Because it's one of those years again...

And because four different people randomly asked me about this blog in the past couple of weeks, I'm going to fire her back up. I can't promise I'll update as regularly as I like (he said, after not providing an update in 20 months), and I can't say I have the same passion for consuming political news I once did.

Ok, I'm not selling this very well, am I? Let's do a quick rundown of Obama's first 3 years in office:

Foreign Policy: A

He got Bin Laden. He got the troops out of Iraq ahead of schedule. He got Gaddafi for less than a billion dollars and with no lives spent. He's got us prepared for that invasion of Canada we're not supposed to talk about. It's hard to have complaints.

That said... China is our biggest foreign policy concern, and they still own us. And he "got Gaddafi" by following our allies into an illegal (though morally justified) war.

Can't give him an A+. But the reality is he's crushed it on foreign policy.

Economic Policy: C-

We're closing in on two straight years of private sector job growth. Nobody believes me when I tell them that.

That's thanks directly to the stimulus, and indirectly to the bailouts. The obvious problem is that the stimulus wasn't big enough and wasn't targeted well enough, while the bailouts came without strings. Which still burns me right up.

The other problem is that while the private sector grows, the public sector continues to shrink.

That's thanks directly to the decision to renew the Bush tax cuts. It was a gutless move. I don't care that people like Andrew Sullivan think it was great statesmanship.

That said... five months ago I worried that Obama was Herbert Hoover. In retrospect, I'm pretty sure he's not.

Civil Liberties: OMFG WHAT'S GOING ON????

DOMA's dying; Don't Ask Don't Tell is dead; women still have the right to choose (and the gag rule's been lifted); and a whole bunch of other nice stuff has happened.

But... the NDAA is an abomination that is wholly unconstitutional. And SOPA/PIPA will be right there with it, should they pass.

So while Obama has been a great president for civil liberties in some ways, in others he's been pretty openly Bush-ian.

Three long years. And 10 long, money-filled months to the next election.

It's good to be back.

Heading below 8000...

• The Dow just keeps sinking, and this morning dropped below 8000 for the first time since 2003 before rebounding a bit to the 8200-range around noon. What does this mean? For one, it means folks want the bailout to happen sooner than next month. Duh. But it also means that the "confidence crisis" is still happening, and Bush's speech wasn't much of a roadblock.
• To illustrate just how stupid people have been: While the rest of the country is waving their arms, running in circles and shrieking "Fire!", Warren Buffet made $8 Billion last month and overtook Bill Gates as the world's richest man. Intelligence, patience, foresight. And he supports Obama.
• Paul Krugman, meanwhile, continues to assure us that we've booked passage on the bus to Beelzebub. His solution? The Soros Plan I highlighted here last week - though we can't call it "The Soros Plan," because "Soros" is a toxic name in reep political circles, and this is going to require bipartisan agreement to get done. I have an idea: Let's call it The Buffet Plan! Anyway, here's Krugman:

  What he should have proposed instead, many economists agree, was direct injection of capital into financial firms: The U.S. government would provide financial institutions with the capital they need to do business, thereby halting the downward spiral, in return for partial ownership. When Congress modified the Paulson plan, it introduced provisions that made such a capital injection possible, but not mandatory. And until two days ago, Mr. Paulson remained resolutely opposed to doing the right thing.

  But on Wednesday the British government, showing the kind of clear thinking that has been all too scarce on this side of the pond, announced a plan to provide banks with £50 billion in new capital — the equivalent, relative to the size of the economy, of a $500 billion program here — together with extensive guarantees for financial transactions between banks. And U.S. Treasury officials now say that they plan to do something similar, using the authority they didn’t want but Congress gave them anyway.

• And lastly on the economic front, Sammy Brittan at the Financial Times begs and pleads for John Maynard Keynes to rise from the dead and save us all from our own stupidity. TOO LITTLE TOO LATE, SAMMY! You've been spouting laissez-faire deregulatory corporatist nonsense for years, and this is the natural end product. This is what you get when you remove oversight and transparency in the name of big, bigger and biggest business and put the fox in charge of the henhouse. Let me say it in no uncertain terms: This crisis must be the end of Friedmanite economists being taken seriously in the financial world. Anyone with a Chicago School or Berkeley Mafia resume has to become persona non grata, or we'll just end up in the same place yet again. And Sammy, you can shove this quote up your ass:

  May I end on a personal note? Some friends and colleagues ask if I have not been guilty of trying to dethrone Keynes in favour of Friedman. Not so.

And in other news, I'm happy to report that the state of my birth has become the third, after Massachusettes and California, to legalize gay marriage. It's about time.