There is no joy in Mudville

There was ease in Casey’s manner as he stepped into his place;
There was pride in Casey’s bearing and a smile lit Casey’s face.
And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,
No stranger in the crowd could doubt ’twas Casey at the bat.

Casey at the Bat

By Ernest Lawrence Thayer Taken From the San Francisco Examiner – June 3, 1888

Op-Ed Columnist Charles M. Blow actually went to the Great Louisiana football school of Grambling, so maybe I should’ve used a football metaphor, but mighty Casey seemed mighty apropos here. So many had so much hope in one person and as far as I could tell from the crowd at the old UNO basketball area on Thursday, many still do when it comes to our President. So many folks in love with one person as a symbol of so much. There was one elderly black woman wandering out side on a sidewalk sayin’ “We can go anywhere now! Anywhere we want!”

So, here’s a little taste of Charles Blow’s op-ed column from October 16th at the NY Times.

When, Mr. President? When will your deeds catch up to your words? The people who worked tirelessly to get you elected are getting tired of waiting. According to a Gallup poll released on Wednesday, Americans’ satisfaction with the way things are going in the country has hit a six-month low, and those decreases were led, in both percentage and percentage-point decreases, by Democrats and independents, not by Republicans.

The fierce urgency of now has melted into the maddening wait for whenever.

There is a list there, one we are all familiar with here at The Confluence of things that folks with a liberal bent to their disposition desire. Things promised and as of yet, undelivered no matter what apologies the apologists have provided.

Take health care reform. Because of the president’s quixotic quest for bipartisanship, he refused to take a firm stand in favor of the public option. In that wake, Democrats gutted the Baucus bill to win the graces of Olympia Snowe — a Republican senator from a state with half the population of Brooklyn, a senator who is defying the will of her own constituents. A poll conducted earlier this month found that 57 percent of Maine residents support the public option and only 37 percent oppose it.

Poll after poll show that people really want that public option. Just exactly who is the constituency that must be appeased by both Republicans like Senator Snow and the democratic leadership including President Obama? Who are we appeasing to go against the will of the majority?

Ah, but there’s more to list and more chances to ask that vital question WHEN?

On the same weekend that gay rights protesters marched past the White House, the president again said that his administration was “moving ahead on don’t ask don’t tell.” But when? This month? This year? This term?

Yup, wasn’t there the absolute promise to get rid of don’t ask don’t tell? Wasn’t there that firm commitment –at the very least of repealing DOMA–to civil unions, to full recognition of one’s human right to completely love, commit and protect another.

Oh, but there’s more, as Mr. Blow so brilliantly opines.

As we prepare to draw down troops from the disaster that was the war in Iraq, we may commit more troops to the quagmire that is the war in Afghanistan and the government may miss its deadline for closing the blight that is the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

You would think, perhaps, he would end there, after all this is quite a list. But just as we’ve written thread after thread here, there is more on that list of broken promises.

Obama pledged to stem the tide of job losses and foreclosures and to reform the culture of the financial sector. Well, the Dow just hit 10,000 again while the national unemployment rate is about to hit 10 percent. And the firms we propped up are set to dole out record bonuses while home foreclosures have hit record highs. Main Street is still drowning in crisis while Wall Street is awash in Champagne. When will this imbalance be corrected?

And now we’re back again to my home town–New Orleans–and the promises made and broken here.

Candidate Obama pledged to make the rebuilding of New Orleans a priority, but President Obama whisked into the city on Thursday for a visit so brief that one Louisiana congressman dubbed it a “drive-through daiquiri summit.” The president spent more time on the failed Olympic bid in Copenhagen than he did in the Crescent City.

At the town hall in New Orleans, Obama appealed for patience. He said, “Change is hard, and big change is harder.” Is that the excuse? Now where have I heard that before? Oh, yeah. From George Bush.

If I could deliver thunderous applause Mr. Blow, I would. Thank you for printing in the New York Times what is on the mind of so many of us around here. Symbols are nice but wins are much better!

