Homeland Security?

We missed a terrible Christmas tragedy by the skin of our teeth the other day. Only the actions of a single Dutch passenger, Jasper Schuringa, saved the passengers and crew from annihilation. For this he should get a medal and all expense paid trip around the USA.

The TSA, the FBI, the coordinated anti-terror cadres of the airlines and overseas security services failed utterly in identifying and detecting the bomber. The bomber’s conduct was, in fact, a textbook case of the terrorist profile. Flying into Schipol Airport from a 3rd World country with a heavily propagandized Muslim population, Nigeria. Accompanied by  a stranger who looked strange; buying his ticket with cash, and then having visa problems at the counter which were only resolved with the intervention of a supervisor and the mysterious stranger. At the least he should have been taken aside and frisked. Instead he was allowed to board.

The Department of Homeland Security jumped into action by enacting the following measures to assault the dignity of grandmothers, veterans, people with metal plates in their bodies and the general public:

. No more than one bag on board

. increased frisking

. No standing, bathroom breaks, opening overhead compartments or blanket usage in the last hour of all flights

. no more in flight locators on the personal display at each seat.

Janet Napolitano had the gall to state on three network interview shows this morning that nothing was amiss and the system worked as planned. Either she is delusional or a liar. The horse is so far out of the barn on this one it’s in the next county.

The system broke down, Ms. Napolitano. Your multi-billion dollar politically correct  farce was shown for the sham that it is. The TSA is inefficient and mainly good for relieving innocent civilians of their water bottles, cigarette lighters, and pocket knives rather than finding and preventing terrorists from carrying out their plans. It is an embarrassment to law enforcement.

Eric Holder also garners his share of blame, for it is he who has been dismantling the joint agency projects and committees that shared information across jurisdictions and law enforcement agencies. This was one of the central recommendations by the 9/11 Commission, and these structures are now being torn apart.

Once again, it is about image and power, not law enforcement. It’s about hundreds of thousands of new Federal employees and control of that budget with lip service to catching the bad guys. Public safety has given way to CIA investigations, sham trials, PR and just plain BS.

Our dangerously disingenuous President

A terrorist tried to blow up a plane yesterday, and the day before, “Yemeni” forces stuck a high level Al Quaeda meeting being held at the hideout of Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s spiritual mentor, Anwar Al-Awlaki and killed 30 terrorist leaders. But we no longer have a War on Terror. It’s funny, because Terror sure seems to have a war on us. Our president is either oblivious or has his own agenda.

The president’s dithering for three months on the plan forward in Afghanistan surely has not helped, nor has his unsuccessful policy of engaging the Pakistani government in its own self preservation. Over there, they are making war on one set of Taliban while granting sanctuary to the Mullah Omar’s Quetta Shura and Afghani narcoterrorists such as Haqqani and Hekmatyr. The Pakistani combination of denial, delusion and paranoia is truly disturbing, but seems par for the course in extremist Islam. Our enemies see this disarray and take heart in it.

Some of that same denial and delusion is now being exhibited by our own government. There is no more War on Terror but rather a campaign against common sense and the American people. All the while, the president has spent more time on the golf course than at church, if you haven’t noticed, both of which are trumped by his time in front of the teleprompter either outright campaigning or in turn lecturing us.

His staff is fundamentally reshaping our democracy with government power grabs at the EPA, on health care and in corporate America with ever growing dissent from a broad swathe of the governed, and he chooses to ignore these disagreements on matters of principle while becoming ever more petulant. His tin ear is amazing. Even Richard Daley, the ultimate machine Democrat has warned him of his veer leftwards. He is being seen more and more as an American Evo Morales, destroying our checks and balances in his quest for more power.

The other noticeable trend is his lack of fingerprints on the evidence. His is the single most closed administration in the past 50 years, and we see only the end product. Whether on Capitol Hill or at the White House or the various agencies, almost everything is done behind closed doors and the results presented as a fait accompli.

As we go into 2010, the president’s poll numbers are tanking worse than any of his predecessors, which is hard to believe after George Bush.  A bunch of left-wing radicals are doing their best to reshape our democracy.  What we now know  is that every day we are losing our freedoms and rights and our opportunities to excel. We are losing what it is to be American.

Tiny Tim’s crutches in the corner – A political/moral analogy

In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is the epitome of Victorian evil.  His selfishness, greed and lack of charity lead to a loss of soul. Marley’s Ghost appears to him to warn him of the consequences of his actions on Christmas Eve, and he is then visited by the Spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future.

We are again being visited by Marley’s Ghost in Washington and on Wall Street. In the Senate, leadership is working behind closed doors again and wants to vote on what just about everyone in the country agrees is an abomination of a Health Care bill. Whether it’s Danny Glover or Howard Dean or the doctors or the insurance companies, it doesn’t seem to matter. They all agree it’s terrible and will do little to nothing to improve health care in America. The impetus is purely political and is to get the bill through at all costs and damn the consequences.

On Wall Street it is simply business as usual as we get fleeced one way or the other. Our economy is still a shambles, and there are more storm clouds in the form of the commercial real estate mess, impending government defaults at home and abroad, and mortgage resets. More people are out of work today than at any time since the Great Depression and the government’s solutions are not working out very well.

We are also at war in a place where the outcome is in doubt. Our troops are strong, but it may be our will to win that is not. As many of them sit cold and in danger and far from loved ones, we as a nation dither.

Doubt is our watchword.  Of our politicians. Of our leaders. Of our institutions. Faith has been broken and “faith” is under assault.

The ghost of Christmas past has already visited us. We know what we have lost. The Ghost of Christmas Present is upon us. More of us see the future is much dimmer than the past than the other way around. We see Tiny Tim’s crutches in the corner, but no Tiny Tim.

At last in Dickens’ book, in the visit of the Ghost of Christmas Future, Scrooge sees his own grave overgrown with weeds and untended, with the implications to his immortal soul clearly spelled out before him. This prompts him to see the error of his ways and become a new man.

We have a choice now. We have seen the errors of our ways and the trend is spiraling downwards. We have seen more corporate misconduct than ever before. We have seen more personal irresponsibility than ever before. So do we avert our eyes as we lose not just our souls but our futures, or do we repent and change our ways? Do we build a better future or fatalistically accept our fates? Dickens gave his character a choice. We have that choice as well.

At the end of A Christmas Carol, Tiny Tim’s crutches are still standing in the corner, but Tiny Tim has been healed. Kierkegaard’s Either/Or presents a stark contrast. The hedonistic, self involved life or one of ethical duty and responsibility. Both books were, oddly, published in 1843. Both books had the same message. One path or the other, with our collective future at state. Which do we choose? The old Scrooge or the new?

As Tiny Tim said, “God bless us one and all”.

Merry Christmas.

How is the Auto bailout working out?

Fiat announced today that they will be investing $11 Billion to capitalize on its “investment” in Chrysler…..by boosting production in Italy. Chrysler figures into the plan by introducing 5 new models in 2011, one for Fiat and for Lancia, yup Lancia, who used to be known for idiosyncratic sports cars. Perhaps they’ll revive the Lancia Stratos rally car with the Dodge Stratus body. Hey, it’s Italy and you never know what they might come up with.

In the meantime, Chrysler, the other parts of which are owned by the UAW (67%)  and the government (9.85%), and the government of Canada (2.4%). In other words, the shareholders and bondholders got bupkis in a government engineered takeover of incredibly mismanaged proportions. The law was trampled in the process.

So how is it working out in this country?

2007 unit sales                                                                   2,076,650 vehicles

2008 unit sales                                                                    1,453,122 vehicles

2009 unit sales (through November)                            844,879 vehicles

So 30+% drops for the past 2 years. The dealer networks are a mess, and there simply is no confidence in the company any more. Of course, Chrysler has spent a fortune on hybrid and electric vehicle technology, all of which Fiat has access to, but so far these technologies have been a money pit. 2010 will be the make or break year one way or the other.

Over at GM, management is in turmoil. The company is owned by the U.S. government, who invested $57.6 Billion of TARP money with a small equity interest by the Canadian government. The CEO and CFO have abruptly left the company. Saturn, hailed as a newer and better car company, shipped their last car in October. Plymouth is gone. Opel/Vauxhall is a mess after management seesawed on selling the operation. Saab is going. GM is a soap opera, not a car company right now.

2007 sales                                                                                3,866,620 vehicles

2008 sales                                                                                2,980,688 vehicles

2009 sales (through November)                                    1,875,981 vehicles

It’s not looking very good over at GM either, I’m afraid.

The automotive sector is the last major core of commercial manufacturing in America. It dwarfs most everything else and is the heart of our industrial economy. Now it is being run by Ron Bloom, whose resume includes both investment banking and a long stint with the UAW, one of the root causes of the problem in the first place. The working members of the UAW, remember, bragged that they gave almost nothing back, while their own retirees and white-collar retirees took it on the chin and lost most of the benefits they had. Another insider job.

The car business is a funny one. Chrysler invented the minivan in the early 80’s and it saved the company. Iacocca introduced the Mustang in 1964 and it became the icon of Detroit. Today, low-cost me too products like Kia and Hyundai are making inroads while at the high-end BMW, Mercedes and Audi dominate. Somewhere in the mess in the middle Chrysler, Ford, GM, and even Toyota are all taking a massive hit. While they tout electric and hybrid products, this will not excite the American public. We are a nation in love with chrome and horsepower and luxury and speed.

2010 is going to be another tough year for the auto industry, and through the pull through effect, the economy. I don’t feel very comfortable with the job that has been done so far by our government controlled automotive sector.

The Age of the Mediocre

Has anyone noticed how mediocre society has become in the past 20 years?  Fine art, music, film, literature, politics, radio, television etc.,  really are in a doldrum.  The postwar flowering of New York as the world’s cultural center has turn now into a monolithic mass of mediocrity. The same people reading the same newspapers watching the same television eating at the same restaurants with the same friends discussing the same things put out the same piles of junk every day. We have squeezed our children into the same politically correct, sterile boxes and wonder why they turn their backs on us in favor of video games or the internet.

It starts with education. 40 years after the experimentation began, the bureaucrats of the education establishment have figured out how to teach absolutely nothing in the most efficient and painless way possible. Any flavor or zest for education is sterilized and homogenized to be taught in the same standardized manner that anesthetizes the student and retards the learning process. Grade inflation has led to reduced expectations and a dumbed down society.

Media went through incredible consolidation in the 1980’s and 90’s. Clear Channel, Time/Warner, Fox, and others all went on merger and spending sprees, with the result that we now have a velveeta media. The same squishy, uninformative feel good groupthink from all sides. Scandals are manufactured and celebrity for the sake of celebrity is celebrated. All the while, the hard news is minimized or trivialized until it blows up. Kiplings five friends are instead discarded in favor of pushing slanted agendas with sloppy or inaccurate reporting. There’s no wonder the major media is dying on the vine. With their incredible bias to the left, they have managed to alienate close to 50% of their available audience. Thus we see the New York Times, the LA Times, the Rocky Mountain News, and Seattle Post Intelligencer all falling by the wayside. In New York and LA especially, the Times have become nothing more than soapboxes for provincial ideologues ranting to the like minded.

In Hollywood, you have a choice of blow ‘em up mind garbage, ultra dysfunctional self involved vanity projects, or some twisted version of cops & robbers. Until the 1960’s, Hollywood churned out a  diverse product with perhaps 10 new films hitting the theaters weekly. Now all rides on $100 Million in special effects. In music, Elvis has left the building. It has become a mindless drone unless one seeks out the truly unique in hidden niches. Much of the best music is being written in places like Brazil or Mexico, with the occasional African or Middle Eastern artist thrown in. Otherwise it seems to be overproduced, dishonest crap. Frank Zappa wrote about television in the early 1970’s;

” You will obey me while I lead you

and eat the garbage that I feed you

Until the day that we don’t need you

Don’t go for help, no one will heed you

Your mind is totally controlled

It has been stuffed into my mold

and you will do as you are told

Until the rights to you are sold”

Pretty prescient. High culture has been abandoned to its own shrinking ghetto in favor of bling. Back in the 1930’s, Frank Capra described helots as graspers and takers; people who had and cared for things and only things and the world is basically being run by them to the exclusion of all else now. The ancient Spartans described helots as slaves who were ritually mistreated and degraded. That sounds like a complementary description these days. Those on the inside will foist the lowest common denominator garbage on the rest of us simply because they can get away with it.

Open a book, listen to something outside the box, read foreign newspapers on the internet, seek out the weird and wonderful and offbeat. Break the stranglehold of the mediocre on our country.

Deflecting Blame

The AIG scandal sums up the Washington game today. Slip in an earmark or special favor, get paid handsomely, and blame someone else. It’s political 3 card monty and special interests have been playing the game for years. Wall Street contributed billions and played both the Democrats and Republicans in their effort to grease the path to profit. The unions on the other side get nice fat pork projects. ACORN, Obama’s pet organization, gets hundreds of millions to organize and spread their gospel, and GM gets billions to continue in their moribund ways. It’s a matter of who you know and how much you buy a favor for. The rumor is that certain congressmen have price lists.

The corruption is worse than at any time in history. Even during the Hayes administration, there was some decorum. These days it is a formalized industry with K Street at the nexus. Goldman Sachs simply sends another Treasury Secretary to replace the last one, and their interests are covered for the next 4 years. They pit interests against one another to keep the volume up and misdirect attention from their deals, all the while creating paper tigers to scare their constituents.

People can no longer trust the media. Secret listserv sites coordinate the liberal propaganda machine and commentators paid by the networks coordinate in secret with White House staff every morning to determine today’s message. Slime the opposition, change topics every day, and push as radical an agenda as they can seem to be the operative philosophy. It seems that 1984 was just a few years late in coming.

The New Fascism – AIG episode

What we are seeing now with the pile on at AIG is an attempt to open up class warfare. Executive compensation is absurd today in many sectors. Boards of directors have been supine and shareholders have allowed top management to dictate far beyond the reasonable checks and balances normal to corporate governance. And yet we now have a lynch party getting ready to hang a bunch of executives who were legally compensated to stay at a failing institution to clean the place up before they turn off the lights. Sometimes in business, you need to do these things, much as you might not like it.

The issue of ridiculous compensation  seems to go back to Michael Eisner in 1992. Just before Bill Clinton came into power with a promise to raise taxes, Eisner gave himself a $200 Million bonus, perhaps the largest in history until that time. Eisner, one of Clinton’s top supporters, wasn’t stupid. He got his as best he could as fast as he could, but what a hypocrite. Since then, it’s been Sally bar the door. Welch, Kozlowski, anyone at Goldman Sachs, and thousands of other senior executives suddenly decided they were absolutely critical to their companies success, or rather that they could get away with it too. Instead we got a bunch of 2 bit MBA hacks who knew little about their companies core competencies and made their money through M&A in most cases. The investment houses egged them on, with all those juicy fees (and bonuses) as the payoff. So today, we have a debt loaded corporate sector where core capabilities have been outsourced and offshored. In a technology based global economy, our leadership class has sold us out for 30 pieces of inflation adjusted silver.

And now while  a dollar/year CEO who just started and a bunch of people are trying to unwind the biggest rats nest in American economic history, the real crooks; the ones in Congress and left wing special interests, have identified AIG as the new Louis XVI. “Off with their heads” is the rallying cry for the new sans culottes at Harvard and Yale and HuffPo and ACORN. As they eat their arugula salads and drink Fiji water they rant against the unfairness of it all and “sticking it to the Man” like some bad 1960’s B movie. Check out Hollywood and entertainment compensation if you want to see some real economic crimes.

The United States was built upon al foundation that we are all equal under the law. However, today, there is an philosophy of entitlement at the upper levels of our society that protects the rich and powerful. We are at risk of a permanent oligarchy who will maintain their privelidge by any means necessary. But it is not the AIG executives in this case who deserve our censure, but rather their predecessors and enablers on Wall Street and in Congress. For clearly the fault lies squarely on Capitol Hill. Campaign contributions lubricated favorable legislation, and Obama and Geithner and Dodd are in this up to their necks. They have been  duplicitous in their denials. AIG is simply a convenient distraction. A shiny, noisy bauble to distract the rubes as the oligarchs try to shove more statism down our throats and cover up their criminality with fiat rather than constitutionally sound law.

9-11 changed a lot of things in our society. We need more security today, and with technology, some of this means a very careful monitoring of the threat posed by real enemies using advanced technology. New technologies have been put into place that can easily be abused by those with no moral quandaries. While the Left called Bush fascist, I never really worried about my own personal freedom or privacy or that of the vast majority of us because I trueted him to do the right thing. That is rapidly changing. There is evil afoot, and it is not just external threats. I become very afraid when I can no longer trust my government or corporate leadership to do the right thing. There is far too much opportunity now of an accrual of power to those who would abuse it in their own personal interests. We have already seen what happens when greed and hubris combine with the means to pry open the safe.

In Italy in 1922 and Germany in 1932 it was the industrialists and bankers who backed the fascists. Without the Krupps and Thyssens, there would have been no Hitler. If we allow AIG to be singled out in this manner, is there that much difference? They are the convenient patsy. The full power of the state is a terrible weapon, which is why our Constitution is such a powerful document. It cleary limits such conduct. And yet Congress in its wisdom has decided to tread along the edge of a slippery slope. Too many times, I have heard excuses that we the people are powerless. We the people are being used, and we the people have become very lazy. It is at times like these, when despite their unpopularity, we must defend the rights of those who are unfairly singled out. There is a systemic problem that must be dealt with according to the rule of law, the rules of good corporate governance and of moral conduct. Allowing a bunch of power drunk crooks to use AIG to cover their own malefactions is not the answer.

3 Card Monty

The Chinese government has just spoken. They do not trust the United States government to maintain the value of the Dollar and have outlined the skeleton of a plan for the IMF to implement a new global reserve currency based on Special Drawing Rights (SDR’s), a basket that in the past consisted of a mix of U.S. Dollars, Euros, Japanese Yen, and Pounds Sterling. This has all been brought about by the absolute irresponsibility of the U.S. government in maintaining the integrity of the dollar. The immediate effect could well be the onset of significant inflation. Most currencies today are back only by the creditworthiness of the country issuing them, and the global consensus seems to be that Uncle Sam has become a deadbeat.

50 years of budget games have led us to this precarious position. Taking Social Security and Medicare off budget and then using fiscal 3 card monty to move many other hugely expensive programs including the Iraq war off budget has created an untenable position. When factoring in underfunded pension obligations, state budget shortfalls, etc. we simply will not have the money to pay down these obligations, perhaps within our children’s lifetimes. How they can hold to the same standard of living is a dire question.

The Republicans blame the Democrats and vice versa, but the reality is that it has been a shell game from the beginning. The people in power want to stay in power, so they buy off special interests and the American people with more and more expensive programs. Well, the Chinese are going to put a stop to all of this. Just like borrowing from the bank, the Chinese are now our bankers and they will be ready to foreclose if we continue down this path. We have to get our financial house in order as best we can as fast as we can.

What we cannot do under any circumstances is to have repeated Trillion $ programs to bail us out. Wall Street has been insulated and has been milking the crisis. The money under TARP 1 was promptly redeposited back into T Bills while the central problem, toxic mortgage debt, has still not been addressed. Even more money flooded in under the stimulus bill and then the budget. Suddenly, U.S. debt has exploded by $4 Trillion+. Tomorrow, Treasury Secretary Geithner is preparing the same old Washington remedy; throw money at the problem. Sooner or later we must fix the problem rather than treat the symptoms.

I will try to post some ideas on fixing the crisis, but I know it will take an objective, non-partisan solution. It’s not about faction. It’s about the continuing viability of our country.

We Gotta Get Out of This Place!

If that’s the last thing we ever do, as the song goes. The world is mired in recession. Leadership has basically come up with 2’s, 3’s and 12’s in their dealings with the crisis. World markets are laughing at the U.K., and the U.S. is right behind them in the clown show that is their excuse for an economic recovery plan. The two leading capitalist nations are on the brink of meltdowns, and yet massive spending programs have done little to nothing in relieving the crises which began the meltdown. In the UK, the money has gone primarily to support the banks. Here in the USA, President Obama has used the shotgun approach and is funding every liberal democrat’s wet dream as if he won the golden ticket in the Willie Wonka movie.

The problem is, though, that the cupboard is bare in both London and Washington. Instead of exercising fiscal restraint and common sense, both Gordon Brown and Obama propose to spend their way out of the crisis with money they don’t have and won’t have under their ongoing plans to stifle their economies. While proposing increased taxes on the “rich”, Obama somehow thinks that the producers will rise to the occasion and somehow lift us all miraculously out of the mire. Yet every prior recession and depression ended only when business began to recover and industry got back on its feet. That will not happen if taxation is oppressive. The rest of the world is almost done financing our debt, and the bill is coming due. The loss of the dollar as the benchmark currency is a symbol of the fall of America.

And yet there are alternatives. Past economic trends clearly indicate that industry and technology are the path forward. Whether the Industrial Revolution or Renaissance or Internet revolution, it is science, industry, and knowledge that help all boats rise. The problem is that today, our Western leadership has hocked our technology inheritance overseas to Japan and China and Taiwan in the interest of cheap consumer products. Government and corporate management consist of lawyers, marketers, and MBA’s who have little or no understanding of technology and who do not value the means of production. Rather, they prefer mergers and acquisitions and a management style that benefits the very few insiders at the expense of their employees, shareholders, suppliers, and customers. The big names in technology in North America; Apple, Hewlett Packard, Motorola, etc. really don’t make anything anymore. Rather, they package a few ideas and have someone else do the manufacturing. How can one understand the opportunities if one doesn’t understand the processes that lead to those opportunities? A few companies still understand this vital key to the puzzle.Look at Intel and Cisco for example.

In government, even key organizations such as DARPA have forgotten enabling technologies in favor of flashy programs with short term payoffs. The basic research organizations; Bell Labs, PARC, SLAC, and even Livermore and Sandia are either gone or focus on the high profile. Science and technology are done in the weeds in our modern world these days. There is little low hanging fruit in terms of discovery.

Aviation, rocketry, electronics, and medical technology all began modestly in small labs or garages or small factory floors. Today, we need to reexamine our priorities. For all the talk of green energy, the boom will be short lived, and the economics are still prohibitive without heavy government subsidies. Once the base is installed at @ 15% of total energy production/consumption, there will be little requirement for the high paying jobs our leadership now tout as the way forward. But it will be the men and women working in small organizations who are willing to risk it all on their dream who make the real difference in the long run. There are vast new horizons out there. We just need to get out of the way, make sure there is a reasonable degree of safety, and let our basic American inventiveness take advantage of the opportunities.

Obama’s European Vacation

Well it seems our president had a really good time in Europe. He got to meet the Queen, discuss important matters of state for @ 10 hours at the G 20 photo op and sort out the world’s problems. He went to Strasbourg, a lovely city, to both receive the adulation of his admirers and meet with the NATO heads. But what was really accomplished?

The whole G 20, including China, Japan, Germany, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and the rest came up with a whopping $1 Trillion for economic troubleshooting. Since neither the U.S. nor the U.K have much left to contribute these days, perhaps that’s all anyone was willing to commit beyond their own borders. Right now, it seems like economically it is every country for itself. The rumblings of nationalism and protectionism are still out there, and little else was agreed upon or discussed.

At the NATO summit, Obama was promised 46 French policemen and a player to be named later when he needed combat troops to fight the Taliban. Not the kind of success he was hoping for, I think.  In the meantime, he also mentioned that he would like to eliminate nuclear weapons, which is a nice thought when you’re at home smoking a joint, but try selling that to the Pakistanis and Iranians. The thing is that membership in the nuclear club is expensive and these folks really think they need the things. The whole India/Pakistan thing, the Iran/Israel thing, and yes, even the US/Russia thing are all dead serious Armageddon scenarios that any chess player knows end in checkmate for both sides, which is one reason MAD theory works. We are living in an asymetric world, and when North Korea is helping all sorts of tin pot mullahs and dictators  arm themselves with the very best in dirty bomb technology, it’s just a bit of a problem for the world’s superpower to willingly relinquish that power. Kumbayah is for the Girl Scouts, not national policy.

Otherwise, trading kisses with the Sarkozys does not qualify as a successful presidential trip. This was a photo op, nothing more. At home, Congress is battling on everything from a pork filled budget to carbon offsets to card check, with clearly socialist policies in the ascendence. We used to have a Constitution in this country which was honored. Today, it seems it is honored in the exception rather than the general. So come on back, Mr. President and chastise some more bankers or auto execs or other capitalists. After all, with your deep and comprehensive grasp of industrial policy, economics, and technology, you should be able to lead us all to the promised land.

Die Walkurie – Opera Review

The other night I was lucky enough to be able to go to the Opera with my beloved in Los Angeles, seeing Wagner’s Die Walkurie. Opera can be amazing; uplifting, tragic, sublime, but my impression of Wagner was of some proto Nazi thug with a lot of Nietzschean and Freudian overtones. Well that part is correct, but he could write a hell of an opera.

Placido Domingo is getting on a bit. It happens to us all, but as a performer it must be especially cruel to have to husband one’s gifts. By all accounts he has been a tremendous boost to culture in Los Angeles. Without a lot of fanfare, LA has become one of the leading arts cities on the planet. Mr. Domingo played Siegmund, the doomed male twin in the incestuous and adulterous relationship that is at the core of Die Walkurie. This is the second of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, and lays the groundwork for the balance of the Operas, which will all be performed next year. Domingo’s Siegmund was a wonder; devastated, conflicted, rapturous, joyous, and doomed. All of this was sung and acted at a level which is very rare to experience. The other singers; Vitaly Kovalov, Linda Watson, and Michelle DeYoung all found the heart of their characters; Kovalev as the amoral and deeply conflicted Wotan;  Watson as a deeply moving Brunnhilde, and DeYoung as the wronged wife of Wotan, Fricka, confronted with the fruits of his infidelities and as the guardian of marriage and hearth the moral heart and prime agent of the heartbreak and despair to follow. It is her rectitude and will that propels all that follows.

Wotan must find a pure and free paragon to regain the Rheingeld or Valhalla will fall. His son, Siegmund, is, he thinks, that agent. However, in Sigmund’s love affair with his twin sister Sieglinde, who is in a loveless and desperate marriage to Hunding, he breaks moral bonds and as Fricka demands, must pay the price for his sins. Wotan must remove his protection, and Siegmund must face his enemies alone. Anje Kampe as Sieglinde is magnificent. Desperate, emotionally terrorized and despairing, she is fatefully reunited with her twin in a doomed affair.

Achim Freyer’s production is spectacular and to the point. Surrealist, Freudian overtones define the characters and action. There are dwarves, giants, demons and monsters in this world. The gods are oversized and incredible. Brunnhilde is swathed in a massive cloak of feathers that take three to operate. Swords become light sabers, and all the while, the sands of time inexorably trickle away towards an inevitable conclusion. The scale is massive, appropriate for Wagner, and yet very human. A simple bench at the center of the stage becomes much more as Wotan confronts his own despair and the betrayal of his mortal son. Brunnhilde knows her fathers heart and must obey him without question, and yet in her love of her half brother she chooses to support Siegmund and Sieglinde to her own inevitable doom. Ms. Watson does a masterful and entrancing job in both singing and acting the role of a demigod.

The conclusion is foreordained. The Walkurie abandon their sister, who is cast into a a deathlike sleep. It’ s a short summary, but it is the journey that is magnificent. In a world where high culture seems to fade from view at an ever faster rate as even artists commoditize and monetarize their product, Die Walkure stands as a masterpiece. I can only hope that next year’s Cycle meets this very high standard.

Pirates, Arrgh!

It’s hard to believe that the nations of the world are countenancing piracy on the high seas. Somalia, perhaps the most screwed up place in the world, is the home to a bunch of desperate thugs who will to go far out to sea to hijack huge container ships along with anything else that looks like a target of opportunity. We know who the pirates are and where they live and still do nothing.

In 1802, President Jefferson ordered the U.S. Navy’s U.S.S. Constellation, Chesapeake, Constitution, Enterprise and Intrepid to stand off the coasts of the Barbary states (Morocco, Tripoli, Algiers, and Tunis)and engage the pirates, whose business had been good for hundreds of years predating on ships of many nations. The Koran apparently allowed this conduct against infidels; murder, slavery, and ransom were all a part of it. It was a business and business was good. The suppression of piracy  was one of the first tasks of the new U.S. Navy, and they were very successful, leading to a treaty in which Jefferson agreed to pay $60,000 ransom.

Piracy was another story elsewhere. In the Caribbean, it depended most upon national interests. Spanish, British, and French pirates were another instrument of state, with Letters of Marque to offer legal protection in the home country of many privateers. If caught by the other side, however, justice was swift and painful. Hangings, keelhaulings, auto da fe’s etc were common. Even today, the Straights of Malacca near Singapore still harbor the occasional pirate, but strong anti piracy measures by the regional governments have kept this in check.

Now, we have the most powerful country on earth  indecisive and clueless on what to do in the face of a new threat. We seem to be able to fight two wars, but a bunch of reckless tribesmen with AK-47’s, 12.5mm machine guns, and RPG’s, all considered light weapons, are holding the world’s merchant fleet hostage. Two days ago, several pirates were killed and captured by French commandos on a private yacht that had been commandeered. One hostage died. Unfortunately, the only thing thugs understand is force, and with it, the threat of annihilation.

