John McCain

Still three-plus years left in Obama’s presidency, where mediocrity has been elevated to a highly acceptable status.  A good and intelligent man has proven to be an incapable leader, often by making poor choices in the advice received... However, not all has to be lost for Obama; he still has time to reweave a legacy that now appears grey and bleak.  And that reweaving will not be on the domestic front; for the economic future of 80 percent of Americans has already been cast... the slope pointing downward no matter what hopeful lies are manufactured in Washington.  Reweaving, for Obama, should take place at the international front; a great opening has appeared before him partly by chance and partly by what other world leaders have to gain as well.

Update: Well, kiss that idea goodbye: GOVERNMENT WILL SHUT DOWN TONIGHT; HOUSE WILL NOT ATTEMPT MORE VOTES TONIGHT, WAPO REPORTS (link)

While it will be supremely ironic if stocks were to soar on the day the US government shuts down (it would be curious to see how Congress would spin that particular "market" reaction to a world without a US government), a ramp in the futures is precisely what is going on. And while there is no definite reason for this market reaction, it is being attributed to two things: first, the House Rules panel announced moments ago it would meet at 10:30 pm on a new spending Bill and are that Republicans are said to seek talks with the Senate on spending. Of course, if the GOP folds in the last moment, it would be Boehner's most epic collapse to date (in a long and illustrious series of humiliations). Which brings us to reason number two: also moments ago, John McCain pretty much threw his colleagues under the bus, saying House Republicans will not "succeed in the end" and that the House will end up sending a clean CR, just as Obama has demanded all along, which in turn has emboldened traders to assume that there is a better than negligible chance the GOP will once again bend over.

Over the past week, many have been scratching their heads over why JPMorgan is so eager to comply with the DOJ's investigation into the banks misrepresentation of the quality of its RMBS bundled mortgages, having gone so far as to suggest a number that could be as large as $4 billion in cash (with a $7 billion non-cash component), though still shy of the DOJ's $20 billion ask. The reason, as the WSJ reports, may be very simple one: a rat is providing the Feds with information deep from within the house of the whale. "The Justice Department's pursuit of possible criminal charges against J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. is based in large part on a key cooperator from inside the bank who is aiding the government and has provided information suggesting the bank vastly overstated the quality of mortgages that were being bundled into securities and sold to investors, according to people familiar with the matter."

"When Pravda.ru editor, Dmitry Sudakov, offered to publish my commentary, he referred to me as "an active anti-Russian politician for many years." I'm sure that isn't the first time Russians have heard me characterized as their antagonist. Since my purpose here is to dispel falsehoods used by Russia's rulers to perpetuate their power and excuse their corruption, let me begin with that untruth. I am not anti-Russian. I am pro-Russian, more pro-Russian than the regime that misrules you today. I make that claim because I respect your dignity and your right to self-determination. I believe you should live according to the dictates of your conscience, not your government. I believe you deserve the opportunity to improve your lives in an economy that is built to last and benefits the many, not just the powerful few. You should be governed by a rule of law that is clear, consistently and impartially enforced and just. I make that claim because I believe the Russian people, no less than Americans, are endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness..."

The definition of what makes an “enemy” may vary from person to person. But we would say that, generally, an enemy is one who has an active ability to do irreparable harm to you or your essential values. He is motivated by destruction, the destruction of all that you hold dear. He is capable and unrelenting. He is a legitimate threat. He will not compromise. He will not waver. He will do anything to wound you. He will not stop. He is possessed. Americans have spent the better part of a century being told who their enemies are with very little explanation or substantiation. We have blindly rallied around our patriotic prerogative without knowing the root cause of the conflict or the nature of the target we are told to annihilate. We have been suckered into war after war, conjured by international interests in order to lure us into accepting greater centralization and concentrated globalism. As a culture, we're sorry to say, we have been used. We are a tool of unmitigated doom. We are the loaded gun in the hand of the devil. When one applies the above definition of “the enemy” to Syria, one comes away with very little satisfaction. So, the question arises: If Syria is not the real enemy, who is?

The first clips from Charlie Rose's interview with Assad are being released and given the Russia-Syria discussions, Obama's skepticism, and now John McCain's 'dubious support' for "the US getting on board with Russia's proposal for Syria to hand over its chemical weapons," we thought this brief view of Assad's response was telling...

Perhaps the 77 year-old republican senator should stick to online poker. Because if the war hawk was in charge of US foreign policy, World War III would be a distant memory. Courtesy of The Burning Platform, the chart below lists of countries where John McCain has not called for military intervention. It is, in a word, large.

Yesterday we implied a difficult question when we illustrated the huge size of US Treasury bond holdings that China and Russia have between them - accounting for 25% of all foreign held debt - implicitly funding US standards of living (along with the Federal Reserve). The difficult question is "Can the U.S. really afford to greatly anger the rest of the world when they are the ones that are paying our bills?" What is going to happen if China, Russia and many other large nations stop buying our debt and start rapidly dumping U.S. debt that they already own? If the United States is not very careful, it is going to pay a tremendous economic price for taking military action in Syria.

