa were a key factor (although I guess it's
> debatable how key) that led the regime to eventually talk with the
> "terrorists" and then compromise and share power.
>
> Interested in your views,

Whip out the bubbly...

2009-01-02T02:19:00.000-08:00

I liked 2008. It just didn't turn out as it should have. But it was a nice year. In principle.

OK, in lieu of resolutions (which impose too much responsibility on the offerer), and hot on the heels of the last quarter's bubble-popping frenzy (the housing bubble, the securitisation bubble, the investment banking bubble, etc.) allow me to present the next three bubbles.

First, a disclaimer. I can't deny that there'll be other bubble-bursts inbetween (eg. Vanity Fair warn convincingly of an impending private equity pop). Second, they may not all pop this year. But I have tried to lay them out in the order I think they'll unfold. So here goes:

1. The US treasury. This is a stealth bubble, inflated by Bush, longstanding hubris, and latterly the Federal Reserve Bank. The unravelling will take the form of an increased impotence, as the government finds itself unable to intervene effectively. Treasury bond yields will rise, and the coporate spread will narrow. This means that the government's ability to borrow will weaken. Given that it's voluntarilly weakened its ability to raise taxes, and it's in deficit, Americans will learn the meaning of the Afrikaans post New Year phenomenon bubble-las.

2. Barack Obama. This one was popping last September, until in a rare example of an implosion shielding another implosion, the panic stemming from the housing collapse kept it going. More on this in my Jan20 note.

3. China. It's a long story, but China's been poorly managed for a long time. The banks have been a mess. It's been as dependent on overstretched Americans as the rest of us. Let's not get started on the politics, save to say that rich people don't like having their own freedom restricted. And there's an increasing amount of wealth in China. This reduces the effectiveness of extreme goverment efforts at gerrymandering the economy.
Initially, there'll be firesale attempts at prolonging the implosion. Invariably, these involve selling the most recent stocks of the familly silver (or china). In this case, they're US treasry bonds. I forget the numbers, but the overwhelming majority (80% order of magnitude) of new American borrowing over the last years has been from China. This is why in my list China is #3, and the American treasury #1. In a reversal of the bubble altruism that propelled Obama to November, we have here a case of a bubble pressganging another bubble.

OK, then. Crappy New Year.

On solid footing.

2008-12-15T00:06:00.000-08:00

A few remarkable things about this video:

0. The aim. I don't think I could get that close. Twice.
1. The secret service response time. If you've seen Spike Jonze's "Five Stop Mother Superior Rain" video, you get a sense of the silent pandemonium in the first few nanoseconds of an assasination.
2. Bush seemed to enjoy this, proving that the inner fratboy is hard to kill.
3. Nuri al Maliki was the most breathtaking. This is a replay of his unflappable form last year when a bomb exploded outside a press conference with the new UN secretary. Ban Ki Moon tried to crawl under the table, and Maliki looked as if bomb blasts within retching distance are an everyday thing. Which I suppose they are.
4. The SOFA, which brought Bush to Baghdad, may surprise in its content. Patrick Cockburn has it covered here.

After the race

2008-11-06T08:52:00.001-08:00

"Thaht's kwoit ah hedd o' hairrr ya gat therrrre," at which, startled, I gave up the attempt at removing my underpants to address the wizened frame of the hulking Scot who towered over me (in the mens' change room at the Sea Point swimming pool). It was an unusually grey and rainy Cape Town summer's morning, which I found fit for a swim.

He was very friendly, this grey-bearded haggis eater, who - in an apparent bid to ant-dissapate the tension from his dreadful greeting offered "Sooow, arrr ye ahs huppy aboot thah eleyction ahs wee arrr?" And then, when my expected "absolutely" was met with awkward pause he coninued "wahll, ut least therrr'll be ahn ehnd ta tha worrrs."
"Well not if it's up to Obama, he favours an intensification in Afghanistan."
"Whall, at least tha parrrtie of warrr is ote."
"Not really. Vietnam was a Democratic initiative. The (uncapitalised) bay of pigs was Kennedy."
"Uhm ohld enuff ta rememberrrr thaht, yong mahn", he intoned serenely. And then, flashing youthful optimism in defiance of his years (and putative memory) he wrapped "whall, we'rrre just ohptimistic, though I cunn see yorrr skehptical". And then I swimmed.