There is really only the one solution to stop this bad joke. Sink all their boats, kill enough of them to dissuade them, and perhaps then destroy their homes and goods pour encourager les autres as the French say. We have the technology to find them and track them, and more than enough to militarily defeat them. Sometimes it does become necessary to use maximum force. But until the Europeans and Filipinos and others show some spine, it will be a thankless task. People will die, including hostages and our own, but what is the alternative? The Taliban has been funding themselves with the proceeds of drug trafficking, and now the Somalis will be able to purchased bigger and better guns. To allow it to go any further is to allow another nest of viperous enemies to grow stronger and hurt us even more.  The attacks have been made by Muslims against infidels and thus the Islamic world either doesn’t care or approves of the pirates actions; Europe seems to be incapable of action. The Chinese have sent several ships to protect their own merchant fleet and we have heard almost nothing of Chinese vessels being boarded. It is American, European, and smaller states whose ships and crews are most at risk. One thing I do know is that the Navy can and will gladly do the job if so ordered. It’s in their DNA. Decatur and Bainbridge are two of the most hallowed names in Navy history and both relished such a fight.

Welcome to 1984 – 25 years late

The Department of Homeland Security recently released a report, “Rightwing Extremism – Current Economic & Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization & Recruitment”. The report is the product of the Extremism & Radicalization Branch of DHS and was sent to federal, state, and local authorities around the country on April 7 with the goal of deterring and preventing terrorist attacks against the United States.

First, there is no specific information for such a report of domestic right wing terrorist activity. The cause for this radicalization, they say, is the economic downturn and the election of an African American president. The report states that right wing extremist groups are using these issues as recruiting tools. The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and harsh economic circumstances in the 1990’s are cited as historical antecedents. The possible restriction of firearms sales and return of military veterans are also cited, as is the murder of three Pittsburgh police officers by an individual expressing racist ideology and antigovernment  beliefs last week. Illegal immigration is also identified as a flash point. However, the evidence cited is very weak.  Another example is proposed legislation for mandatory gun registration, tagging, and ammunition control. The last statement is of deep concern, as it has not yet appeared on any news or other media outlets. Who is doing the proposing? Where has this legislation been introduced?

Somehow, the communists and “one world” government are thrown into the stew as well, and then disgruntled military veterans are identified as one group to watch. At the same time, the report notes that after the Oklahoma City bombing, membership in militia groups dropped significantly. The report cites the internet and availability of information on the tools of the soldier’s trade as sources for information.

Overall, this is a dog’s breakfast written to obtain a specific end; greater control by Homeland Security. Somewhere along the line, government took leave of its senses and now sees a threat under every rock and bush. One of the primary concerns of many citizens has been the possible effect of restrictive gun legislation and as a result they have reacted logically by purchasing more guns and ammunition. At the same time, the administration has proven to be remarkably consistent in maintaining the Bush Administration’s secrecy, wiretapping and other security prerogatives while now seeming to expand those restrictions further. Why? The timing is very suspicious. Tomorrow, April 15, Tea Parties will take place throughout the country to protest out of control spending and fiscal irresponsibility at both state and federal levels. If you are an accountant or loan officer, the state and Federal governments would basically would have been cut off from credit markets long ago. It’s not about emotion, it’s about numbers. Could the Department of Homeland Security be afraid of the Tea Party movement?

Think about the various restrictions that have been put in place since 2001; increased surveillance and wiretapping; an oppressive and sometimes arbitrary TSA; militarization of police forces, and now a significant and unpopular political shift  to the left of what most of us expected. Statism is resurgent as the United States Government attempts to gain control of banking, insurance, and the automotive industry. This has never been done before in our history and is diametrically opposed to the founding principles of the Constitution. And yet there has been little discussion of these great seismic events.

We can of course slough these issues off and go back to watching television or playing video games, or we can discuss them as adults. Socialism and Naziism are really two sides of the same coin. Each wants to control society, by force if necessary. Orwell was a committed socialist until his participation in the Spanish Civil War opened his eyes to the evils of left wing socialism… where he saw the true face of socialism. In Spain, a movement that was portrayed as democratic and liberal was transformed by ideologues into the mirror image of their Fascist opponents. Thousands were murdered for not being socialist enough as determined by the Comintern.

In 1984, Winston Smith’s job was to falsify and expunge records that conflicted with the regime’s propaganda. Government surveillance and indoctrination were pervasive and language was redefined to further the regimes goals.  The Ministry of Truth is actually a Ministry of Lies. Informers are everywhere, and the Thought Police enforce conformity with terror and death. The Ministry of Love is in fact the agency for torture and execution. The cult of Big Brother, the all knowing, all powerful leader is enforced with the gun and imprisonment.

Unfortunately, there are too many parallels today for us to ignore the significance of 1984. London has become to most surveilled city on the planet, while a culture of fear has arisen, despite the fact that crime in America is at historic lows. To date, government has done little or nothing to assuage the fears of those who might feel their civil liberties and economic futures are in jeopardy. Corporatism rules, and the Administration is clearly playing favorites. And yet our Constitution is clear in that it is a document that exists to enfore the rights of the individual, not government or large corporations. These are all deep concerns.

Bruce Springsteen is a Putz

Bruce Springsteen played the other night in Los Angeles to a crowd of over 12,000 adoring fans. He brought a message of hope and perseverance to Los Angeles, at least those who could afford tickets that went up to $500/each. Very proletarian. $40 T shirts, $100 sweatshirts all whizzing off the shelf as the merchandising machine gobbles up every available dollar as he preaches the virtues of the common man.

Back in 1972 – 73 Bruce would play the local high school and Villanova beer blasts and up and down the Jersey Shore and had an electricity that bound us up in his dreams.  In 1975 we stood on our chairs screaming with delirium at the Bottom Line as he roared into full blown rock & roll  stardom. But then, sometime thereafter, something changed. The lyrics became darker. The music more reflective. The politics more apparent. There was a populism and sympathy for the working man; the same high school kids who partied and roared back at him a couple of years earlier now grown older and perhaps care worn with the burdens of responsibility and perhaps this was reflected  in his own hegira. Years of touring tend to burn one out after a while and even if the money’s good and the lifestyle is a teen dream, perhaps one does begin to think of higher things. But the music got darker, and every now and the he would come out with a rock & roll classic, but somewhere back then he lost me.

I have seen the good and the bad here in America and overseas. I have seen real poverty and suffering. I’ve seen death both violent and peaceful. I’ve seen the pain people, often the ones closest to each other, inflict on each other. But somehow, I have always had hope and dreams not of darkness on the edge of town, but of light, of opportunity, of the incredible love we can have for one another. Where Mr. Springsteen sees hopelessness and despair, I see people trying to change their lives, not giving up or giving in to self pity. I see people trying to step in, sometimes not successfully, to help those in dire need. I see faith in action and the difference it makes to our society as a whole.

It’s a screwed up world. Always has been, and probably always will be. We can be a part of the problem or part of the solution. Either way, we have to look at the facts objectively and determine our best course of action. And we have to be true to our principles. Bruce is, I’m sure, true to his. But I have a real problem being lectured by people who have my best interests at heart and want me to do what they tell me. 70% of the time they’re wrong anyway, and I’m an ornery cuss who can think on his feet and do just fine for myself. I really don’t like the very wealthy who have successfully insulated themselves from the rest of us then calling themselves the common man and telling us that socialism is the way forward. It stinks of hypocrisy. He got his. I just want mine. Fair & square, but one of the cornerstones of this society is opportunity. Bruce got his shot and made the most of it. There was no state radio as in Europe dictating playlists of Udo Juergens or Heino in the late 70’s as the Germans did. He had American free form radio where a DJ could go into the studio and play the same song over and over because he loved it and had faith and got his audience to buy into the craziness. The German kids would listen to AFN to find out what was really good. And yet Bruce’s  “progressive” politics would usher in more control, more “fairness”, more uniformity in an industry which has become almost completely homogenized.  Well going back a few years, Huey Long was not especially fair once elected, and as Orwell said and we found in Eastern Europe from 1917 – 1989, some pigs are more equal than others. And if today’s Democratic leadership is the benchmark, it’s okay to lie,  evade taxes, take bribes, steer funds to political supporters for “apolitical” work, and 20 other sins. Sorry Bruce, I ain’t buying.

There is a  trend in the country today to be “counter culture”. The reality is that the counterculture has become the culture. Tats, piercings, gangsta lean, left wing politics, and self entitlement have converged into a mess of muddled thinking. The herd differentiates itself identically. We all want more of the pie, but don’t want to work for it. The kids who studied engineering and built things went into financial management and MBA programs and create nothing except vapor and go to Springsteen concerts to validate their bonafides. Hey, the music is great, but the reality is that it’s a dream, a diversion.

So Bruce, when your CFO comes in with next week’s box office and swag numbers and you step onto your G4 remember to think of the real working men and women. The ones who go to church and join the Army and pay their taxes and struggle to do the best for their children. Who don’t complain and feel sorry for themselves or entitled. Who can’t afford Bruce Springsteen tickets. Who fought and died and won in Iraq as you and your leftist buddies said the war was lost. Who are the ones who donated hundreds of millions for the Tsunami or Katrina and do so again and again even as our ruling class bankrupts the country with sophistry and corruption. You’re a part of the problem, not the solution. As another band wrote.

“same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was.”

Energy Hypocrisy

I remember the first Earth Day, back @ 1972 or so. Fairmont Park in Philadelphia was wall to wall with kids who had ditched school for one of the largest free concerts in the city’s history. All of us were committed to building a better world, and 30 years later, in many ways, we have. Pollution in North America is much lower, and rivers that were environmental nightmares in 1972 have thriving fish populations today. As we understand more, we can act more effectively.

Today, we are faced with energy and environmental hypocrisy on an unprecedented scale. The science would be laughable if the effects were not so evil. Cap & Trade has been demonstrated in Europe to have no significant effect except to make insiders rich. EU directives such as the lead free initiative and RoHS show little or no understanding of scientific principles or the true environmental cost of bureaucracy directed legislation. And recent news reported in Australia, but not here, has clearly shown that rather than shrinking, the Antarctic and Arctic icepacks have been growing, partially as a result of the holes in the ozone layer. Sunspot activity is at a historic low.

Our president today visited a windmill factory to promote his vision of energy independence. He called for a new era in energy exploration. This after closing the Yucca Flats nuclear storage site, shutting down much of the oil shale exploration in the Upper West, shutting down further exploration in Alaska and offshore, and stating clearly that coal fired plants would be put out of business.  A very curious energy policy indeed.

The plant the president visited used to employ 15,000 workers making Maytag refrigerators. Today it employs 90 in an industry where manufacturing will fade rapidly once the infrastructure is built out. This leads us into a new and glorious future? He called for each of us to replace one incandescent bulb with a fluorescent bulb. This is energy policy? It is idiocy, and what is amazing is that is being reported with a straight face by the media.

Apparently, this week’s nostrum is wind power. There’s only one problem with this. It is an irregular energy source and is both expensive and very difficult to build to generate high volumes of power. Driving past the Palm Springs wind power farm for the past 30 years, I am struck with how often the majority of the windmills are idle. Same with the field at Altamont up north. Either the potential usage for the power generated doesn’t match needs, or the price offered is too low to make it profitable for the owners to run them. The problem is similar to that facing the natural gas plant near my house which only runs when the price is right. The advantage with gas, however, is that it’s an instant on, constant volume source. These fields have been in operation for 20 years or more, so what’s the advantage, exactly?  The issue with wind and solar is that they are irregular sources of power. If Obama’s plan for electric cars is to succeed, the demand for electricity will soar, and the infrastructure, already on the brink of failure, will collapse.

We are being hoodwinked on energy policy. Nothing has been done to either reduce our reliance on fossil fuels or gain energy independence. Changing lightbulbs, checking our tire pressure,  and adding windmills does not a national energy policy make. Whether you’re reading science fiction or scientifically analyzing industrial policy, one of the key factors for building cities of the future or going to the stars is cheap energy. The current policies are doomed to failure.

California Dreaming

There will be an election in mid May to determine the future of California. In all likelihood, only 20-25% of the electorate will turn out, as it is a special election on proposed tax hikes, which according to California law must be approved by referendum.

Several weeks ago, a kabuki drama took place in Sacramento. With a budget shortfall for 2009 approaching $40 Billion (yes, Virginia, billion), the state legislature, which has been dominated by the Democratic party for the past 50 years, voted with the help of three sacrificial Republicans to raise car taxes, the income tax, sales tax, and other taxes to the highest overall tax rate in the country. Not a penny in spending cuts was proposed. To further exacerbate the issue, California had record revenues for the prior 5 years from a hot economy where housing was turning over every 18 months at record prices. The legislature managed to spend 125% of that income as well. In the legislative vote, the Republican leadership apparently conspired with the Democrats to pass the budget and tax increases. Only a very few voices, among them Chuck DeVore, called “bullshit” on both parties and tried find an honest solution.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected on the recall of Gray Davis, he promised us a top to bottom review of state revenue and expenditures and with great fanfare called it the “California Performance Review”. He hired Donna Arduin, an experienced Wall Street analyst who had great success in Florida and elsewhere in balancing budgets, to run the state Department of Finance and get to the bottom of the trouble. The CPR was due approximately 1 year after that announcement.

I ran into Donna about that time and asked her when the report would be released, and she told me in a few weeks or month. Two weeks later she resigned to go back into the private sector. Nothing has been heard from her since, and since that time, the CPR has been  a black hole. Repeated requests to the Governor’s office, the Department of Finance, and state legislators have turned up no sign whatsoever that this document even exists. With the state facing bankruptcy, one would think that an objective financial analysis of the balance sheet would be at the top of the list of things to do. Instead, we are faced with the Wizard of Oz. “Don’t look behind the curtain!”, “Ignore the man pulling the levers!”. How have we become so completely irresponsible? How have our leaders gotten away with this? The LA Times, the John & Ken show, and the Orange County Register apparently have zero interest in pursuing the story.

As a businessman, I am faced with the most difficult economy I have seen in 30 years, and have had to take measures to ensure the health of the company. Pay cuts, reduced overhead, reduced travel, and reduced investment are all part of what is necessary to survive. Everybody sacrifices so we can all survive. I guess the exception is government. There have been no pay cuts, no reviews, no cost cutting. In fact, this is the time of year when budgets get blown out. One of the little secrets of government budgeting is “use it or lose it” at the end of the fiscal year. As a government manager, if you don’t spend your budget by the end of the fiscal year, it will theoretically be reduced next year. Thus Caltrans catches up on maintenance work, the city police helicopter gets extra hours to burn the gas budget, and agencies hold training seminars and off site meetings to ensure the money gets spent, wisely or not. Look it up or ask any state manager. It doesn’t matter whether the funds are used wisely; they simply have to be used. This is not conducive to good planning and budgeting.

So our legislature has punted on the budget issue, and can then blame those terrible voters if they get shot down. In the interim, they have coopted every special interest group they can find to fund their “Yes on 1A” campaigns. If there’s slops in the trough, the special interests want their piece of the action. In the meantime, the people of California are taking it on the chin.  Taxes for an average family of 4 making $75,000/year will go up $1,000 – $1,500. For people making more, the hit will be much worse. And yet our state services rank at the bottom of the nation. Education, infrastructure, and other critical functions of a state government have fallen by the wayside as the politicians give lip service to improvement.

Come May 19, we will vote, and a lot of people are very unhappy with the fiscal irresponsibility. If the measures are voted down, California will be in technical bankruptcy. $16 Billion (yes, Billion) of the Federal government’s bailout money will be allocated to the budget shortfall, but this is not enough. And what will happen then? My guess is that the politicians will blame the voters and dither and lie as the state’s credit rating is shredded and real cuts must finally be made. Earlier this year, I received a promissory note from the state Controller for my tax refund. I paid my taxes, but then they have the nerve to tell me they’ve spent the money I loaned them for 9 months and can’t pay it back. How is this right? How can we trust such a spendthrift bunch of grifters? And where are the reporters? The republicans? Anyone standing up for common sense and doing the right thing? Have we sunk so low?

Socialism in Our Time

I woke up this morning to read that the proposed bailout deal for Chrysler would give the United Auto Workers 51% of the company, while at GM, they are proposing that the UAW get 41%. This seems like rewarding the fox for ravaging the henhouse. I am somewhat amazed that there has been little outcry. Between the auto industry power grab and what the government is doing to the banking industry, it has become clear that rather than adhering to the Constitutional principles of our country, the current administration has an aggressively socialist agenda. This is, simply, the greatest challenge of our time. There seems to be no debate, no national conversation as Obama continues his predations on capitalism and his policy to steer the country left. Most of the media is silent or quietly egging him on.

My first experience with the UAW was when I was a boy.  My father’s company sold materials to the auto manufacturers, and I learned that the company salesmen always drove the car from whatever manufacturer they were dealing with, and by God, never a foreign car. To park in a Big Three parking lot driving an import invited vandalism and mayhem. Later on, I began working with a wide range of subcontractors as well as the Big Three, and found out how things work today. An example. We recently installed a machine at a Big Three plant. Normally (including the Japanese auto manufacturers), it takes one of our technicians and a customer technician 3-4 hours to install a machine. At the Big Three plant, it too a carpenter and helper to uncrate the machine; a rigger and helper to place it; an electrician and helper to wire it; a plumber and helper to run the compressed air line, and two engineers to supervise the process. No one cared, and no one took ownership of the project, and it took 3 days just to hook up a machine. This is the daily reality of a UAW run plant. Workers leave dirt on the floor during the week so that they can claim overtime cleaning up on Saturdays instead of cleaning as they go. Simple things one does at home become sagas in the interest of overtime. Then, if a UAW worker gets laid off, they really aren’t laid off. They maintain full pay. Not a bad gig if you can get it.

Recently, a study was done of a Ford plant in Germany and another in the UK. The German plant had flexible work rules and a cooperative attitude between workers and management. The cost/hour for labor was higher than in the UK. The UK plant had an extremely adversarial relationship between management and labor, and restrictive work rules. The German plant produced 20% more cars per day with 20% less labor with an overall manufacturing cost @ 30% below the UK plant. This is the reality of the U.S. auto industry as well. Gross inefficiency, and everyone knows the reasons. In a global economy where manufacturing has migrated to China because of reduced costs, how can we ever expect these companies to be competitive?

GM’s latest plan is to borrow $11 Billion in addition to the $15 Billion already borrowed from the government and then give the government 50% of the stock in the company and the UAW 39%. This leaves the shareholders and bond holders with 11% of a company that is pretty well doomed to failure. That senior management is complicit in this travesty is simply amazing. That there is no discussion of fundamental changes in compensation or work rules is criminal negligence. At Chrysler, the proposal is 55% for the UAW, 35% for FIAT ($8 Billion investment) and 10% for the bondholders and government. For this, the UAW has agreed to forgo cost of living adjustments (which were built into the contract at exorbitant rates), their Easter Monday holiday, and overtime will only be paid for work beyond 40 hours/week.

Thus shall ownership of America’s largest industry pass into the hands of the workers. A central tenet of Marx is the ownership of the means of production by labor, so how can this not be Marxist? As several banks who were originally forced to take TARP funds to cover up the weakness of others, now try to repay those “loans”, they are finding that the federal government will not accept the money back, and instead wants to convert these loans into equity. Sounds like a rigged game to me. That many of the bondholders are recipients of TARP funds is also of concern. Are these companies being forced to acquiesce to government pressure? Who are the bondholders? How much are they giving up? what is the real deal behind the scenes? There sems to be an awful lot of self dealing on the part of the government in this handover.

This power grab goes well beyond even Roosevelt’s social programs of the 1930’s. Never before has our government both tried to steer ownership of a key industry into the hands of it’s donors and supporters, and at the same time tried to coerce another key industry into handing ownership over. This reeks of 1920’s Italy or 1930’s Germany. Even the Bolsheviks were more honest in their aims. Congress, the Republicans, and the media are so far silent. Can we give up our most deeply held principles so readily? Can we transform the United States into a socialist state simply by government fiat? Where are the constitutional scholars protesting this? Where are the outraged reporters investigating cui bono? When we were promised hope and change, I do not believe this is the hope and change most of us expected.

Bait & Switch at Chrysler

So Chrysler is scheduled to enter into a 60 day miracle bankruptcy where the government injects another $6+ Billion,the UAW gets 51%,  Fiat gets 30%, the government gets the balances and the creditors get screwed. On top of it, Obama is angry with the hedge funds for crying out as they’re getting screwed. This deal is a stinkeroo for the shareholders, for the taxpayers, for the creditors, and ultimately for the UAW as well.

Chrysler has several good brands but are in a dormant market at present. Until the economy turns around, they will be challenged to meet payroll. We all know the problems, and #1 on the list are the union contracts and underfunded retirement mandates. And yet so far, despite the dire state of both GM & Chrysler, the UAW has basically refused to make any concessions. This is like the crew refusing to man the lifeboats on the Titanic.

Chrysler operates under the laws of the United States and in a bankruptcy, the law is well defined. The judge and the receiver/trustee have clearly defined fiduciary responsibilities. Creditors have a place in line as secured and unsecured. there is precedence and order. But what we now have is a president directly involving himself and dictating the form of the reorganized company. How does this jibe with our laws? In addition, it is assumed that several of the bondholders were recipients of TARP bailout money, further complicating the issue and the potential for conflicts of interest. Will the government exert undue pressure as they seem to have with TARP? Is the government pushing a political agenda rather than an equitable one? To think that this can be resolved in just 60 days is just plain nuts. Delphi, GM’s former parts subsidiary, has been in bankruptcy for over 3 years with far fewer complexities.

The proposed ownership is also out of whack. While it is true that the obligations by Chrysler to the UAW are considerable, contracts are normally open to be renegotiated by the receiver, so those obligations would be modified considerably, perhaps to a point where the company can make a profit once more. So why the push for 51% for the UAW? They have been absolutely uncooperative in their negotiations. They are a root cause of the problem in the first place, and they are receiving preferential treatment. Is this simply another political payoff?

Commercial negotiations are sensitive and confidentiality is required. However, the government seems to be using this excuse to gain advantage for their supporters. Rather than being postpartisan, this government has demonstrated itself to be hyperpartisan. In too many cases to date it has been found that they simply lie when the facts disagree with their conclusions. As they redefine the lexicon, we are entering the grounds of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four. Chrysler was in reasonable shape when it was sold to Daimler Benz and bad mistakes were made, but putting the fox in charge of the henhouse in the form of  UAW ownership is not a viable solution for the company’s long term survival.

For the good of all parties concerned, the negotiations must be honest and make the most sense for all parties concerned. Right now, it doesn’t seem so.

Pompeii and the Roman Villa – LACMA

The new exhibition at LACMA previewed the other night, and it was sensational. Focused on the lifestyles of the rich and famous 1,940 years ago, it illustrates the sheer magnificence and beauty of the ancient Roman lifestyle if one were lucky enough to be of the upper classes. An eclectic mix of donors to the museum got first chance, and by the look of it the show will be very successful.

The colonies around the Bay of Naples (Neapolis) hosted a number of emperor’s villas as well as those of senators, generals, and the great families. Rome in summer is miserable, and even today, Naples and the Amalfi Coast are a wonderful getaway. The eruption of Vesuvius encapsulated Pompeii and Herculaneum, a smaller and wealthier enclave, near the base of the volcano. When one sees the actual distance the ash and lava had to go, the magnitude gets to you.

The exhibition selected @ 150 pieces from the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples, The Scavi (excavations) museum, The Louvre, the museum in Baia, another local city, and many others around the world. If not the cream of the crop, the pieces in the exhibition highlight the greatness that was Rome in a way few other exhibitions have been able to convey. Rome in its earlier days was a bit like Puritan New England. Frugality, duty, and virtue were the highest callings. The historian Livy was quoted thus 150 years after the fall of Pompeii:

“no republic was ever greater, none more virtuous or richer in good example, none into which luxury and avarice entered so late, or where poverty or frugality so honored. For it is true that the less wealth there was, the less desire there was. More recently riches have imported avarice and excessive pleasures with a craving for luxury and wantonness to the ruination of ourselves and everything else”.

So the seeds of decline were sown  as seen by Cato, Plutarch, and others of civic virtue as the Empire accreted the wealth of conquest. Pompeii was The Hamptons of its time, with similar extravagance and decadence. As such, the art that is left behind has a magnificence that only Rome itself exceeded. The pleasure palaces were an escape from the mundane frugality of the metropolis.

Pompeii was a city of perhaps 20,000, lively, earthy, and living the good life. The exhibition centers around the villas, of which there were quite a large number. The context of many of the pieces does not come through, as the location and surrounding artifacts would have given a better feel for the piece. They must be viewed in an artistic rather than archaeological context, which is appropriate since LACMA is an art museum.

The first pieces one comes upon are busts of several emperors and dignitaries. Those of Julius and Augustus Caesar convey gravitas and are magnificent. Another of a young Caligula hints of dissipation, decadence and evil. Nero’s buts depicts a wastrel. Flabby, egotistical, and with his own brand of malice. Another bust, of Gaius Cornelius Rufus is a magnificent exposition of the sculptor’s abilities.

Deeper into the exhibition are marvels of sculpture, painting, and artisanal excellence.  Wall paintings carefully removed and framed convey a richness of experience and wonder at the diversity of Roman life. Whether a mosaic of Plato and his students or a drawing of a centaur caught in the act of kidnapping a Greek girl or the frescoed walls of villas, all are rich, lively, and engaging even 2,000 years later. One magnificent discovery was a gladiator’s helmet detailed with the Fall of Troy. the metalworking is magnificent, and it hard to reconcile such a work of art, as it even then would have been considered, entering the ring of violence and death. Basins and tables and other furniture show a rare level of craftsmanship. A skyphos (deep wine cup) of obsidian inlaid with gold and semiprecious stones depicting Egyptian gods and themes is stunning in its elegance and freshness. Was it made in Egypt or locally?

There are more than 100 other pieces, all of them magnificent to see. For a taste and feel of Rome at its height, the exhibition is an elegant and well laid out guide to some of the most beautiful treasures ever to be collected in one place.

Fix It Again Tony

With all due courtesy, I still do not understand how FIAT makes any sense whatsoever in the Chrysler deal. It seems they are getting 20% of the company for nothing, and what do they really bring to the table? An excellent distribution and service network in Italy? FIAT has been clear that there is no cash or even commitment involved for their percentage of Chrysler. How does this deal make sense?

The trio of the UAW, FIAT, and the federal government owning and running Chrysler sounds like Moe, Larry, and Curley Joe at their best. FIAT is the Italian automobile industry, and own Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Maserati and of course, Fiat.  It is intertwined with the Libyan and Italian governments. In 2005, an agreement to sell the Fiat automobile marque to GM was cancelled, with Fiat receiving a $2 Billion cancellation charge. That says something about their core holding. Now we are expected to believe that FIAT will create a new, low cost manufacturing base for Chrysler in America. When the biggest problem is union wages and work rules, I think this is doomed from the outset.

The accusation that the Obama administration has issued threats against Chrysler’s bondholders is also very disturbing. Since when has an administration resorted to thuggery to ram through a business deal? Since when do they have the authority to do so? Last I looked, there an entire body of bankruptcy law that governs the Chrysler case. It is best for government and FIAT to step out and for Chrysler try to void some of the contracts that have been strangling them for the past 40 years and put their operating costs in line with non union manufacturers, who have been doing just fine, thank you, without government handouts.

California – What Next?

The polls indicated that Propositions 1A et al will be going down to defeat. What next? Technically, the state cannot go bankrupt, but it can and will be in default on much of it’s debt. The credit rating will immediately plunge as the state does not have the revenue to pay its bills and meet its commitments. IOU’s will start going out again almost immediately. How much longer the banks will accept these is one of the questions that will have to be answered.

But what does our legislature plan as a back up position? So far, there has been little or no discussion of spending cuts. California’s expenditures outpaced revenue by 20-25% in the good times, and the state is still spending at the same rate. Since Schwarzenegger’s election, the state has added 50,000 additional employees. The legislature is spending $25 billion more than they receive. This year’s budget deficit is $42 Billion because of the revenue drop off.

The state employee’s unions are the primary culprits. The inmates have taken over the asylum. Our prisons cost twice as much per inmate to run as any other state.  Our teachers are the highest paid in the country, by 25%, and yet California has one of the worst records on education in the country. To top it off, it is virtually impossible to fire incompetent or even criminal teachers. The largest political contributors in the state are the unions, and our legislature has become “pay to play”.

So what do we do? A general recall of all politicians? The debacle that led to these propositions showed how even the Republicans have gamed the system. The state’s voting districts have been gerrymandered to ensure Democrat dominance with nice, safe Republican seats for the permanent minority. Schwarzenegger has mentioned the possibility of a constitutional convention in order to subvert spending caps and mandates. Perhaps it may be in order, but not for his reasons.