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Okay, Y’all are just Creeping me out here!!!

I watched the new Joy Behar show yesterday on Headline News. I have to admit I liked it. Bette Midler–koolaid sipper extraordinaire–had a lot to say as the show’s first guest. I’ve often compared Glenn Beck to the character Lonesome Rhodes in the 1957 movie a “Face in the Crowed” but Midler went one step farther.

“Someone like Glenn Beck has made gazillions of dollars because he’s out there being sort of hateful in many ways,” Behar said. “He calls himself a clown and a comedian. Do you think it’s funny?”

Midler confirmed what one would probably expect – she’s not a fan of Beck at all.

“I don’t think he’s funny even a little bit,” Midler said. “I’ve never had a laugh from Glenn Beck. In fact, I find him terrifying. I find him terrifying. He’s like an old school demagogue, and it’s really frightening.”

What did Midler compare Beck to? She likened the popular Fox News host to the instigators of the Rwandan civil war, which was the catalyst for the Rwandan genocide where an estimated 800,000 to 1 million lost their lives.

“If you look around at the rest of the world and what this kind of behavior has done, like in Rwanda, where the demagogues got on the radio and fomented all that hate between the Tutsis and the Hutus and the devastation that happened from that, I mean, it’s terrifying,” Midler said.

According to Midler, that’s a possibility in the United States.

“And that could happen, you know, you could turn on a dime,” Midler warned. “That could happen here.”

So, that was yesterday. Then I tripped over to Memorandum this morning to find this tidbit from Gore Vidal who is waxing poetically over “we coulda hadda Hillary”. A little late for the sippy cup grandpa but at least he admits that he was wrong. Not the same as an apology though.

Last year he famously switched allegiance from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama during the Democratic nomination process for president. Now, he reveals, he regrets his change of heart. How’s Obama doing? “Dreadfully. I was hopeful. He was the most intelligent person we’ve had in that position for a long time. But he’s inexperienced. He has a total inability to understand military matters. He’s acting as if Afghanistan is the magic talisman: solve that and you solve terrorism.” America should leave Afghanistan, he says. “We’ve failed in every other aspect of our effort of conquering the Middle East or whatever you want to call it.” The “War on Terror” was “made up”, Vidal says. “The whole thing was PR, just like ‘weapons of mass destruction’. It has wrecked the airline business, which my father founded in the 1930s. He’d be cutting his wrists. Now when you fly you’re both scared to death and bored to death, a most disagreeable combination.”

Oh, wait, it gets better.

Vidal originally became pro-Obama because he grew up in “a black city” (meaning Washington), as well as being impressed by Obama’s intelligence. “But he believes the generals. Even Bush knew the way to win a general was to give him another star. Obama believes the Republican Party is a party when in fact it’s a mindset, like Hitler Youth, based on hatred — religious hatred, racial hatred. When you foreigners hear the word ‘conservative’ you think of kindly old men hunting foxes. They’re not, they’re fascists.”

Another notable Obama mis-step has been on healthcare reform. “He f***ed it up. I don’t know how because the country wanted it. We’ll never see it happen.” As for his wider vision: “Maybe he doesn’t have one, not to imply he is a fraud. He loves quoting Lincoln and there’s a great Lincoln quote from a letter he wrote to one of his generals in the South after the Civil War. ‘I am President of the United States. I have full overall power and never forget it, because I will exercise it’. That’s what Obama needs — a bit of Lincoln’s chill.” Has he met Obama? “No,” he says quietly, “I’ve had my time with presidents.” Vidal raises his fingers to signify a gun and mutters: “Bang bang.” He is referring to the possibility of Obama being assassinated. “Just a mysterious lone gunman lurking in the shadows of the capital,” he says in a wry, dreamy way.

