Category: White House

F136 Alternate JSF Engine Update

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So, the House-Senate Conference Committee agreed to fund the F136 alternate engine for the JSF, despite a qualified veto threat from the White House.

By qualified, I mean that “sources in the WH” have said that they would “recommend a veto,” if the engine were funded, which is quite different from the flat out statement that Obama would veto anything with the F-22 white elephant Raptor.

While the weak veto threat is one of the reasons that supporters of the alternate engine have gained momentum, there is also the fact that Pratt & Whitney is doing back-flips on cost and schedule in order to try to kill the RR/GE F136 engine, which reinforces the idea that they see a real threat their profit model for the F135 engine.

Additionally, the idea that the program managers can squeeze P&W just as hard if there is no competitor out in the wings is plainly ludicrous, and the F100/F110 “engine war” of the 1980s clearly shows that.

The reason that the DoD is fighting the alternate engine at this point, is because they really want the JSF, and even a small amount of money, even if it pays ten fold dividends further out, may push the JSF further down the delay/cost escalation/procurement cuts cycle.

Ashton Carter* pretty much says that flat out when he says that, “The crux of the analysis is that the additional upfront costs of a second engine are very clear and very real and the possible savings associated with a hypothesized competition in the future are much harder to estimate.”

That being said, the development of the F-136 is not going perfectly. The manufacturers just had to halt testing following the discovery of damage to the turbine, described as “nicks and dings”.

Same as It Ever Was

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Same as it ever was,
same as it ever was,
same as it ever was

Here we go again. The flying monkeys are looking to impeach Barack Obama, with the usual suspects penning an article, titled, “Is it time to whisper the word ‘impeachment’?”

They claim that there is a, “The groundswell of calls for the impeachment of Barack Hussein Obama is growing” but those calls are the voices in their head.

This is what happens to people who believe that God has personally anointed them to rule, and I don’t think that you could drive Tom Delay’s penis between the mental space separating them from Osama bin Laden.

Obama’s Problem in 1 Picture

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The larger problem here is not that somehow or other that these feelings are an inaccurate Thing is, these opinions do accurately reflect reality

Ezra Klein nails it with one picture.

You see, the American public, given a few months, and a subject that holds their interest, even tangentially, and they begin to tease truth from fiction, and as a group, come to understand what is going on.

It’s the Delphi Method writ large.

We saw it during Bill Clinton’s impeachment, when the public came to realize over a period of months that this was not the end of the world, it was some guy lying about cheating on his wife, and the Republicans attempting a coup as a result.

So, here we are, 8 months into the Obama administration, and a year into the financial crisis, and the American public gets it: No one is the least bit interested in doing anything to help them.

They are bailing out banks and automakers, and CEOs are still getting obscene pay packages, and the, as taxpayers are paying for it.

You see, this is not a problem that can be solved with an Obama speech, because there is nothing to explain here. That great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity,* Goldman Sachs, has captured treasury, insurance has captured healthcare, and real-estate has captured….well…Everything.

The Obama administration, and much of the Democratic Party has been captured by the Finance, Insurance, and Real-Estate (FIRE) sectors, and so is attempting to support the phony products of this sector, as opposed to produce something useful.

The Republican party has been captured by FIRE too, but this doesn’t matter, because they are remarkably honest about this, and their platform is not to protect the little guy, but rather to hate those defined as “the other”, so they are neither hypocrites, nor are they likely to lose much support.

That being said, much as in 1994, when people looked at the Democrats in Congress, and said, “If they are both going to f$#@ me over with NAFTA, I might as well vote for someone who hates f*gg*ts and n*gg*rs too,” Obama and the Dems are in real trouble.

As Harry S Truman said, “Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.

Absent actions that involve most of the senior staffs of Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Citi, Bank of America (Especially Ken Lewis), and the ratings agencies (S&P, Moody’s, etc) frog marched out of their places of work in handcuffs, this is the reality we have, not the reality we’d like to have.