The fallout economically across the world will be significant. In addition to California, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, and Ohio are on the brink. This could be the last straw. The federal government, while it has the ability to print money, can no longer finance its own debts. Our largest creditors are turning off the taps as the try and figure out how we will ever repay the trillions of dollars owed as two of the largest sectors of the economy, banking and automotive, collapse and are nationalized. This doesn’t take into account high risk debt overseas, which is barely under control as well. The lending windows are closing all over the planet.

So far, most of the pain of the recession has been carried by the individual and the investor. Government has been exempt and is growing at an unprecedented level. This is not the prescription for economic recovery. To pay for the huge deficits, government needs tax revenue, which comes from as many people working as is possible. Companies make money. Companies pay taxes. Same with individuals. But if government  raises taxes, especially with unemployment over 11%, this kills economic growth. California needs to re-learn this lesson. For too many years, the sense of entitlement by government here has led to an ever increasing burden on the people of the state. They make sure we pay through the nose for the priviledge of living here. Reagan had it right. His tax cuts did stimulate the economy while increasing government revenue. His ideas on shrinking government, applied properly, reduce the burden on the taxpayers. And for goodness sake, we all should be paying taxes. The top 10% pays 90% right now, and the bottom 35% pay nothing. Everyone needs to pay to ensure they have chips in the game. It’s very easy to vote to raise other people’s taxes. It’s also unfair.

Major cost cuts, renegotiation of union contracts, and the reduction of foolish legislation must all be at the top of the list if California is ever to recover from this debacle. otherwise, we might as well rename it Alta California, because it will be just as bad as in Mexico.

Obama’s Economy Takeover

So it’s now shaping up that the President is rewarding his supporters at the UAW with 55% of Chrysler and 40% of GM through no real effort on their part. This is the single largest and most damaging political payoff in history. And it’s being done with little or no consideration or discussion of the consequences. This also represents approximately 20% of our entire economy, and the largest segment of the manufacturing sector left in North America.

This follows the president’s takeover of the banking industry. When the TARP funds were disbursed, there was little discussion of securitization or how the funds would be accounted for. Now we find out that the administration is thugging its way into controlling interest of several of the largest banks and many other financial institutions. Undue pressure has been applied already in the Chrysler bankruptcy, and we can expect the same when GM is reorganized. There has been no accountability on Wall Street as well to date, and the people who scammed us seem to have disappeared into the woodwork. Since so many Wall Streeters supported the president, this should come as no surprise. Banking & financial services represents another 20% of the economy.

Then we come to health care, where the administration and its allies in Congress are preparing to ram through a single payer health care system, taking over another 20% of the economy. Again, there has been little discussion.

The administration is also strong arming some of the states on the use of the bail out funds. In California, one example is the strong arming of the state government to restore pay cuts for unionized health care workers. otherwise the state will lose $7 Billion.

Lastly, the administration has moved the Census office from the department of Commerce to the White House, the better to be able to manipulate the results to political advantage.

So what we have so far is the government mugging 60% of the total economic output of the country, mugging the states, and mugging the constitution.

Section 8 of the Constitution is pretty clear on the responsibilities of the federal government. It has been far exceeded by government fiat over the years. But under the 4th Amendment, we are protected from unlawful  seizure, while under the 14th Amendment, the government must respect all of the legal rights of the individual (or corporation) according to the law of the land. Under the 5th Amendment, individuals are protected by due process as well. And yet it seems that there have been violations of all of these constitutional guarantees have been violated in the rush for Obama’s control of the country.

60%…….wow….the government is trying to rip off 60% of our entire economy….They are, in giving ownership of GM and Chrysler to the UAW fulfilling one of Karl Marx’s prime goals, ownership of the means of production by the workers. This can only be called communism. And our Congress is whistling while they deprive the people of our country of their fundamental rights. Homeland Security gets stronger and issues declarations that those whop do not agree with the Democratic Party agenda must be monitored. This is not Orwell. This is not the Soviet Union. This is happening today right here in the United States and the press is silent. We are marching lockstep into our own shackles of incompetence, favoritism, and sloth.

I  believed in Obama’s good intentions at one time, but I can do so no longer. The same man who promised a new era in integrity has appointed far too many crooks and insiders. His chief of staff acts more like a mafia don, and his minions vilify and threaten and degrade their opponents for simple differences of opinion. His colleagues in Congress are clearly guilty of felonies and yet sit immune to prosecution. The Speaker of the House lies about her knowledge of harsh interrogation tactics. These facts have all been documented. Corruption is rife. The media are simple whores to the id. This is a situation where the combined deceased predecessors of Mr. Obama must be rolling in their graves at 78 RPM. Maybe he can harness that energy in his green initiatives. Obama is pushing the country as far left as he can as fast as he can.

The country is at a crossroads. We have more crises looming on the horizon and as P.J. O’Rourke once said, “giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys”. We can do better. We must do better. For our own survival, we must, at this time, just say no.

White Houseology

This weekend’s Wall Street Journal introduces a new academic discipline to the world, namely White e. In an analysis by Elliott Abrams entitled “The Power of the First Impression” he studies the nuances of the upcoming  meeting between President Obama  and Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, much as a corps of analysts used to study the inner workings of the Kremlin. Who appears with whom; what is both said and unsaid, and who is standing where on the podium on May Day have all become deeply relevant to the understanding of the workings of today’s United States government, rather than that of the Soviet Union for 70 years.

This follows on to an accretion of power to the White House that has never before been attempted. In the first 100 days, the president has appointed special “czars” and new offices at an unprecedented pace, in many cases bypassing his own Cabinet. He has politicized the Office of the Census by bring this into the White House. He has an  Auto Czar who is attempting to hand over the controlling interests in both Chrysler and General Motors to the president’s supporters in the Unions, and he has a special health care task force that has remained completely under the radar until the time comes to spring his plan on a pliant Congress.

There is no transparency. Geithner, Richardson, Daschle,  et al put paid to that prevarication. Tax cheats run the Treasury while the Automotive czar seems to have a pall over his activities related to pension funds and a penchant for bullying. There are rumors of thuggery in the White House’s dealings with the Chrysler creditors and threats to those who ask the wrong questions or oppose the president on principle.

These are not the actions of an American government. These are a cross between Chicago and Argentina and the Soviet Union. The apparatchiki go to the exclusive stores like G.U.M. while the rest of us are figuratively on the bread lines. If you’re an insider, you’re golden. The law is for everyone else.

So now we must read the tea leaves to discover our real national policy. Our president’s first call when elected was to Mahmoud Abbas of Palestine, surely a strange choice in a world dominated by global economic crisis and the War on Terror (conveniently renamed). His “Blame America” tour of Europe went over like a lead balloon with no gain to show for it. Why? The White House wants to nationalize banks and the automotive industry and health care.  Much of this is going on behind closed doors as the dimwits who call themselves the Republican leadership bicker about ideology instead of recognizing the challenges of providing a counterweight to such an audacious program.

So perhaps at some land grant college or a private university, a chair will be endowed in White House Studies to try and understand how an individual elected with only 52% of the vote socialized the bastion of democracy. As our principles of freedom and enterprise are turned on their ears, perhaps those academics will be allowed to publish freely to explain to us how and why it happened. Perhaps not. Because right now, no one seems to care.

The Age of Specialization and its effect on our National Discussion

I would believe that most people would agree today that we have been in an age of specialization for the past 60 years or so. The old adage “it doesn’t take a rocket scientist” has been replaced in many fields with “it does”. The drive to excel and to comprehend the diverse fields of human existence, whether science or medicine or to succeed at the top of ones profession takes a single minded devotion to ones specialty, and society is the weaker in the long run for this in some ways.

At one time I was very involved in Olympic level sports and came into close contact with many champions. The most common characteristic I saw was a single minded dedication to ones discipline. Swimmers and skaters probably had it worst. 2-3 hours in the pool or on the ice before class, 3-4 hours afterwards, and somehow trying to stay eligible academically takes up all of ones waking hours. One of the other characteristics of many of these people was also a very limited intellectual or social outlook. At the same time, professionally, I have met some of the most brilliant scientists and engineers on the planet. The same habits exist among many in these professions. The same can be said for doctors, Wall Street analysts, and many other disciplines. Talk to a college or professional coach sometimes. When the job requires ultimate focus, peripheral matters suffer, whether its family or current affairs or sometimes personal habits a la’ the nutty professor.

The stakes have grown higher . The pressure to perform across the spectrum has never been higher. But we are losing some very important values in the process. Perspective, a more rounded world view, conversation, free inquiry. Today, more people rely on received wisdom than ever before, and yet the purveyors of that wisdom are themselves constrained by economics or political faction, as Washington once expressed it,  so that a diversity of opinion is lacking. Thus, the herd mentality is reinforced at the expense of critical thinking. Hannah Arendt proposed the theory of the banality of evil, where there is a tendency for ordinary people to obey orders and conform to mass opinion without thinking about the results of their inaction or action. It is a rejection of personal responsibility. Both because of the pressures of modern life and the subtle manipulation of emotion and opinion by those seeking to promote one agenda or another, we are once again faced with momentous events with little real debate on the merits of proposed fundamental changes in the way we live.

There has never been a greater need for understanding than today. There has never been a greater need for discussion and dialog on the hard issues facing us than now. As one faction or another claim advantage, the reality is that the house of cards that has been the Western economic system is in real danger of collapse. Somewhere along the way, our “leaders” forgot that life is based on the facts, not on what you want them to be. In America, the government is printing money out of control while our creditors have told us clearly that they will no longer loan us the money to finance this deficit spending. The government, business, banking, and economy have been based upon manipulation and accounting tricks. We now have hard dates on the bankruptcies of Medicare and Social Security and yet nothing is being done to ameliorate the problems. Government, notoriously inefficient, is now poised to take over the automotive, medical, and banking sectors. This is not a recipe for recovery. It’s a recipe for disaster.

Think for yourself. Read. Talk to people. Do not rely on one or even a few sources of information. Listen to opposing views. And then think “what is good for our country”. The answers will be inevitably painful, but if we are to survive, we must confront the issues honestly and openly and with all the facts. And we must also recognize that we have laws and a Constitution that we must also follow. This seems to have been forgotten in a headlong rush to avoid disaster.

Printing Funny Money

In case no one has noticed, the U.S. Dollar is about to lose its status as the world’s reserve currency after almost 70 years. This is a cataclysmic event in terms of both confidence and monetary policy. For many years, the United States has relied on the debt markets to finance our economy.  As a part of this compact with our debtors, the government and Federal Reserve, as their part of the bargain, agreed to maintain a prudent fiscal policy that would support the value of our money. But as our trade deficits grew, we ran up larger and larger debts to our creditors, both foreign and domestic.

At the same time, the whole world has watched as first Bush and then Obama have run up incredible deficits at a time when we are running out of money and credit. The most recent news is that both Social Security and Medicare, which are now 50% of the country’s budget,  are estimated to be completely bankrupt by 2037 and 2017 respectively. In personal terms, basically everyone under the age of 50 is screwed. Congress knew this was brewing for Social Security when looking at the statistics as far back as 1955. Medicare has been on life support almost from its inception.

While Bush ran up his own deficits at an alarming rate, under Obama TARP and the profligate and completely misnamed Recovery Act blew the doors off of all previous spending records to the tune of some $3-4 Trillion ($3,000,000,000,000 -$4,000,000,000,000). All the while, Congress added more and more gasoline to the fire in the form of pork. The Administration has de facto nationalized the banking sector and has begun the same for automotive. Health care is next. I am sure productivity and innovation will rise immediately. In terms of foreign exchange and the dollar, the pressure is unsustainable.

The country faces other economic crises. California, New York, Michigan, New Jersey, and Ohio are our very own Nigeria’s, Zimbabwe’s, and Haiti’s. I hate to say it, but the issues are in many ways related to systemic corruption  in our country as well. There has been no accountability on so many levels, and the unions have become the new privileged class, with gold plated benefits and guaranteed no trade contracts as the rest of us scrape by. All the while, the people who got us into this mess; the politicians, the Wall Street wunderkinds, and the corporate elite got theirs already and have run for the hills, leaving the rest of us to hold the bag. In Congress, “play for pay” is an everyday reality.  Our society operates on  “who you know” rather than “what you know” on a grand scale. As Midnight Oil once said “the rich get richer,  the poor get the picture”.

Monetary policy is not rocket science. It’s about trust more than anything else. Our dollar is backed by the “Full Faith & Credit of the United States”. The problem is that very few people have  Faith in the U.S. government any more. They do not trust the government to maintain a stable currency. 3 years ago, the Iranian, Venezuelan, and Russian governments proposed an alternative to the dollar using a weighted basket of currencies, specifically for oil transactions. These countries do not have our best interests at heart. Later, when the recession started and China was already holding over $690 Billion ( as of 12-08) in American debt, a specific warning was delivered to our government by the Chinese not to devalue their investment. Then we passed a $2 trillion+ budget. The Chinese have now warned us three times publicly and probably feel they have done all they can. Today, the Financial Times reports that the Chinese will do business in RMB Yuan and Brazilian Reals. The devaluation and eventual irrelevancy of the dollar has begun.

The cost of imports will go up at a time when the US has never before been more reliant on imports. The cost to borrow will skyrocket, placing tremendous pressure on the Treasury and the government, and making doing business even more difficult. More U.S. debt is being offered than at any time in history in a debt market that has shrunk precipitously and has grown wary of the US exporting inflation. The Fed will be forced to buy our own debt, fueling inflation. The buying power for the consumer will drop precipitously. These are all economic realities and will leave us broke and beaten down. The good news would be that American exports will be very competitive, except the only thing we seem to export any more is debt. The printing presses with continue to run 24/7, and at some point the debt monster will see us printing $1,000, $10,000, and $100,000 bills for general circulation. The lessons of Weimar Germany will have to be repeated for a whole new generation.

There are answers, but first we must place our house in order. 60 years of financial recklessness must be rectified, and we must learn from our mistakes once again. As Ortega y Gasset once said, “those who do not study the past are doomed to repeat it”.

Integrity

It seems every day now we hear of one politician or another, or someone else in the leadership class blatantly lie to us. The New York Times latest plagiarism case, where Maureen Dowd stole the ideas of a blogger and called them her own, is only the latest in both admitted and denied cases at the Times that stretch back 10 years to Jayson Williams. They have repeatedly spiked stories that disagree with their narrative, and published stories that are factually inaccurate despite knowing the truth. Today, Jon Chait, a liberal blogger stated that reporting is overrated. In the network news, you can pick your political slant, and with it their spin on the news. The facts don’t seem to matter if they do not agree with the narrative.

Unfortunately, the problem goes all the way to the top. The current occupant of the White House has corrected himself or retreated on so many promises at this point that it has become difficult to take what he says seriously. This is very dangerous for the world. Whether it was his promises to have the most ethical and transparent administration in history, or his stance on enhanced interrogation techniques or his promises of fiscal restraint, the man is basically a liar of the first order. The Speaker of the House has been caught in an indefensible position on her knowledge of waterboarding and yet continues to deny the truth. In Congress, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Charles Rangel, and several others have all been caught stealing or taking bribes and nothing has been done. Are they immune to prosecution? In the Stevens case, while his conduct was reprehensible, the prosecution lied to nail a conviction. These are simply the daily headlines these days.

Madoff, Mozilla, and a host of other crooks simply say “oops” as they have tanked our economy and stolen  billions of dollars of the nation’s wealth. Corporate presidents cut the hearts out of their companies and outsource/offshore in the name of “maintaining profits” when the reality was that they were doing so strictly to line their own pockets and run for the nearest tropical island. In California, the propositions voted on were known to be lies. Our own legislature and governor point blank lied to us.

And yet there has been no discussion of ethics or morals. Why did this occur? Why did they decide to take the easy way out? Why did they lie so blatantly? Who the hell do these people think they are? Why are there no consequences?

And yet if you are reasonably decent and moral and pay your taxes and go to church, you are classified as a right wing religious nut. Obama, who not only is a proponent of partial birth abortion, but who has also now forced doctors, nurses and hospitals (many religiously affiliated) to perform abortions against their moral principles, spoke at Notre Dame, and many in the Catholic hierarchy finally said enough is enough. Obama stated that reasonable people can disagree, but partial birth abortion is inherently unreasonable and we all know this. Who is the real nut?

And yet, it seems there may be some push back building. The Tea Parties have been an honest response by ordinary people to the abuse of power. These have been denigrated by the left, and yet the people who have attended are those most ordinary (or perhaps extraordinary) of people; retirees, teachers, small businessmen, housewives, students, and kids. The salt of the earth, basically. They have said “I’m tired as hell and I’m not going to take it any more”.  We need more discussion around the dinner table of what is right and wrong. The churches need to preach to the faithful. The pundits must spread the word. Words have meaning, and we will not be lied to. Our country is in a world of hurt right now, and it is time to work towards some basic reforms.

Obama vs Cheney – The Rumble on the Potomac

After reading the speeches of both the president and former vice president, a few things stood out. First, Obama stated ” for the first time, we are providing the resources to take the fight to the Taliban and extremists in Pakistan”. Well gee, I wonder how all those who have served there for the past 8 years feel about that? More taking credit for policies already underway under Bush. He then went on at length about his own background, and proceeded to blame the prior administration once again for Guantanamo and torture. He then states his opposition to waterboarding and how it was illegal. And yet there were clearly strong legal arguments for the tactic to be used, and the policy was debated at the very highest levels at length. The methods were not used without some incredible soul searching, and were believed in good faith to be the only way to obtain critical information to protect the country. Remember, it happened to three individuals on three occasions each. One of them, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was the mastermind of 9/11 and personally beheaded Daniel Pearl. In any court in the world, he would have received the most serious of penalties. In many countries, including our own, his life would have been forfeit. This is the guy who said he couldn’t wait to get to New York and talk to his lawyer. He thought he was already gaming the system when he was arrested. And Mr. Obama condemns these practices despite the opposition of the current and 4 (FOUR) prior directors of the CIA. I always thought one hired the best people available and listened to their advice. But I digress.

The president then went on the show his fundamental misunderstanding of our enemy. He spoke of waterboarding as a recruiting tool for the enemy, and the maltreatment of our troops because of it. And yet we are dealing with one of the most evil enemies the country has ever known. Even the Nazis observed the Geneva Conventions in the West. The Taliban and Al Quaeda, and Muslim terrorists in general, were using assassination, suicide bombing, beheadings, and terror even before we entered the fray. Much of this Muslim fanaticism goes back over 100 years. It has nothing to do with our niceness and goodness and desire to be seen as the good guys. They simply hate everyone except those who believe in their apocalyptic vision. These terrorists are murdering far more of their coreligionists than Americans.

The president then went on to discuss Guantanamo and its failings, and yet only 2 days ago he authorized the resumption of military tribunals. No other country will take these prisoners, and the recidivism rate is 1 in 7. These people really hate us and will go right back to killing Americans if given the chance. So the president contradicts himself once again. Only yesterday Congress spoke very clearly and refused to authorize funds to close Guantanamo both because they do not want these bad guys in the country, and because there is no plan. How can we take the president seriously with these facts in evidence? It’s all talk. The president calls all of these “abuses” a rallying cry for our enemies, and yet they need no rallying cry beyond “death to the infidel”. You simply cannot get along with people who have no desire to get along with you. Ask Jimmy Carter.

The president calls his opponents fear mongers, and yet these are serious policy issues where the president and his supporters have been left in the unenviable position of being caught out in significant misstatements of fact. On the one side you have Nancy Pelosi, Arlen Specter, Harry Reid and the president. On the other are the aforementioned CIA directors, most of Congress, and the professionals at the CIA and Justice Department. The president further clouds the issue with his selective release of documents while withholding others that could provide some clarity. Pure politics.

The president then somehow rationalizes first his decision to release photographs of Abu Ghraib and then to withdraw his decision. When one’s SecDef, his Joint Chiefs of Staff, his National Security Advisor, and his CIA chief and his predecessors all say the same thing and he still has doubts, it’s obvious we have a president who is either very naive, very stupid, or who has his own agenda. I would bet on the latter. His trope of “strict legal tests” just doesn’t fly in face of his actions to date. He has been far too casual already with the law he says he will uphold. Look at the Chrysler mess. Lastly he asks that we rise above politics while blaming Bush. Pure lawyerly BS.

On the other hand, Cheney’s remarks were concise, to the point, and well organized. His purpose was to set forth and defend  the strategic thinking behind the Bush Administration’s policies.  He briefly reviewed the state of the nation before and after 9/11, the horrible events that led us to engage our enemies, and the rationales for what the Bush Administration did. He  factually leads us through the discussions and debate on the issue of waterboarding and other EIT’s, and the moral arguments that took place. I truly believe that these discussions would never have even taken place in such a structured manner in any other country. Most other countries, with the exception of the Vatican, are much more cold blooded, and even the Vatican had its Borgias and Colonnas.

Cheney points out where he feels the president has done the right thing, and where he feels the president is mistaken. The is little rancor and little partisanship in his speech. Rather, he defends the record of the Bush administration. He challenges the president where he feels it is necessary.  He points out the fallacy of Obama’s elimination of certain terms such as “enemy combatant” and “Global War on Terror”, and yet it it is not simply semantics, but rather a fundamental reversion to the pre 9/11 thinking of our battle with extremists as legal, rather than military. Try selling this concept to the Army Ranger being shot at with a .50 cal or RPG. “You have the right to remain silent”….BLAM!

This was Point/Counterpoint at the highest level, and as such is good for our national debate. But yet so much of the debate revolves around posturing that it has become a farce. So much seems to be overturning policies that worked simply for the sake of doing so. And yet the president has been forced to back down both by his advisers and by Congress.  This is good for the country. But there is a failing in gravitas, and far too much willingness to “Blame America”. One of our cardinal principles has always been not to start fights, but to finish them, and that fight began in earnest on 9/11.  The sooner we take away the rhetoric and the political element in our national defense policy, the better. I would rate this a unanimous decision for Cheney on this one.

Bankrupting the Country and How to Fix It

Today, President Obama was interviewed on C Span and was held to account for once. In the interview, he admitted the United States Government is out of money.Yup, we’re broke. Busted.  This week, the Treasury will auction $100 Billion in T Bills. That is the rub. If my president tells the whole world we’re out of money, why would I then buy American debt? This could be the flash point for a new economic crisis. The idiocracy is firmly in place.

We are in a deep recession of our own making. There is plenty of blame to go around for the causes, but the country seems to have forgotten that you don’t spend what you haven’t got and that you plan for a rainy day. Obama somehow blames our health care policy in his interview. How about unchecked government spending and the most corrupt spending/stimulus bill in our history?  $1.7 trillion in bank relief funds. Poof! gone. $700 Billion in Pork…Poof! and yet no one says a word. He can try to blame his predecessors, but in just a few months, he has taken ownership of the crisis lock, stock and barrel.

Supposedly the UAW has offered concessions in the Chrysler and GM reorganizations, and we have no idea what they are. 25% of the country’s already beleaguered manufacturing sector melts down and there is no transparency from a president who took it upon himself to involve his office directly. A president who promised transparency. What is left of American manufacturing? Military? Aerospace? Medical? Telecom infrastructure? That’s about it, folks. and that does not make for a healthy economy.

The only way to get out of such a recession is to work our way out. To invent, to apply elbow grease and put in more hours and work harder than we ever have before to set things right. To put our manufacturing sector back on track and build value and well paying jobs. The old warning about ending up doing each others laundry has come true. What use is a financial sector if no one has any money? What value is a “service” sector if no one can afford those services?

We have a government that is utterly out of touch with reality. They are enacting carbon offsets, forbidding oil drilling, making the automotive industry even more inefficient, and pretty much doing all they can to throw a monkey wrench into our ability to save ourselves. Nationalizing the banks only makes matters worse, as does socialized medicine. On top of it, they want to tax us as never before. This is a recipe for disaster.

The perspective from Taiwan and China is interesting. Times are challenging in Asia as well, but they are reacting differently. They are investing in the future, building nuclear power plants, building necessary infrastructure, making their industries more efficient, and carefully navigating the financial markets. The Taiwan stock market is up based upon their leading indicators that the world will still demand notebook computers, cell phones and all of the other electronic paraphernalia of modern life. In contrast, HP, IBM, and 50 other American companies gave up on manufacturing in favor of reaping short term profits. Now it will bite them right in the read end. Who needs HP or IBM or Apple? They’re just labels. the intellectual property and know how reside in Taiwan, China and Japan.

Recovery in the United States will be significantly delayed because of the bad decisions of our management class and political leadership. However, there is hope. We must invent and make and take back what until the 1990’s was  American leadership in technology and manufacturing. We must generate cheap energy. Green technologies are for the most part highly subsidized. We must find better and more cost effective ways, or until we can, hold off on chasing foolish chimeras. This is a time for hard headed decision making and a ruthless attention to following through. The highly adversarial nature of business must be placed in check so that the best decisions for all of the stakeholders are made. Pride and vanity must be put aside.

Mr. President, please stop shooting our country in the foot every other day. Focus on what is going to get this country back on it’s feet again instead of some cockamamie socialist vision of a kumbaya world. Otherwise, we will end up a very poor client state of China in record time.

Our Economical Dilemma

The other day, Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury stated that the “era of complaint politics has ended” just prior to his trip to Beijing to discuss monetary policy with the Chinese government. Last week, I saw Nancy Pelosi’s jet on the ground in Beijing where she had remarkably cordial meetings with Chinese leadership and mentioned nary a word on human rights or trade. Welcome to the new paradigm. In a few short days, the new administration managed to a – blame Bush, b-succumb on human rights, and c – kow tow to Chinese economic sensitivities. The Chinese hold over $1 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds at a time when we must market another $2.5 Trillion plus to finance our reckless recovery plan. In banker talk, this is called having ones client by the throat. The fundamental paradigm of U.S. – China relations has irrevocably changed.

The Chinese are facing their own deep problems. Their economy is dependent upon exports in a world that has reduced consumption precipitously. Up to 200,000 factories have closed and perhaps 20,000,000 industrial workers are unemployed. The stock market is down 60%+, and predictions for economic growth that had reached 15% have been revised downwards to 6-7%.  The rumor is that should growth fall below 6% and unemployment rise further, regime change could be in the air. China graduates over 6 million students from college alone every year, and must create huge numbers of jobs just to maintain equilibrium. They have announced their own $600 Billion stimulus package.

The difference is that in China you’ll see new bridges and ports and real infrastructure while in America you’ll see a high speed rail link between Disneyland and Las Vegas (one which was repeatedly voted down by the electorate, by the way). Otherwise, it’s all sort of nebulous, but you will know it’s being spent from the special Obama signs each project will have. In China you’ll see Hope. In America something else.

America has been financing a consumer economy that can no longer stand on its own. Nations arise and fall because of their industry, and yet America has become a land where we produce little of what we consume. Inflation was kept in check by low priced goods from overseas, but even with this brake on inflation, consumption has dropped precipitously, putting even those companies who supplied the unending demand in danger. Wall Street will remain in quietude for some time to come as banks try to recover and our government fiddles with the knobs trying to prevent another melt down.

In reading of the 17th Century, something similar happened. During the wars between the French and English, both countries basically at one point ran out of money. An amazing state of affairs, but true. Economic activity ground to a halt for years, and only renewed when the British Government founded the Bank of England and established common sense economic policy. The maturation of natural philosophy into science and industry occurred at the same time. Then, the engines of growth took off once again and didn’t slow down for centuries.  The Industrial Revolution began and wealth proliferated. All boats rose. We need to lay the groundwork for a new Industrial Revolution.

Look around you. We are living in a derivative society. A society of the mediocre. Our films, our literature, our art our culture all have reached the lowest common denominator. The only endeavor that has reached an apogee is bullshit. In politics, art, banking, and across the spectrum, we excel as never before in touting our own greatness. Instead we need to get a dose of humility, and that may be the blessing of this crisis.

One of the common threads throughout the build up to this crisis has been a loss of morality and of God. Anything goes. Pundits, because one can not call them philosophers because they have no philosophy, declare God dead and Darwin triumphant, and yet they offer no coherent vision of man’s place in the universe. And yet we come ever closer to understanding Isaiah’s words, written 2,700 years ago by a man who had very little understanding of the world around him in a world lit only by fire. Perhaps a shepherd or even a learned man of his time, nevertheless, he had no concept of the deep complexity of the world around him, and yet he wrote that God had spoken to him saying “as the heavens are higher than the Earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts higher than your thoughts”.  There is a certain part of us that takes its challenge from this, I believe, and continues to struggle for knowledge.

And yet, as we delve deeper and deeper into the subatomic level and as we reach further and further into our universe, we see the incredible truth of these words. It is a never ending quest. And for the majority of humanity, we have made tremendous accomplishments.  Lifespans have increased, and with them a greater demand on our resources and so thus our responsibility to each other to wisely use them.

This crisis is, I think, pointing us in the right direction. Crisis clarifies the thinking and wipes away the cobwebs to allow us to consider the important things. In the past 100 years, man has tried to reinvent himself as something he isn’t. False constructs abound. The desire to overturn the old rules simply for the sake of the id or the ego is slowly drowning in its own ennui.

In the meantime, its about survival, and that means trial and hard work. Economically, it will require creativity, trust, and innovation. The old values will see one through. There are mixed signs ahead, and there may be many more challenges, but we must redefine our goals and our methods. It may be months or it may be years, but with the knowledge we are learning every day, I think the best is yet to come.