Vidal now believes, as he did originally, Clinton would be the better president. “Hillary knows more about the world and what to do with the generals. History has proven when the girls get involved, they’re good at it. Elizabeth I knew Raleigh would be a good man to give a ship to.”The Republicans will win the next election, Vidal believes; though for him there is little difference between the parties. “Remember the coup d’etat of 2000 when the Supreme Court fixed the selection, not election, of the stupidest man in the country, Mr Bush.”

So, Bette is voting on a revolution, Gore, a presidential assassination and more and if all that wasn’t enough, there’s this little thing called a military coup suggested by Newsmax’s John L. Perry. I’ve linked to the piece via Media Matters.

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the “Obama problem.” Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic.

America isn’t the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn’t mean it wont. Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it.

[...]

Will the day come when patriotic general and flag officers sit down with the president, or with those who control him, and work out the national equivalent of a “family intervention,” with some form of limited, shared responsibility?

Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making.

Military intervention is what Obama’s exponentially accelerating agenda for “fundamental change” toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama’s radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible.

Unthinkable? Then think up an alternative, non-violent solution to the Obama problem. Just don’t shrug and say, “We can always worry about that later.”

In the 2008 election, that was the wistful, self-indulgent, indifferent reliance on abnegation of personal responsibility that has sunk the nation into this morass.

As Cannonfire reminds us, the newsource is whacky but the writer was on the staff of LBJ and Jimmy Carter. That’s hardly the sort’ve person that should be suggesting a military coup against Obama. Cannonfire also shows us some of the most recent unreasonable things said by Republicans against our sitting president.

I’m not sure if I want to buy a security blanket or a gun at this point, but frankly, all this talk is a little whacky and it’s creeping me out!

On Overlooked Battles and Unsung Heroes

In the midst of so much policy disarray, it is easy to overlook many issues that deserve our attention. I’m beginning to think all the chaos may be angle of hat trick magician relying on slight of hand and misdirection. So, just as I continue to hammer at boring things like bank reform, I continue to follow things related to the Patriot Act, FISA, and other potential intrusions that are in conflict with constitutional rights.

Today, the NY Times predicted “A Looming Battle Over the Patriot Act”. Remember, the most sensitive portions and controversial are those that involve surveillance. House and Senate committees are discussing re-authorization of three key sections that are set to expire at the end of this year. In a continuation of the Bush-Cheney encroachment on civil liberties, the Obama-Biden administration seeks re-authorization.

The provisions expanded the power of the F.B.I. to seize records and to eavesdrop on phone calls in the course of a counterterrorism investigation.

Laying down a marker ahead of those hearings, a group of senators who support greater privacy protections filed a bill on Thursday that would impose new safeguards on the Patriot Act while tightening restrictions on other surveillance policies. The measure is co-sponsored by nine Democrats and an independent.

Days before, the Obama administration called on Congress to reauthorize the three expiring Patriot Act provisions in a letter from Ronald Weich, assistant attorney general for legislative affairs. At the same time, he expressed a cautious open mind about imposing new surveillance restrictions as part of the legislative package.

“We are aware that members of Congress may propose modifications to provide additional protection for the privacy of law abiding Americans,” Mr. Weich wrote, adding that “the administration is willing to consider such ideas, provided that they do not undermine the effectiveness of these important authorities.”

At the moment, there appears to be very little evidence that the FBI has abused its current power. Is that the salient point over which to argue for or against re-authorization? Sadly, we liberals have so much on our plate now with pressuring an administration and congress that should be our ally on things like truly universal health care, involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and continuation of Bush financial market bailouts, that we could potentially miss this important battle over one of our most basic rights. That right to go missing would be security from government invasion into our person and homes without due process.

The first such provision allows investigators to get “roving wiretap” court orders authorizing them to follow a target who switches phone numbers or phone companies, rather than having to apply for a new warrant each time.

From 2004 to 2009, the Federal Bureau of Investigation applied for such an order about 140 times, Robert S. Mueller, the F.B.I. director, said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week.

The second such provision allows the F.B.I. to get a court order to seize “any tangible things” deemed relevant to a terrorism investigation — like a business’s customer records, a diary or a computer.