*Alas, I cannot claim credit for this bon mot, it was coined by the great Matt Taibbi, in his article on the massive criminal conspiracy investment firm, The Great American Bubble Machine.

When I Agree with Mitch McConnell…….

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I know that something is wrong, and in this case it is how accurately the Senate minority leader nails the attitude of Barack Obama and His Stupid Minions™: “

Senator McConnell dismissed the President’s substantive involvement in the debate, dryly noting the president “would sign anything the Congress sent him, provided it had ‘Health Care Reform’ written at the top of the page.

It’s not just McConnel who is saying this. We also have Robert Reich, who has always been an extremely big booster of the Obama campaign and later the Obama Administration, so when he says this:

Big Pharma and big insurance hate the public insurance option even more than they hate big Medicare discounts. And although the President has sounded as if he would welcome it, political operatives in the White House have quietly reassured the industries that it won’t be included in the final bill. At most, the bill would allow the formation of non-profit ‘cooperatives’ that wouldn’t have the scale or authority to squeeze the profits of private industry, or a ‘trigger’ that would allow states to form public insurance options eventually if certain goals for cost savings and coverage weren’t met.

Which is a clear statement against his own political interest.

He cannot bring himself to voice it explicitly, is that Barack Obama and his people do not care about healthcare reform, but that they are looking for phony reform for 2012.

The results of White House “Axis of Weasel” on this is plain to see, with , as Rockefeller’s public option amendment being voted down, as well as Schumer’s weaker tea public option.

It gets worse, of course, with Baucus proposing that nationwide standards on insurance be written by the insurance industry in his bill.

He is suggesting that the National Assn. of Insurance Commissioners write binding regulations on insurance company behavior, it has issued advisory regulations for some years, with , “States would be permitted to deviate from the standards only by appealing to the Department of Health and Human Services.”

What’s more because the NAIC is a private organization, there would be no requirement for public meetings or public access to records.

It’s mice to know that there are a few bright spots, but, as with the case of Sen. Byron Dorgan (!)

offering an amendment allowing for drug reimportation, but you know that Rahmbo , with the President’s full approval, will go all out to kill this, because the White House has already cut a deal with health insurers and pharma to boost their already obscene profits by requiring people to buy health insurance.

Obama to Paterson: Drop Dead

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So, Barack Obama’s people have told New York Governor David Paterson that he should not run for reelection, and to put a cap on this, they have leaked this to the press.

New York State government is supremely dysfunctional, and one of the main reasons is because the Republicans managed to Gerrymander themselves into a state senate majority for a very long time, because everyone on both sides of the aisle were cool with it, so long as they were winners in the incumbent-protection racket redistricting process too.

Now that Republicans have weakened enough to lose their hold on the senate, and now that there are indications that the senate will likely stay lost to them in next few cycles, their former Joesph Bruno is under indictment, we have the spectacle of the what might be the most incompetent Governor in the nation insisting that he will run for reelection, which might very well place Republicans back in the Governor’s mansion when redistricting rolls around in 2012 or so.

Elections Matter, White House Visitor Edition

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So the White House will now release its visitor logs:

The first names posted to the White House Web site included health industry executives who met with the Obama administration to discuss his plan to overhaul health care.

The visitors, whose names were released in July, included Jeffrey Kindler, chairman and chief executive officer of New York-based Pfizer Inc., the world’s biggest drugmaker; New Brunswick, New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson’s chairman and CEO William Weldon; and Stephen Hemsley, CEO and president of Minnetonka, Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group Inc., the largest U.S. insurer by sales.

Other visitors included former Representative Billy Tauzin, now president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America; Rich Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association; and Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans.

They are also releasing the Bush logs.

Gee, that was easy, why wasn’t this done 6 months ago? Why did they fight it until now?