A Nuclear Iran?

Yesterday, our Dear Leader stated his opinion that Iran should be able to have it’s own nuclear power industry. On the face of it, there’s nothing wrong with this, but reality is very different indeed. The Russians have been assisting Iran in building it’s nuclear power industry, which after Chernobyl should allay any concerns. Of course the spent fuel would never be used for improper purposes.  Lots of assumptions there not based in fact.

Iran now has over 10,000 centrifuges running 24/7 to separate out U-238 into U-235, the stuff that makes nuclear weapons go bang. Of course Mahmoud only has the best of intentions for this. He tells us at Friday night prayers every week. Interspersed with the obligatory “Death to America” chants are his threats against Israel, a hallmark of his administration. If it walks like a nuke and it quacks like a nuke and has a half life like a nuke, it’s probably a nuke.We must take his rhetoric seriously. He does.

Now good friend Mahmoud doesn’t just have issues with the Israelis. He is ecumenical in his ambitions. There’s no love for the Gulf Arabs or Iraq, and he’s been meddling in Afghanistan for quite some time as well. The hell of it is that with the prevailing winds and those wonderfully competent Iranian rocket scientists and Israeli Patriot missiles, the odds are that any device launched would detonate or break up somewhere over the West Bank or Jordan. Since our friends at Hamas are so friendly to us and to their neighbors, as they say in Brooklyn, my nose bleeds for them.

And what of our Dear Leaders’ words and actions in the Middle East to date? His first call when sworn in was to Abbas, and now that Mahmoud is running around the Middle East acting like the cock of the walk. Not a lot of compromise there these days. But then again, Abbas has his own issues with Hamas, who pretty much hate everyone except their own except when they’re having a vendetta of some kind or another over someones lack of dedication to suicide bombing or pointless rocket attacks. Obama in the meantime paid homage to King Abdullah as keeper of the Holy Places recently, and is today doing a meet and greet in Riyadh before his stump speech in Cairo.

The Israelis, realizing they are basically screwed, have hardened their line as well. The settlements are going forward and a new breed of conservative hardliner is in the ascendancy. Remember, their backs have been to the wall repeatedly in the past 60 years, and it was only US assistance that helped them defeat 6 invading armies in 1973. Now that assistance from the U.S. is no longer a foregone conclusion,there is an opening for Assad in Syria and Hezbollah and the rest, who I am sure Obama can reason with.  And if anyone can smell a drop of blood on the sand, it’s an Arab. Any signs of weakness or an opportunity for a cheap shot and it’s “game on”. The war clouds will gather, and once again the jezzails will come out and the stories will be told sort of like Baghdad Bob’s bedtime tales, but hey, who’s really paying attention? They will see an opening and try to exploit it.

And all the while, the puppeteers in Iran, who have been running the convoys containing rockets into Gaza and guns and advanced weaponry to Hezbollah, will be seeing another patsy just like Jimmy Carter. Mind you, it is not the Iranian people necessarily who have the beef. It’s just the men with guns.

And back in America, between carbon offset cap & trade, highly subsidized and inefficient solar and wind power, reduced on and offshore exploration and drilling, Ted Kennedy’s invisible windmill farms off the Cape, clown cars, shuttered coal fired power plants, etc. we will be just fine and dandy, thank you as we slouch back to a 19th century lifestyle. Nuclear power plants are okay for Iran, apparently, but not for us.

President Obama’s Fiscal Irresponsibility

It was reported  that President Obama was on Capitol Hill this afternoon admonishing the Congressional Leadership to enact “pay as you go” legislation to control spending. He was quoted as saying “the reckless fiscal policies of the past have left us in a very deep hole”. Associated Press in a separate article then reported that he has also asked for $2.5 Trillion in exemptions in spending limits to pay for his new health care bill. Watch what the man says and then what he does. To date he has either signed legislation or proposed such as follows:

$2.5 Trillion in Recovery Funds

$787 Billion in Stimulus Funds

$1 trillion in TARP Funds

$ 100 Billion in Auto Bailouts

$2.5 trillion in his new exemptions for Health Care

_______

$6.887 trillion

…..in just 5 months

Never before in our history has a president spent so recklessly. And his comments come during  a  news cycle where more and more newspapers, businessmen, economists and others are recognizing that his efforts are simply not producing the desired results. Rupert Murdoch, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Chinese bankers, and many others are all saying “enough”. Instead of these fiscal actions easing the financial markets, the specter of inflation is rearing its head and unfortunately, economic history tells us it’s going to get worse. The president stated ” we have done more than ever, faster than ever, more responsibly than ever, to get the gears of the economy moving again”. And yet his “Buy American” provisions are rankling our allies and threatening to initiate a repetition of the effects of the Smoot Hawley Act of 1930, which was generally acknowledged to have deepened the Great Depression into the worst in history. Taken together, his actions, and they are his alone, forebode bad economic times for our country just when the signs of global recovery have begun to sprout. Will it affect the global system? You bet.

In Asia, Taiwan, China, Korea, and Japan are slowly digging themselves out of the financial mess. Western Europe is also recovering. This is all now endangered by our reckless fiscal policies. The inflationary monetary policies of the United States are in danger of being exported globally, and at the same time, markets for materials and goods manufactured or produced overseas will dry up as the United States can no longer afford them. As our manufacturing sector has been especially hard hit, this will only compound the economic damage. We must to an extent export and work our way out of this recession.

And yet our president continues to blame his predecessors to what purpose? While it is true that between Social Security and Medicare and deficit spending our finances have been unsound for some time, Mr. Obama is accelerating this trend at an unprecedented rate. He seems to acknowledge the issue, but then continues to spend like a drunken sailor. His passive/aggressive fiscal policy seems destined to ripsaw our economy into client state status in record time. His drive to nationalize health care can only promise even greater deficits as evidenced by self evident data of the Medicare fiasco. The results are out there for any of us to see, but no one seems to be paying attention.

Quietly, the leaders of nations as disparate as Russia, Germany, China, India, Brazil, and Japan are all consulting with each other on how to react to an unprecedented financial event. The reserve status of the Dollar is in great doubt, but what will replace it? What does one do when the economic powerhouse of the world endangers itself with self inflicted wounds? How does one react to the potential for a meltdown of unprecedented proportions? How do you get a raging alcoholic to stop drinking? One who one day admits his problem, and then next denies it? The first thing is to take away the keys so they don’t drive over a cliff. Then get them into rehab. We must face the facts and make common sense decisions. Maybe someone out there is listening, but so far, I see little evidence.

The $9 Trillion Dollar Man

” Obama’s Spending Plans May Pose Political Risks”

So says today’s Washington Post, one of the decidedly more liberal newspapers in the country. They have Obama’s stimulus spending at some $9 Trillion (not my number…the Post’s ) now over 10 years, rather than the $1.7 – 2.5 – 3.0 Trillion that was originally bandied about when the bill was being considered. Funny how the truth comes out afterwards. Think about it. Nine…Trillion….Dollars....that you and I, and our children, and our children’s children, and their children unto generations unknown will be saddled with. That is if there’s much of a country left by that point. We may be broke as the Balkans and just as fragmented by then if this continues.

The Republicans told Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party leadership no. The bankers told them no. The tea parties told them no. The Chinese and other lenders told them no. And yet they went ahead and did it anyway.

The article repeats once again Mr. Obama’s quote from his speech last week to Congressional leaders…. “The reckless fiscal policies of the past have left us in a very deep hole”. No Mr. President, it is your reckless fiscal policies that have left us in the hole. It was bad before, but under your plan, it’s impossible.

And what will the money spent accomplish? No one really knows, but hey, it’s all good. Except the money won’t be worth a Continental when The President done. Way back when our country was founded, the Continental Congress, printed their own money with no backing. It quickly became worthless. There was runaway inflation and the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 inserted Article 1, section 10 into the Constitution that made gold and silver the only legal tender in the United States for this specific reason. We are rapidly headed once again down the slippery path.

The President is the ultimate hypocrite. His lecturing Congress on fiscal responsibility is like  Madonna lecturing Cher on chastity ( the virtue) and good taste. Kent Conrad (D-ND), that noted fiscal conservative and head of the Senate Budget Committee said ” The second five years is where we’re on a completely unsustainable course”. Should I laugh or throw up?

The Post article speaks of desperation and utterly meaningless gestures such as trying to save $100 million back in April. Finally the Post, that media bulldog, is putting Obama’s new math together. It is and always was a fiscal Potemkin Village.

The good news is that much of this can be fixed. There are actually signs the economy is beginning to pull out of the nose dive. The global freakout of last November is being replaced with a sense that life does go on, and in many sectors, people and companies are doing their best to work harder and live within their means. Automotive is and will remain a wreck, and those sectors touched by Obamania will feel the effect, but even this has its limitations and we will find a way forward.

Congress, on their part, can reverse the damage if they have the guts. It’s doubtful, but there is hope. Rahm Emmanuel is hoping for tax reform and Medicare and Medicaid reform. How about some common sense and getting the mobility walker and penis pump/erectile dysfunction scams put to bed for a start?  Gee whiz, just think of the possibilities if it wasn’t a politically driven slush fund. Emmanuel’s definition of tax reform, by the way, is soak the rich who aren’t Obama supporters. Tax cheats and frauds abound in the new administration and that’s the way they’ve run things so far, so why think they’ll change?

This isn’t about Republican or Democrat really, because Republicans like Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins all voted to approve this fiscal insanity, and truth be told, a lot of the “moderate” Republicans simply hid behind the bushes to save their seats and didn’t do their job in speaking out against it. There is little to no fiscal sensibility in Washington, or for that matter on Wall Street these days. It’s been all about greed and who you know for the past 20 years. The ethical rules no longer apply. But if we are to reverse this train wreck, they must.

But out here in the hinterlands, many of us know you don’t spend what you don’t have. It’s funny, because this philosophy holds true mainly in the Red States. California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Minnesota, and Michigan have been run in an utterly irresponsible fashion and are on the brink. All of them vote Blue.  QED, Mr. Watson!

The first step in a 12 step problem is recognition that there is a problem. Just perhaps, this is beginning to happen. there is much more to be done, and there are many policies that just don’t make sense. But this one is front and center now.

Media Bias Crosses Another Line

The world today is a curious place. Depending on where you get your information,the same story can be reported in  black or white. Politics seems to inform articles that have no political content, and the agreed upon objective standards that informed the political dialogue at one time seem to have been completely trashed. The media rank with Congress (< 20% approval) in their public approval ratings, and our country suffers from a lack of objectivity.

Thirty years ago I remember reading about Walter Duranty, the New York Times Moscow bureau chief in the 1920’s and 30’s. At the time, after the First World War, there was a love affair with the Soviet Union. The staid, Christian nation states of Central Europe had to a great extent engaged in a meaningless war that betrayed their core values and killed a generation of their young men. Communism was an attractive alternative, and it attracted many. Many people turned their backs on the past in the search for new meaning and political stability. Duranty was one of these. His reports from the Soviet Union were glowing with promise. As the civil war wound down, he found himself at the nexus of the society of the new man, and like John Reed, became a flack for the regime. Stalin was consolidating his dictatorship, and between pogroms, the Ukrainian holocaust, and purges, it was the advent of a new, terrible dictatorship. And every week the readers back in New York and Washington and Boston believed Duranty’s reports as true. Except they weren’t. 5,000,000 kukaks were starved to death, many thousands of political opponents were sentenced to the gulags or shot in the back of the head at the Lyubyanka, and later on, virtually the entire officer corps was exteriminated on the brink of World War II. And not a word was said. Everything was glorious in the worker’s paradise.

Duranty was only the most egregious case, but there were many others. Politics has informed the reportage of the New York Times for the past 60 years. But there is a difference between what is on the editorial page and what is on the front page. People expect and deserve the facts. Kipling’s 6 honest serving men; What, Why, When, How, Where, and Who, are the glue that allows people to believe the basic truths of the news. When these facts are slanted, whether in Hearst’s penny press or today’s Times, we all suffer.

This bias is not exclusive to the Times, but rather pervades what many call the mainstream media these days. Whether the television news or weekly magazines or large city press, there is a lockstep to the left, it seems, the exceptions being Fox News and a few openly political organs such as National Review and the Weekly Standard. Limbaugh is vilified it seems, almost as often as the preacher condemns Satan at Sunday Meeting. What is odd is that there seems to be no concern that the free exchange of ideas takes place. There is no desire to arrive at an objective truth. A liberal associate wrote to me the other day and said  “It all goes back to Plato and the view that most people are stupid, except for that wise elite who should have the power to rule”,  implying that somehow this is a modern conservative viewpoint.  And yet this educated person should know his Plato better. Plato wrote The Republic as a Socratic dialog with opposing viewpoints competing in the arena of ideas. The issue of the masses has always been difficult, especially in hierarchical societies, and there has always been a need to balance short term, perhaps more visceral, decisions with those grounded in the long term. This is why in our country we have the House and the Senate.  But the attitude of my correspondent is indicative of much of the problem. There is a need today to demonize one’s opponents and count coup at every turn. At the same time, the way Washington works is to create straw men and then raise as much money as possible for one’s cause while maintaining a polite distance from the ideologues and ensuring the invitations on the cocktail circuit continue to arrive in the mailbox. It works this way on both sides of the aisle. These days it is fashionable to be on the Left. The use of the term “progressive” is back in vogue. Progressive = leftist in the political dictionary, just to be clear. And in the media today, we are seeing this in spades.

Last week, David Letterman took a  joke too far and implied a highly inappropriate relationship between Alex Rodriguez and Sarah Palin’s 14 year old daughter. Andrew Sullivan, a purported conservative, has been reprehensible in his innuendo on the subject. Katie Couric the CBS Evening News anchor, and reportorial descendant of Walter Cronkite, the Apollo of American newsmen, in a “comedic” speech at Princeton just last week called first for a more moderate dialog and then savaged Palin.  Cronkite doing such a speech while still at CBS would have been unthinkable. He was a newsman first and last and certain lines were not crossed.

Today, ABC News announced that they would be broadcasting from the Blue Room at the White House, focusing on the upcoming health care debate. This has been arranged by Linda Douglass, the White House communications director for health care and a former ABC reporter until 2006, and the broadcast will include a Town Hall event with the president. We can almost be sure that Time and Newsweek will chime in with their own “objective” studies. A couple of month back, it was revealed that there is a teleconference every morning of reporters and other media to discuss talking points for the day run by Rahm Emmanuel. Participants have included George Stephanopoulis and James Carville, both of whom somehow have reporting jobs with ABC and CBS respectively. The top management of General Electric, who own NBC and MSNBC,  has been accused with at least some cause of muzzling criticism of the administration to conform with their politics. Notice a trend?

The Washington Post admitted on Sunday that the estimated cost for the stimulus bill over 10 years will be over $9 Trillion, and yet this has been reported nowhere else in the mainstream media. I will repeat it again, because it flabbergasts me…Nine Trillion Dollars. And no one says a word. Why? Paul Krugman states the case for foreign exchange balancing out the inevitable rise in interest rates through the foreign exchange mechanism. This used to be called devaluing the currency. Again, a very strange idea taken as wisdom within a fashionable bubble.

These are no longer political issues, but rather existential ones. They cross party lines, because if we do not balance our budgets, the country will be broke and very bad things will happen. Our cost for food, or imported oil, or that new television will skyrocket, and the disestablishment of the middle class will accelerate as we all end up in the poor house. Our nation may never rcover, and the great experiment that is America will have failed. And our media are leading the many into this maelstrom, playing the magic flute leading us to our demise.

The Appearance of Impropriety

Over the past several months, we have all watched as the Obama administration has taken shape. There have been a number of very disquieting developments in this period.

In November, the president-elect was said to have raised over $744.9 Million (George Washington University – presidential campaign finance) in his election campaign. Earlier in the year, he promised to abide by campaign spending limitations, a promise he broke when he saw the large pot of gold he could tap into. Of greater concern were the sources of this funding. It was reported at the time that some donors were using debit cards, which in many cases are untraceable, with names like Saddam Hussein, Mickey Mouse, and Superman. Obvious pseudonyms. Because Obama opted out of matching Federal funds, he had no obligation to report his sources of income. The FEC’s hands were tied and the FBI was uninterested in pursuing the matter. Part of this was his unprecedented use of the internet, but there is a deep concern where that kind of money comes from. To put this into perspective, the U.S. donations for the 2004 tsunami were $1.874 Billion, and Katrina $3.574 Billion (IUPUI Center on Philanthropy). Those were two of the worst disasters in history and donations crossed all lines. This was a lousy political campaign, and during hard times no less.

Mr. Obama then promised the “strictest ethics rules ever applied” on November 12, and banned lobbyists from his transition team. This turned out to be untrue as well, as that team was riddled with lobbyists. He then nominated over a dozen appointees for cabinet level positions who had either failed to file income taxes or outright evaded them (Geithner). Avoidance is acceptable, but evasion is criminal. Geithner is the Secretary of the Treasury, to whom the IRS reports. Clearly a conflict of interest, but “it was for the good of the country”.

The president has also consolidated power within the White House in unprecedented fashion. Instead of having his Secretary of State as the primary representative of the United States overseas, he has special representatives for almost every major region and issue, few of whom coordinate or cooperate with the State Department. There are “czars” for all sorts of issues, and policy is discussed and formed behind completely closed doors. This is true for the GM & Chrysler deals, the TARP bailout, health care and other key issues. When Hillary Clinton tried this in 1992/1993, lawsuits were fild opening these discussions. Obama learned from this and acted accordingly. Nevertheless, it is still most likely illegal. His refuisal to allow reporters to view White House visitor’s logs also has direct bearing on the matter.

The president’s disrespect of the rule of law is also an issue. In the case of both TARP and the auto bailouts, strong arm tactics were used by the White House and the Chrysler deal especially seems to be crafted out of whole cloth. The UAW, one of his biggest supporters and the primary cause of many of the auto companies difficulties in the first place, ends up with controlling interest, and somehow FIAT ends up with 20%  of the company and access to government funds. The shareholders, the bondholders, the dealers and their employees, and the white collar employees,  not to mention the taxpayers, were all, to put it bluntly, screwed and undue, and possibly illegal pressure was used by the White House to do it. In exchange, the UAW was supposed to grant concessions, but we still don’t know what those are.  Basically it’s a multi billion dollar payoff.

The White House also moved the Census Bureau under their control. The census determines the political landscape, and in itself could be considered a political plum with hundreds of thousands of short term jobs. Jiggering the Census results could result in a permanent Democratic majority. ACORN has been linked to this effort, and are already being investigated in several states for voter fraud. Are these the people we want determining the political landscape for the next 10 years? To my knowledge, no president has ever been so blatant in their grab for power. The Justice Department also dropped an airtight case against the Black Panthers in Philadelphia for voter intimidation. In this case there were witnesses and the incidents were recorded on video, but somehow it just wasn’t worth pursuing. So much for freedom to vote in North Philly.

The Guantanamo Bay prison for terrorists has also been a legal and political football. It now seems the president is slowly dispersing prisoners, a few to Bermuda, some to Palau, a couple to Italy. On the terrorist charges, the president has all but stopped any action, and the families of the victims have become furious. We have in our custody the masterminds for both the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole and the 9/11 attacks and yet they have not faced justice after years of delays. Any way you look at it, this is not just.

Lastly, the president has fired three Inspectors General of federal agencies under dubious circumstances. The first, for Americorps, was investigating misuse of funds by the St. Hope Foundation, a charter school program in Sacramento, CA  This IG obtained an agreement to restitute 50% of the $800,000 funded on the basis of misuse of funds. This was then followed by the accusation by the executive director of St. Hope, that the founder, former NBA star and Obama supporter Kevin Johnson, deleted hundreds of e mails related to the case to avoid investigation. The president has already come under heated criticism for this. Unfortunately, this was then followed by the firing of Neil Barofsky, the Inspector General for the TARP program at the Treasury Department, who was appointed only a few months ago by this same president to act as watchdog on over $2 Trillion in federal expenditures to Wall Street, those paragons of virtue. The IG of the International Trade Commission, where cases like dumping and tariffs are determined, has also been summarily dumped by the president.  In all three cases, the White House has been stonewalling requests by both Democratic and Republican members of Congress.

Whether in law or in government, the appearance of impropriety is normally enough to trigger both alarms and investigations. In the case of the Obama administration, we are seeing neither so far. If it walks like a duck and it smells like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. There has been a trail of ethical lapses that is unmatched in presidential hstory. The accusations against Bush and Cheney were unmatched in their vitriol, but here, where we have a clear trail of evidence, not a word is being said. This is politics Chicago style squared, and our country is the lesser for it.

Democrats with their hands out and Republicans with their pants down

What is going on with our political system today? It is as if, as Mugatu said in that film classic, Zoolander, they are all taking crazy pills. The president is stage managing the news while we have a significant number of politicians on the Democratic side either raving mad dog looney or on the take. On the Republican side, it seems they just can’t keep it in their pants or come up with a coherent ideology. Their time seems to consist of chasing other men’s wives or conspiring with their Democratic colleagues as in California, to continue the spending spree that generates the money in bribes and payola for these reprobates to indulge in their sybaritic pastimes. Dodd has his “cottage” in Roundstone, Ireland and Sanford flew all the way to Buenos Aires for some tail. There’s your global warming problem in a nutshell. John “Ramses XIV”  Murtha builds  monuments to himself in the outer reaches of Pennsylvania while thinking no one is paying attention, and John Ensign comes clean because his aide’s hubby is trying to shake him down. What kind or world do we live in?

Perhaps it is  time to move the federal government someplace honest and clean, like Las Vegas or Baghdad, and turn Washington into a combination of Williamsburg and Six Flags. The  Congressional office buildings can be turned into a house of mirrors .  We could maintain the architectural integrity of the Capitol and build the rides around  and under the facades. This way to the Teapot Dome! Use the insidious Disney line strategy to sucker the bumpkins into Murthaworld (which sounds much like the Underworld of Greek mythology). Everyone rides in a little electric car and gets paid off as they pass the PMI cave where  trolls hand out fools gold. GM and Chrysler can build that one. Old Fiat 500’s would be perfect if for some reason Chrysler can’t put something together for a few years. At least that way we’d get something back for the 20% of the company Obama gave away. The whole thing could be staffed by the UAW, but would only be open for 4 hours/day and don’t go on Mondays or Fridays because the wheels will fall off. Every hour on the hour, the statue of Lincoln in his Memorial could be wired to zap the hiney of some miscreant politician. People would line up for that one, I think. Up by Union Station, they could build Barney Frank Land; adults only of course, and equal opportunity. As part of the educational aspect of the park, Geithnerworld where the Treasury used to be could teach creative accounting.

The reality is that between the venality of Congress and many state legislatures and the mendacity of a president intent on  “Chicago Rules” our country is in deep trouble. The news is being manipulated on an Orwellian scale and the ideas being brought to the table, without open discussion and debate mind you, are cockamamie and clearly deleterious to the welfare of our country. Our leaders are betraying us every day and debasing themselves and their offices. The Boomer Generation and their successors are found wanting. We have met the enemy and he is Us, as Walt Kelly wrote.

Contrast this with the Founding Fathers, who put their lives and sacred honor on the line for the sake of a philosophy; freedom under God, and that all men are created equal. Pretty simple. We are squandering our inheritance. We are screwing up any legacy left for our children and their children’s children. The noble ideas which have seen the country through invasion and civil war and holocaust, and which fundamentally delineate not our own basic human rights, but those around the world, are being whored to the highest bidder. It was France who looked to America in 1789, and then the world.  Our constitution has been the model for many others. These simple ideas were the light of the world. And without the sacrifices of the Continental Army and the willingness of Washington and Jefferson and Franklin and Adams and so many others to take a stand for what is right, the world today would be a very different and much darker place. Today we are edging closer and closer to that reality for the most base of reasons. Sex and money. Is this how future historians will write of us? Will selfishness and greed be our epitaph?

These issues cross party lines and it doesn’t matter whether one is Republican or Democrat. The hemorrhaging of our culture has to stop, and we must act like adults. The signposts of history are clear. The pendulum has swung too far. Hard work, right conduct, and common sense must be applied. Deconstruction, revisionism, and hedonism must abate. The false gods of vanity and envy and nihilism must be put aside. We must elect officials who truly embody the citizen/servant ethic and then all of us hold ourselves to a higher standard.The Renaissance occurred because  the works of Aristotle and Plato and Ptolemy, in the arts and philosophy and science were rediscovered and built upon. It seems we must rediscover some of these basic principles once again.

Tom Wolfe wrote about the arts in the middle of the 20th century that “New compounds began succeeding each other in a berserk rush”. It was the flavor of the month in art, in philosophy, in sexuality, in conduct, even in monetary theory. Wolfe said about music that composers had become so exquisitely abstract that “no one from the outside world had the slightest interest in, much less comprehension of what was going on”. This translates across society today. there is a reason things are called “classic”. They translate across the ages. As we try to rebuild our society, we must keep this in mind.

A Trillion$ here, a Trillion$ there – The Health Care Fiasco

Senator Max Baucus (D- Montana) the head of the Senate Finance Committee, threw a $1 Trillion/year price tag for his proposed health care bill onto the table this morning to see how others would react. Having done this, we should all know by now to double or triple the number because these folks just can’t seem to play it straight. Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, a faction of the Democratic Party is trying to ram through a climate change bill that would be the largest tax increase in American history. It seems that they just can’t seem to help themselves from grabbing other people’s money.

The fact that Medicare has been predicted to be bankrupt within the next 8 years by the Congressional Budget Office phases them not in the least. With one massive program going down the tubes, why not propose an even larger and more out of control program? In addition the Veteran’s Administration medical program has been terribly administered and is broken, and Walter Reed Hospital, which used to be one of the crown  jewels of the military medical system, was just recently closed because it had fallen apart. So what exists is a broad spectrum of federal medical care programs having broken down at the same time.

In the meantime, Medicare now approves scooters and Viagra. From a common sense perspective, it would seem a much better idea to limit funding to what really matters if an organization is facing financial problems. Instead, Medicare has become an arena for political favor as vendors angle for contracts. And now the Democrats in Congress and the President want to expand this into a whole new level of federal expense just as government is breaking the bank with TARP, stimulus packages, auto bailouts, and continuing resolutions loaded with pork. This makes no sense at all.

So let’s go over the costs again. Remember, this is all new spending, and the cupboard is already bare:

$ 750 Billion      TARP

$      1 Trillion    Stimulus Spending cost per year

$150 Billion     Cap & Trade Costs per year

$ 1.5 Trillion    Universal Health Care Bill cost/year

$100 Billion    Auto Industry bailout

Remember, the money for the stimulus, auto industry, and TARP  is already on the books and is being spent. So in 2010, according to these generally accepted numbers, we will be saddled with another $2.75 Trillion in spending. The total federal budget for 2008, Bush’s last year, was $2.9 trillion. In other words the president’s proposals will double our federal budget at a time we can ill afford to keep pace with 2008’s spending. Where will the money come from?

From a care standpoint, it is quite obvious that service and treatment will suffer. Such a large program cannot help but compete with the private health care industry, so it will eventually have to cut into this sector to find revenue, further accelerating the demise of the world’s best health care system. We will be left with a national health care network more akin to the nightmare county hospitals in large urban areas where patients are left in the hallways and emergency treatment can take hours. Is this the change we voted for?

The crazy part is that in most cases, the people in Congress don’t even read the bills they are voting on and only find out the details afterwards. It’s all a con conceived in back rooms and rushed through so the rubes can’t see how they’re being fleeced. And then, to add insult to injury, Congress is exempt. They will still have access to the best care available, on our dime of course, as we line up for our 5 minutes with a doctor. There has to be a better way.

The Great Climate Change Legislation Ripoff

The House Democrats did their best to bury the climate change bill as deep as possible under the cover of night yesterday. A 1,200 page monstrosity was hidden from view before the vote, and then between pork and earmarks to get certain legislators on board, and buyoffs for the coal and energy companies that distort the economics even further, we have one of the most poorly thought out pieces of legislation in history instead of a common sense approach to our environmental problems. Cap & Trade has already proven to be a scam in Europe, but the beneficiaries are the big financial houses and multinationals gaming the system, not the environment. Germany “wants us to do more” according to Frau Merkel, and yet they have been shuttering their nuclear power plants as they grow more reliant on Russian natural gas for their needs. This is the twisted path we are crafting for ourselves. Tying ourselves into pretzels as we do very little to actually improve the environment.

When you have Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth and the National Association of Manufacturers and U.C. Chamber of Commerce on one side, and the multinational corporations who are gaming the system on the other, you get the idea. One congressman was bought of by calling already subsidized industrial byproducts biofuels so that they can qualify for double tax credits….another congressman got a hurricane research center and Bobby Rush, the Chicago congressman from the Black Panther Party got some funding for low income households, but what is simply amazing in reading The Hill or Politico or the New York Times or the Washington Post at 2:00pm the day after, almost 24 hours after the bill passed, neither the legislators who voted on the bill nor the sycophantic press nor Al Gore nor Barack Obama nor do we the people know what the hell was really in it! Nancy Pelosi is ecstatic it passed, but doesn’t seem to know. Henry Waxman, it’s prime sponsor, doesn’t seem to quite know either. So then when it blows up in their faces in 2-3 years, they can say “gee, we didn’t know!”. This is the height of irresponsibility, and the Republican leadership should be just as ashamed they did not use every legislative tactic to force an open discussion and examination beforehand. This is not the Soviet Union or Ruritania. Or is it?

