Obama goofs are portrayed as reflective intelligence!

Some analysts are quoted in Barron's regarding their market thoughts. (See 1 below.)

Ahmadinejad responds negatively to more incentive candy. (See 2 below.)

More commentary about McCain's campaign from Bill Kristol - where is Murphy? Kristol is not talking about Murphy's Law. (See 3 below.)

Obama fumbles and McCain punts. Kristol is correct - Obama's goofs, "mis-speaks" and retractions are portrayed as evidence of his keen intellect, reflectiveness and thoughtfulness. Will "Boobus Americanus" buy it? Probably, if McCain does not challenge and remains brain dead. (See 4 below.)

Dick



1)Barron's Cover notes that the Bear market has arrived and may be here for a while

In the average post-1940 bear market, by the time the market was down the needed 20% the average bear was 74% over. There have been few hiding places other than commodities this time around. And there is little prospect for relief in the short term, especially with Q2 earnings season about to start. Jeremy Grantham of GMO thinks the bear will continue into 2010 and that we will be lucky if the downside is only to 1100. Bespoke Investment found that defensive plays like consumer staples and health care actually do slightly worse through the rest of the decline after holding up in the early stages. Currently there are few managers that want to pick a bottom in financials especially with bank stocks nowhere near as cheap as in the early '90s. Woody Dorsey of Market Semiotics sees the potential for a short-term trading bounce. Frederic Marks of Cheviot Value Management likes two strong U.S. companies despite their domestic economy exposure, they are Wal-Mart (WMT) and Walgreen (WAG). To gain exposure to foreign government bonds, try the SPDR Lehman International Treasury Bond ETF (BWX).

2) Ahmadinejad defiant amid report Iran has resumed bomb work


Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday his country would not stop enriching uranium and rejected as "illegitimate" a demand by major powers that it do so, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Ahmadinejad's comment came as a British newspaper, quoting intelligence reports received by Western diplomats, reported Monday that Iran has resumed work aimed at producing a nuclear bomb.

The remark was Ahmadinejad's first comment on the dispute since Iran delivered its response on Friday to a package of incentives offered by world powers seeking to curb its nuclear activities."They offer to hold talks but at the same time they threaten us and say we should accept their illegitimate demand to halt (enrichment work)," Ahmadinejad told reporters in Malaysia, where he was attending a summit of eight developing countries.

"They want us to abandon our right (to nuclear technology)," he said.

The United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany demand that Iran suspend its enrichment work before formal talks can start on their revised package, which includes help to develop a civilian nuclear programme. Iran, the world's fourth-biggest oil exporter, says its nuclear activities are peaceful. The United States and its
Western allies suspect they are a cover to build atomic bombs.

Tehran has repeatedly refused to stop producing enriched uranium, which can be used as fuel for power plants, or if refined much more, provide material for nuclear weapons.

The Daily Telegraph reported Monday that Iran had set up a number of civilian companies whose activities, it said, were being deliberately concealed from the United Nations nuclear inspection teams.

"The companies, based on the outskirts of Tehran, are working on constructing components for the advanced P2 gas centrifuge, which can enrich uranium to weapons grade two to three times faster than conventional P1 centrifuges," the report said, adding that the firms were set up by Iran's Revolutionary Guard, which oversees Iran's nuclear program.

Nuclear experts were quoted as saying the centrifuges are highly sophisticated devices mainly used in the manufacture of atomic weapons.

"The work is aimed at developing the blueprint provided by Dr AQ Khan, the 'father' of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, who sold Iran details of how to build atom bombs in the early 1990s. the newspaper said.

The offer of trade and other incentives proposed by the world powers was presented last month by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana to Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili. Iran has put forward its own bundle of proposals aimed at
resolving the dispute and has said it was encouraged by common
points between the two separate packages.

Ahmadinejad said Iran was ready to discuss its nuclear ambitions but that the "language of threat" was futile. "We are ready to discuss common subjects of the two
packages. Talks should be held in a fair and just atmosphere," he said.