From 2004 to 2009, the bureau used that authority more than 250 times, Mr. Mueller said.

The final provision set to expire is called the “lone wolf” provision. It allows the F.B.I. to get a court order to wiretap a terrorism suspect who is not connected to any foreign terrorist group or foreign government.

Mr. Mueller said this authority had never been used, but the bureau still wanted Congress to extend it.

Several other lawmakers are expected to file their own bills addressing the Patriot Act and related surveillance issues in the next several weeks.

Many of the proposals under discussion involve small wording shifts whose impact can be difficult to understand, in part because the statutes are extremely technical and some govern technology that is classified.

But in general, civil libertarians and some Democrats have called for changes that would require stronger evidence of meaningful links between a terrorism suspect and the person whom investigators are targeting.

In the same way, some are proposing to use any Patriot Act extension bill to tighten when the F.B.I. may use “national security letters” — administrative subpoenas that allow counterterrorism agents to seize business records without obtaining permission from a judge. Agents use the device tens of thousands of times each year.

I know you have a lot of issues and life challenges on your plate right now, but I think it might be worth your time to follow this issue as it makes its way through committee to the President’s desk. Our technological capability to intrude far surpasses our ability to ferret out potential abuse. I think it best we ensure the FBI can do its job, but not at the expense of our our basic civil rights. Just a reminder of who is on what side on one facet of this act. That would be the provision granting immunity from prosecution from telecoms.

As a senator, Mr. Obama voted for that bill, infuriating civil libertarians.

The bill filed Sept. 17 — which is championed in particular by two Democratic senators, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois — would repeal the immunity provision.

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Revenge of the Beta Males

There’s only a few places in the real world where Beta Males get to whoop it up and extract their revenge on the Alphas that shoved them around during their model-building, star wars loving, well-spent but unhappy youths. Those places would be on Wall Street, what passes for journalism these days, and Washington D.C.. It’s occurred to me that these places contain Beta Males that are natural allies. Since none of these folks ever got to sit at the kewl kids lunch tables in high school, they’ve built their special lunchrooms where no one else can venture without getting hall monitor passes from the former high school hall monitors. It’s also probably why we’ve now built an economy that no longer builds anything useful but gets increasing amounts of money from mathematical gambles and laws that favor insiders. It’s the only area where the Beta Males can dominate. If you can’t play football, at least you can bet on the game, win big, and eventually buy yourself a former cheerleader.

I went out in search of some evidence that we might rein in the market malpractice on Wall Street, and instead found that we’re just as likely to be setting up another financial crisis as not. Maybe I should throw up my hands and follow the lead of George Soros. I should start a hedge fund that bets on the stupidity of Wall Street aligned with the duplicity and complicity of politicians and journalistic misinformants. That way I could buy my own island and avoid the next financial crisis.

It seems bringing translucency to the market (a goal in a true market economy) would only benefit those on the outside looking in and we can’t have that. It might bring the rest of the world back to the lunchroom tables. We continue to have Republicans blocking everything because of their incessant worship of the idols of false capitalism. How can so few understand so little and gum up the works for so many? This quote appalled me.

“The president has offered a reform proposal that would grant broad new authorities to government bureaucrats while intruding in private markets and restricting personal choice,” said Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the senior Republican on the House Financial Services Committee. “The obvious lesson of the events of September 2008 is that we need smarter regulation, not more regulation, not more government bureaucracy, and not more incentives to engage in harmful business practices.”

This is a man truly devoid of intellect and any sense of how a competitive market functions. Removing frictions like information asymmetry, huge single powerful players, or moral hazards makes markets work beautifully. Civilization has regulated its financial markets since Hammurabi for very obvious reasons. How can you come up with real political discourse when the opposition is so obviously factually handicapped?

