Six years after Iraq invasion, Obama sets out his
exit plan.

post from The Osterley Times on 27 February 2009 11:55:00 PM. © The Osterley Times

He had called it, "A dumb war. A rash war."

In many ways it was his very opposition to this war which had enabled the young senator from Illinois to make his improbable journey all the way to the White House. When Clinton was forced to admit that she had been wrong, and McCain continued to insist that he had been right, Obama was able to take the high road and talk, not of experience, but of judgement. He was able to fend off Hillary's attacks, such as the three am phone call, by insisting that what mattered was whether or not one made the right decision when that call came in, and implying that Hillary and McCain would not.

Yesterday, he walked the tightrope between his campaign promises and respecting the troops. How could he be expected to stand before these young men and women and tell them that they had risked their lives for a lie? That their comrades had fallen for no great cause? He couldn't and so he didn't. He spoke of a mission to rid Iraq of Saddam, rather than of WMD, and congratulated them on achieving that task. He spoke of the mission to enable democracy and, again, patted them on the back.

But even they cheered loudly when he, at last, stated:

"Let me say this as plainly as I can - by August 31 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end."

A further 50,000 will stay for a further year to aid the Iraqis, but by 2011 all Americans will have left Iraq. It's less swift than lefties like myself would have liked, but no-one can say that he is not fulfilling his promise to leave Iraq "carefully".

But the plan was welcomed by Republicans, including John McCain, who had opposed early withdrawal."Overall it is a reasonable plan and one that can work and I support it," he said.

He also won great applause from the troops by promising to look after them better than Bush has done should they return home requiring medical assistance.

All in all, I thought he handled a tricky task particularly well and made sure that the troops realised that he appreciated all that they had done, even if he was not enamoured by the task which they had been sent on.

He also promised never again to put them into harms way without good cause. And hanging over all that he said, unspoken, was the hint that this is exactly what President Bush had done.

But, for now, surveys show the US public has fiercely repudiated the war six years after it began, with 60 percent saying it was "not worth it," according to an ABC television poll released last week.

People may think that. Indeed, Obama himself has made it perfectly clear that he is of that mind, but he couldn't say it yesterday as he spoke to the brave young men and women who had risked their lives for Bush's rash war. So he didn't.

Instead he, rightly, concentrated on their bravery and told them that, in future, it would only be called upon when utterly necessary.

As I say, he walked a tightrope, but he walked it well. And, in doing so, he fulfilled one of his earliest campaign promises. He declared the war which should never have been fought to be over.

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Tags: Obama, Iraq war

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Lloyds discovers an additional $114 billion in
high risk loans

post from AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth on 27 February 2009 11:52:00 PM. © AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

This is exactly what crushes the spirit of the market. Banks and their media cheerleaders keep telling us that the surprises are over, the bad debt behind us and the good times are near. The market needs calm, boring and predictable behavior for one quarter and then another and another, etc. "Discoveries" of new bad debt only enhance the existing belief that it's a dangerous market.

Lloyds banking Group revealed yesterday that it had found £80bn of high-risk loans at HBOS, the bank it bought last month to save it from collapse.

The high-risk assets are part of £165bn of loans that Lloyds said were outside its own appetite for risk. Surging bad debts on HBOS's books drove it to a £10.8bn loss for 2008.

Impairment losses at HBOS surged to £9.9bn from £2.01bn a year earlier, with two-thirds coming from the corporate bank, with its heavy weighting towards the stricken commercial property and housebuilding sectors.

Alex Potter, a banking analyst at Collins Stewart, said: "The scale of the deterioration in the HBOS book has shocked us."

Lloyds said that HBOS's estimate of the losses for 2008 was only a third of Lloyds', which itself turned out to be too low by £1.6bn.

Eric Daniels, Lloyds' chief executive, said the bank's forecast had not predicted that the economy would shrink by 1.5 per cent in the last quarter of 2008, increasing pressure on borrowers. "While we were pretty gloomy, what actually happened is we were not gloomy enough," he added. But he insisted that the losses were not far off Lloyds' expectations and were manageable.

Uh huh. Who ever could have forecasted anything like that?

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I Realize This Is A Serious Problem

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 27 February 2009 11:50:14 PM. © Docudharma - Front Page

This is how it develops...I decide to water my garden.As I turn on the hose in the driveway, I look over at my car and decide my car needs washing.As I start toward the garage, I notice that there is mail on the porch table that I brought up from the[...]

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Open Thread

post from Crooks and Liars on 27 February 2009 11:30:00 PM. © Crooks and Liars

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Ricky Jay does his magic, Ace through King. Open thread below...

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It's Jindalriffic!

post from Talking Points Memo on 27 February 2009 11:28:00 PM. © Talking Points Memo

Just out from the Times-Picayune ...Louisiana's transportation department plans to request federal dollars for a New Orleans to Baton Rouge passenger rail service from the same pot of railroad money in the president's economic stimulus package that Gov.[...]

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Religion, Income, and Voting

post from FiveThirtyEight.com: Politics Done Right on 27 February 2009 11:18:00 PM. © FiveThirtyEight.com: Politics Done Right

In chapter 6 of Red State, Blue State we talked about some of the fascinating trends in religion and voting, in particular the big jump in the religious/secular voting gap starting in 1992, in parallel with the big jump in the correlation between voting and attitudes on social issues. For example, this plot showing the average position on abortion among Democrats, Independents, and Republicans:

Now that we have the Pew pre-election polls, we could look at what happened in 2008. To start with, we found that the more you go to church, the more likely you were to vote Republican:

No surprise but it's good to start with the basics.