Following a "spirited" town hall in Phoenix forcused on Syria, Senator John McCain made comments to a local TV crew. "The fact is [Syrian President] Bashar Assad has massacred 100,000 people. The conflict is spreading... The Russians are all in, the Iranians are all in, and it's an unfair fight," McCain told KFYI's Mike Broomhead. "And no one wants American boots on the ground. Nor will there be American boots on the ground because there would be an impeachment of the president if they did that." McCain also slammed Obama, exclaiming "the president has bungled this beyond belief." CBS reports that McCain then added that the President "announced that he's going to strike and then say, 'No, I'm going to the American Congress.' I can't believe how badly he’s mishandled this issue."

• Robert Menendez, D-N.J. - net worth from $317,005 to $680,000
  
• Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. - net worth from $1,147,008 to $5,380,000
  
• Ben Cardin, D-Md. - net worth from $1,416,074 to $3,998,000
  
• Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H. - net worth from $1,692,382 to $5,223,360 
• Chris Coons, D-Del. - net worth from $2,690,584 to $7,095,576
  
• Dick Durbin, D-Ill. - net worth from $1,208,567 to $1,443,564 
• Tim Kaine, D-Va. - net worth from $667,015 to $1,507,000
  
• Bob Corker, R-Tenn. - net worth from $6,625,018 to $76,453,998 
• John McCain, R-Ariz. - net worth from $3,226,239 to $15,247,981 
• Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. - net worth from $-234,998 to $299,999 

Late last night news broke that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had proposed a resolution for US involvement in Syria which among other things, would limit Obama's Syrian military strike - whose "clinical" purpose and intentions are still very much unclear - to 90 days. As reported earlier, Republican war hawk John McCain said he would not support the resolution, arguably because he hopes to see a wider, more spread out campaign, one which would certainly infuriate Russia and China. Or a simpler reason: the usual bipartisan breakdown in Congress strikes again. Moments ago, yet another republican who previously said he was for Obama's campaign following Boehner's support, the committee's top republican Bob Corker got cold feet, and as Politico reports, may delay if not scuttle the Senatorial vote altogether.

UPDATE: The entire Boehner-based drop has been retraced. It would appears that one should sell on war but buy on even moar war... which makes some idiotic sense since a longer-protected episode will indeed provide the deficit surging room for moar QE.

It seems perhaps Senator McCain missed the most salient (surgical strike, non-regime-change) points of John Kerry's compelling case yesterday and has decided that:

US REPUBLICAN SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN SAYS DOES NOT BACK SENATE PANEL DRAFT RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING USE OF FORCE IN SYRIA

Maybe in order to deter McCain's strategy of going in blind "all in", raising all the way to nothing short of WWIII, someone should advise the confused presidential candidate he is no longer playing poker on his iPhone

It seems that the reason why Obama has been such a staunch supporter of a Syrian campaign without a land component, is because US-armed and trained Qatari mercenaries, also known elsewhere in the media as "rebels", are about to take to the battlefield (ignoring for a moment prior reports that American, Israeli and other troops have already long operated on Syrian territory). The Telegraph reports that "the first cell of Syrian rebels trained and armed by the CIA is making its way to the battlefield, President Barack Obama has reportedly told senators. During a meeting at the White House, the president assured Senator John McCain that after months of delay the US was meeting its commitment to back moderate elements of the opposition. Mr Obama said that a 50-man cell, believed to have been trained by US special forces in Jordan."

• Mediterranean 'Ballistic Targets' Were Part of Israeli Test – Defense Ministry (RIA)
• Microsoft to Buy Nokia’s Devices Unit for $7.2 Billion (BBG)
• Long-Term Jobless Left Out of Recovery (WSJ)
• Swiss banks apologize for assisting tax cheats (Reuters)
• As Obama pushes to punish Syria, lawmakers fear deep U.S. involvement (Reuters)
• India Looking to Expand Rupee-Payment System (WSJ)
• Citigroup Dialing Back Its 'Alternative' Holdings (WSJ)
• Libya Seeks New Solutions to Oil Crisis (WSJ)
• Lenovo Chief Yang Shares Bonus With Workers a Second Year (BBG)

At a time when we claim to be seeking a permanent solution to the circular situation which exists between Israel and Palestine (Palestinians), it is incongruous to reality that we fail to see what is happening all around the Middle East.  The old United Arab Republic, Syria and Egypt, have over 90 million people divided and fighting, whether in open civil war or through socioeconomic confrontation.  It has less to do with political regimes, and so-called dictatorships such as those of Mubarak and Assad, and more to do with the existing distribution of wealth and power.  And equity may or may not come through dialogue (hopefully) or civil struggle (unfortunately).