Speechification Alert

Who stole the Cookies from the Cookie jar?Great illustration in today's New York Times: Banker's and the taxpayer cookie jar

Well, it’s my turn to listen to a Obama Speech. Those speeches usually have the same dizzying effect on me that tennis matches do. Instead of watching balls go back and forth rhythmically while lulling me to sleep, I get to watch the head of the President. Teleprompter Right, 1,2,3 to Teleprompter left, 2, 3 …

So the speech is on bank reform which is something I’ve been on about for months now. It’s the anniversary of Lehman’s demise. Stories abound on the Grey Lady today including this call by Dr. Tyler Cowen of George Mason University. He’s a little libertarian for my taste on policy–even managing a h/t to Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged–but he gets it all in a way that only an economist could.

But we are now injecting politics ever more deeply into the American economy, whether it be in finance or in sectors like health care. Not only have we failed to learn from our mistakes, but also we’re repeating them on an ever-larger scale.

Lately the surviving major banks have reported brisk profits, yet in large part this reflects astute politicking and lobbying rather than commercial skill. Much of the competition was cleaned out by bank failures and consolidation, so giants like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan had an easier time getting back to profits. The Federal Reserve has been lending to banks at near-zero interest rates while paying higher interest on the reserves the banks hold at the Fed. “Too big to fail” policies mean that the large banks can raise money more cheaply because everyone knows they are safe counterparties.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the birth of a military-industrial complex. Today we have a financial-regulatory complex, and it has meant a consolidation of power and privilege. We’ve created a class of politically protected “too big to fail” institutions, and the current proposals for regulatory reform further cement this notion. Even more worrying, with so many explicit and implicit financial guarantees, we are courting a bigger financial crisis the next time something major goes wrong.

We should stop using political favors as a means of managing an economic sector. Unfortunately, though, recent experience with health care reform shows we are moving in the opposite direction and not heeding the basic lessons of the financial crisis. Finance and health care are two separate issues, of course, but in both cases we’re making the common mistake of digging in durable political protections for special interest groups.

I have to admit that I’ve written about similar concerns, however, I can tell Cowen and I may differ on how to correct the situation. That’s typically true of most economists. We agree on the root causes because of our grounding in shared theory but argue which policy might be best based on our political bent. I continue to argue for the role of government as rule setter and referee. However, I really do prefer independent bureaucrats in the position of auditor and enforcer. Congress, however, still has to write the law. This action, to date, has been missing.

So, MarketWatch has provided a pre-speechification programme so that we can get our score card ready. The speech is supposed to “rekindle” interest in regulatory restructuring. I’m not sure we need restructuring so much as we need laws that recognize the systematic problems we’ve developed in financial markets since quants have turned asset pricing into a physics exercise, financial innovations have become exotic, and the entire set up is now one big cartel waiting to pounce on the unsuspecting business sector and consumer. We now have a small number of banks capable of funding the really big capital undertakings and who knows what priorities or friends they’ll choose to fund over positive net present value projects? This should be enough to send any capitalist running for government regulation. Also, get ready for lack of services and fees that would make a loan shark blush. This should make any advocate for the little guy scream for the same. Today, I am the jade dakini. It’s happening in Europe but I doubt it will happen here.

So, what is Obama said to be inkling tomorrow that will be undoubtedly be sacrificed to the demons of political expediency down the road?

Losing Ground

Whatever AxelRahm and POTUS are doing, it’s not working. CNN reports that the majority of registered independents in the country now disapprove of how President Obama is doing his job.

A majority of independent voters disapprove of how Barack Obama’s handling his job as president, according to a new national poll.

Fifty-three percent of independents questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Tuesday say they disapprove of how Obama’s handling his duties in the White House, with 43 percent in approval. That result marks the first time in a CNN poll that a majority of independents give the president’s performance a thumbs-down.

The issues that appear to be responsible for the downward momentum include health care, the economy, the budget deficit, and taxes. Majority support is still holding for national security (terrorism) and foreign affairs which are being managed by the still popular SOS Hillary Clinton. It would seem the most obvious downer numbers should come from the health care fight, but other issues also weigh in.