So now, in the full comfort of my undergarments, allow me to share with you (a first, as this usually is a solo misery) the closing moments of my post-electoral gloom. What's now become a (probably permanent) four-yearly cycle of despair has been remarkably shorter this time around. The reasons are clear. There's no Ohio or Florida recount to prolong the hope. The alternative wasn't that alluring, and I'm a little more experienced.

So why this? Unlike the last two times, the despair requires a bit of explaining. My shower mate's presumption is in keeping with the standard distribution of assumptions. Instead of going through things repetitiously, I hope to refer those with a professed interest (you, probably) to this blog. This way I get to mope once, and live a little more.

My reservations about the Obama candidacy were threefold, and didn't change much over the latter course of the campaign:
1. The candidacy was based upon a cynical, unnecessary and harmful exploitation of race.
2. It was an empty candidacy, at its core an expression of style, with only a tactical reversion to substance.
3. It was a dishonest campaign.

The first point may need elaboration. Barack Obama was one of five people of colour on presidential tickets this season. Why were none of the others regarded as vectors to the "historic opportunity (to elect an unwhite President)" (brackets not mine.) In short, because none of them asked to be thus regarded. This in spite of the fact that one of them (Cynthia McKinney, the Green Party candidate) offered the astonishing double whammy of being a black woman candidate.

The major/minor party distinction only partly explains the difference, but while it could account for McKinney and Matt Gonzalez (Ralph Nader's running mate), it hardly explains Alan Keys (Republican) and Bill Richardson (Democrat). The reason Obama stood out, is that he asked to. I'd encourage readers to view this article from the LA Times' Shelby Steele:

Here's a snippet:

Obama's special charisma -- since his famous 2004 convention speech -- always came much more from the racial idealism he embodied than from his political ideas. In fact, this was his only true political originality. On the level of public policy, he was quite unremarkable. His economics were the redistributive axioms of old-fashioned Keynesianism; his social thought was recycled Great Society. But all this policy boilerplate was freshened up -- given an air of 'change' -- by the dreamy post-racial and post-ideological kitsch he dressed it in...

This was never lost on me, and as a lifelong (so far) pawn in the web of racial politics I found the use of blackness as a central bargaining chip to be particularly offensive. Steele's remarks on the deployment of the chip chime with what I've struggled to articulate in private conversation before. Steele continues:

Obama is what I have called a "bargainer" -- a black who says to whites, 'I will never presume that you are racist if you will not hold my race against me.' Whites become enthralled with bargainers out of gratitude for the presumption of innocence they offer.
Bargainers relieve their anxiety about being white and, for this gift of trust, bargainers are often rewarded with a kind of halo...
Obama's post-racial idealism told whites the one thing they most wanted to hear: America had essentially contained the evil of racism to the point at which it was no longer a serious barrier to black advancement. Thus, whites became enchanted enough with Obama to become his political base. It was Iowa -- 95% white -- that made him a contender. Blacks came his way only after he won enough white voters to be a plausible candidate...

I've seen (and continue to) the operation of this halo effect in South Africa. Nelson Mandela is, without question, regarded as "a great leader", with no reference to policy and implementation under his stewardship. There's a racial element to the attribution. Black south Africans remember and recognise him as a selfless, ultimately vindicated freedom fighter. White South Africans, who generally despise the violent guerrilla movement he began, and the crippling economic sanctions campaign he endorsed, limit their attribution to a localised equivalent of the redemption bargain.

I don't wish to be drawn on a debate around the timing of Iowa. What resonates is Steele's characterisation of Obama's allure: The illusion of a quick-fix, in lieu of a programme of substance-driven change. The danger of this offer is evident. To the extent that it succeeds, the quick-fix tells the previously anxious "you have nothing left to regret, and by implication nothing left to attend to." And so, the first two issues defining my reservation morph. I've previously referred to this as the delegitimisation of radical politics; an immediate consequence of the substanceless bargain.

In this regard, I was struck by John McCain's acceptance speech. There were only two moments of sustained clapping; the second when he thanked Sara Palin, and the first when he declared

"Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on Earth."

Put differently, "Now that (the presidential) race is behind us, race is behind us."