Repairing the Damage That Bush and His Evil Minions&trade Have Done

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Barack Obama and Eric Holder have to go on a hiring binge for the DoJ’s Civil Rights Division.

It appears that after 8 years of forcing competent, experienced, and qualified people out, and replacing them with hacks who got their diplomas from the back of cereal boxes, they need to bring in some people who are not implacably hostile to the idea of Civil Rights.

Of course, some of these same hacks, most notably Hans “der Novotenfuhrer” von Spakovsky, who has built a career on keeping blacks from the ballot box, are claiming that this is “nakedly political,” but they think that the law, and for that matter facts, have a liberal bias, to paraphrase Stephen Colbert.

Liberals Draw Line in the Sand

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Barack Obama has called just about everyone in Washington, DC for a meeting at the White House, insurance companies, doctors, Republicans, Blue Dogs, etc., but he hasn’t called in the progressives.

While members of his staff are making it clear that they intend to Sistah Soulja the liberals, the Liberals, or more accurately the Progressive Caucus in the House, are hitting back:

In a letter delivered to the White House moments ago, the two leaders of the bloc of House progressives bluntly told President Obama that they will not support any health care plan without a public option in it — and demanded a meeting to inform him face to face.

The bullet points of the letter are that in order to have them support the plan, there must be a public option, built on Medicare providers and using Medicare rates.

Note that there three things that can happen:

  1. Obama can stick with, and pass, most likely under reconciliation in the Senate, a bill with a real public option.

    1. Which means that the progressive caucus wins, and the Democratic party wins, particularly in the long run, when people see that government works for them.

  2. The bill gets killed in the house when 40+ Democrats vote against it.

    1. Which means that the progressives win, because they show that they have the power to stop things, and the electoral repercussions hit the Blue Dogs from close districts, not the Progressive, and Barack Obama. It means that they have to be negotiated with in the future, and the Powers That Be of the Democratic Party’s efforts cannot be exclusively dedicated to providing anilingus to the Blue Dogs.

  3. They fold like a bunch of wet broccoli, and vote for a milquetoast bill that allows Barack Obama to claim that he has done something to reform our healthcare system in 2012

    1. This is a lose for the progressives, and they go back to being people that everyone in Washington, DC can ignore with impunity.

The only way that these guys lose is if they blink…..Then again, never underestimate the capability of Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Needless to say, the argument that is apparently being fronted by Rahm and His Evil Minions™:

Should Obama jettison the public option, progressives will come under tremendous pressure to back the plan anyway. White House advisers will likely insist that liberals mustn’t deny the president a historic victory and enable a defeat that could cripple the first African-American presidency.

Is one of the most repellent things that I’ve read…well this week….It’s a bull market for repellent these days.

I would also add that the only person crippling Barack Obama, whether its on marriage equality, DADT, banking reform, healthcare, torture, accountability, etc. is Barack Hussein Obama.

Letter from Congressional liberals below:

Dear President Obama:

Thank you for continuing to work with Members of Congress to draft a health reform bill that will provide the real health care reform this country needs.

We look forward to meeting with you regarding retaining a robust public option in any final health reform bill and request that that meeting take place as soon as possible.

Public opinion polls continue to show that a majority of Americans want the choice of a robust public plan and we stand in solidarity with them. We continue to support the robust public option that was reported out of the Committees on Ways and Means and Education and Labor and will not vote for a weakened bill on the House Floor or returning from a Conference with the Senate.

Any bill that does not provide, at a minimum, a public option built on the Medicare provider system and with reimbursement based on Medicare rates-not negotiated rates-is unacceptable. A plan with negotiated rates would ensure higher costs for the public plan, and would do nothing to achieve the goal ofproviding choice and competition to keep rates down. The public plan with set rates saves $75 billion, which could be lost if rates are negotiated with providers. Further, this public option must be available immediately and must not be contingent upon any trigger.

