I've avoided commenting on the recent events in Gaza, as the more I read, the less I understand. But I do know how to look for Signs, and a big one is when Bill Kristol is in your corner, watch out. From today's column:

The Israeli assault on Hamas in Gaza is going to be a replay, we’re told, of the attempt to subdue Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in the summer of 2006. And the outcome, it’s asserted, will be the same: lots of death and destruction, no strategic victory for Israel and a setback for all who seek peace and progress in the Middle East.

Obviously, war is an unpredictable business, so I say this with some trepidation: I think the conventional wisdom will be proved wrong. Israel could well succeed in Gaza.

War is an unpredictable business, but tallying up Kristol's track record is not. His prediction-accuracy quotient is Zero, which suggests things are only going to get uglier.

Here's why. Read it. And weep. Another spot-on analysis from the best in the biz.

Alberto Gonzales gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal that reveals him in all his schmuckatude. No wonder he earned the nickname of "Fredo," when he can claim, "What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?....for some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror."

Substitute "dumb" for "evil," and you get this: "It ain't the way I wanted it! I can handle things! I'm smart! Not like everybody says... like dumb... I'm smart and I want respect!"

Of course, Gonzo has that extra dimension of self-important arrogance, the sort of thing that makes him think he can claim "I don't recall" a gigillion times in Congressional testimony and that maybe no one would notice. Hence, you get this little admission at the very end of the article:

In one of his final acts before leaving office, Mr. Gonzales denied he was planning to quit, even though he had told the president of his intention to resign. Asked about the misleading comment Tuesday, he said: "At that point, I didn't care."

Yep, Gonzo, it all hinges on what you feel like saying on any particular day. He says he's writing a memoir now too, but it may just be for his sons, since no publisher has come a-knocking. But then, who would want to read 300 pages of "I don't recall"?

Filling in those endless commercial breaks must be a chore for TV news anchors. What do you do when you run out of chit chat? Talk about the news? Too depressing. Of course, if you're Bill O'Reilly you can just shout abuse at some intern. If you're Rick Sanchez you can gaze lovingly at yourself in the monitor. And if you're Kyra Phillips, you can just stare at all the pretty blinking lights on the set.

But the anchors at Chicago's WGN, Robert Jordan and Jackie Bange, are made of sterner stuff. They've perfected the Close Order Anchor Silliness Drill that should be the envy of newsrooms across the land. Check it out on the WGN blog, which unfortunately doesn't have an embed function for me to put it up here. Right now You Tube only has the very beginning of it up, and it ends before they really get their Astaire and Rogers on.

Hope everyone is having a good holiday.

We had a white Christmas, with few streets plowed and most people not knowing how to drive in the snow...don't know why people wouldn't believe me when I told them not to spin their tires...

The 2008 Golden Monkeyfist Awards have been posted. Plenty of folks you know are on the list!

The Awards list can be found, HERE.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and congratulations, one and all!

Why, that'd be Pat Robertson, the man that time forgot. But not CNN, who gave him 10 min. on their Situation Room today. Amongst the nuggets, Pat talks to God some more:

MALVEAUX: You had actually predicted in the beginning of the year that we would be in this financial mess. You said in January, "I also believe the lord was saying by 2009, maybe 2010, there's going to be a major stock market crash."

You predicted a recession. Why?

ROBERTSON: Well, I don't know why, but that's -- you know, I go away to pray at the end of each year and sort of try to ask for some leading guidance as to what's going to happen and what I'm supposed to be doing. And this came to me last -- the end of last December, that we were going to have a serious downturn.

Ah, Pat Robertson, master economist with Jesus himself whispering in his ear. And getting the timing of the crash all wrong by a half year or more. Our good friend Invictus here at B3 has been citing lots of evidence well before Dec. '07 of the trouble to come. And this is the best insider info The God of Gods can feed to Pat? Seriously, who cares what this demented leprechaun has to say about anything anymore....except for the fools at CNN that are still using their 1990's Rolodex files for guest spots.