Without a laboured elaboration of the third reason, I recall the extent of Obama's flip-flopping. His pacifist preening to Democratic primarygoers, contrasted starkly with the later sabre rattling about Pakistan, guns, FISA and Jerusalem. The turnaround on campaign finance was clear deceit. This, in an ordinary candidate, would've skotched his credibility. How it sustained his transformative claim is beyond me.

Indeed, the cracks in the transformative facade were immediately available on election night. Even as they said "yes we can", the voters of ultra-blue California passed a ban on same-sex marriage, by the same margin as Obama's national popular vote. This mirrored the cunning of the change agent, who during the campaign endorsed the bigotry of the ban, objecting only to the effort to centralise the decision-making around the ban (i.e he wanted states, not the federal congress to decide.)

Returning to my shower mate, something else is striking. There is a racial determination of the expected response involved in all of this. Black people are expected to shirk from McCain, and embrace Obama. Anyone who looks like doing contrariwise on either count is, however tacitly, required to explain. Which can lead to rambling blogging.

Again Steele's remarks are pertinent:

But there is an inherent contradiction in all this. When whites -- especially today's younger generation -- proudly support Obama for his post-racialism, they unwittingly embrace race as their primary motivation. They think and act racially, not post-racially. The point is that a post-racial society is a bargainer's ploy: It seduces whites with a vision of their racial innocence precisely to coerce them into acting out of a racial motivation. A real post-racialist could not be bargained with and would not care about displaying or documenting his racial innocence. Such a person would evaluate Obama politically rather than culturally.

This last line invokes something else that's weighed on me. Obama continues to benefit from what George Bush (or his speechwriter) poetically dubbed "the soft bigotry of reduced expectations". Ironically, it is Bush himself who dropped the bar for Obama, by providing as benchmkark his disastrous administration. This has allowed Obama to escape comparison with the more substantive people he actually was running against.

So much for my initial concerns. Given that Obama is president, what now? There's something like a more constructive reason for writing this blog: Sometimes I hope to be refuted. Refutation is easier when one is upfront with one's reservation. Otherwise, there is the temptation to continually change the gripe in response to parts of it being undone. Obama has the potential to come up with new ways to disappoint me. But barring that, I don't wish to add to the current crop. The onus is on him to trim it.

In the spirit of bipartisanship (and in defiance of your the temptation to forget George Bush too soon), allow me to channel Karl Rove:

What Mr. Obama and his team achieved was impressive. But in 75 days comes the hard part. We saw a glimpse of the challenge Tuesday night. The president-elect's speech, while graceful and at times uplifting, was light when it comes to an agenda. That may have been appropriate, but it also continued a pattern.
Many Americans were drawn to Mr. Obama because they saw in him what they wanted to see. He became a large vessel into which voters placed their hopes. This can lead to disappointment and regret. What of the woman who, in the closing days of the campaign, rejoiced that Mr. Obama would pay for her gas and take care of her mortgage, tasks that no president can shoulder?

Very much good will come from the Obama presidency. As they accrue, his accomplishments must be recognised and praised without reservation. The misgivings described here can be addressed by engaging his administration on specifics, as I have no doubt sections of civil society will.

Four years from now, Black America will continue to be as much of a relatively impoverished, undereducated and overimprisoned place as it is now. In fact it's likely to get worse. This is not due to Obama at all; inequality so deeply entrenched takes a long concerted effort to undo. Even if you really want to. The only way out is to define programmes of improvement. They need to betoken a radical break from the present. There's a myriad of ways that this can happen, which implies a host of possibilities for Obama. By establishing credible institutions for the improvement of Black America, he will have vindicated the claim that his was but a tactical - and pardonable - bargain.

The last debate

2008-10-15T18:00:00.001-07:00

Still unsure if I can blog this, as the channels I have access to claim that they won't be covering it. Anyway...

Dramatis Personae
BS - Bob Shaeffer, moderator.
BS - Likely content of tonight's discussion.
BO - Barack Obama, pretender.
JM - John McCain, posttender.
TAP - The (much-venerated-never-questioned) American People

Quoting Zogby "The stagnant nature of this race comes as tonight’s final presidential debate looms. The first two presidential face-offs have been somewhat lackluster, failing to gain a television audience as large as the debate between the vice-presidential candidates, Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin. Tonight’s event is the last time Obama and McCain will stand on the same stage before the election."

McCain's last chance to talk in detail.