My job is involved more deeply every day in green technologies. We get under the hood and see how it all fits together and works. The solutions being discussed in that field are not definitive, nor are they even well developed intermediate answers yet. Using the technical term, they are half assed. In photovoltaic, or solar energy, the reality is that it can only ever account for perhaps 15% of the overall grid demand. It works only when the sun shines and because of things like clouds and seasons, even when gauging the efficiency of cells/modules, results vary with operating conditions. It will work great to help meet peak demand during the summer, but cannot help at night in the middle of winter. There is already a clear history of these limitations in Spain, where there was a huge surge, and then a precipitous fall in the photovoltaic industry. So we know what we are getting into. Wind, wave etc are all marginal sources at best.

One of the other issues we have to look at are electric cars. Nice idea, but where will the power come from? Same thing with those science fiction movies and Ronald Reagan’s shining city on a hill. All of these goals require abundant, cheap electricity. Cap & Trade does nothing to get us there. Zero, zip, nada. It is meant to force us to improve efficiencies, bt you can’t get blood from a stone nor cheap, clean electricity out of thin air.

There are two solutions out there, but no one seems to want to talk about them. The first is nuclear energy. The second is the transmission system.  The very first thing a conservationist looks at is, you guessed it, conservation. The current grid was built out  in the 1960’s at a time when utilities were government regulated and owned the lines. The first thing to be jettisoned when deregulation came to the power industry was the transmission system; the wires. They are expensive to maintain and don’t generate much revenue. So as a result, power loss across the lines themselves, because of lack of maintenance has risen from @ 5% 15 years ago to close to 10% today. This is a simple maintenance issue. However, the longer the current has to travel, the more that gets lost in transmission as well. This can be improved by adding more lines at greater efficiencies but is expensive and companies don’t want to bear the cost. That’s why the federal government gave utilities monopolies in the first place.  So they could afford to build the infrastructure and amortize it over 20-30-50 years. Now we’re back in the same boat again. The Smart Grid will  be a significant factor, as will having photovoltaic closer to the place of use. This may improve efficiencies by say, 25 or 30% best case. That’s pretty amazing. But the problem is that demand growth already outstrips supply by 25% per year and has done so for many years. Think again about all those electric cars and the burden they will place on the grid. We will need huge amounts of electricity at a time when Cap & Trade is shutting down coal fired plants across the country.

The elephant in the living room is nuclear power. Under Bush, 50 new plants were being submitted to the regulatory process. Today, they are to an extent in limbo. President Obama, who pushed for Cap & Trade, has offered no solutions to date that meet the reality check. Nuclear power is the cleanest, most efficient, lowest cost solution, and as the technology progresses problems such as supply ( there’s not a lot of uranium out there), and safety (so far the only fatal major accident was Chernobyl, and that was a horrible design flaw issue) will be further improved as will generating efficiency, reducing costs even further. The Chinese get it and are building plants. The French rely on nuclear for 40% of their needs. Here in the US of A, our legislators would rather enrich those same Wall Street dirtbags who got us into the financial mess by creating a whole new Ponzi scheme.

Well, at least you know where I stand on the subject.

Obama, Chavez & Castro

Honduras is faced with an unusual problem this week. The democratically elected president tried to force a referendum on holding a new constitutional convention in contravention of Hondura’s 1982 constitution. The Honduran Congress voted Mr. Zelaya out of office and a new president, the head of the Congress, was immediately appointed to serve out Mr. Zelaya’s remaining term.  The Supreme Court affirmed the decision. Mr. Zelaya was flown out of the country to exile in Costa Rica.

President Obama joined with Hugo Chavez, the dictator of Venezuela, and Fidel Castro, the most repressive dictator in the Americas for the past 50 years, in condemning this “coup”. Mr. Chavez has been busy for the past few weeks trying to close Venezuela’s last opposition television station so that he can control the news while Cuba only last week detained more dissidents.  AP and others are reporting the array of leaders in the Americas condemning this state of affairs. But we must ask ourselves another question. Why after stating his noninterventionist policiy in Iran is Mr. Obama so quick to speak out forcefully on much more opaque situation?

Mr Chavez has, since 1999, amassed power and curtailed human rights in his own country while subsidizing leftist parties throughout the Americas. In August 2007, two Venezuelans later identified as government agents, were arrested in Argentina at the Buenos Aires airport carrying a suitcase destined for the election campaign of Claudia Kirchner, the leftist candidate. A week before, another $800,000 was allowed through by another Argentinian official, who was later forced to resign. Other payments originating in Venezuela totaled hundreds of thousands more. Ms. Kirchner won the election and aligned her country with Venezuela immediately. The same thing has happened in Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia,  Paraguay, and it is believed by most Hondurans, in Honduras. Venezuelan influence and money have funded the elections of leftist leaders in all of these countries as the Bush administration was otherwise engaged and seemingly did not care. The political landscape is once again favoring statists and dictators, and when a reaction to the onslaught on the rule law occurs our president comes  down on the side of the bad guys.

Chavez think’s he’s  Fidel for the 21st century and idolizes his mentor. His goal is to outshine Simon Bolivar himself. His allies include Iran, Syria, Zimbabwe, Belarus, and Russia, some of the most repressive regimes in the world. Under his leadership, crime and economic inequality have skyrocketed in Venezuela and yet his desire to create a cult of personality is unique in its audacity in face of the facts. Repression and intimidation rule now in Venezuela. And don’t be fooled. Chavez has been reading Marx since he was 10 years old and has a messianic complex.

There is a mentality prevalent in Latin America that governments, not the markets, create and manage wealth. This crosses ideologies. It can be seen in Peronism in Argentina or Chavismo in Venezuela or the transnational Bolivarian empire which Chavez is trying to build. Markets, capitalism, and  religion are the enemy. To the Left, Jesus is a Marxist revolutionary. To them Juan Peron is a nationalist liberal, not the fascist dictator who destroyed one of the wealthiest countries in the world. There is a worship of thugs and crooks who as long as they spout the ideological diatribe of the populist, get away with wholesale theft and oppression. At the same time, the oligarchies are probably the strongest in the world. They use the Church as a shield for their plunder. The middle road of moderate capitalism is thus the exception rather than the rule.

So in Honduras there is a clash between the Constitution and the desire of the president to rewrite that constitution in the Bolivarian idiom. The reality seems to be that the goal is a dictatorship similar to that in Venezuela. With the Statists, you get one free election and then the darkness. Honduras barely has its head above water. It has the MS 13 to deal with and one of the highest murder rates in the Americas. Zelaya was actively trying to shut down the opposition media and replace it with his own. There were massive protests in the streets against him, and the two other pillars of government decisively opposed his actions.

So where does President Obama stand? Why of course with Castro and Chavez. What else would one expect from a community organizer? It fits his own world view. While the Europeans have called for mediation, Obama has taken a hard line. He has called the coup illegal despite the actions of the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court. This is the same president who 2 weeks ago cautioned for nonintervention in Iran, where the election was fraudulent and the regime repressed demonstrations violently. So far in Honduras, the rioting and protests have been limited. So why the aggressive stance now? Hillary Clinton has stated that the United States believes the situation has “evolved into a coup”. If the Congress and e Supreme Court have ruled decisively against the president, what then is supposed to happen? The Congress was discussing impeachment proceedings. Shouldn’t we allow the Hondurans to sort this all out first before acting precipitously? Hugo Chavez stands ready to invade and the Cuban Army are no slouches. These are  ideologically driven stormtroopers still. How will President Obama react then? Could the Hondurans count on American support, or perhaps we’ll just leave them dangling in the wind.

Back in the 1990’s a wonderfully titled book called “The Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot” was published. It tore into the hypocrisy and venality of the power structure throughout the continent. I sense today that it’s authors might want to focus their efforts a few degrees of latitude north. Obama’s statements should be worrisome for anyone who truly values freedom.

Dependence Day

We Hold these Truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”.

Pretty simple, and stunning its simplicity,  beauty, and truth. Read it to a villager in Niger or China or South America, and it has the same impact. The same basic yearnings unite all of us. And yet today in the country of its origin, we seem to have forgotten the opportunity given us by our forefathers. In the interest of comfort and safety the American people have slowly conceded many freedoms in increments and ceded critical thinking to others. In the interest of  power, some would limit these freedoms. In the interest of greed, others would coopt these freedoms. all of this from within, not without. These are issues we ourselves must discuss and debate, and yet there is little of the philosophical discussion of man’s place in the world and our duties and responsibilities, only rights we seem to invent as we go along.

The punk band The Clash wrote of a right not to be killed. Not a bad idea. But we don’t have the right to color television or a new car or to expropriate our neighbor’s stuff. We have freedoms and then some clearly outlined rights. Too often these days, everybody knows their rights, and these get kind of weird at times (ask any 12 year old) but not their responsibilities and duties. These go hand in hand.

We live in a world of dependence; on our parents when we’re young, on each other where we work and live; on the value of the money we earn; on our most basic services. But beyond this it’s all dependent on the choices we make, and we have to make these from knowledge, not ignorance. Responsibly, knowingly, and considering all of the options. It’s called free will. We were endowed with this gift by our Creator. It allows us to choose our path and build cathedrals or skyscrapers or write symphonies. It also allows us to hurt ourselves or enslave others. The Declaration outlines the grievances of the colonists against tyranny and liberates them. But it does not liberate them from responsibility. Rather, it very clearly calls on that responsibility to their Creator to act in a certain manner they felt was unassailable. With respect, with charity, with tolerance for one another within certain clearly outlined modes of conduct. This was dismissed by the adage “times change”. It is true, but they should change for the better and it is for us to do this using our better instincts.

Today we are risking what independence we have left. We are battered financially and our leaders don’t seem to have done a very good job in presenting us with viable alternatives to help us regain our standing. Greed rules, and “what’s in it for me” are the operative philosophies. Morality and gravitas are mocked openly, and pseudosciences are replacing the wonder of opportunity and invention and creativity. We are presented with a rapidly expanding picture of our universe, and we are watching “Dancing with the Stars” instead. Cults of celebrity and the absurd have more credence than the fundamental truths. Deconstructionism and revisionism in the face of the facts dominate intellectual discourse. The Id takes precedence.

The signposts are still there though. The Declaration can never be erased, but as Ronald Reagan said “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States when men were free”.

It all goes back to the basics in the end. The same philosophies that propelled Western Civilization are those that will propel us into a better future. This is not a time for sophistry or cant, but for common sense, hard work, and a rededication to the principles of our fathers. No one ever said it was going to be easy, but the beauty is that we have a road map in the Declaration and the Constitution and the founding principles.

In defense of Sarah Palin

I think we were all stunned today when the governor of Alaska announced her resignation. Obviously under pressure, she outlined her accomplishments as governor and left a mystified Alaska press corps. What we do know is that she has been vilified beyond any public figure in recent memory by much lesser people than herself for no reason except that she was a threat to the established order.

It didn’t seem to matter whether it was from the right or left, the Beltway elite and their sycophants descended like carrion birds on Ms. Palin and her family. Even the Mafia doesn’t go after spouses and children. And despite this; despite the 50 ethics charges and the unprecedented legions of opposition researchers that descended on Alaska like dung beetles, nothing was found. And the vilification continued anyway. The most vile things were said by people who should certainly know better; television personalities, news anchors, politicians. It should be remembered that these kinds of things can have a funny way of biting you in the ass later on.

What ever happened to the American sense of fair play? What happened to our common decency? What happened to our respect for getting out there and getting involved and getting things done? Are we jackals simply ripping each other into bloody shreds now? For there are no lions left… only mangy, sadly twisted buffoons crawling out of their ratholes on the Upper East Side and Georgetown and most of the statehouses in the country conning the rest of us with a cacophony of lies.

As our president lies to us again and again… As our Congress’ approval rating descends below zero. As scandal after scandal bares the lies and venality and whoredom of Pelosi and Reid and Ensign and Sanford and Rangel  Congress has the gall to pass an$800 Billion stimulus bill overloaded beyond comprehension  with pork and a  multi Trillion dollar sham of a climate change bill without reading them and the press gives them a hall pass and then vilifies someone who actually gives a damn and steps up to do what she thinks is right.  It’s like having the country club set golf clapping as the looters carry off anything not nailed down. What the hell is the matter with us?

Those same values of Ms. Palin go back 10 generations and were the ones that got this country through a revolution and a civil war and the struggle for civil rights. She embodies the philosophy of “do the right thing”. Have our values skewed so badly?

Was Harry Truman brilliant? FDR didn’t think so. Grant was considered a drunk and a fool and a failure. Dwight Eisenhower was buried at the Pentagon in the shadows when his country called upon him. The United States Army was 10 million strong and great leaders arose from the ranks to carry us through our darkest days. It’s funny and it is exceptional that in this country leaders arise from the mundane to accomplish great things. It is what separates this country from all others.

Ms. Palin has done some great things already. Streamlining state government and cleaning out the detritus is not an easy thing. One automatically makes enemies in the bureaucracy and the gravy train. She stood up to some of the most powerful businessmen in the world and helped build a pipeline that would otherwise probably not have been built. In Alaska, environmentalism means making peace with the bears and the moose in your backyard. I have found people who are dealing with nature every day much more practical and solution oriented than theorists sitting behind desks 4,000 miles away. When you depend upon that environment for your livelihood, you respect it.

Taking up the gauntlet of a presidential campaign is a scary thing. As Truman said, ” if you can’t take the heat stay out of the kitchen”. But when is enough enough? I think we have reached a tipping point. I think we must all, regardless of our political beliefs, say “no more will we countenance the vile and disgraceful blood sport politics has become”. I may or may not vote for Ms. Palin if and when she  runs for office. But I will judge her on her actions and deeds, not some twisted propaganda.

But we must now hold all our leaders and ourselves to a higher standard. The nuclear warfare politics have to stop. We must say “enough’ to the jackals. As they say, “speak now, or forever hold your peace”.

A Bloody Honduras?

So Mr. Zelaya’s plane was not allowed to land at Tegucigalpa airport as had been reiterated several times by the interim government. Zelaya’s supporters tried to rush the fences and shots rang out, killing at least a few. The Nicaraguan army  is rumored to be mobilizing towards the Honduran border. And this could all have been averted with a measured response from our president.

Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua’s president, is an avowed communist and ally of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. None of them have much respect for the rule of law or human rights. He has few illusions about Mao’s dictum about political power. Now, faced with a crisis in which perhaps hundreds or thousands may die, and in which all of the branchs of President Zelaya’s government including his own party are aligned against him, Mr. Zelaya has returned to Managua vowing to try again tomorrow.

Common sense seems uncommon these days. But to me, it would seem that the United Nations, the OAS, Mr. Obama, and his allies might want to prevent bloodshed rather than encouraging it.

AP quotes the director of the Latin American Studies Institute, Harley Shaiken,  one of the most leftist academics in the country, as saying about the interim regime “they miscalculated. I think they thought it would play as a constitutional change, as the Supreme Court and Congress were involved. But that’s not how it played. He called it “a combination of arrogance and isolation fueled by the traditional oligarchy in Honduras”.

Now if my president allied himself closely with Hugo Chavez and tried to hold an election, as Zelaya did, in direct violation of the Constitution, I would be deeply worried about that president’s intentions whether in Honduras or anywhere else. If I were in the Senate or Supreme Court I would consider taking action. If then that same president then took to the streets with a mob to try and steamroller the issue, again against the law, would that constitute a valid reason for the Hondurans to remove him from office? Mr. Shaiken’s analysis reveals his own  bias. Unfortunately, these are the kinds of people AP and the media go to on a regular basis.

Honduras, and common sense, are at the brink. The blood will not be on the hands of the Honduran people and government, but on those of Mr. Zelaya, Mr. Ortega, Mr. Chavez, and Mr. Obama.

Iran’s Descent into Fascism

Seemingly unnoticed by many, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard announced that they had taken over the nation’s security and warned political opponents that there is no middle ground. This is a dangerous new development in the aftermath of the recent elections.This is being portrayed as a takeover of the country, which in essence means that the democratic facade of Iranian politics has now been cast aside and what is left is a dictatorship.

The Guard’s support for Ahmedinejad is absolute, as he was formerly a high ranking member. A major crackdown is underway, with some of the allied mullahs calling for executions of dissenters. They also immediately threatened Iran’s opponents with retaliation for any criticism. This was not the government. It was the Army.

The opposition is preparing to commemorate those killed in a 1999 attack by government thugs on students in dormitories of Teheran University in which dozens of students were beaten, some quite severely. That incident was the result of student protests of harsh new censorship laws at the time. It resulted in protests across the country for 5 days afterwards.

Today the lines have been drawn sharply. The Revolutionary Guard are in charge and have warned the dissidents clearly that they will maintain control by any means necessary.What we are seeing is the crushing of any remaining dissent within Iran, and the emergence of a blackshirted dictatorship with no pretence of dissent. This is the nazification of Iran. We will know more on Thursday, but when one side has all the guns, they usually win.

Obama’s Big Mistake on Honduras

New information has been published about the genesis of the Honduran political crisis that contradicts the policies undertaken by the OAS, U.N., Obama, Chavez, and Castro. All of them have been calling the situation in Honduras a coup and are attempting to force Mr. Zelaya upon the country, and yet it seems that the decisions of the Honduran government  have  perfectly legal underpinnings  based upon their Constitution.

In this document, Title II, Chapter 3, Article 42 clearly states that “la calidad de ciudedano se pierde – por coartar la libertad de sufragio, adulterar documentos electorales o emplear medios fraudulentos para burlar la voluntad popular”. In English this translates to “the quality of the citizen is lost if ” they limit the freedom of suffrage, adulterate electoral documents, or to use fraudulent means to deceive the popular will.” This would seem to be a reasonable and clear case of Mr. Zalaya adulterating electoral documents.

Why did our State Department’s experts on Latin American law not translate something so fundamental to the underpinnings of the president’s decision to join in the condemnation of Honduran government? Why the rush to judgment? Why the continued support of a populist whose own people have renounced him and who is supported by our enemies?

Shoddiness and a roughshod interpretation of the law, whether ours or those of other countries, is a hallmark of the current administration. There is a deeply disturbing lack of respect for the rule of law. To Obama, a lawyer, the law means what he wants it to mean and his interpretation is far to the left of the American public. He is clearly wrong on this one.

Suicide California Style; Driving the bus off the cliff in Sacramento

California is in the midst of the worst budget crisis in its history. The state is $41 billion in the hole and the State Assembly still dithers onwards putting the hard decisions off till October. The major banks, according to the Wall Street Journal, have informed the state that they will not accept the state’s IOU’s. This is a very bad thing. It is the height of irresponsibility in itself, but when considering the seriousness of the crisis, the leadership should be tarred and feathered.

To give one a sense of the outright crazo stupidity of the leadership, one must consider Karen Bass (D – Wilshire/Los Angeles) the Speaker of the Assembly. Remember, the state has already cut many employee’s salaries and forced many  to take furloughs as well as an interim measure, and yet Ms. Bass, when asked by Tavis Smiley on June 15 the simple question “we know that today is the deadline for a balanced budget and  obviously it’s not going to happen today” responded:

“well actually in fact we have a budget that is in place”

Today, July 11, there is no budget in place. When asked why the State legislature did not cut their own salaries and budgets when cutting others,she replied that she had two children in college, a non sequitur.  Ms. Bass should realize that a lot of us are making similar sacrifices. She, on the other hand, is driving the state over the side of a cliff while enjoying all the perks and entitlements of the office.

So far, the state has taken only very limited half measures, and the latest fantasy of the Left seems to be that it was all the fault of Prop 13 . This is patently false. When enacted, Prop 13 limited the property tax  on residences to 1% of the full cash value of the property at the time of sale. The Democrats argue that this has crippled the state. However, California also allows a 2% annual assessment increase, and has the highest turnover of residential sales in the nation. Thus every time the property sells it is reassessed and property taxes levied accordingly. In addition, hundreds of thousands of new homes have been built in the state, and under Mello-Roos legislation, most areas with significant construction levied a 2%+ tax for a fixed period of time, usually 5-10 years, in order to pay for infrastructure, so those costs have been covered.

The reality is that California has experienced record state tax revenues from all sources for nigh on 20 years, and in the past several years has managed to outspend this by 20+%. In 2008, when the state was faced with a $20 Billion imbalance, the difference was 25%. Since Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected, the state’s population has slowed growth considerably, and yet the state government has added over 100,000 jobs. Whole new classes of employees such as home health care providers (unionized by the SEIU) have been created.

But it gets worse. California has 12% of the nation’s population, but over 30% of it’s welfare recipients. To top it off, the Democrats in the state legislature refuse to allow any investigatory function to probe fraud and abuse of the system. That same refusal holds true for the home health care sector, where suspicions of abuse are rife. There is simply no accountability for most programs today. California has become a magnet for graft. And the mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsome, who wants to run for governor, announced that he wants all the food in San Francisco government facilities under his jurisdiction to be organic. This is not fiction. It is our reality.

The Central Valley, one of the most productive agricultural regions in the  world, is being starved for water by the decision by a Federal appellate judge to turn off the floodgates to protect the Delta Snail Darter, a potentially endangered fish that may or may not be indigenous to the Sacramento River. As a result, orchards that take 20 years to bear fruit are dying, and the agricultural industry has crashed. The official unemployment rates in Fresno and Bakersfield and Modesto are 15-20%, but the casual rate, after the unemployment runs out, is over 30%. And this is hitting hardest those who can afford it the least. Family farms and farm workers. Life is tough enough in the Valley. Now some judge in San Francisco has made it impossible. Where are the United Farmworkers on this issue?

Drive through the business parks in Southern California. The most common sign in many now is “For Lease”. Tens of thousands of jobs have been lost, especially in manufacturing. Fishing grounds have been closed because of overfishing. The forests have been closed for logging. Even slant drilling for offshore oil has been blocked as the price of oil has risen.  But Senator Dianne Feinstein recently got an exception from the Interior Department that will allow a company in which her husband has a significant financial interest in to mine gold in Northern California. Where are the LA Times and San Francisco Chronicle on this story?

If you have studied economics, it is well understood that wealth is only created by four industries; manufacturing, real estate, natural resources, and agriculture. Everything else is a service industry. The state government of California has created a perfect storm that has brought all four pillars of our economy to their knees. Basic wealth is what pays the taxes for government and for schools and for doctors and for transportation and for laundries and for the movie industry. Much of our economy is built on disposable income, and without the fundamentals it will all eventually collapse.

Go to Sacramento and speak with our legislators and you will find so many one note Charlies it’s scary. Whether it’s gay rights or protecting developers or environmentalism or the unions, so many of our legislators have either been bought or have such a limited range of knowledge we may never get out of the mess we’re in. California is fighting for its life. There are common sense solutions, but far there is little common sense being applied. Do we stand and watch as the bus tumbles end over end down the side of the cliff or do we act?

If Shepard Fairey Can get Away With It

July 9, 2009 – Protests in Iran

Today marked the 10th anniversary of the violent suppression of student protests at Teheran University in 1999 against the closing of opposition newspapers and the arrests of reporters and editors. Several people were killed and hundreds injured and arrested that day and in the riots in the days after.

Today, opponents of the Ahmedinejad regime again took to the streets to commemorate that event and renew their call for greater freedom. The protesters are mainly students and the people one would see on the street any day of the week; old men, housewives, workers, small businessmen. They live in a society where they have already been warned of dire consequences for their peaceful protests. The videos that have come out show people marching and chanting. There is little violence on the part of the protesters both today’s protests and in the aftermath of the recent election. And yet, to quell these demonstrations, the regime has used dogs, clubs, and guns. It has also been reported that many of the Basiji, the paramilitaries most responsible for the violence, do not speak Farsi. The police have fared better in public opinion, but not much.

In The Guardian, a doctor working in a large hospital in Teheran paints a dark picture. While the official death toll from the recent protests is listed at 20, the doctor’s hospital had recorded 38 riot related deaths, while a colleague at another hospital nearby reported 10. The Basiji have been confiscating the identification cards of the dead and wounded. Medical staff are under pressure to hide the casualties, and one doctor committed suicide. Many of the victims had multiple gunshot wounds and the downward trajectory path through their bodies indicates that the shooters would probably have been at an elevated location such as rooftops. this was premeditated state terrorism.

Video on the web shows thousands of protesters today. Not nearly the numbers seen in the recent demonstrations, but with the threats by the government of the most severe consequences, this is not a surprise. Dozens of known activists have been arrested in the past week to prevent the movement from growing, and cell phones and computers are being confiscated to examine call and e mail histories.Government agents are searching Facebook and Twitter to identify their opponents. The opposition has grown from the supporters of Mousavi to include a broader spectrum of Iran’s population more concerned with the direction of the government.

In response, the government has undertaken an Orwellian propaganda campaign to both crush dissent and promote their version of the truth. The aforementioned doctor wrote something about the state of government pervasiveness and control that must be repeated.

” Whoever you are in Iran and whatever you do, it is easy to doubt yourself. Many of us who witnessed this state aggression watch Iranian news and listen to the authorities and start to question what we saw. The bias is so great you begin to feel isolated, question what you have witnessed. At night, the Basiji swept the riot zones and cleared away evidence. They want us to think nothing happened. They want us to be blind.”

This same philosophy of government holds true today in many countries, including the United States and Britain. Whether in Teheran, or London, or Tegucigalpa, or Washington, we must hold our leaders to account for the truth and for the defense of basic human rights. In the meantime, watered down statements by the G-8 leaders guarantee the killings and oppression will continue until the unlikely event Iranians rise up against their dictator. Far more likely in this world of prevarication and appeasement, the jackboots will do their best to crush the human spirit. We are seeing the flowering of Islamofascism. Soon will come the uniforms and rallies once again unless we give both moral and concrete support to the basic human dignity of the least among us.

Does Cap & Trade Doom our World?

Jim Hansen, the director of of NASA’s Goddard Flight Center in Maryland is one of the country’s primary researchers on the causes of climate change. His work is grounded in science, and he’s very worried about carbon levels and their effect on global weather and water. He wrote an article posted on the Huffington Post today that caught my attention. One of the primary issues with the climate change debate has been the scientific underpinnings. There is considerable disagreement over cause and effect, but I for one am always willing to listen to a logical argument. Mr. Hansen’s topic this morning was the absolute worthlessness of the Waxman-Markey Cap & Trade bill. I agree. He points out several inconvenient truths about the bill, including:

. It guts the Clean Air Act, removing the EPA’s ability to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants
. It sets meager targets – 13% less CO2 emissions in 2020
. It sabotages carbon reduction by providing fictitious offsets by which others are paid to preserve forests, while logging and deforestation will simply be moved elsewhere.
. It has no provisions for preventing insider trading by participants.
. It provides no pricing structure for carbon, which allows no foundation for an understanding of the mechanisms for carbon reduction and cost/benefit analysis
. It is “astoundingly inefficient”

What has been passed is clearly a profiteer’s paradise with literally no benefit to the environment. Mr. Hansen then goes on to discuss setting a specific carbon fee which would be the equivalent of perhaps $1.00/gallon of gasoline. He discusses greater efficiency in the devices consuming energy. He then discusses  a dividend for carbon reduction. I can agree with much of this as well.

I strongly agree that we must  become much more efficient in our consumption of the world’s resources. Whether it is fisheries or minerals or forests, we now live in a time where we know for certain the earth’s resources have hard limits. We must dig and drill deeper to find minerals and materiel, and we are overfishing our oceans.  We are throwing away as much as we consume. These are facts, not politics. As a matter of common sense and at the very least, we must ensure that the lungs of our planet, the forests and phytoplankton and bacterioplankton, are preserved in order that life on the planet may continue.

As the global population increases or even if it stabilizes, the demand for resources simply because of the transition of so many economies into higher technology and better living conditions cannot be accommodated for much longer unless we become more efficient. Look at computer technology. The cost drops exponentially as we implement better and lower cost manufacturing methods and materials. But even there, many of the environmental dictates make little sense because they were driven not by hard data, but by bureaucracy and politics similar to Cap & Trade.

Let me use an example. In the 1960’s and early 70’s certain chlorinated solvents were used in the manufacture of electronics as cleaners and developing solutions. They were highly efficient, safe and could be recycled, but there was a concern because of atmospheric damage. These materials were slowly phased out under the Montreal Protocols. The replacement was first milder solvents, and then water based solvents, and with each changeover, the chemical efficiency was reduced substantially. Instead of releasing chlorinated hydrocarbons into the atmosphere, greater and greater quantities of energy and water as well as other materials which have their own deleterious effect on the environment, were used. The characteristics of those original solvents are well known. They are the most efficient and lowest cost technologies in this case. Would it not be better to make the original process much more efficient and improve recycling? At a 10X efficiency improvement? 20X? Sometimes innovation can be both more cost effective and better for the environment. We need to do better.