Is the fight over health care responsible for the downturn in Obama’s numbers?

“Yes, in part, but his standing on some other issues has taken an even bigger tumble,” adds Holland. “Among all Americans, his rating on health care has dropped 13 points since March. Compare that to his 16 point drop on the deficit and 17 point dip on taxes and it looks like there is growing discontent with Obama’s overall domestic agenda — not just his health care policy.”

According to the poll, Obama’s approval rating on how he is handling the war in Afghanistan also fell 18 points since March.

Another interesting poll was released by Rasmussen today where Republican Voters Say their GOP Reps in Congress are still out of touch. However, it appears out of touch means too liberal for their tastes.

Seventy-four percent (74%) of Republican voters say their party’s representatives in Congress have lost touch with GOP voters nationwide over the past several years. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 18% of GOP voters believe their elected officials have done a good job representing the base.

Most Republican voters (55%) say that the average Republican in Congress is more liberal than the average Republican voter. Twenty-four percent (24%) say the average Republican in Congress holds views about the same as the average Republican voter while just 17% think the Congressional Republicans are more conservative than GOP voters.

The Administration shouldn’t expect Republican voters to cooperate much as eighty-four percent (84%) of them believe it is more important to stand for what their party believes in rather than trying to work with President Barack Obama. Only 14% favor bipartisan cooperation with the President.

Meanwhile Rasmussen continues to show a decrease in Obama’s approval rate in their daily Presidential Tracking poll.

Overall, 45% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance. That’s down a point from yesterday and the lowest level of total approval yet measured for Obama. Fifty-three percent (53%) now disapprove. See recent demographic highlights from the tracking polls.

In addition to our daily tracking, Rasmussen Reports has released a month-by-month review of the President’s Approval ratings. This allows a longer-term look at trends. In August, President Obama’s full-month ratings fell below 50% for the first time.

I wouldn’t want to be an incumbent in this atmosphere. These are some ugly, ugly numbers. I’m guessing the Dems are on their way to losing the senate and possibly the house if this keeps up.

You can talk about this or consider this an open thread. Have a good evening!

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Borrowing a turn of Phrase …

Paul Krugman’s Saturday blog post takes a defensive tone with Marc Ambinder who once called Krugman and a group of other liberal thinkers “reflexively anti-Bush”. Krugman expected a better apology from Ambinder after it was confirmed by former Bush Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge that the White House did, in fact, play politics with the Code Orange terrorist warnings. Evidently, there was an email between the two and Krugman felt the exchange wanting. Here’s his rationale.

But I’d like to return to one point: even after retracting his statement about people who correctly surmised that terror warnings were political being motivated by “gut hatred” of Bush, he left in the bit about being “reflexively anti-Bush”. I continue to find it really sad that people still say things like this.

Bear in mind that by the time the terror alert controversy arose in 2004, we had already seen two tax cuts sold on massively, easily documented false pretenses; a war launched with constant innuendo about a Saddam-Osama link that was clearly false, and with claims about WMDs that were clearly shaky from the beginning and had proved to be entirely without foundation. We’d also seen vast, well-documented dishonesty and politicization on environmental policy. Oh, and Abu Ghraib was already public knowledge.

Given all that, it made complete sense to distrust anything the Bush administration said. That wasn’t reflexive, it was rational.

I’d like to borrow the example and phrase because some of us around here are perpetually called “reflexively anti-Obama” or, of course, called racist because it’s a much more pejorative and personally damaging label. This is simply because we see similar patterns of behavior in Barrack Obama and his administration. Notice that Krugman has a laundry list right there in that second paragraph of things that made him rationally distrust anything the Bush administration said. I personally have my own laundry list of things that makes me rationally distrust anything the Obama administration says. It starts (but does not end) with the pledge to vote against FISA.