0:00:00 Shaefer finishes his nonsens, and they stroll on. This is a roundtable. The first question is "why's your economic plan beetter than his?"

0:01:00 McCain reprises his deathbed opening. I didn't hear who was sick this time (Kennedy in the last debate). But the prayers went up. There's a lot of eyelash flutter.

0:03:00 Obama hits the ground running with details. He's following the Palin formula of talking straight into the camera. He has won the debate in the first five minutes. Remarkable.

0:05:20 JM takes the first stab. It's the tax gambit. Incidentally, it revolves around a Joe-sixpack man whose name really is Joe. Supposedly, this man met BO at a rally. JM is doing the Palin thing too now. However belatedly.

Both of them are stressing the differences between themselves. This is JM's last chance to challenge BO's numbers.

0:07:30 BO marshalls independent studies to support his economic policies. So far, there's been nothing new, detail-wise.

0:09:00 remarkably, JM talks to the wrong camera. This is a suable offense.

0:10:30 JM has started fighting. BO looked tired in the last salvo. JM still hasn't found the camera.

0:11:30 Here's a reprise of the "what spending will you cut" question from the last debate.

0:12:50 BO defers the answer until his presidency "I want to go through the federal budget line-by-line," etc.

0:14:00 JM defeats the claim that he's an old man: "During the Depression WE had a thing called..." He gets back to his small government refrain. It's not seemed to work in the past.

0:16:40 Porky, the second debte mascot, makes a dramatic return. She's tackled the same way that BO's done in the past (perspective). So far, BO's been in control of the debate. Ironically, he looks more grandfatherly, which helps in these fragile times.

0:18:00 JM delivers his first attempt at soundbite of the evening "Senator Obama, I'm not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago."

0:21:00 BO turns the soundbite around. He's forced JM to show his pen, which makes him look out of control. This debate is turning into a game changer. But not for Arizona.

0:22:30 Bob Shaeffer (should I call him BS?) asks about the campaign dirt.

0:23:30 BO sneers at the townhall idea. Potential gaffe there. He goes on to dismiss the importance of tone in the debate.

(I only just got to make this blog at the eleventh hour. So it was unprepared. None of the fanfare from the last time. So far, this seems like a more robust version of the last one. So I'm tiring of it.)

0:33:30 JM dredges up the dirt on BO. Who said that negative character portrayals are off the Ayre? Then BO dispatches elegantly. That should be the end of this issue now. BO sneers a little more. Then BS turns the corner.

0:42:00 Some droll remarks about the veeps.

Someone should have taught McCain how to speak slowly. TAP don't like no edgy folk. Even Bush knew this.

Next cycle we should have live audience tracking, to work out for how long people stay tuned into the debates. And at what points they opt out.

I don't know how JM intended to sit through ten townhall debates with such a small stock of ideas.

0:58:00 BREAKTHROUGH - BO says "zero", and JM's jaw drops. It's a long story, though. They're talking healthcare. BO is on top of the details. JM has raced through various options that he didn't seem enthused about. it sounds as if the reigning expert on the McCain healthacre plan is Barack Obama.

1:04:00 Talking judges. After telling us at Saddleback that he didn't like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, JM now proudly reveals that he voted for her.

1:13:00 Mercifully, the last question arrives.

1:24:00 "Gentleman, we have come to the close". JM lies first: "I think we have had a very healthy discussion." Finally he finds the right camera. (Or it finds him.)

Interestingly, JM focuses on his long history, and BO on his short one.

BO wins this one on a clear points decision. It's the first debate with a clear outcome.

G'night.

The WHO-DF

2008-10-09T03:34:00.000-07:00

Herewith, Kylie's email:

It certainly is an exciting proposition, although I am so frightened of being naively optimistic like I was about the UDM in 1999. I think for me one of the many interesting questions would be if a “UDF” was formed what would the ANC do in terms of the electoral system. We have always known that a pure First-Past-the-Post electoral system would obliterate the opposition, so would the ANC now with a real threat to its power finally change the electoral system? Rather than a pure FPTP system I like the idea of a multi-member constituency system which I think combines the benefits of representivity with access and limits the power of party bosses.

Another question is, is this a split in the ANC or a splinter of the ANC? Uncle Thabo did get 40% of the vote at Polokwane – could Lekota and team attract 20 – 30% of the national vote?