Now let's break things down by religion and denomination:

(The size of each circle is proportional to the number of people represented in the survey. In particular, most of the people who attend church more than weekly are born-again Protestants.) As in 2004, churchgoing is more strongly associated with Republican voting among Catholics and born-again Protestants than among non-born-again Protestants, and all three of these groups represent approximately equal proportions of the population. Whassup with those non-born-again Protestant regular churchgoers: didn't they get the memo? The patterns for Jews and Mormons are also interesting (and consistent with 2004). Finally, you can see that the "no religion" people continued to be a strong Democratic bloc.

What about income and voting? In Red State, Blue State, we talked about the pattern, consistent with the story of "post-materialism," that religious attendance is a more important predictor of vote choice for the rich than the poor. Here's what we see in 2008:

This is similar to what we saw in 2000 and 2004.

Finally, we can look at voting and income for different religious groupings:

Within the "no religion" group, income is associated very weakly with how you vote. This is consistent with the idea that social issues are more important for richer voters; thus, the richer people with no religion are remaining on the Democratic side because they don't like the Republican Party's socially conservative and religious orientation.

Discussion of methods

I think my style is off-putting to some readers because, rather then state my point right away, I often will lay out an argument and then look at it from different angles. (This isn't such a problem with my own blog because I've gradually built up a readership over several years, and the readers/participants are familiar with my style. But it is an issue when I drop these long graphics-filled posts into Nate's blog, whose readers are more used to his and Sean's more topical approach.) Also, I don't always have a strong conclusion; sometimes I just want to put the data out there and let you draw your own inferences. Synthesis is great, and we try to do some of it in our book, but I think it's also possible to make a contribution just by putting some data out there.

One final remark. After seeing my earlier graph-laden posts, several commenters thought I should be controlling for more variables--for example, in my graphs of political ideology and partisanship among sports fans and nonfans, people wanted me to control for sex. That would be fine--I have no objection to doing separate analyses for men and women, and in any case the GSS data I used are public and so anyone can feel free to do this analysis and send it to me--but for the purpose of answering the original question, the data combining both sexes were fine.

Recall that the original hypothesis of the conservative commentator was that sports fans are disproportionately conservative but not especially Republican, and thus he thought they represented a ripe low-hanging fruit for the Republican Party. Actually, though, the data showed the opposite: sports fans were more likely than the general public to be Republican but they were not particularly likely to be conservative.

So this simple data analysis revealed something. (And, yes, I agree that a serious study of this issue would require the use of more data than a single opinion poll from the 1990s.)

I do run regressions, and I'll report some of these on occasion. But it's a misconception to think that simple comparisons are meaningless or that regression analysis is always necessary. One thing sophistication can give you is an appreciation for the simple things in life.

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http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/02/religion-income-and-voting.html

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Open Thread and Diary Rescue

post from Daily Kos on 27 February 2009 11:15:05 PM. © Daily Kos

Tonight's rescue brought to you dopper0189, joyful, mem from somerville, shayera, and vcmvo2, with srkp23 editing.

A Siegel offers a heartfelt tribute to one of our own inspirational warriors with Homage to a hero: Climaticide Johnny Rook. (mem from somerville)

occams hatchet tells a thoroughly researched tale of corruption, greed, injustice and criminality in Body armor, part 2: BAE exports Corruption Too Big To Fail. (srkp23)

kevin3231 tells Kossacks about Obama, the NIH, You, and Me. (shayera)

In this thoughtful diary on Anti-Semitism and Racism from the Disingenuous Powerful, mikecraud shines the light on certain recent examples. (vcmvo2)

D Wreck weaves some recent observations with a metric from the past with Apply the Powell Doctrine to Wall St. (mem from somerville)

EmperorHadrian comes back to visit with a colorful tale of Caesar and his march across the Alps into Switzerland: Hadrian's Forum: How the Romans Defeated UBS (well, sort of). (vcmvo2)

YoyogiBear explains the difference between legalization and decriminalization in Marijuana: Why decriminalization alone won't work. (srkp23)

mftalbot questions some conventional wisdom about the human condition in "You're born alone, you live alone, and you die alone"? (vcmvo2)

dabug introduces an interesting project of an information activist in Transparency in government? Yes we scan! (mem from somerville)

so you say you want to help? Strange Animals instructs us how to effectively write a publishable letter-to-the-editor. (vcmvo2)

sheddhead shares some more Arizona Jewels - Riparian Institute - Birds. (shayera)

Eclectablog keeps an eye on the local press, and provides the other side of the story in (MI-07)Heritage Newspapers Ed. Slams Schauer in Front Page "Article". (mem from somerville)

jotter serves up High Impact Diaries: February 26, 2009.

emeraldmaiden brings Top Comments 2-27-09 - Puppy Dog Tales.

Enjoy and please promote your own favorite diaries in this open thread.

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NY-20 - the rebirth of Republicans

Mr. Tedisco, of the State Assembly, is running on the Republican line for Sen. Gillibrand's former seat. He's got a rogue's gallery of usual suspect Republican supporters, an ad campaign which carefully omits his party identification, and a few[...]

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C&L's Late Nite Music Club with Dirty Mac

Title: Yer BluesArtist: Dirty Mac
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Hat tips to Skippy for this one.

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http://lnmc.crooksandliars.com/maxmarginal/cls-late-nite-music-club-dirty-mac

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Looking out my back door

post from AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth on 27 February 2009 10:55:00 PM. © AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

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Looking out my own back door, the garden continues to grow thanks to the weather warming up a few degrees and no sub-freezing temps. The camellia's still have another few weeks to go though this will be the first time in three years that they have not bloomed in February.

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