The nuclear dispute with Iran has raised fears of a military confrontation and helped send world oil prices to record highs. Ahmadinejad dismissed talk of military action.

"Let alone America and Israel, even if hundreds of countries came together, they would not dare to attack Iran," he declared.

3) So Where’s Murphy?
By WILLIAM KRISTOL


From the gun clubs of Northern Virginia to the sports bars of Capitol Hill — wherever D.C.-area Republicans gather — you hear the question: Were's Murphy?


“Murphy” is Mike Murphy, the 46-year-old G.O.P. strategist who masterminded John McCain’s 2000 primary race against George Bush, helping McCain come close to pulling off an amazing upset. Murphy was then chief strategist for Mitt Romney’s successful Massachusetts governor run in 2002.

Murphy remained close to both men, and as a result sat out the G.O.P. nominating contest this past year, not wishing to work against either of them. It was widely assumed, though, that if either McCain or Romney won the nomination, the winner would bring Murphy on board for the general election. So far it hasn’t happened. I believe it soon will.

I hasten to disclose that Murphy is a friend. I should also disclose that when I called to say I had heard he might well be signing on with McCain, he went Sergeant Schultz on me, saying nothing.

But here’s what I gather from acquaintances and sources in and around the McCain campaign.

McCain is frustrated. He thinks he can beat Obama (politicians are pretty confident in their own abilities). But he isn’t convinced his campaign can beat Obama’s campaign. He knows that his three-month general election head start was largely frittered away. He understands that his campaign has failed to develop an overarching message. Above all, McCain is painfully aware that he is being diminished by his own campaign.

This last point is galling. McCain has been a major figure in American public life for quite a while. And yet his campaign has made him seem somehow smaller. Obama is a first-term senator with no legislative achievements to speak of. His campaign has helped him seem bigger, more presidential.

Even Obama’s adjustments for the general election — his flip-flops — have served in an odd way to enhance his stature. Some of them suggest, after all, that he is at least trying to think seriously about what he would do if he were actually president. So Obama has achieved the important feat, as the campaign has moved on, of seeming an increasingly plausible president. McCain seems a less plausible president today than he did when he clinched the nomination.

So McCain decided it was time for a campaign shake-up. Last week he moved lobbyist Rick Davis aside. He seemed to put Bush-Rove alum Steve Schmidt more or less in charge. But the full plan, as I understand it, was — and is — to have Schmidt, a good operative and tactician, take over day-to-day operations at headquarters, while bringing Murphy on both to travel with McCain and as chief strategist.

But McCain hesitated to carry out both steps of the plan at once, worried about an overload of turmoil. And Murphy’s arrival would mean a fair amount of turmoil. The current McCain campaign is chock full of G.O.P. establishment types, many of whom aren’t great fans of the irreverent Murphy. Murphy’s also made no secret of his low opinion of the Bush-Rove political machine that has produced many of these operatives. And Murphy hasn’t made his possible entry into the campaign smoother by telling a New York Times reporter the other day that “the depressingly self-absorbed McCain campaign machine needs to get out of the way” of its candidate.

Still, Jeb Bush — whose winning Florida gubernatorial campaigns Murphy guided — was with McCain in Mexico City last week. I’m told he argued that the time to bring on Murphy is now. McCain didn’t disagree. And so I expect that in the next couple of weeks we’ll learn that Murphy is coming on board as chief strategist, with Schmidt running operations at the headquarters. This would be a structure very much like the Obama campaign, led by the combination of strategist David Axelrod and campaign manager David Plouffe.

Why Murphy? As observers of the 2000 effort know, he has a deep rapport with McCain — including an ability to tell him when he’s made a mistake. He’s a creative campaign tactician and an imaginative ad maker — but his great skill has always been an ability to find a clear theme for his candidates, as he did for McCain in 2000, who ran then as a conservative reformer and champion of national greatness.