My other question about the “UDF” would be who would be its core constituency and what would its political philosophy be? If Lekota’s convention happens in Cape Town or he has a consultative forum here – I will definitely be heading off there. Keen to join me?

By the way – I am now officially unemployed and happily working away at my masters dissertation. Too quickly I am becoming very used to being able to work according to my own schedule.

To Nashville!

2008-10-07T12:52:00.000-07:00

Err... peeps!

I make no promises, but maybe I can live blog "tonight's" McCain/Obama debate. The challenges before me are:

1. Resolving the permanent barrier between my PC and the tv screen.
2. Staying awake until 4.30AM (Cape Town = UTC+1) when, thankfully, it ends.
3. writing and viewing at the same time.

Watch this space...

OK, the preliminaries:

BACKGROUND: McCain wanted one townhall meet a week (starting in June). Obama's handlers wouldn't let him come out to play. Tonight it happens at last. For the last time.

JARGON:
BLA - Body language alert.
BO -The Jim Crow term for uppity Illinois senators.
FCAn -Fact Check Alert #n.
GA - Gaffe Alert.
JM -JC for Arizona.
K5 -Keating Five (pejorative for the evening).
TM - Tom Brokaw.

STRATEGY:
Obama: - Look presidential.
McCain: - Look parental.

PREDICTIONS:
Another draw. At current levels of support, Obama wins if its a draw. This was his (successful) strategy in the tail of the primaries.

THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR:
- Obama scowling.
- McCain sneering.
- Obama saying "Uhhh."
- McCain looking at his watch.
- Keating cropping up.
- Obama linking McCain to "the failed policies and philosophy of Bush" for the hundredth time.

OK, so this is a strangely "studio" townhall. Gallup selected the audience. Tom Brokaw officiating. He looks suspiciously like JM. I want to protest, but can't bring myself to.

Funny how the undecideds are exalted. "Only in America." They'll keep schtum.

00:00 They come onstage. JM loos reticent. They stroke each other. I didn't know that JM is a Southpaw. The Republican inside me is stirred.

00:50 BO won the coin toss. The first Bush-McCain link is landed. The scene is set. JM's task is to be au fait with details. He should be spewing numbers. So far BO has rambled superficial.

00:03 JM lies "Senator [Obama], it's good to be with you." He plays the Palin gambit. JM looks more rehearsed here, but I suspect that BO is keeping his powder dry. "Stabilise home values" is more detailed than BO's "executive pay" ramble. He drives a wedge between himself and Bush.

00:05 Brokaw allows JM to play the non-partisan, motivating "the sage from Omaha" for the treasury. BO smiles approvingly.

00:07 BO waxes partisan on tax cuts. His wind has been stolen just a little.

00:09 JM introduces his regulation flip gambit. It's a long story. I didn't expect this. I hear the stirrings of Keating.

00:10 BO hits the detail. He sounds professorial. It should work. But now the gloves come off. "You're not interested in hearing politicians pointing fingers" -after shoving JM ten of the best.

00:13 BO denies that the economy will get worse. "I am cnofident about the American economy" How's that possible if "the fundamentals are strong" is baloney?

00:14 JM asks my question above.

00:15 Not for the first time, a beau stumps BO. He says "uh" a lot. This conceals the question. It may work for him, but that woman sounded livid when she posed the question.

00:18 JM shows good ol' Southern charm. He calls the questioner a cynic. At least he's answering the question. BO sneers. But beautifully. I want to cry.

00:22 JM carries out his first outright duck. He's imbibed the Palin "I won't answer the question the way you want me to" KoolAid.

00:23 BO invokes the ghost of JFK. Where's Keating? I want more mud!

00:25 TB cracks a cute joke about deficits.

00:27 BO looks beautiful offstage. Have I said this before? Oops. Here he comes...

00:28 BLA - JM defies his inner oldman, by standing between questions. Trick is, he has a tiger-prowling reflex, which could hurt. The lanky BO prefers to slouch. Beautifully. (As I may have pointed out before.) BO has done a better job of actually answering this question.

00:34 JM is combining numeric specificity with pugilism. TB reigns in the uppity BO. I don't think it'll work, though.

00:35 FCA1 Do less than 90% of small businesses have an operating profit under $200,000? BO thinks so.

00:38 JM "Medicare is difficult." He's scowling a lot. He's landing some tax-related blows. It may have been a bad idea for BO to pick that fight.