Cap & Trade will, along with the growing energy demands of our world, put a huge strain on power generation. The use of coal has gone from 1485 million tons in 1965 to 2929 million tons in 2005 (source: BP). Cap & Trade can only eventually force the closure of the most inefficient plants in a logical world. However, the world is not logical. The developing world overwhelmingly uses coal and is not about to stop any time soon. The two largest users, China and India, refuse to have anything to do with Cap & Trade. So where does that leave us? That is the crux of the issue. Even under aggressive timetables carbon dioxide reduction goals will not be met under this legislation. But someone’s going to get rich, which I am sure was the intention all along. You see, the oligarchs in Washington and on Wall Street really don’t care as long as they get theirs. The planet may die but they will be seated in the First Class lounge of the Titanic.

The shift to alternative energies will place a massive demand increase on the electrical power grid. For the long term, this is the only solution. The increase in demand by electrical devices alone will ensure this, and if personal transportation goes electric, the demand and strain on infrastructure will increase exponentially. We need more efficient energy and we need it fast. Nuclear is the only real option long term for the world’s infrastructure. It is also the cheapest technology. Nuclear can also generate hydrogen cheaply as an alternative to oil from a virtually limitless supply of water, and hydrogen burns clean. And yet little has been done to accelerate implementation of the technology. It is clearly the the best solution, and with accelerated work on safer, more efficient new technologies we can meet the need to reduce carbon missions and increase the overall available power to the requirements necessary to build a better world. But in Washington, Bonn, Rome, London, and Moscow, there is only silence.

When I see an old airplane taking to the skies I stand in awe of the men who built it. It’s durable, and like they say, they just don’t build them like that anymore. But planned obsolescence is part and parcel of commerce today. The environmentalists talk about recycling and green materials, but the reality is that in most cases this construction simply reduces the durability of the product and we throw it away more quickly. Look at a Weber barbecue built 10 years ago and one built today. The more recent vintage will almost certainly end up at the dump much sooner. Better product quality and lifetime is another area for improvement.

Politics is driven by knee jerk response in many cases. Mass propaganda machines whether in commerce or politics stand ready to sell a product or candidate and the facts and relative merits are immaterial. Many campaigns have become Orwellian in their deception. Cap & Trade is one of these. The Chinese and Indians understand this and will have no part of it. If Mr. Hansen’s numbers are correct, we may all die as a result. The G 8 meeting this week only stands the United States up to ridicule for our sophistry.

President Bush began the process of rebuilding and adding to our nuclear infrastructure. It takes 10 years to complete a plant, and there are only a few in the early stages. In most cases ground has not yet been broken or permits obtained. It will be years before we see a single watt of clean cheap power. In the meantime, under the new administration, nuclear power has fallen out of favor. Nary a word has been said.At a time when there is urgency for a number of reasons, our Congress is enacting legislation that is both venal and ineffective. The same hucksters responsible for the mess on Wall Street have another opportunity to cash in.

We have a defining moment ahead of us. Do we use common sense, hard work and ingenuity to find the solutions or do we leave it to the sophists and market speculators? We need a new Manhattan Project. We need a sense of urgency that we can gather around as a country. We are in the midst of the worst recession in decades and Congress is pissing away trillions of dollars on vapor and pork. A clean efficient energy infrastructure and common sense invention will benefit the planet and our economy, leaving a better world for future generations.

The recession isn’t over yet

Here in San Francisco, the signs of the recession are all around us. Attending the SEMI show, the world’s premier venue for the semiconductor industry, the halls are quiet and the outlook gloomy. Semiconductors are the leading indicator for the electronics industry, which is just about anything these days, and this does not bode well for the overall economy.

Walking the streets and visiting restaurants, as one does on these trips, there is a curious lifelesness. Restaurants and small businesses are closed with “for lease” signs, and the activity on the streets seems subdued. The restaurants we have visited seem to be only partially full, and when asked, owners and waiters say business is off considerably.

In California’s Central Valley, farmers have erected “Congress’s Dustbowl” signs to protest the lack of water caused by the damming of the Sacramento River waters to the Valley because of the Federal injunction protecting the Snail Darter, a fish which may or may not be endangered. You can see the dead groves of almonds and fallow fields as you drive up I-5 from Los Angeles. It’s much worse in the foothills of the Sierra, where irrigation makes all the difference.

July is the time when business starts picking up again. The car companies are building new models and orders for tools and materials pick up. Business ramps up until October, when it begins to tail off until the end of the year. This year is different, though. July has been quiet. Volumes are not picking up. There is no buzz in the manufacturing sector.

The deficit numbers look good for the moment, but the reality is that oil imports are way down and while exports of grain and raw materials are up, manufactured goods exports are stagnant. The airlines are hurting, and a couple may not last till the end of the year. This will then hurt Boeing, especially, America’s prime technology exporter. Delays on the 787 are not helping them either. By the way, this export profile more closely resembles America’s role in the mid 19th Century, when our manufacturing industries were immature and natural resources and agriculture were our primary exports.

Management, especially in the manufacturing sector, are like deer in the headlights. Frozen, unsure of what to do next. Conserving cash is the operative mode. This further stalls the economy. Reinvestment in plant & equipment is critical to a modern economy and provides its own spur to productivity.

While Wall Street has been positive recently, the underlying signs are not good. The next big surge in real estate foreclosures will be in the higher end homes in the $600,000 – $1,500,000 range. This is the heart of the economy in some ways. These are the people who had the disposable income. Now, with higher taxes and falling incomes, they are being hit just as the middle class was hit last year.

The Cap & Trade bill will certainly be a brake on the economy. Some say it will cost every household up to $2,000/year. Now, Congress wants to raise taxes to pay for their poorly thought out health care bill.  Has anyone actually read it yet? The president is trying his best to ram this through as fast as he can while he has a majority, but once again, no one is seeing the details. The burden from this bill will even further weigh on the economy as the best medical care system in the world deteriorates. That is a stone cold guarantee, by the way. Fewer and fewer breakthroughs, because managed care will be the order of the day. Look how well the government runs Medicare (bankrupt in 2017) now and you’ll get a peek at health care in the future.

So where are the bright spots? The stimulus money has not even hit in most sectors, and much of what has been spent has gone to the states with the most out of control spending. The only sector growing is the public sector, which does absolutely nothing to spur the economy. The TARP funds disappeared into the accounts of the banks to make their balance sheets look better. Little of this money is being loaned out. If one looks at the facts objectively, so far, over a trillion dollars has been paid out to those who have acted most irresponsibly in our society; reckless banks, reckless states, and reckless borrowers. And the rest of us are still being asked to knuckle down and pay more. The government is about to create a “right to health care” out of thin air which we cannot afford even under the best of circumstances. So where does the money come from? How is this even Constitutional?

The sycophants in the press tell us that the recession is ending. Not from where I sit, and somehow, being in manufacturing and out on the road in the real world, I have the feeling that perhaps the people in the bubble might want to look around and see what is really going on. Whether it’s San Francisco or Michigan, where unemployment is hitting 20%, or Florida, this country is still hurting badly and needs to begin the recovery.

We can turn this thing around. But we have to have the common sense and willpower to work hard and make sacrifices and act for the long term. This is still the greatest country on earth, and we have the resources and talents to learn quickly from from our mistakes and capitalize on that knowledge.

Two Deaths in Afghanistan

Up close against the Pakistani border provinces of North and South Waziristan is Paktika province in Afghanistan. My friends are there now spread across some of the more Godforsaken real estate on the planet. The area is like the foothills of Southern California without the charm and more altitude. Combat Outpost Zerok is one of the more “picturesque” outposts of our military in Afghanistan. There’s a single rough track they call a road that runs miles in from another dirt track. The resupply crews call it “Ambush Alley”. Think about Gunga Din and lose the illusion. Aggregate carboy walls and sandbags and shit burning details, some Conex containers to offer some cover from the elements and very small arms fire, and a couple of generators to run the lights and radios, and you get the idea.  Lots and lots of sandbags and razor wire.

On the 4th of July, like many others, I read of an attack on an outpost somewhere in Afghanistan that killed two American soldiers. The AP reported that the Taliban had launched a coordinated attack first with a suicide truck bomber to try and blow the gates (which failed), and then with coordinated mortar, machine gun, and RPG fire, raking a quiet FOB Zerok. Over 200 Talibi hit pretty much at once from 2 sides with everything they had.

The American paratroopers on the base reacted quickly and their training took over. The machine gunners, infantrymen, and mortarmen all went into action as all hell broke loose. Medics set up an aid station for the casualties, both theirs and ours. Funny how Americans are like that. We’ll rain hell down on our enemies and then go out and police the area and take extraordinary measures to save their lives after we’re done. It’s a Judeo Christian thing.

One of the mortarmen, PFC Aaron Fairbairn, 20, of Aberdeen, WA was hit by shrapnel from a mortar bomb. His team member, PFC  Justin Casillas, 19, of Dunnegan, CA lifted Aaron over his shoulder and ran towards the aid station. They did not make it. Another mortar bomb exploded, and both of them were mortally injured. 7 other soldiers were wounded in the attack. The attack went on for hours with air and Apache support that helped keep the base from being overrun.

Our soldiers devastated the enemy. Dozens were killed, and the bloodstains leading back across the border to the safe haven for the Taliban were many. These were murderous thugs trying to impose the worst sort of degradation on their own people, and their sole goal was to take as many American scalps as possible on our most sacred civic holiday for the glory of Allah and Sheikh Sirajuddin Haqqani.

PFC Casillas was buried yesterday back in the central Valley where he grew up. He always wanted to be a soldier, and he paid the soldier’s price. He was met by his family and friends and the Patriot Guard at the airport, and the Woodland and Dunnegan Fire Departments and CHP provided an escort and honor guard. Yesterday they and other public safety officers did the same again as they laid him to rest. It seems that across the country, mainly in the small towns, we reach out now to the families to honor these kids, and some old men sometimes too, who pay that price. People were lined along the streets in respect as PFC Casillas was taken to his final rest , holding flags and covering their hearts with their palms.

PFC Fairbairn was met with a similar escort when he arrived at the Hoquiam, WA airport out on the coast south of Seattle at the base of the Olympic Peninsula.  He enlisted in early 2008 and this was his first deployment. He will be buried tomorrow.

These young men knew their duty and did it in the face of death to protect all Americans. As we had our barbecues and picnics and parades, and as we ate too much and drank too much, these kids died for our freedoms to say and think and do as we pretty well please. We don’t see this in the suburbs and cities. Death is distant, hermetically sealed off. It’s in the small towns that we see the price of war more clearly.

We must respect the  sacrifice of these young men and so many others who have paid that price and demand more of ourselves in return. It’s called keeping the faith. May God rest their souls and comfort their loved ones and buddies back in Afghanistan.

Fixing California

Just after Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected, he hired a woman named Donna Arduin to help sort out California’s budgets and expenses. She had come from Florida and prior to that, Michigan and New York, where she had worked for other  governors in balancing budgets. Her job was to review the budget and then perhaps fix same. The California Performance Review actually only reviewed the states operations and administration, with 1,200 recommendations for streamlining government. It did not tackle the underlying issues, but it was a start. Unfortunately, not a lot of it was implemented because of political and ideological turf battles. Almost all of the consolidation measures recommended were trashed, and the government continued to grow like Godzilla when the poor Japanese government officials found out the hard way he liked being zapped with laser beams. So that didn’t work, and the state added 100,000 employees along with who knows how many local governmental jobs. It seems no one really has a good handle on the whole thing.

Well I have a few, humble ideas that will help.

1. English Only in Schools – ESL has been proven not to work. There is a huge bureaucracy that a – fails in its mission to mainstream students, and b-redirects resources away from fundamental education in the basics.

Start when the children are 5. They are little sponges for knowledge at that age. Classes for basic English can be a part of the curriculum. I believe that class can be called, “English”. This represents billions of dollars in savings. We need to build togetherness, not otherness, and a common language and values are critical to our future as a nation. Studies done in the 1920’s showed that mainstreaming is critical to the successful integration of immigrant communities.

2 – Get rid of 50% of the education bureaucracy – The LAUSD has well over 100 administrators making over $150,000/year with a year round car and driver to boot. What they are administrating I am not sure, as the drop out rate is over 50% in Los Angeles, so cut back by 50% since they are obviously not doing their jobs.

3 – Restore order to the classroom – give the teachers the authority they used to have and cut out the BS. Catholic school teachers regularly have 30-35 students/class. Why? because there is order and a focus on learning. Couple this with more truancy enforcement and parental penalties. Maybe they can pick up street trash like they do on the highways. We’re all for a cleaner California. This will cut more costs.

4 – California has 12% of the country’s population but 31% of it’s welfare cases. We have no fraud investigation. None. Don’t you think there is some connection there? Where is workfare? Are we paying for welfare for illegal immigrants? Sorry, we can’t afford that anymore.

5 – Stop paying for Viagra and other discretionary medicines. We’re broke, get it. We can’t afford to pay for Grandpa to make whoopie, much as we’d like to. Review the whole process.

6 – Get rid of unnecessary litigation. Prop 65 and the ADA are plaintiff’s lawyer’s goldmines. Silicon Valley has been crippled by the plaintiff’s bar. Medical litigation is like winning the lottery. There are legitimate cases, but when a doctor is paying more than half his income in insurance costs, that is crazy. Litigation costs are driving business… you know, the people who provide the real jobs that pay the taxes, out of state. It hasn’t gotten any better, and all the while certain legislators are trying to reopen the Worker’s Comp Pandora’s Box, the single success of the Schwarzenegger administration.

7 – Everybody pays income tax. Right now, the majority does not. That isn’t fair. Not a lot in the lower income brackets, but some. We all buy into the system then.

8 – Bring back manufacturing – the reason manufacturing has left California is the cost of doing business. Regulations, taxes, and legal costs are all way above most any state in the Union. California used to be called the land of opportunity. Let’s make it so again.

9 – Build nuclear power plants – They’re greener than anything else and provide the lowest cost power.  The state is chronically power short. We have to pay market prices for imported power.  Make it cheap and plentiful and business will come and living costs will drop.

10 – Take a page from Sheriff Joe – Prison is prison and Sheriff Arpaio has had some good ideas for cutting costs. Not all, perhaps, but many.  Gavin Newsome, on the other hand, wants to serve only organic food in San Francisco. Take your pick.

11 – Fix the Ag mess. California is the world’s breadbasket and yet we are killing it off. As the world needs more food than ever before, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot.

12 – Get rid of the junk in the university system. How many departments and course are just plain dumb? Get back to the basics.

These are just a few ideas. If people want to make them left or right that’s something else. To me they’re common sense.

The Pressure Ratchets up on Honduras

The Financial Times reported on the 17th that Hugo Chavez, on a visit to Bolivia, stated that Manuel Zelaya was heading for Honduras, threatening civil war. This week, Zelaya has stated that he is prepared to begin resistance this weekend if talks are not successful. As Chavez has had a massive influx of small arms into Venezuela over the past 3 years, if war occurs, the likelihood is that the arms for Zelaya’s forces will have come from Venezuela. Chavez has also been accused of sending agitators into Honduras. Mr. Chavez, who on July 9 contacted the United States State Department ’s Undersecretary of Western Hemisphere Affairs, Thomas Shannon, to discuss the situation in Honduras, is now accusing the United States government of backing the Honduras “coup”. he recently stated “The cruel and beastly hand of the Yanqui Empire, trying not only to overturn democracy in Honduras, will next come for all of us who are trying, with the people, to implement the processes of democratic change”. In an article in today’s Caracas “El Universal”, it was reported that Chavez stated that “the coup was perpetrated by the U.S. Department of State” and he does not trust “the empire which is behind Obama”. Chavez had only recently accepted the exchange of ambassadors with the U.S. after Chavez had expelled the American ambassador.

In San Jose, Costa Rica, both sides ended discussions on Sunday on finding a solution in talks mediated by  President Oscar Arias, who has already won the 1987 Nobel Prize for his work brokering peace agreements in Central America, after mutual antipathy prevented the principals from even sitting in the same room. Mr. Arias had proposed that Zelaya serve out a term shortened to October and that all parties form a reconciliation government with a general amnesty. The United States supports the idea of a unity government. The Micheletti government accepted a number of these proposals but remains firm in its desire to see Zalaya face some form of justice or stay out of the country. The recent discovery of computers in the presidential palace with data that seems to indicate that the results of the referendum proposed by Zelaya that started the crisis had been falsified in favor of the former president prior to the election has complicated matters further. Both sides are saying that they will continue discussions, possibly as early as tomorrow.

In Tegucigalpa, it was reported that hundreds of Zelaya supporters protested in front of the Congress building. The Honduran government has  petitioned the State Department to send observers  in response to statements by Zelaya’s supporters of heavy civilian deaths in the aftermath of the coup. There have been no reports of political violence as the Army and police have been actively trying to maintain calm. 4,000 protested in Tegucigalpa last Friday, with smaller protests in other cities.

In the meantime, the United States ($16.5 Million in military funding) and European Union (65 Million Euros/all aid) have cut off some aid to the interim government, and organizations including the OAS and United Nations have suspended  programs. Venezuela cut off oil deliveries, while Nicaragua refused access to their air space for Micheletti’s trip to Costa Rica. The U.S. maintains its threat to cut off another $180 million in development aid and loans from the World Bank and Inter American Development Bank have been suspended.   Today, the International Transport Workers Union has called on its membership to boycott Honduran flagged ships.

Mr. Zelaya has ratcheted up the rhetoric, repeatedly accusing the United States of complicity in the coup as well, and has appealed across Latin America for support.  But the reality seems to be that the only sticking point now seems to be Mr. Zelaya’s return.

Sources:  NY Times, AFP, Reuters, Financial Times, Inside Costa Rica, LA Times

UPDATE – The Washington Times reports this morning that video footage from the Central Bank of Honduras shows Enrique Flores Lanza removing the equivalent of US$2.2 Million on June 24, just prior to the circumstances which led to President Zelaya’s deportation. The funds were said to be destined for use by the president in the referendum on presidential term limits that is at the center of the dispute.

A Matter of Justice

The saga of Professor Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. James Crowley continues to make headlines around the United States as we explore the nature of race relations in the 21st Century. What seems to have been a minor altercation now involves the President of the United States and is being scrutinized under a microscope not for the facts of the matter, but for intentions and reactions. The question seems to be “where do you stand?”.

This is part of our ongoing national dialogue regarding race, ethnicity, and privilege. After 40 years of affirmative action,  we still don’t know quite where we are. There’s a funny song though from the Broadway play Avenue Q called “Everyone’s a little bit Racist”, that I think applies here. Whether we admit it or not, it’s who we are as human beings. We all have biases and rather than deny it must deal with in the context of our own relations with others. What is of much greater concern is that there are those in power who use this tool to divide and conquer us.

The power structure has always been one that tries to perpetuate itself. Whether it is the fact that  Congress does not abide by many of the laws it passes, or that virtually none of the crooks on Wall Street who created the greatest financial meltdown in history have been held accountable for their actions, or the reaction to performance enhancing drugs in sports is “so what?”, we seem to have lost an honest sense of fairness and morality.  The rules simply are not enforced for the powerful, and money buys justice and people just don’t seem to care.

Congress has been acting in a criminal manner for the past several years with no accountability whatsoever. This is bad for all of us, regardless of party. A president who ran on transparency and candor is neither. Let’s look at the record so far:

1 – High Crimes & Misdemeanors

Christopher Dodd (D – Conn) – bank fraud

Kent Conrad ( D- ND) – bank fraud

John Murtha  (D – PA) – widespread corruption & bribery

Barney Frank (D – MA) – refused to enact checks & balances at Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac

Rod Blagojevic (D – IL) – corruption and selling of political offices

Anthony Rezko – (D – IL) – developer close to the president convicted of fraud & corruption

Charles Rangel – (D – NY) – tax fraud, corruption

Peter Visclosky – (D-OH) – campaign fraud

James Moran – (D – VA) – campaign fraud

William Jefferson – ( D – LA) – bribery, corruption

Timothy Geithner ( Sec Treasury) – income tax fraud

Bill Richardson – (D – NM) – under investigation for campaign fraud & corruption

Sam Adams ( D – OR) – Mayor of Portland caught in affair with teenager

Kwame Kilpatrick – (D – MI) – Mayor of Detroit convicted of corruption

2 – Personal Pecadillos

Elliot Spitzer ( D-NY) – prostitution scandal

Ed Rendell (D – PA) – prostitution scandal

Mark Sanford ( R – SC) – marital infidelity

John Ensign ( R – NV) – marital infidelity

Larry Craig – (R-MN) – homosexual encounter at airport

What seems to differentiate these two lists? It seems the Democrats are doing real damage to the Republic and its values, while the Republicans are entranced by the trappings of power. Which is more serious? The Republicans are paying in the court of public opinion, while most of the Democrats have been immune to prosecution to date.

Whatever our background, the reality is that we are much more alike than different. We were raised with similar values. The Ten Commandments covers a lot of ground for a lot of us despite the differences in religion and color.

The country is in bad shape and we need to pull together, not apart. A first step might be to stand up and say “No More”. Don’t let them distract us with shiny objects and tabloid scandals. Look for the real transgressions. The pendulum has gone far to one side when it comes to ethics. They trot out the phrase “judge not lest ye be judged” as they steal trillions of dollars from us and laugh all the way to their offshore banks. It’s time we get involved.

Democrats Blame Insurance Companies, Special Interests, and the Media on Health Care

It is interesting to note the dismay of the Democratic Party leadership over the health care bill going into the August recess today. It seems that the finger pointing has turned into a circular firing squad.

Leftist leaders are blaming the Blue Dog Democrats, the more conservative party members. Many of these members of Congress were recruited as moderates by Rahm Emmanuel to break the Republican hold on the House in 2006, and were specifically chosen for their fiscal and legislative moderation. And yet Maxine Waters was on television yesterday making veiled threats against them by backing more liberal opponents in next year’s primaries if they do not fall in line. Henry Waxman, the congressman from West Hollywood and chair of the Energy & Commerce committee, froze out moderate Democrats and the Republicans when crafting the bill behind closed doors, and then presented a 1,000+ page bill stunning in its complexity. 45 Democratic party moderates wrote Waxman a letter stating ” We don’t want a briefing on the bill after its written. We want to help write it”. Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN) said of the bill yesterday  “the members don’t even understand what’s in it”.

The Congressional Budget Office, staffed by Democrats, has issued three reports to date. The first stated that the Senate version of the bill would increase Federal budget costs by $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years. The second said that any savings engendered would at most be 0.2% of the overall health care budget. The third stated that health care costs will increase significantly as the various provisions of the bill  take effect. And yet the proponents of the bill are still trying to say that it is revenue neutral. When your own accountants disagree, that’s a problem.

In the meantime, as Congress recesses, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are blaming the media for having set an August deadline for passage while the president has been trying to lay blame at the door of the Republicans. So far, most of the damage has been self inflicted. Nancy Pelosi has already called the health insurance companies “Villains” in her attempt to demonize them, while the Democratic House leadership issued a memo yesterday outlining their media strategy for doing the same for the next 2 months, which, in cooperation with the White House, the AARP, and the Unions , will spend tens of millions of dollars. They will introduce a “Hidden Tax Clock” similar to the National Debt Clock, to try and turn the public against the insurance companies.

The president went on national television last week and said about doctors “you come in and you’ve got a bad sore throat, or your child has a bad sore throat and the doctor may look at the reimbursement system and say to himself “you know I make a lot more money if I take this kid’s tonsils out”.  This is an insult to the medical profession. This is the rhetoric we can expect for the next 2 months.

So far, it would seem that the bills themselves have been poorly crafted by a very few ideologues with a very specific agenda. Congress has also gotten into the habit of voting on legislation they have not read. Now Reid, Pelosi, Waxman, and Obama are trying to bum rush what is clearly a very poorly crafted bill through Congress to take over another 20% of the economy. Perhaps they should listen rather than dictate policy. Blaming insurance companies, doctors, the Media, and Special Interests is not the answer. How about some common sense and some common cause for a change?

Getting America’s Mojo Back

In a recent Rasmussen poll, 49% of the respondents said they thought America’s best days are behind us.  Wall Street has ripped us off. The government is run like a private piggy bank for insiders, and the economy is cratering. The housing markets are dominated by foreclosures and short sales, and at least here in California, the Ag sector has been crucified by the water spigot being turned off by a Federal judge. And yet  we can work our way out of this if we’re smart.

The Harvard Business Review published an article entitled “Restoring American Competitiveness” in which the central thesis is that U.S. industry has outsourced themselves out of a job. I have been seeing this in the electronics industry for the past 20 years, yelling from the rooftops trying to get someone, anyone, to pay attention without success. The HBR article goes on to point out that we have lost much of the infrastructure and makes a number of recommendations. The president tells us that the key to the future is innovation. So if the smart guys are telling us this it must now be true. So why not take some of the trillions of dollars we are wasting in boondoggles to help revive innovation? Not a whole lot. $100 billion will do.

One of the industries I work in is printed circuits. The United States used to dominate this industry. Companies like Cray Research and Univac and HP and IBM and Motorola all built the best technology in the world. Today, some are history and the others are mainly shells of their former manufacturing selves. And yet the same people who built this stuff are still out there. They didn’t get dumb. They got laid off. Today the American printed circuit industry builds legacy product. Yes there are few companies building prototypes for the next generation Apple or Cisco product, but even these companies will die unless they adapt the news technologies available and innovate quickly.The same holds true across many industries.

I have worked in Asia for 30 years and watched as the Japanese and Taiwanese have moved up the technology curve to a place where today most American printed circuit engineers cannot even understand the complexity of some of the product being built. If you get over there and go to the shows and talk to the engineers, it’s all there to see and available and they’re working on the next generation.  I am very lucky in my friends. Some of them were the engineers who built the factories or introduced the technology or invented the fundamental processes we rely on today, and we talk a lot. We’re frustrated because we see the same things. We see an ocean of opportunity in new technologies and no one in this country with the vision or the the pocketbook to reignite a new industrial revolution. Because it’s there for the taking if you dare. Truly.

American leadership and management have commoditized us to within an inch of our lives. The hardware doesn’t matter. In business, it’s all supposed to be about the software or intellectual property. Well there ain’t much IP in breakfast cereals or beer or whatever the latest video game is. They have misdirected our resources. It’s all about the Id to those people. We are simply numbers or tools to be used or rubes to be fleeced in the latest con game. In manufacturing and technology, we invent the application here and then immediately export it to save a few bucks. In the 1970’s it was oops, we just lost the television industry. In the 1990’s, oops, those darn personal computers are a commodity now.” Leave it to the Taiwanese and the Chinese. They’ll undercut us anyway.” Bull! These were bad management decisions in the interest of short term profit. Intel waves the shiny ball to distract us as they skim the cream, but it is about the hardware just as much as the software, for without it, nothing changes.

Real product innovation in America is at an all time low. One of the reasons the Intels and Ciscos and Apples don’t use North American suppliers anymore is that they feel they are talking to simpletons when they discuss new technology with suppliers here. The suppliers are short handed and not investing for there is no profit. The exchange of ideas is slowly dying on the vine. And our own government has encouraged the flight of manufacturing with inane rules and an uneducated and unfriendly ear.

And yet right now in my industry, there are convergences of technology that are complete game changers. In printed circuits, it is High Density Interconnect (HDI); embedding both active and passive components within the circuit board; Meso -MEMS (micro electro mechanical systems); and organic light emitting diodes (OLED’s). These are enabling technologies and are already entering widespread use. Every GPS system has some of this. So does your WII or your car. It’s in the digital camera you use or your cell phone. In science and medicine, the term “lab on a chip” is entering widespread use. But there are so many more possibilities, and there is no reason not do it here in America. Companies worry about their intellectual property. Why not put the chip inside the circuit board where people can’t get to it? The reverse engineering time would at least be doubled.  A simple concept. If you don’t want to export your industry, it’s one way to prevent it from happening.

Whole new product categories are there for the taking. We still have the best minds in the world. We were just told that manufacturing isn’t cool and that we would all get rich trading tulip futures or make “miyyions” day trading. Well that obviously didn’t work out, so we had better get back to the basics.

Nanotechnology is a similar virgin forest. Biotech is another. We are facing a crisis in our oceans. We’re running out of fish. The Chesapeake Bay is becoming a desert as is a good part of the Gulf of Mexico. And we will keep on abusing these God given resources until we run out. More sensible would be to use some of these technologies to extend our basic resources. Same with oil, coal and gas. We burn it up like crack addicts when we know we will need these finite resources for other things; medicines, plastics, chemical intermediates. We need to make better use of what we have, and we have to make it profitable.

We need to take the money our government has appropriated for pork and payoffs to political favorites and reallocate it to what will pull this country back out of it’s funk. Government cannot give money to other governments (states, cities) and somehow expect this to lift our economy. It doesn’t work that way. We need to revive our applied laboratories and the blue sky stuff. We need to bring back Bell Labs and PARC and the Skunk Works. NASA isn’t sexy these days, but it was one of the single most important drivers in 100 fields for 30 years before we got bored with space flight. Nuclear power can reduce our costs. Our engineers are delivering 300HP cars with 27 MPG now. We can do these things if we put our minds to it. But we have to put the old politics aside and make common sense decisions based on the facts, not passions or greed or BS. “Feel Good” decisions don’t work in hard times.