Paradise Squandered

I guess the old adage is true. A year is a long time in politics. Less than 18 months ago I held out hope that we would see a solid democratic majority for some time and that there would be a democratic President with a democratic agenda moving the country forward and away from the Bush Cheney nightmare. I expected that we would have no more warrantless wiretapping. I believed we would be discussing an energy policy that included more options that drill, baby drill. I thought a women’s uterus would no longer be considered an object of state interest. I figured that we’d see the end to talk about protecting traditional marriage, whatever the heck that ever was to start out with but basically we’d no longer exclude gay couples from a civil institution and gay soldiers from openly serving in our military.

I thought our future seemed bright.

I thought perhaps we could have a defense department budget that resembled the levels of other democratic countries and that we would have a health care plan that resembled the rest of the developed world. I especially felt hopeful, when I watched the first democratic debate, that one of those folks would be in charge of America again. It was only a matter of which one. Little did I know then, the one I discounted as not really knowing a thing by the time the second debate was over is the one we got. My basic thought about Obama was Vice President material.

Now, our national nightmare continues and The Cook Political Report has just dropped the other shoe. The Cook Political Report has a very good reputation for handicapping elections.

Gallup’s three-night moving average tracking poll, President Obama’s job approval rating in both their August 16-18 and August 17-19 averages was just 51 percent, the lowest level of his presidency. The latter sampling showed his disapproval up to 42 percent, matching his all-time low hit in the August 15-17 tracking poll. The 51% job approval rating is identical to two other polls released in recent days conducted by NBC News and the Pew Research Center. Today’s regression-based trend estimate computed by our friends at Pollster.com from all major national surveys show an approval rating of 50.7 percent and disapproval of 43.7 percent.

These data confirm anecdotal evidence, and our own view, that the situation this summer has slipped completely out of control for President Obama and Congressional Democrats. Today, The Cook Political Report’s Congressional election model, based on individual races, is pointing toward a net Democratic loss of between six and 12 seats, but our sense, factoring in macro-political dynamics is that this is far too low.

Many veteran Congressional election watchers, including Democratic ones, report an eerie sense of déjà vu, with a consensus forming that the chances of Democratic losses going higher than 20 seats is just as good as the chances of Democratic losses going lower than 20 seats. A new Gallup poll that shows Congress’ job disapproval at 70 percent among independents should provide little solace to Democrats. In the same poll, Congressional approval among independents is at 22 percent, with 31 percent approving overall, and 62 percent disapproving.

I’m with him …

I have to say, I’m with my neighbor James Carville on this one … put a decent health care reform out there and let the Republicans kill it. I’ve said over and over that without a vital public option, it’s neither about the health care or the reform. It’s about the lobbyists and an administration win and I don’t think we should go for it. Carville thinks it would send a good signal to the country about how little Republicans are willing to come to the table in the name of what’s good for American and bi-partisanship if they fight health care reform vehemently. Let them show themselves as obstructionists while we trot out people bankrupted by underinsurance, folks who lost relatives to insurance companies who ration health care, and people who can’t even access the basics enough to be treated for the most treatable of diseases. Let them all be seen on TV saying no well baby care and prenatal care to their fetus fetishists.

On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Democratic strategist James Carville became the first leading Democrat to suggest publicly that there might be political advantage in letting Republicans “kill” health care.

“Put a bill out there, make them filibuster it, make them be what they are, the party of no,” Carville said. “Let them kill it. Let them kill it with the interest group money, then run against them. That’s what we ought to do.”

This weekend’s comments by White House officials simply acknowledged the long-obvious reality that the idea of a government-run insurance plan was partly a bargaining chip.

Bargaining chip? WTF? What exactly do we get if the public option is off the table?

Krugman says the public option may be a signal on Obama’s trustworthiness that not every one is seeing. Okay, finance/economics lesson time again. Signaling theory is based on the idea that that market reacts rationally to publicly available information. So, for example, if I want to signal that my company is worth more than the average company, I want to find a way to signal that to the market I’m superior so they’ll run up my stock price to recognize me as a superior company. Then I can rake in bonuses and capital gains. I could borrow money in the commercial market, for example, that gives me a Aaa rating. This signals raters who are assumed to be in the know find my company to be a good bet compared to others that they rate lower. This signal should push up my stock price.