00:40 The first anti-Palin question is asked. JM takes it on the chin. BO stumbles a bit in his fightback. He is restrained again.

Halftime assesment:
BO - He's getting the draw he wanted. The blows have been softer than they could've been. He looks better.
JM - He's doing much better in the economic section than in the first debate. He's more direct. He's been the more interesting character to watch. I feel at one with my inner Limbaugh.

00:46 JM is ducking. Now he returns artfully for a pert 10 second reply. His fighter pilot skills serve him well.

00:47 BLA - The audience is doing a great job of looking unimpressed (except the woman in blue who beams at BO.) I can't wait to see the polls.

00:48 Let's see if JM has learnt from the (recent) past. BO reprises his giveth-taketh-away tax attack from the first debate.

00:49 He hasn't.

00:52 JM infringes BO's copyright on the word "Uhm."

00:54 FCA2 Is Bo gonna fine small businesses that don't insure their staff medically? BO is doing a good job of showing that he feels the pain. You get healthcare for that.

00:55 Ding! TB calls the end to the BO-owned part of the debate. It's off to foreign policy now.

(the fat guy in blue looks like he could take a swipe at JM. I'd nudge the secret service at this point.)

00:60 BO "economizes" the foreign policy debate. Clever lad. We certainly aren't getting the argument-dominance of Biden over Palin in last week's debate.

01:02 On Rwanda and the Holocaust, BO reprises his inner Palin. When JM drops his voice to a whisper, he sounds like he's trying too hard. But if you're not too bored by the discussion you'd notice that between barbs, at least JM is saying something substantive by way of answering the question before him.

01:05 FCA3 I think that BO is wrong about the reasons that Bin Laden escaped. It had nothing to do with a shortage of resources, but a deliberate decision to leave it to Pashtun proxies. By the way, he's ducking what he called "an excellent question" about Pakistani sovereignty. (i.e. is a drone attack an invasion of sovereignty? She was asking about a Cambodia-style operation.)

01:10 "I want exactly the same, but different". JM defies his inner (and outer) old man with some GenY-speak about the surge.

01:10 BLA - JM drinks water through sips and gargles. FCA4 - Is BO's contention that Pakistanis' flagging support for America is limited to support for Musharaf true?

01:13 Palin won her McKieran question. Which of these two will win the Couper-Coles equivalent this time? (the blue lady has stopped smiling. I blame charm fatigue.)

01:15 The answer is neither. JM oversells the surge.

01:18 "Uhhhh.... For the most part I agree with Senator McCain"(Whoever accused BO of eloquence has obviously never heard Jon Kerry and Hilary Clinton.)

01:19 In the homestretch moments, BO reaches out to me by recalling the title of the underloved Jethro Tull jig "Thinking 'round corners."

All of you sit up in bed. don't think in straight lines ahead.
Can't sleep? head spin? don't think in circles, it'll do you in.
Think back to the dream you had; no sense of being good or bad.
Jump to the left, jump to the right. think round corners into night.

01:20 BREAKTHROUGH#1 - JM makes the audience laugh. They've promised not to do it. This is it. As Brokaw announces the last two questions, JM has landed the knockout for the evening. He said "Maybe".

01:22 BREAKTHROUGH#2 JM gets some love (warm smile and handshake) from a bald questioner. Even after his earlier jibe about hair transplants!

01:24 GA (just kidding - disappointingly, there weren't any tonight). Also Keating's been in hiding. The pink shirted baldie gives no love to BO. Dis some Bradley shi'!

01:26 The last question. BO has just finished his impression of talking like a robot.

01:27 BO's overweening ego makes him pass up an opportunity to self-deprecate. He channels his inner Rummy ("unkown knowns"). He decides to override the questioner's question with his own. I'm not just being an egregious redneck. This really happened.

01:29 JM won't dismiss teh question, but he's not gonna rub his nose in it entirely. More Rummy-reprise.

The verdict.
This has been much better for McCain than I'd thought. We now know why Rahm Emanuel wouldn't let Obama out to play townhall-townhall. He sucks at it.
Obama didn't loose the arguments, but this was his turf, and he bestrode it with insufficient dominance. Especially after Biden-Palin, this is net better for the Republican ticket.

It's been a pleasure staying up with you. Goodnight.