Mr. President, the need for reform is urgent. Every day, 14,000 Americans lose their health care coverage. We must have health care reform that will effectively bring down costs and significantly expand access. A health reform bill without a robust public option will not achieve the health reform this country so desperately needs. We cannot vote for anything less.

We look forward to meeting with you to discuss the importance of your support for a robust public plan, which we encourage you to reiterate in your address to the Joint Session of Congress on Wednesday.

Lynn Woolsey
Raul Grijalva

Why Barack Obama’s Poll Numbers are Dropping

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Outsourced to Digby:

This makes perfect sense because his problem is that he’s been kow-towing to the left so much that he’s lost the country, what with all the war crimes investigations, the tax hikes for the rich, the crackdown on the banks, the repeal of “don’t ask don’t tell” and the thumbing of his nose at the Republicans every chance he gets. Not to mention the plans for full withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan by 2012 and his full blown assault on the health care industry and insistence on a Canadian style health care system. You’d think Obama would have been far, far more cautious so as not to give the Republican freakshow any possible path to demonize them as “far left.” It’s not like they could just make stuff up and a lot of people in America would believe it, right?

(emphasis mine)

At least, that’s what an anonymous “top official” (**cough** Rahm **cough**) says.

“These People Are Unappeasable”

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Krugman nails it on MSNBC:

Of course, this does not prevent the White House from capitulating on the public option, because, as I’ve said before, Barack Obama does not care about healthcare reform, he cares about being able to sign some sort of healthcare reform bill, even if it is bad and has no real reform, because he gets to claim success.

They are talking Co-Ops, which we know won’t work, because they haven’t worked. If they were even marginally successful, we would see hundreds of them, some of them huge, and we don’t….They can be counted on the fingers.

Yes

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Frank Rich asks, “Is Obama Punking Us?,” with regard to health care.

What he is really asking is whether Obama is more concerned with having something that he can claim as an an accomplishment to sign than he is with actually fixing things.

You see the same thing with Geithner/Summers and the financial crisis.

There is a real and deep aversion to meaningful change here.

This has been another episode of simple answers to simple questions.

It’s a Half Step

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Barack Obama is now proposing a tax on “risky” financial transactions.

The problem here is two fold:

  • Many of the risky financial transactions were there to skirt regulations, and this just creates another incentive for people to do this again.
  • Many of the problems with our markets come from people who attempt to generate minuscule profits across thousands, or millions, of trades, Goldman Sachs front-running the entire US stock market comes to mind.

The solution to fixing this is to make rapid-fire low margin speculation unprofitable, and the way to do this is to to tax all financial transactions at something like ¼-½%.

For the investor, this is an infinitesimal cost of doing business, but it puts the rampant speculator out of business.

It eliminates regulatory arbitrage, and could go a long way toward paying for health care reform.

Card Check Killed in Senate

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Most of the rest of the reforms remain intact, but the card check provision has been removed.

What remains is the right of unions to campaign on company property, a faster election cycle, which gives less time for employers to strong arm and illegally fire employees, making mandatory anti-union meetings illegal, and binding arbitration.

Truth be told, I expect it to be watered down further, because the Barack Obama administration has been studiously silent on this measure, throwing yet another key constituency, unions, under the bus as they have with labor.

This bill will not progress with meaningful reform without White House support, and none is forthcoming.

We Now Know Why Rattner Left the Auto Task Force

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It appears that he is more closely tied into the state pension plan pay for play scandal than had been previously indicated.

Big surprise. You hire a merger and acquisition scum bag specialist who maked his money on buying up companies, juicing the stocks by making draconian cuts, and then flipping them, and then you have to get rid of him because he turns out to be….well….a scum bag.

So shocked.

BTW, I realize why he got the job in the first place (from the Wiki), “Rattner is married to Maureen White, the former National Finance Chair for the Democratic Party,” which means that she specialized in raising lots of money from her rich friends, so there was an element of pay-for-play in his getting this assignment in the first place.