Obama's team is due to release its report on their contacts with Blagojevich regarding his open Senate seat. The report will be thorough and reveal no inappropriate conversations. Cable news talking heads will regard this as a very suspicious development. That is, if they can ever bear to tear themselves away from the utterly fascinating and important story of a water main break in Maryland.

(Gee, that was easy--can I get a seat on the panel next to George Will on Sunday?)

Little Billy Kristol just loves taking a dump on the op-ed pages in the NY Times. Take today's entry, praising the "straight talkers" like Dick Cheney. Commenting on Big Dick's recent defense of telling Pat Leahy to fuck himself:

No spin. No doubletalk. A cogent defense of his action — and one that shows a well-considered sense of justice. (“I thought he merited it.”) Indeed, if justice is seeking to give each his due, one might say that Dick Cheney aspires to being a just man. And a thoughtful one, because he knows that justice is sometimes too harsh, and should be tempered by civility.

And just to show he's bipartisan, Billy offers this oh-so irreverent thought on the Illinois Hair Helmet:

Blagojevich is even more terse: “I want to make money.” And when an opportunity came along — a vacant Senate seat — he didn’t sit around studying polls and consulting focus groups. He got to work. He knows — as Americans have always known — that the good things in life aren’t free. As he put it eloquently in discussing the vacant Senate seat, “I’ve got this thing, and it’s [expletive] golden, and, uh, uh, I’m just not giving it up for [expletive] nothing.”

It’s also nice, in this day and age, to see an example of family togetherness and marital harmony. Rod and his wife, Patti, seem to be in accord on so many things. For example, in a disinclination to turn the other cheek...

So is this just li'l Billy's way of rubbing our noses in it by way of saying "look what utter shit I can submit to the Times and GET PAID FOR IT"? Or can we expect his next column to reflect on the underappreciated Human Resource Management Skills of Charlie Manson?

I'm done.

2008 may well go down as the most forgettable year of my life.

Put aside the fact that I've tried my utmost to navigate my clients through a deepening worldwide recession (with most heeding my advice and some not). Put aside the fact that our economy teetered on the brink of collapse, that, because of unprecedented greed and stupidity, investment banking as we knew it is now gone (that Bear Stearns is gone, that Lehman is gone, that Merrill was acquired, that Goldman and Morgan Stanley are now banks). Put aside the fact that as a result of the worldwide recession markets around the globe -- including ours -- have cratered. Put aside the fact that Bernie Madoff has given Wall St. yet another black eye by running a Ponzi scheme that may reach back as far as 30 years.

No, none of that was enough. The icing wasn't on the cake just yet.

Wednesday evening I found out that a friend's sister was shot three times -- and killed -- by a teenager in a botched home burglary turned homicide. She'd walked into her home while it was being looted and one of the two teens shot her dead. She was found by one of her children.

What even is there to say?

Godspeed, Susan.

"The DJ Riko Merry Mixmas collection is a holiday tradition that dates back to 2002. Each edition is a continuous mix of Christmas music spanning multiple musical genres and multiple decades."-- DJ Riko

It's an absolutely free download, with CD art, and everything.

via DJ Riko

Tracklist:

Nat King Cole - Toyland
Soul Saints Orchestra - Santa's Got a Bag of Soul
Liz Phair - Winter Wonderland
African Christmas - White Christmas
Joy Electric - Here We Come a Wassailing
The Torero Band - The Holly and the Ivy
The Four Seasons - Jungle Bells
The Sixth Great Lake - Always After Christmas Boring
Rotary Connection - Silent Night Chant
Jewish Christmas - Jingle Bells
Binky Griptite - Stoned Soul Christmas
Casey James & the Staypuft Kid - St. Nick of Bloomingdale's
Hoodoo Gurus - Little Drummer Boy (Up the Khyber)
Irwin the Disco Duck - Donde Esta Santa Claus
Gene Autry - 32 Feet and 8 Little Tails
E-Money - Christmas Crunk
8mm - Baby It's Cold Outside
Mikey Jarrett and Mikey General - Santa Claus is Black
Parenthetical Girls - Carol of the Season
Prince & the Revolution - Another Lonely Christmas
Cold Chillin Juice Crew - Cold Chillin Christmas
Drunken Boat - Blue X-mas (To Whom it May Concern)
Stephen Colbert - Another Christmas Song
Billy Paul Williams feat. Nicole Henry - Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Martin Mull - Santafly
Boxcar Willie - Hee Haw Honey
Hawaiian Slack Key Orchestra - Auld Lang Syne