Too much leisure is a curse and we are paying that price as well. People have forgotten to think for themselves and we’re lazy. Stress clarifies the issues wonderfully and need breeds invention. We are in a time and place where we have the the tools available. We have the option to move forward or to watch our country descend into a second rate has been. If enough of us start thinking like this, we can move the world and have fun and help others in doing so. But it’s not a 9 to 5. It’s a challenge. It will require discipline and hard work.

Archimedes of Syracuse said in the 3rd century BC “Give me a place to stand, and with a lever I will move the whole world”". We have many levers. We just have to use them wisely.

Community Organizers versus Right Wing Zealots

There is a strange phenomenon occurring across America. We are seeing small and not so small outbreaks of grass roots protests against a number of the governments recent decisions and policies. The Tea Party phenomenon seems, especially with the debate on health care to be growing stronger, not weaker.

In the past few days since the Congressional recess, Congressmen/women and Senators have been confronted in their home states across the country at press conferences, town hall meetings and other venues by these protesters who have a grab bag of issues; the stimulus package, government bailouts, TARP, health care, and Cap & Trade. The protests seem to be strongest in the Midwest, but also Long Island and even in Boston recently. Today, here in California, Senator Barbara Boxer and her tool, Chris Matthews, attacked the “Brooks Brothers” protesters as “stooges of the health care industry”. Yesterday, the Democratic National Committee issued a press release stating that “mobs of right wing extremists” are being incited by K street lobbyists and bussed in to the demonstrations.The DNC will be running a series of attack ads to this effect across the country in their efforts to help pass the health care bill in the Fall.

The White House had Linda Douglass, their communications director for the health care initiative  say in a Youtube video that ” if you get an e mail or see something on the web that seems a bit fishy, send it to us at www.whitehouse.gov”. Doesn’t this ring  of Big Brother?  Organized reporting on people is simply un-American.  It goes against our fundamental beliefs as a society. The president was videotaped several years ago stating his absolute support for a single payer health care program, which has been posted on the Drudge Report and other web sites. And yet the same White House talking head protested that this was taken out of context. And yet the statement stands completely on its own. Did the president or didn’t he say it?

Back oh, 4 years ago, Barack Obama’s profession was listed as “community organizer”. He took pride in grass roots level political action.  How could he and his staff object to others doing the same thing he himself was paid (and very well paid) to do? This again is highly dissonant.What is going on here when the president himself is organizing a smear campaign against his opponents?

During the AIG furor 7 months ago, a couple of half busloads of paid community activists were dropped off outside the front porches of some of the AIG executives who were receiving huge bonuses while the government was bailing out their employer. Every major network had reporters and camera crews using tight focus capturing the vilification of these Wall Street capitalists while disguising the paucity of the crowd. Perhaps 20 or 30 paid protesters were on site, but to the average viewer, it looked like hundreds. Just another dirty little secret of the mainstream media. This has been going on for 20 years, whether it be union protests, the Code Pink loons, or a dozen other left wing propaganda machines. They take Alinsky very seriously and have media directors, press officers, and e mail lists targeted at the political class and the media. The medium, after all, is the message and there’s nothing like klieg lights and stunts to get on the 6 o’clock news.

And yet the tea party crowds are very, very different. I know because I attended two of them out of curiosity. On April 15th, a protest was held against TARP and the Stimulus bill. The anger was directed at the waste and unaccountability of the programs and the extraordinary debt in which the government had placed the taxpayers. There were no organizers. Just someone who got a permit and set up a small stage and microphone and people talked. There were 2-3,000 people there, but the press did not cover it and then reported 2-300. I cannot argue with what my own eyes saw, and the people were pretty much a cross section of Orange County. White, Latino, Vietnamese and a wide range of ages. Most were dressed neatly and many carried homemade signs. Is this one of Barbara Boxer’s mob of Brooks Brothers dressed lackies? They looked more like housewives and small businessmen and retirees and college kids to me. On a weekday afternoon on a beautiful day, they chose to try and make their voices heard. I would have to say that is pretty grass roots democracy to me.

The unions can mobilize thousands when they choose to. The May Day rallies in Los Angeles 3 years ago were a good example. Color coordinated t shirts, huge banners, and a whispered prohibition on Mexican flags. “Don’t scare the media”.  Compare this with the tea party advocates. Compare the messages, more importantly. Save Money- Be Responsible versus the tired politics of progressivism. The country is broke and the government is spending money it never has and most likely never will have the way they’re going. Conmmon sense would seem to indicate the time honored values of thrift and hard work rather than ideology.

So once again the forces of polarization will come into play. Accusations of bigotry and racism and class warfare will be hurled at political opponents who in some cases are the same race and even poorer that the ones hurling the epithets. Straw men will be set up to be knocked down on network television. And our country will once again be ill served.

Political Art as Theater

The above  images are meant to illustrate the nature of political art. In the context of the manufactured outrage ofy the LA Weekly and Washington Post regarding the alleged racism of the “Joker” image, I felt that it was useful to compare Shepard Fairey’s own political art to a single fleeting image photographed in Los Angeles this week. Fairey sold thousands of his images for hundreds of dollars per piece while the Joker image seems to have been meant as cutting political protest by an anonymous artist.

There was  no lack of passion over the Bush Administrations policies from 2001-2008. From the inauguration, there was a vocal and very angry opposition. After 9/11, this moderated but again came to the fore @ 2005. In 2006, there was an outcry from the Left Wing to withdraw from Iraq which saw many impassioned pieces by world renowned artists. Botero’s images of Iraqi prisoners and Bush come to mind.

There is a romance on the Left, especially by artists, writers, and musicians with dictators, whether it was Stalin & Lenin in the 1920’s and 30’s or Fidel and Che in the 60’s or Hugo Chavez today. For some reason, based from what I can read and interpret as what they say, rather than what they do, leftists idolize murders and oppressors much more so than  purported right wingers. It seems to me there is a direct connection between the id of the artist and the id of the dictator that is congruent when their political beliefs align. After all, one of the attractions of the bohemian lifestyle is the lack of rules, and which rules have Stalin, Che or Chavez ever followed? The power, when expressed as the will of the people, is an aphrodisiac.

Fairey made his reputation on the streets of Los Angeles with his tongue in cheek “Obey” stickers and posters featuring Andre the Giant. He appropriated the symbology of socialist realism very successfully to caricature modern iconography. He has made millions doing so with his posters, originals, skateboard decks, and other merchandise. He is living the American capitalist dream. His “Hope” image is pure political art Contrast this with his images of Bush. More importantly, contrast it with the image of the “Joker”. From the time of the Romans and Greeks, graffiti has been part and parcel of the political landscape. from the walls of Pompeii and Rome to London broadsheets to the exhortations of Mao Zedong in China, caricature has been integral to the dialog. The political cartoons on the editorial page are a perfect, if you will excuse the pun, illustration. Let it continue without the freight of racism and false offense.

The Democrats versus America

Today, Congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Sten Hoyer published an op/ed article attacking the recent tea party protests as unAmerican. This has been the unifying message of the entire Democratic Party leadership since the Senate recessed on Friday. Over the past wek, the tea party activists and all protesters are being called stooges of the insurance companies, Nazis, and “Brooks Brothers”  activists.

At meetings across the country this week, protesters confronting their representatives have been shouted down by some of those legislators and assaulted in one case in St. Louis by union organizers. Accusations of protesters being bussed in have been made, and yet there is not a shred of evidence to this effect.

The White House is just as deeply involved, with presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs dismissing the protesters as astroturfers and Linda Douglass, the health care communications czar presenting a non-denial denial of the presidents unequivocal support of single payer health care, one of the roots of the current protests, on video in 2003. The video of the president is clear. Ms. Douglass’ rebuttal is highly opaque. Front page articles and op/ed pieces carry the same untruths.

These protests are not isolated. They are taking place throughout the country, and many Democratic lawmakers are in many cases now in hiding from their own constituents.  What gives?

The first protests I can remember occurred in Fullerton, California to rally against the duplicity of both Democratic and Republican legislators in Sacramento trying to ram through a tax increase rather than applying common sense solutions to the state’s budget crisis. With TARP ($1.7 Trillion), the Stimulus ($900 Billion), the auto bailout ($50 Billion) and now the health care bill, which no one in Congress had even read last week as they were trying to pass something, many citizens tolerance for the incompetence in Washington grew into action.

These are not your typical activists. They are the people you see at church or the grocery store or the VFW. They are the ones who bought into the system. Pay your taxes, go to war, obey the law.

Frank Rich in today’s  New York Times said something interesting. He quoted from last week’s Washington Post, where a Virginia real estate agent said “nothing’s changed for the common guy. I feel like I’ve been punked”. While I differ with Mr. Rich’s conclusions, I believe this is the underlying feeling in our country today. People are sick and tired of a government that has gone off the tracks.

Whether it was in Iraq, where mismanagement was rampant, or the banks and mortgage lenders acting completely irresponsibly, or corporate America outsourcing and offshoring jobs, the majority of Americans voted for change in 2008. And now the change being offered has not really changed anything except to make things worse.

We are not reconstituting our manufacturing base and creating real jobs. The TARP and Stimulus programs are being seen more and more as political payoffs, and with a secretive cabal of leftist legislators and a president who is seen to be talking out of both sides of his mouth, no one trusts them to make the right choices on health care.

The Republicans are no better. There are no solutions being offered on their side either, not that they would be listened to by the majority. But there is also a fundamental loss of the principles of that party today by its leadership. This  angers their constituents.

The CBO reported today that deficit in July was $1.3 trillion, a $181 Billion rise over last year. Between the loss of tax revenues and the recession, there’s no money in the till. Eventually, the dollar will come under assault for the Fed’s inflationary policies and it will get worse. People sense this. They sense that we are in a crisis while Nero fiddles. We need answers and leaders and instead we get grifters, con artists, flim flam men and Nancy the insult dog.

This is the summer of our discontent. This is not manufactured emotion. It is real and it deeply held based upon the fundamental principles of fairness and common sense, and of our Constitution. For our leaders to dismiss and ridicule these people is an insult that will result in a political upheaval in the next elections. For they are not attacking just their political opponents. They are attacking all of us.

Paid Community Organizers vs. Astroturfers

Several blogs in the past 2 days have found a plethora of Craigslist ads for paid advocates and campaign managers for the president’s health care agenda at rates from $9 – $14/hour to $500/week. Some of the locations I found with a brief search were:

California  – sacramento, Berkeley, San Francisco – www.jobsthatmatter.org -  an associate of CalPIRG

Washington  – Washington Community Action Network -

Chicago – www.jobsthatmatter.org – The Fund for the Public Interest

Atlanta – The Fund for the Public Interest

Philadelphia – The Fund for the Public Interest

Philadelphia – PennPirg

These are all Liberal/Left organizations and are all advertising specifically for foot soldiers in the battle to pass the Democratic Party health care agenda. In some cases, they are funded with public monies.

And yet we have Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Hoyer demonizing the insurance companies for doing the same, but with no evidence whatsoever. Go on Craigslist and type in “campaign” under Jobs and see for yourself. I would challenge them to identify similar campaigns among those protesting their policies.

I am no friend of the insurance industry. they make their money by restricting care in many cases and denying options. But overall, the system is not a bad one and our medical care is good. It can be better. It must be better. But until the country has an honest dialog about tort reform and other equally important components to the issue to both make the system more efficient and more responsive, any plan will go nowhere.

In Oregon, if a patient has less than a 5% chance of survival, medical benefits can be denied under the states public insurance option. These are the most vulnerable stakeholders, and there are significant cost constraints. In my own family I have seen the limitations of the National Health Service in the UK. The first time it was in the 1970’s when an uncle had a stroke and lay in an indigents ward undiagnosed for days. The second for a relative with multiple illnesses who was denied care because of her age. She died recently.The Democratic leadership does not like to be reminded of the failures of single payer systems overseas, but this is exactly what so many of the protesters fear.

These are some of the realities we must face. But first, we have to remove the smoke and partisanship and maskirovka* from all sides. This isn’t about politics and it isn’t about the special interests, and the fact is that our resources are more limited than ever before. Our representatives seem to have forgotten this.

* Russian military term meaning the artificial creation of the fog of war. Deception, Misdirection, Disinformation.

Creating Jobs

In an Op/Ed piece entitled “A Scary Reality” Bob Herbert in today’s New York Times points out a disturbing trend; where are the new high paying jobs going to come from? July’s job losses were 247,000, and it must be remembered that first, these jobs are not being replaced, and second, they are the kind of jobs that pay the bills for so many other parts of our society. These are the “first tier” manufacturing, knowledge, and equity jobs that have been lost that create the wealth our economy depends on.

Unemployment among men between 20-24 years old is 35%. We have lost 6.7 million jobs in this recession. The country has the same number of jobs as in 2000, which was not the best of years with the Internet meltdown, and yet there are 12 million unemployed. The casual and partial unemployment rates are in the same category, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. During the Great Depression, some workers went into their jobs regardless every day because they had nowhere else to go. We really don’t want to get to that point. We have it a lot better than that, and there are answers. But we cannot wait for long.

To date, most of the Stimulus money has not been spent. Some is going to balance state budgets, some is going to long term projects, and some is going to maintain employment in the public sector. We have to redirect some of the money budgeted from the Stimulus into creating real jobs that will help our economy grow in the long term. Manufacturing, energy, and natural resources will do this. The fact is that our government has treated manufacturing, once the central pillar of our economy, as a red headed stepchild for far too long. This must change.

Much of our manufacturing sector is on life support and is technologically outdated. We need to upgrade and retool and revive invention so that American manufacturers can compete for their fair share of the global market. Outsourcing and offshoring have left many of America’s largest technology companies nothing more than labels.  Management and leadership pursued higher margins while they let their manufacturing operations to rot on the vine or closed them to save 5 or 10%. This has to change.  We also need to incentivize the customer base to buy American, not with protectionism, but with better quality at competitive prices.

We have replaced quality and development and manufacturing engineers with supply chain managers. Walmart, Sears and others have squeezed every penny from their suppliers both here and abroad, and what we have left are minimum wage jobs and products that fall apart after a couple of years. Those products simply fill our dumps with more waste, much of it hazardous in today’s electronic age. As to the jobs, even some of those will go as demand spirals downwards.

Regarding infrastucture, the high voltage lines cannot carry the KvA of an industrial economy any more, nor do we have the power capacity required to recharge the electric cars we are being promised. If we don’t act quickly, it won’t matter that we have wonderful green cars. We won’t have the juice to keep them running or the ability to move that electricity over long distances. We need cheap, clean energy and to rebuild our power infrastructure and we need to do it now. Nuclear is the answer, but no one seems to be asking the right questions.

As workers and citizens, we must understand that more will be demanded of us. Longer hours, perhaps, but we can also do more by making intelligent decisions instead of the easy ones. No one outperforms the American worker for productivity and creativity.This has been proven in study after study. No one invents like Americans.  Americans do not shirk from challenges. There are new technologies that can guarantee intellectual property so that it cannot be easily copied overseas. We need to adopt these so that we can keep jobs here.

Hard times clarify thinking to the essentials. Our government must rethink its priorities as conditions have changed considerably. Of the trillions spent to date very little has made its way into the economy. The banks are hoarding. The auto companies  received a massive bailout, but then shuttered factories as they received another several billion dollars in the Cash for Clunkers program. None of this will help us rebuild our economy. It only prolongs the stagnation and pain. The Fed’s monetary policy will inevitably be inflationary, making the Dollar worth less. We should prepare now to take advantage of a weak dollar, improve our trade imbalances and work our way out of the recession.

When Does Political Speech Cross Over into the Pathological?

I was deeply disturbed today the watch the President of the United States lie openly not once, but twice today at a Town Hall event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Twice he stated that the American Association of Retired People (AARP) supported his health care bill. This is simply not true.

He then went on to attack primary care doctors and surgeons who might elect to perform amputations on diabetes patients in order to collect $30,000 – $40,000 instead of less expensive treatments. This is similar to his unsubstantiated accusation of doctors performing unnecessary tonsillectomies to garner similar fees 10 days ago during his nationally televised speech on health care. This is the rhetoric of the rabble rouser.

Nancy Pelosi was caught on camera stating that the protesters against health care have been carrying swastikas, implying that they are Nazi zealots, when  she neither had the evidence nor any other information on any such instances. She and her colleagues have also accused the K Street lobbyists and the insurance industry of busing protesters to Town Hall events, all without a shred of evidence.

Add to this the presidents promises of the most transparent administration ever; his promise that lobbyists would not be hired by his administration; and his promise that he would hold his administration to the highest ethical standards. In each case, these have been untruths quickly and publicly proven on the front pages and at the newsdesks of multiple media outlets. We are approaching Nixonian ethical dissonance and we are only 6 months into the new administration.

This is not just politics as usual. This represents something much deeper. This is what Orwell feared. The lie repeated again and again until it became the truth. We are entering Alice’s rabbit hole. We’re not there quite yet  but at the same time, never in our history have we seen such a blatant disregard for the truth. Neither Nixon nor Bush, who was vilified by the Left for his actions, came out with major whoppers that could so easily  disproved. On policy, even the president’s most ardent supporters have become disappointed as he has said one thing and done another.

Politicians are not known for their truthfulness. Facts and platforms become distorted as a candidates steer left and right to win the primary and general elections. But once elected, we expect more of them. Reading back through Adams and Washington and de Toqueville and Lincoln and Roosevelt and Truman, one reasonably concludes a high regard for the American discourse. Of course it has always been rough. There were duels fought and canings on the House floor. We were a pioneer people with massive disagreements over fundamental issues. But today our leaders act like the Roman elite carrying sophistry to a new level.

And yet with the internet, it is so easy to roll the video or read the underlying documents. We can let the principals and politicians speak for themselves. And unfortunately they are doing themselves no credit at all. the electorate is more deeply offended on both right and left. We need arguments based on principle and the facts.

The Mother of all Bureaucracies

A British Member of the European Parliament, Daniel Hannan, recently pointed out that UK’s National Health Service with 1.4 Million employees is the 3rd largest employer in the world behind China’s Red Army and India’s National Railroad. The UK has a population less than 1/3 that of the United States. In addition, more than 50% of those employees are administrative and have nothing to do with health care on a daily basis.

Today, the Department of Health & Human Services has 67,000 employees. The Medicare Administration, a part of HHS, employs  4,100 of that 67,000.  One thing we know for certain is that the government is very good at is creating bureaucracies. The TSA, which did not exist 8 years ago, now has 45,000 screeners  and a $6.8 Billion budget.

Regardless of which plan under consideration is signed into law, the bureaucracy created would dwarf these numbers. We will be looking at the single greatest increase in the federal payroll in our history. The number of administrative staff would increase exponentially with absolutely no effect on the quality or availability of care. If what the president says is true, we would not only have that governmental payroll to deal with, but the existing system as well.

The CBO has already stated that there would be significant cost increases based upon the expansion of treatment. What about the administrative costs? We are thus discussing not only a massive increase in direct spending, but a massive increase in overhead. And  I thought the problem we had  that brought up this whole mess was dealing with runaway costs.

North American Manufacturing – How To Fight Back Against the Odds

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In a recent meeting with senior engineers at one of America’s remaining technology companies, one of the managers stated that the North American electronics industry is stuck building legacy product. This company is buying hundreds of millions of dollars of components in Japan and Asia, and feels they can no longer even find the capabilities to manufacture advanced technology at home.

In the Harvard Business Review’s July/August issue, Professors Gary Pisano and Willy Shih write in the feature article on “Restoring America’s Competitiveness” that decades of outsourcing has left the United States, in particular, without the means to invent the next generation of high technology products. It is an issue on which I have written for over 15 years, so I have some familiarity with the problems. The West has made the terrible mistake of abandoning applied engineering, and if we are to rebuild our economy, manufacturing must be integral to that recovery.

Tom Bartlett, whom I have known for many years, in a recent New York Times article blamed Chinese currency manipulation as a part of the problem that led to the demise of his manufacturing company in Chicago. This was one cause. Another was a complete disregard for the means of production at the highest levels of American business. Another was the lack of reinvestment when times were good. What Hewlett and Packard and Noyce and Durant and Ford knew in their bones was forgotten by two generations of American managers more interested in personal gain and that of their largest investors. There was no longer a focus on building long term value.

In government, the word “manufacturing” is anathema, and virtually the entire power structure of our country today has no understanding of making things or Research & Development. It’s all magic. FDR certainly knew manufacturing. Kennedy knew it when he battled the steel companies. Johnson was responsible for NASA as Vice President. Today our space program is an orphan. DARPA in the past 20 years has become a short term applied technology organization rather than the blue sky visionaries they once were. Bell Labs, PARC, and other practical (and sometimes blue sky) organizations have simply disappeared as their corporate owners pared costs. In those intervening years, fewer and fewer of our leaders had a real grasp of the process of making things because they had collectively forgotten the fundamentals.

The technology companies have not helped themselves either. They have pulled back and cut costs at every level for the most part. Even industry organizations bear some responsibility. So many of these were originally the vehicles for the development of standards and process guidelines. At one time the entrepreneurs and businessmen who owned the company were directly involved because they needed those standards and technology guidelines. Networking was critical to understand the next big thing, and they needed that information “yesterday”. With the de-emphasis on manufacturing, organization staff became the driving force, and while competent, it takes being on the firing line to understand the intrinsic issues of technology. Manufacturing has atrophied. But we must get that spirit back. The old dictum that success has many fathers but failure is an orphan has been turned on its head. This failure has many fathers. And yet I am an optimist. We can fix this. The United States has been the economic engine of the world for 100 years and we can continue to do so.

II.

Why has Japan succeeded so spectacularly? Fewer and fewer North American engineers and managers from the manufacturing side visit every year and yet Japan has leapt forward in technology, especially in electronics. The Japanese have been disparaged as consumer driven, and yet their technology is some of the most sophisticated in the world. They sell Billions of dollars of product and keep millions employed doing so.

The Japanese approach manufacturing as a master craftsman would have approached making a samurai sword 200 years ago; layer by layer, process by process, honing each step to perfection. They study and study until they absorb the fundamental concepts, refine them, and then execute. Most of the electronics technology was invented in America, but has morphed beyond recognition. Our labs are still the best, but the rush to commercialize has led to losing long term benefits in favor of short term gain as researchers and technologists look for a quick payday. One also sees in Japan much more collective effort on technology. Companies form themselves into associations to create an infrastructure for a particular product type. In many cases the technologies within a given field compete quite aggressively. In the long run, most companies benefit from that next technological/product step to further their competitive advantage. There is much less of this in North America. American companies can simply buy the end products. But what happens then to the fundamental understanding of the way things work?

Why has Taiwan succeed so well? From my observations, there was a massive application of capital coupled with intense government support and a raucous cross pollination of ideas and technology, most of this taking place within a 75 mile radius. Taiwanese manufacturers have move up the chain rapidly to a point where they dominate certain key technologies. The Koreans have their own intense drive to excel, while in China the focus on becoming the world’s factory is the policy of state. The West’s loss has been Asia’s gain.

Der Spiegel reports this week that it is manufacturing that is leading Germany out of the recession. The demand for German machinery overseas, and their advances in integrating information technology with hardware to create demand for whole new product categories such as RoboCoasters for amusement parks, driverless forklift trucks, and robotic self service milking machines for dairy cows. Germany leads the world in making the equipment and materials for many green technologies.

III.

Crisis generates opportunity. It clarifies thinking when there are no options but survival. There are macroeconomic issues where manufacturers must work more aggressively together. Our government has appropriated $800 Billion in Stimulus funds. The American technology base is obsolete. Capital equipment in many cases is 20-30 years old and must be replaced to compete on the global stage. We must retool for the new technology. Our infrastructure must be upgraded, especially if we are to see a transition to electric cars. We need the transformers and transmission lines and power plants to power our economy not in the nebulous future but now. We need nuclear power to reduce costs and greenhouse gases. A portion of the Stimulus funds must be redirected into  both macro and micro manufacturing infrastructure. It is an investment in the future and will pay off handsomely. American manufacturers can work together to achieve these ends for the good of the country.

Next, we must look at technology overseas without condescension and learn from those we originally taught. We must study the new processes and products closely and master them once again. We have thousands of engineers and workers who would like nothing better than to do what they were trained to do. If nothing else, Americans are the most productive workers and most inventive people on the planet. As engineers, we must ubnderstand the new technologies and make them available to our customers. So many times, we have invented and then abandoned key technologies. Now, even the OEM’s don’t understand the possibilities.

Just imagine putting key components and code withing a printed circuit board. Try reverse engineering that. It would give any company at least an additional 6 months to a year or longer in intellectual property protection, and yet many managers do not understand this fundamental advantage. New combinations in the electronics field such as MEMS, Meso-MEMS, embedded components, electro-optical circuit boards, and other technologies will lead to a reinvention and renaissance in products, but first one must understand the possibilities. These possibilities cut across industries and product categories.

IV.

We must reevaluate our relationships with our stakeholders. Our employees and customers are the reason for our success, and this seems to have been forgotten. Today most companies give lip service to partnerships, but the reality on the factory floor or in dealing with customers is very different. Relationships do matter. If we are to survive and grow in hard times, we must rely on teamwork at every level. Ask the elite military units or championship athletes. Success is not achieved in a vacuum.

Today, most companies do little to cross pollinate sales, engineering, and applications. Each of these functions contributes towards long term success. Process development no longer exists at most manufacturing companies and yet the workspace is if anything becoming more complex. Close cooperation with suppliers and customers is critical in ramping up rapidly, and helps the manufacturer to become an indispensable contributor to their customers success, improving volumes and profit margins.

V.

Commoditization is perhaps the cardinal sin in manufacturing today. The global economy has become dependent on the China price. And yet we throw away and return more product for defects than ever before. One of the dirty secrets of the electronics manufacturing industry is the Repair Center, where products that should have been built properly the first time are replaced. These have become significant profit centers in the contract manufacturing industry.Ask Microsoft the cost of the X Box fiasco. More to the point, this represents a terribly inefficient use of resources. manufacturing yield improvements drop directly to the bottom line, and in a world demanding green solutions this is one of the greenest.

The primacy of the accounting and purchasing departments cannot dictate long term corporate decisions on manufacturing and technology. They are integral to any corporation, but must be subsidiary in long term policy considerations. This must be understood throughout the supply chain. Quality and technology do matter.

Today many of the West’s leading names in the technology sector are simply labels, and most of the wounds are self inflicted. The manufacturing sector has been the engine of our economy since the Industrial revolution, and is vital to our future as individuals, as families, as industries, and as nations. We must recognize our mistakes and correct them. There is a window of opportunity open, but it will take all of us to effect change.

De Toqueville wrote in Democracy in America of our country’s unique character of enlightened self interest. He said that Americans voluntarily join into associations to further the interests of the group, and thus their own. We must remember this once again and take it to heart. We are living in times of ferment and fear. It is up to each of us to work across boundaries for the sake of us all.

The Corporate Health Care Sellout

One of the most offensive aspects of the health care debate is how a number of the major corporations in America are angling for their own interests in the face of the greater good.

The pharmaceutical industry have promised $80 Billion in ill defined cuts, while they have also pledged $150 Million in advertising for the president’s agenda. This would seem to be an illegal quid pro quo. Or is it just the Chicago style?

Wal Mart and other large companies have also embraced the single payer option as it relieves them of billions of dollars in health care costs. We are seeing more and more instances of the large corporations getting behind another of the most poorly thought out pieces of legislation in history.

They don’t know what it is, but if they can weasel out from under a major cost of doing business, they’re for it. Of course, senior management will always be able to get the medical care they need regardless of cost. We are once again seeing the “insider” game where they well connected and amoral grab all they can and leave the rest of us to the wolves.

These same multinationals accrue huge benefits in lobbying for contracts and programs while playing one country off against the other to cut costs and responsibility. These same companies are the ones paying their executives obscene bonuses, for what?  Why for cutting costs of course.

This is not an issue of Democrat versus Republican, it is an issue for all of us together. There is no patriotism or motivation for the greater good at most of these companies today, and we must hold them and the grifters in Washington accountable for their actions.

The Etch a Sketch Presidency

Today, we have the spectacle of the White House reversing HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius weekend statement  saying that the public option may not be necessary to their plans to reform health care. Saturday, they dropped the idea of end of life care decision making panels despite their denials that the idea ever really existed. He said last week that he does not believe in single payer health insurance, and yet he is caught on video saying the opposite in 2003. What new surprises will tomorrow bring? We are entering an Orwellian level of newspeak.

His statements on employing lobbyists, when we now have more them working in the White House than in any previous administration, are at odds with reality. On transparency, he has somehow made Bush look Teddy Roosevelt.  Obama’s decision making process is as obscure as the Kremlin with “czars” working behind the scenes establishing policy with virtually no input from either the Departments or Congress.

Our president cautioned fiscal responsibility while doubling our national debt in 6 months. He then told us he would reduce pork barrel projects, and yet signed the most corrupt and bloated “Stimulus” bill in history  full of payoffs to his supporters. He stated his concerns for fairness in the auto bailouts, and yet the only beneficiaries seem to be the UAW and Fiat.