So what kind of signal do we have here? Well, Krugman argues that the public option is one of the ways Obama can ’signal’ that he’s still a progressive democrat and he’s signaling that he’s a sell out without realizing it. He points out that the public option debate has turn into a signal on who should buy stock in what Obama says. Signals are based on the market knowing what actions can be trusted, however. You have to trust that some one who gives a company the Aaa rating really has some inside proprietary information and believe they are a reliable, trustworthy source of rating. Krugman says the Obama administration is sending out bad signals and doesn’t even realize it.

If progressives had real trust in Obama’s commitment to doing the right thing, the administration would have broad leeway to do deals. But the president doesn’t command that kind of trust.

Partly it’s a matter of style — as many people have noted, he has been weirdly reluctant to make the moral case for universal care, weirdly unable to show passion on the issue, weirdly diffident even about the blatant lies from the right. Partly it’s a spillover from his other policies: by appointing an economic team that’s Rubin redux, by taking such a kindly attitude to the banks, he has squandered a lot of progressive enthusiasm.

Add in the dealmaking as part of the health care process itself, and progressives can be forgiven for having the impression that Obama (a) takes them for granted (b) is way too easily rolled by the other side.

So progressives have their backs up over one provision in health care reform that’s easy to monitor. The public option has become not so much a symbol as a signal, a test of whether Obama is really the progressive activists thought they were backing.

And the bizarre thing is that the administration doesn’t seem to get that.

So, who’s signals should we trust? Carville? Krugman? Obama?

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Shoot the message and the messenger

For some one who was supposed to be the nation’s hip professor with that smooth oration style holding us all rapt and breathless, President Barack Obama sure has turned into to the teacher who has lost control of the classroom. I can’t recall any president–other than LBJ on Vietnam–that has rolled out a major policy and lost the conversation so quickly. It’s not that great of a leap to see remnants of “Hey, Hey LBJ, how many babies did you kill today?” in the faces of seniors who have some how been convinced that discussing living wills puts them in danger of being set out on the ice floes by their government. How did this administration lose control of this conversation so rapidly?

I would speculate that the major players in the debate did not want a repeat of the “HillaryCare” episode so they may have concentrated a bit too much on not repeating a similar process. There were no blue ribbon panels meeting all over the country and no attempts to set up a health care czar. Instead there was this via Bloomberg: “Six Lobbyists Per Lawmaker Work on Health Overhaul” and this from Jane at FDL : Memo Confirms Deal Between phRMA and White House. With this White House–as with Richard Nixon’s–it’s always about following the money. Before the bill even hit the Congress and the people, it was morphed into something that is said to be setting up windfall profits for the people who profit grandly already from the ill among us. Given that, now we’re supposed to buy it as a foot in the door to the real thing. Excuse me for my lack of trust. I’m just not buying that passing this thing will lead to anything but corporate windfall profits and a win in the Obama column.

That’s six lobbyists for each of the 535 members of the House and Senate, according to Senate records, and three times the number of people registered to lobby on defense. More than 1,500 organizations have health-care lobbyists, and about three more are signing up each day. Every one of the 10 biggest lobbying firms by revenue is involved in an effort that could affect 17 percent of the U.S. economy.

These groups spent $263.4 million on lobbying during the first six months of 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group, more than any other industry. They spent $241.4 million during the same period of 2008. Drugmakers alone spent $134.5 million, 64 percent more than the next biggest spenders, oil and gas companies.

“Whenever you have a big piece of legislation like this, it’s like ringing the dinner bell for K Street,” said Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based watchdog group …

We now have a botched roll out, a messy misunderstood plan, and rooms filled with shrieking constituents of all shapes, sizes, and flavors. Is any one buying this as a national conversation?