It's so nice. A full hour of great Christmas music, brilliantly mixed. I give high marks to every single mix, and highly recommend them all for your collection.

Ugly housing starts number today, 625,000:

Larry Kudlow, arguing for the Fed to raise rates, June 23, 2008 (emph. mine):

Nobody expects the central bank to raise its target rate this week — although frankly I wish it would.[...]

I continue to believe that fighting inflation and appreciating the dollar would be the best medicine for the economy, and in the short term would be strong medicine to reduce world energy prices, including gasoline at the pump.

Larry Kudlow, gushing over the Fed's move to a ZIRP (zero interest rate policy), today (emph. mine):

And while some economists worry about higher future inflation from all this money-creation, Tuesday's consumer price report actually showed deflation of 10 percent annually over the past three months. That gives the central bank ammunition to ignore inflation and aim instead for a massive monetary easing.

Tell me again why he has a tv show? Kudlow called repeatedly for the Fed to raise rates, to "take back" some of last winter's cuts. It was absolutely the wrong thing to do, as we now see clearly. (As an aside, any Fed governors who voted over the summer for rate hikes should either resign or be dismissed, as they're clearly incapable of doing their job.)

And lest you've forgotten, boys and girls, Larry tells us yet again today what the only true solution is to any economic crisis:

But I still believe the best economic stimulus would be a move to cut tax rates across-the-board for individuals and businesses.

Just kill me.

So today in a press appearance with Iraq's Maliki, an Iraqi reporter took off his shoes and threw them at Bush from only 15 feet away. Missed, of course (could it be any other way?), but he came damb close. The video's available here. This being Yahoo video, you have to watch a stupid commercial first before the hilarity starts, although the one that played first for me was pretty funny in context: it was for Hersey's Kisses, with a soundtrack playing "What the World Needs Now is Love Sweet Love."

I posted here less than a month ago about how Household Debt and our national GDP -- after decades of running on a somewhat parallel track -- had come very close to converging, both at around $14 trillion. I wrote:

Household Debt (Fed's Flow of Funds, Table D.3) and GDP (BEA data) are now closer to convergence than they've ever been, and debt might actually eclipse GDP when the next Flow of Funds report is issued December 11. It's long been the case that private sector debt has been greater than private sector GDP, but now it appears households alone are going to eclipse total GDP, which has not happened since recordkeeping began.

With the release this week of the Flow of Funds report, we can take an updated look (via the St. Louis Fed, sparing me from doing the work), of where things stand:

What the chart tells us, essentially, is that we grew GDP in large part through the use of credit. That is what is now being unwound, and in fact credit is contracting, as I pointed out here. GDP is contracting, too, as we saw in Q3. And I have every expectation that GDP contraction in Q4 will be on the order of 5%, possibly followed by a similarly bad number in Q1 2009. This, folks, is the face of deleveraging. This chart really captures the essence of how we got here: By piling on the debt, we were able to keep growing our GDP. When the debt burden (which was being fueled by low interest rates and a runaway housing market) became too great, something had to give and the process had to begin mean-reverting.

NOTE to reader JRM, if you're out there: The chart above pretty much replicates what I produced in November, when you asked if there was any other source for the data. It did not dawn on me at the time to go to the St. Louis Fed. My bad.