The McCain campaign this year desperately needs a message and a narrative that is both appropriate for the candidate and for the times. Thinking such a complex challenge through, and executing it, is Murphy’s strength. And he’s run victorious statewide campaigns in states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa — where it’s not enough simply to mobilize the Republican base.

With Murphy in charge, McCain will have the campaign team he wants. Then all they’ll have to do is come from behind to win against a superior organization, more money, a gifted candidate and a Democratic-tilting electorate. Oh well: no challenge, no glory.

4) The Stand That Obama Can't Fudge
By E. J. Dionne

WASHINGTON -- When a candidate calls a second news conference to say the same thing he thought he said in the first one, you know he knows he has a problem.

Thus Barack Obama's twin news conferences last week in Fargo, N.D. At his first, Obama promised he would make a "thorough assessment" of his Iraq policy in his coming visit there and "continue to gather information" to "make sure that our troops are safe, and that Iraq is stable."

You might ask: What's wrong with that? A commander in chief willing to adjust his view to facts and realities should be a refreshing idea.

But when news reports suggested Obama was backing away from his commitment to withdrawing troops from Iraq in 16 months, Obama's lieutenants no doubt heard echoes of those cries of "flip-flop" that rocked the 2004 Republican National Convention and proved devastating to John Kerry.

So out Obama came again to reiterate his timeline. "Apparently, I wasn't clear enough this morning on my position with respect to the war in Iraq," he said. "I intend to end this war. My first day in office I will bring the Joint Chiefs of Staff in, and I will give them a new mission, and that is to end this war -- responsibly, deliberately, but decisively."

The unsteady moment suggested that Obama has not figured out how to slip the trap John McCain's campaign is trying to set for him. As Michael Cooper and Jeff Zeleny shrewdly put it in The New York Times, Republicans want to place Obama "in the political equivalent of a double bind: painting him as impervious to the changing reality on the ground if he sticks to his plan, and as a flip-flopper if he alters it to reflect changing circumstances."

The flip-flop charge may be of limited use to the GOP this year because McCain has changed his own positions rather promiscuously on matters such as taxes and offshore drilling. Even on Iraq, one of McCain's signature issues, the Straight Talker has shifted his emphasis.

At the beginning of the year, McCain famously said he was willing to keep troops in Iraq for 100 years, "as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed." But in May, McCain promised that America would have "welcomed home most of the servicemen and women" by the end of his first term and American troops in Iraq would not be playing "a direct combat role."

McCain's supporters could argue that if parsed carefully, the statements are consistent. But Obama's make much the same claims about his own Iraq statements.

McCain is plainly adjusting his rhetoric to appease the clear majority of Americans who believe the Iraq War was a mistake and want it to end. Obama is being attentive to swing voters who share his negative assessment of the war but are uncertain about how quickly American troops should be brought home.

Yet Obama needs to be careful not to cede the high ground on Iraq. Because Obama's strongest argument for himself on foreign policy rests on his sound judgment in opposing the war from the beginning, any appearance of waffling on the issue is especially dangerous.

Republicans are pressing Obama on Iraq because they know that any new moves he makes will be interpreted, fairly or not, as a change in position, and that this will hurt him with two groups: the anti-war base of the Democratic Party, and independent voters, many of whom are just tuning into the campaign.

Painting Obama as a shameless shape-shifter is a way for his opponents to dull the enthusiasm (and inhibit the campaign contributions) of the war's staunchest foes. And if this image stuck, it could also hurt Obama among independents. They might vote for a hawk or a dove, but not a chameleon.

Over the last week, Obama has been crafty in the way he has sought the political middle ground. He has emphasized his "values" and touted his patriotism, his call to service and his faith, as he did Saturday at a conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. That is quite different from backing off his core promises.

Voters accept that a president may alter the details of campaign promises. What they expect is a clear sense of the direction he will take. At the moment, voters know that John McCain is far more likely than Barack Obama to continue the war in Iraq indefinitely. Obama would be foolish to blur that distinction.