In watching Robert Gibbs field the occasional difficult question at press conferences, I am waiting to see whether he eventually has a seizure or if his head will explode first. Despite the softball questions from most reporters, he manages to make absolutely no sense whatsoever while defying logic completely at times. One sees the cameras occasionally pan to show reporters looking at each other and whispering “what the heck did he just say?”.

The left is just as unhappy with the president, feeling that he has abandoned them on too many issues, whether Iraq or gay rights or cap & trade. There is widespread dissatisfaction that the president has “not done enough”. Even Paul Krugman has been highly critical. Too many times, the president seems to have turned over the etch a sketch and erased his previous statements and positions. For an administration that is only 6 months old, this could prove fatal.

From Guantanamo to the PGA

Friday’s Bermuda Sun reports that the Uighers recently released from Guantanamo are having a smashing time in Bermuda. They are integrating into island life well and have joined the local soccer league, where they play for the X Road Warriors. Sounds somehow appropriate.

After 7 years at Guantanamo, freedom is sweet. All four are now working as assistant groundskeepers at the Port Royal golf course, a long  way from their past lives in the arid environs of Western China. Khalil Mamut said “It’s beautiful. It feels like we are working in a garden”.  They play golf on the Wii, and hope to one day try the real game. For now they are still learning the ropes of greenskeeping. Rule #1, “don’t shoot all the golfers”. From being a baker  and a candy maker and a merchant and a teacher in Western China in their past  lives, the transition to Bermuda has been amazing for all of them.  From the confines of prison to the country club set is simply amazing. I wonder if they’ll be allowed to use the swimming pool on Caddy Day?

According to Robert Trent Jones, Port Royal is the best work he’s done outside of the United States. Y.E. Yang, who won $1.3 Million+ by beating Tiger Woods in dramatic fashion for the PGA Championship at Hazeltine Country Club in Chaska, MN yesterday, will play Angel Cabrera, Stuart Cink, and Lucas Glover, the winners of this years other major tournaments. Woods will be sitting this one out, unfortunately.

In a world of conflict and dissonance, the mere fact that these men have been placed on a tropical paradise working to prepare for a major golf tournament is perhaps a sign that not all is so bad after all. Maybe we will see them wearing neon Bermuda shorts or plus 4’s riding the links in style next. It’s a strange world out there and who knows where it may all end up.

Mortgage Crime

There’s a fellow I know here in California whose story I would like to tell you. For the sake of his privacy, I’ll call him Bill.  I am not sorry for him. He made his own bed. But he was also taken advantage of by people who knew better and did it anyway.

Bill is in his late 80’s, a retired actor. Not a famous one, but he invested wisely enough to build his dream house on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean back in the late 60’s, where he lived joyfully for 30 years before his wife passed away. Since then he has been lonely, and as he got older, more vulnerable. Bill made some investments, some of them quite successful and some not so successful.  As he got older, the successful ones, which produced steady but boring returns, were supplanted with riskier projects. Bill enjoyed the attention as the new, important investor. It made him feel good to have skins in the game and go to meetings and appointments.

Bill started running out of money. He lived frugally and owned his home outright, a prime property in a unique location, but his bad investments were draining his wealth away.  So when he got a call several years ago at the height of the real estate market from a major bank regarding refinancing his home, it was too attractive a deal to refuse. He really didn’t have to worry because the bank would take care of all the paperwork and even send someone out to have him sign and notarize the documents. It was a major bank, so he trusted that they knew what they were doing.  That is, after all, why they call them “Bank & Trust” companies. He had the expectation that they would act within the law and in a reasonably ethical manner. Somehow, somewhere along the way, someone neglected to note that all of Bill’s income came from his social security check. He had been living off of his principal for years, selling off bits and pieces as he needed money. The loan was in excess of $2 Million. In making this loan, someone committed  fraud.

Naturally, Bill could not keep up with the payments. He invested most of the money, and then made payments from what principal remained. Last year, he ran out of money. The bank began sending dunning notices and then began foreclosure proceedings. Bill’s back was against the wall, and yet no one from the bank seemed to realize or care that they were dealing with a very elderly client who might not have understood what was happening.

At that point a neighbor stepped in and realized that Bill had less than 30 days before being evicted. They began a short sale process,and got the eviction delayed as they tried to sell the house. The house sold for perhaps $2 Million less than it would have been worth if not sold under duress, and the bank got every single penny of the money it had loaned plus all of the interest they had collected until that point.  The purchaser knew of Bill’s distress, and made private terms with him to purchase some assets so that Bill had at least a grubstake to get himself back on his feet. Bill doesn’t need a lot. Just a little respect and attention, really. He’s living in a trailer now and has his few friends, but his past life is gone.

I know of several other cases similar to Bill’s. People who should  never have qualified for the loans, but yet somehow ended upside down on houses they had lived in most of their lives. Good, hardworking people who never took anything from anyone that they had not earned honestly. But somewhere along the way, the financial industry lost any good sense or even enlightened self interest.  Money was cheap and flowing like a river. Developers were building huge tracts, and as long as prices went up, it held together with chewing gum and baling wire. Gardeners became landscape designers in order to qualify. The thinnest reed of hope became a field of clover on loan applications. And all the while, the banks and mortgage lenders made billions, not millions. Insult was in many cases added to injury, when low income borrowers or minorities found themselves with higher interest rates, sometimes for good reason, but in many cases because the lenders knew their marks and that they could get away with it. Sometimes, it was even family members taking advantage of relatives.

In contrast, last year President Bush loaned the banking industry $700 Billion under TARP to keep them solvent in the face of nonperforming loans. The TALF program  injected another $1 Trillion dollars, while in March the Fed was authorized to purchase up to $750 Billion in mortgage backed securities. Addition measures to improve liquidity total hundreds of billions more. And yet the banks have not loaned this money out as the government originally intended. This money is the lubricant that was supposed to help get us out of the recession. Most of it is sitting in AAA investments such as T Bills and government backed securities to help protect the banks balance sheets. Part of this is to cover loan losses from the mortgage implosion, but the reality is that prices are down nationally approximately 20%, so the banks are making most of their money back. The huge write downs will eventually turn into pure profit as assets are liquidated. The banks will once again report huge profits.

And people like Bill will continue to end up on the street, whether the home was $100,000 or $1,000,000. Companies will continue to lay off employees because they cannot get loans to keep themselves going through the hard times. The recession will continue because the jobless can’t spend and companies can’t invest. And we will all suffer as individuals and as a nation.But the well connected and the banks will do just fine. Senators and Congressmen will get their insider deals. Their contributors for the right price will be allowed to wallow at the public trough. This is the way it works these days.

Months ago there were headlines and outrage and investigations promised, and yet today, there has been no change. No one has gone to jail. Not one person. Congress held a few show hearings and then promptly forgot about the matter. And yet frauds were committed on a massive scale in the billions of dollars. This crisis has brought our country to its knees and there has been no accountability. If you are not more than a little outraged, you should be. When we live in a society where, with all of the laws and and regulations one can imagine, the criminals can still take advantage of the weak and walk free, something is deeply wrong with our morality and our methods. We don’t need more laws, we need to enforce the ones we already have. This is an offense against all of us.

The Banality of Evil – The Health Care debate takes a dangerous turn

This evening the New York Times is reporting that the President and Congressional leaders plan to go it alone on their health care bill. Since this leadership includes Henry Waxman, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid, and we have seen their hysterical response to the growing concerns of many in the electorate with the various bills introduced so far, I am deeply concerned. Despite massive and growing resistance and incontrovertible declines in the popularity of their positions, they plan to take the gloves off and pass something, anything to be able to declare victory. For that is what this is all about now. Better, more widespread health care is not the issue any more. This is the most craven of partisan politics.

In 1962, Hannah Arendt, in writing about Adolph Eichmann, the architect of the Final Solution, tried to understand the phenomenon of  pure evil. Having been a good German who lived under Hitler until her life was threatened, she escaped the Holocaust. These were her people who did this thing.  She was desperately trying to understand how the German people would participate in such horrors. “The Banality of Evil” was her description of the way in which ordinary people accepted the orders of their leaders and committed such crimes. The  defense of “following orders” was disallowed by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremburg, who stated that following illegal orders was not a valid defense provided a moral choice was possible.

So what does this have to do with health care? Please allow me to relate a true story. Today seems to be my day for such if you have read my earlier blog.

I had a relative in England who died less than three months ago. I will relate her story. She was never in the best of health, but contracted tuberculosis a few years ago in her late  50’s. Since treatments are weighted in the National Health Service, it was determined that her care would not have a high priority. Her children were grown and did not need a mother’s care. TB treatment is expensive, and there is a limit in the UK of GBP 45,000 per patient per year excepting extraordinary cases. Someone somewhere sat down at a desk and factored in all of these variables. This treatment was delayed as are many kinds of treatment in the UK. Then 3 years ago, in a weakened state, she contracted cancer. Once again, the actuarial tables were consulted, and she received only limited care. At that point it was only a matter of time. She survived much longer than anyone would have expected. Other illnesses attacked her body. And then, one day, she finally passed on.

There were steps in this process. There were procedures and guidelines. And decisions made to limit treatment. In the United States, she would have had immediate and aggressive treatment for tuberculosis by government order. She probably would have stood a much better chance of surviving much longer with a reasonable quality of life.

The fact is that today, our government is highly constricted in its financial options. We have already indebted ourselves to a point where we can no longer finance that debt. Medicare, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which is controlled by the abovementioned leadership, will go bankrupt in 8 years. Social Security is predicted to do the same in the 2030’s. The CBO also has calculated that any of the bills now under consideration would cost as much as $1 trillion. So we have the two largest safety net programs yet undertaken by our government bankrupted by irresponsible government borrowing and poor management, and Congress own accountants predicting runaway costs.  The president cited the Post Office as a comparison in speech to his undefined health care proposal in Portsmouth, NH last week. How can he and our leaders fail to see the analogies? How can they fail to see the potential for collapse and the terrible pain it might cause? This should be one of the most serious discussions of our time and there is no discussion.

The warning signs are all around us. We are faced with a health care system that needs reform. So many issues have been identified in the public debate that serious, measurable reform may now be possible. Ideas are coming from all sides. And yet we are faced with a pigheaded, partisan leadership that is basically preparing to tell the rest of us to go to hell and ram through another highly defective piece of legislation without scrutiny and without debate. The  financial system bailouts and Stimulus Bill and Cap & Trade bill all point clearly towards where this will end up.

The Administration and its supporters have vilified the concerns of many about end of live panels, and yet this is a fact of life in the UK already. Somewhere far removed,  bureaucrats make life and death decisions based on the numbers. With all of its faults, our current system values life much more highly. One of the chief theoreticians they seem to be listening to, Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel, the White House Chief of Staff’s brother, has openly discussed the “life value” of infants and the elderly, noting that a child is not really self aware until the age of two. This is a very, very dangerous discussion.

One of the fundamental virtues Americans have always held is the value of life. Whether it is in the care for sick infants or the billions spent on AIDS research or the heroic measures in the operating room on an inner city gunshot victim, or on the battlefield where our troops are indoctrinated with “no man left behind”, or our fundamental obligation under Medicare for the care of our elders,  we have almost always managed to do the right thing. We make herculean efforts to do so. There is a preferential option for the weak in our culture that we must never lose that is based upon our humanity and our faith.

Or do we, like Eichmann, simply shirk responsibility by saying we were only following orders?

Obama’s messianic demonization of his opponents

I have been traveling for the past few days, and so have been out of the loop. What I did catch sort of amazed me. Our president, on a conference call on the Health Care bills, lectured some of America’s leading Rabbis on the Bible. He said that “we are God’s partners in matters of life and death”. This betrays a fundamental arrogance and flawed thinking in man’s relationship with God, and yet no one said a word. No one was allowed to, as the teleconference was more of a speech with several questions submitted beforehand. There was no dialog. Moses had spoken from the mountain.

One of the first things we learn as People of the Book is that God is paramount in all matters. He is God, after all. We are but a mote in His eye, according to the Bible. So how a mere mortal who professes the Christian faith make such a terrible mistake? This is not about the president’s rhetoric. It is dogmatic. Our president would be guilty as a Christian of the sins of hubris and vanity if nothing else. Martin Luther King would never have said such a thing, nor would most of our leaders today. If one is to lead a moral crusade, one must first be moral. One must have humility and deep faith. I see neither in the advocacy of the Health Care bills.

He then called for “40 Days” of action, recalling Jesus’ 40 days and 40 nights in the desert. For a deeply flawed health care bill on which the nation is deeply divided? His analogies defy faith. He uses sacred rhetoric for the most base of purposes.

The president and his advisors have demonized their opponents to a degree which we have not seen in 100 years, with the exception perhaps of the hatred of the hard Left of Nixon and Bush. But this time it is our leaders doing the demonization, not bloggers or protesters. I cannot remember in our history when a president has stooped so low. Lincoln loved his opponents as a Christian. Most others who may have despised their opponents kept their mouths shut.

But this is a demonization of Mom and Dad and Uncle Joe. Pelosi has said so. Reid has as well. Somehow this is the Left’s version of a “communist plot” of 50 years ago, but is being propagated by people who should know better. Pelosi calls herself a good Catholic, but supports extreme abortion rights. Reid professes to be a good Mormon. Obama calls himself Christian, but sponsored the most aggressive defense of third trimester abortion in the land when an Illinois state senator. This is the height of hypocrisy. Whether one is a believer or not, the dissonance is jarring. It short circuits logic to an Orwellian degree.

The funny thing is that this time, these people are way out on the perimeter of the political discourse. Secularists will concede a certain logic to our ethical framework, but our president and his allies seem to defy that logic, all in the name of their political agenda. They set up straw men to knock them down, and cannot seen to even get this right. Our country deserves much better.

The New Two Minute Hate

Over the next few weeks, I believe we will see a new phenomenon in America. The President and his allies have amassed a war chest of $250 million to propagandize the most unpopular legislation perhaps in the country’s history.

In the face of logic and the voters, it is their plan to generate enough smoke and cover to enact a health care bill that includes the leeway to eventually enact a single payer system and expand government control. Nancy Pelosi has told us this is her plan, and the President is on record with his unambiguous support dating to 2003. Mr. Obama has now set the stage for the major media and his allies to take a no holds barred initiative against those opposing this legislation.

Across the country in both liberal and conservative districts we have seen a phenomenon that is distinctly American and which occurs only in times of great ferment. In town hall meetings across the country the message has been clear that citizens are opposed in principle to the current health care proposals based upon several key points:

. Cost – With the likely implosion of Medicare and Social Security and a staggering economy, how can we afford trillions more in expenditures at a time when we are almost bankrupt?

. Coverage – restricted care is likely with the fiscal constraints necessary to extend health care coverage.

. Control – Who will control our health care system? Bureaucrats? Physicians? Accountants? Patients?

Credibility – With so many backtracks and lies to date from our leaders, how can one trust what one hears?

While Pelosi and Reid and Obama and their allies blame insurance companies and the Republicans and lies and astroturfers, we are treated to the sight of Trailways buses unloading SEIU members in Portsmouth, NH and stacked crowds at photo opportunities and our representatives turning to their cell phones in order to tune out the opposition. Do we believe our own eyes or Axelrod’s poll tested, Plaintiff’s Bar Big Pharma funded propaganda?

We have learned that the Democratic Party talking points are to get in the faces of their opponents, accuse the Republicans of inciting angry mobs, and demonize the opposition. The President is now using Biblical phrases to cast this as a “Light versus Darkness” issue in which he will deliver us from evil.

At the cost of hundreds of millions, the advertising industry uses incredible tools to craft the most effective message. They in many ways put Goebbels to shame as they have far more modern resources. Be prepared to see any of the President’s opponents, the elderly, small businessmen, libertarians, and Republicans subtly and not so subtly be vilified. The President’s tactical plan is already on record. He has telegraphed his punch.

Our country has a history of raucous political discourse. From the time of Jefferson and Adams to Andrew Jackson to Lincoln to William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold, hyperbole has been writ large on our political landscape.

Except this time there are very few true believers in the President’s plan. The support is at best tepid and must be ginned up with large doses of cash and payoffs and Union and special interest applied outrage. Look for the identical placards with the union made imprint on the corners. Even the AARP is seeing huge pushback this time from its individual members across party lines. This is the Big Guys versus the rest of us.

This time the plan starts with Alinsky’s dictum that success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics. The ends justify the means as long as you win. The morality of a means depends only on whether the means is being employed at a time of imminent defeat or imminent victory. This is called situational ethics by most and was the rationale developed and expounded upon by Lenin, Trotsky, Goebbels, and Mao Zedong. By any means necessary to achieve the goal. This is not the ethical structure historical to America.

Alinsky said “If you push a negative hard and deep enough,it will break through into its counterside”, a variation upon the Soviet’s “Big Lie” theory in repeating the lie until it becomes truth. This is the reality of the coming health care push.

The President will use his opposition’s tactics against them while ridiculing them and demonizing them as best he can. He and his allies have already started the big push. Black will become white. Words and terms will be redefined into Newspeak.

Doubletalk will confuse the issue. Legislation will be defined by what is left out and not what is defined to allow redefinition at a later date. And his supporters will be called upon to vilify their opponents rather than debate them in an objective manner. We will have taken another step towards 1984.

The Nobel Prize in Medicine and the Health Care Debate

One significant question raised in the health care debate is funding for medical research. I would like to illustrate a simple point and ask for comment on the effect of the current health care proposals on medical progress.

Nobel Prize for Medicine 1945 – 2008

By Country

United States 84
United Kingdom 21
Germany 8
France 7
Sweden 7
Australia 6
Switzerland 5.5
Belgium 2
Italy 1.5
Argentina 1
Austria 1
Denmark 1
Portugal 1
South Africa 1
New Zealand 0.5

One of the primary reasons for this disparate result is the availability of funding, whether for governmental, private, or university based research in the United States. It is obvious from these statistics that the American system works better than any other by a margin of 4:1 over the closest nation, the United Kingdom, and by a substantial margin over all other systems combined. Intellectual freedom, capitalism, a willingness to dream great dreams, and a commitment to the greater good all converge to create the circumstances for success.

We are now being asked to modify this system substantially. We do not know the consequences of the proposed health care initiatives, but we must, by all that is good in our world, maintain our commitment to excellence. If there is any chance at all that proposed reforms might be detrimental to the role of research and medical progress, that legislation must, without question, be voted down. For the time will surely come once again when we will need those minds and resources to fight new disease and illnesses. This is perhaps our greatest legacy to future generations.

Obama vs. Cheney – Round Two

ABC reports this evening that the CIA has released redacted copies of the reports requested by former Vice President Dick Cheney regarding enhanced interrogation techniques. They report that the information gleaned did in fact save many American and foreign lives. They also affirm President Bush’s  statements that terrorist attacks were in fact thwarted.

According to these reports, one of the plots revealed by Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind who was waterboarded two of the three times the technique was used according to other CIA reports, was to obtain and use anthrax spores and disperse them in heavily populated areas. Another was to commit another 9/11 event by flying hijacked airliners into London’s Heathrow airport. Other information gleaned was extremely valuable in identifying and mapping Al Quaeda’s financial network and hierarchy.

So where now are Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and Silvestre Reyes and Alcee Hastings and Maxine Waters and Jan Schakowsky and Adam Schiff and Anna Eshoo, who all castigated the CIA for what amounted to a a great big ball of nothing a few months ago? Their dark suspicions and accusations crashed and burned, and now we find that the President’s assertions, when he knew the facts all along, were an outright lie to the American People. So he responds with a witch hunt.

“Plausible Deniability” has re-entered the lexicon once again. As the president leaves town, Eric Holder, the Attorney General, appoints a special prosecutor to investigate “CIA terror tactics”, according to AP. Four former directors of the CIA, as well as current Director, Leon Panetta, have emphatically expressed their objections to such politicization of national security issues.

The President himself has said repeatedly “he wants to look forward not back” and yet Mr. Holder, who works expressly upon the president’s orders, has gone ahead with his inquisition. How can anyone think the president didn’t know of this beforehand and approve?

The issue has been investigated repeatedly and state secrets leaked by leftist members of Congress, and yet now, being criticized  from all sides for many of his policies, the President and his Attorney General decide to pour gasoline on the fire of an already alarmed electorate.

What is very strange indeed is that this President has embraced wholesale the tactics of his predecessor. On rendition, on Guantanamo, and on interrogation tactics, President Obama has simply renamed them and continued with the same policies.

Naturally, AP’s primary headline followed the Obama party line. “Inhumane CIA Terror Tactics Spur Criminal Probe”. We know where they stand on the issue. This will be published worldwide and further damage our country’s reputation.

Mr. Cheney has shown us that the Emperor wears no clothes, and the Emperor reacted with the most base of politically motivated inquisitions to deflect blame. Round two to Mr. Cheney, but it up to us to count the president out on a TKO.

In the presence of heroes

Years ago I began the process of getting touch with my Uncle Harry, who was a paratrooper killed at Anzio in February of 1944. Not in any spooky sense, but to try and remember the life of a  man who joined the Army in early 1941 and who was looked up to by his friends and family as a natural leader and who died in the fog of war too young. After doing some research, I attended a reunion of his unit to try and find someone who may have known him to try to get to know him better. Not much of a thread to connect over 65 years, but something to try and connect with why he did what he did and who he was as a man. I have been through my own experiences  and wanted to find a connection. What I found was something more.

The 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion was a very unusual unit. They were an independent battalion, only 400 men in an Army where the normal combat unit is a regiment of 3-4 Battalions. The 509th did not fit into most battle plans easily, but they gave the commanding general a unit of very tough, capable soldiers who could go anywhere fast to hold an airfield or bridge or town. They were the first unit into combat in North Africa, making our country’s first parachute assault against the Vichy French, and yes, a number of men were killed. They fought again throughout North Africa, including Kasserine Pass, where they held, and a bunch of places now long forgotten. Along the way they gained a reputation as something of a bunch of buccaneers and a little bit raffish. Maybe it had something to do with their first CO, LTC Edson Raff. Through the years, the 509th has been staffed and commanded by some of the finest men in the Army. in Mid 1943  LTC, later General Yarborough, the father of the Special Forces, commanded the unit. More recently, Generals Casey and Petraeus started their careers there. The 509th has always attracted the best.

After North Africa they were rested in Casablanca, which was much less romantic than it sounds. They were held in reserve in Sicily, which for the airborne was a debacle. Hundreds of American and British paratroopers were lost there before they even landed, many shot down by our own antiaircraft fire. At Salerno, they were parachuted behind enemy lines at Avellino to try to relieve the beachhead. Half of them didn’t make it back from that one, captured or killed. Later on, in a town called Venafro, 11 miles east of Cassino, they became mountain troops in a bitter cold, wet November and spent a month in the line with the Rangers. That was all one could ask of any man. Pneumonia, shrapnel, small arms, and hand to hand combat decimated the unit at each of these stops. My uncle, we knew, had been wounded once in North Africa and again at Venafro. He was said to have escaped from the hospital in Naples to get back to his unit for the Anzio landings, where they were the spearhead, the first men on the beach. He was killed by shrapnel a few weeks into the battle. Once again, the 509th was at the tip of the sword.

I met his Company Sgt., George Fontanesi, at one of the reunions. He remembered my uncle as a kid from Brooklyn, but not much more about him. George is 90 now. He also told me that in the 509th, the turnover was so high from wounds and deaths that men came and went at far too fast a pace.  You lost track, and only after the war sometimes found out. He gave me an example. There was a hill in village called Carano at Anzio, where my uncle had died a few days prior to this battle. The 509th were at the very point of the Allied line in front of the entire army, and the Germans were throwing what seemed like their entire army at B/509 trying to drive the Americans into the sea. On that hill was a reduced Company. Whatever was left of what was supposed be 100 men after almost 4 weeks of close combat. Maybe there were 25-30 men left at that point. The other Companies were nearby, but the Germans decided that they wanted that hill and sent a reinforced regiment with tanks and artillery. It is in the history books. B Company took everything the Germans could hit them with and held. In the middle of the night, George told me, they received 18 replacements. In a foxhole with a piece of paper and a flashlight, it was his responsibility to parcel them out to the fighting positions. The next morning, every one of those men was dead. Such was the history of the 509th. George explained it as it was, no varnish. An awful lot of 509′ers never made it home alive. The wounded sometimes came back, but often didn’t. Harry made it back twice before he died. It was that kind of bond they shared.

The 509th then fought as the pathfinders for the invasion of Southern France, again the first to fight. They helped liberate Cannes and Nice and the French Riviera and lost more men, and then rested at the end of the year outside of Paris. Like the 506th Regiment (the Band of Brothers), they were called out to fill the lines at The Bulge and took another bad hit at a place called Sadzot in Belgium for Christmas, when a full division bore down on them. A month later, they fought one last time at St. Vith. The orders to disband the 509th and parcel the troopers out had been on the way since before the Bulge, but only reached them on January 27. On the 28th, they pulled out of close contact with the enemy at the bottom of a hill with only 55 men still standing. Officially, the unit was disbanded on March 1, 1945. From the first to fight in the European Theater in Africa to March 1, 1945 over 7,500 men passed through the 509th, the majority wounded at least once or dead.

The 509th appeared and disappeared through the  60’s, almost like a ghost until the 1970’s when it once again was reactivated as a front line unit. The 509th Airborne Combat team was the only airborne unit in Europe, once again the tip of the spear. A separate Pathfinder Company were activated only to again be deactivated along with 1/509. In the 1980’s the 1/509th was again activated, this time it seems for a good while. They are the OPFOR (Opposing Force) who train other Army units in urban and guerilla warfare. These days, most of them are Iraq and Afghanistan vets, some with 3 tours, who do their best to drive much larger forces crazy in order to prepare them for the real thing.

Wearing beards and keffiyahs and kidnapping Colonels, capturing command posts, delaying and ambushing larger units than themselves, and then reviewing the results and both teaching and learning from each encounter are all in a day’s work. It is very demanding work, but it has its charms. One trooper delighted in telling me how they had captured a senior officer and then used his cell phone to call other CO’s, threatening them in pidgin Arabic laced with English curse words. He took special pleasure when he found his own former CO’s number. Some of these soldiers jumped in during the first Iraq invasion. Others came from other line units. Every one of them is smart and creative and committed.

One has to love the sublime logic of the Army.  The 3rd battalion/509th PIR was stood up at Ft. Richardson, AK in 2006 as part of the 25th (Tropic Lightning) Division, based in Hawaii. As part of Spartan Brigade, they went to Iraq, where they distinguished themselves as a part of the Anbar Awakening where generals argued over who would retain their services. One Company, along with a company of Marines, fought a pitched battle with over 2,000 insurgents. I met one of those Marines by chance at a supermarket the day before Thanksgiving last year, and he told me his part of the story. He didn’t have the words to express his admiration, and I’m sure the feeling was mutual. It was rough  Eventually, with the cooperation of the local sheikhs, Anbar was pacified and proved General Petraeus’ strategy for the Surge to have been a success. Other Geronimo companies served in Baghdad, Babil, and elsewhere. Anywhere it was hot.

There is a toll for this. Honor in combat does not come necessarily from bravery, but from survival. 21 509′ers gave their lives in Iraq. One squad in Able Company (Able Nation) lost every member but one. He ended up in Afghanistan when 3/509 deployed. He wasn’t going to leave his buddies. I understood why my uncle did what he did back in early 1944, but this brought it all full circle. It’s the same as it’s been since Julius Caesar; squad, company, maniple, century. One for all and all for one.

We had a reunion a few months ago. There were only 6 of the originals able to attend; the rest gone or infirm. We had a lot of guys from the 70’s and 80’s, and 60 active duty 509′ers from Ft. Polk dropped in (literally). A few from 3/509 were there who had been transferred to new postings. The Army is like that, 2 years and you’re in school or halfway across the world in a new post in most cases. But the connection to the 509th remains. West Point has the Long Gray Line, but this is about shared experience and hardship; in training and under fire. I never thought I would get so much out of it. Lessons learned 60 years ago; lessons learned a lot more recently. And a lot of good friends across the age band.

The kids coming back from Central Asia have seen as much as anyone else of war and its pain. Urban combat in Iraq and fighting in the high mountains and valleys for sometimes 3 or 4 1 year tours of duty has its own burden.  And it has its price. Not a lot of people volunteer for this, and that in itself has deep meaning. The young ones are going to need the older ones. 4 months ago, a kid named Justin Casillas was carrying another kid named Aaron Fairbairn who had been wounded, over his shoulder to the aid station at a Godforsaken  place called FOB Zerok when they were both killed. 6 days ago, another young man named Julian Berisford was killed on patrol. This isn’t going away anytime soon.

The bond between the old soldiers and the younger, whatever the unit, is more critical than ever. I see this as a part of the ongoing mission. There’s been talk of the VFW or Legion having issues at some posts with the old guys vs the Vietnam or younger guys, but not in the 509th. The Vietnam era guys especially can relate to the stress and make a contribution. Some of them are doing it already.

Back in 1941-45 or in Afghanistan or Stateside now, it takes a very special man to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. It takes even more to face a determined enemy with a rifle in your hands. Every one of these men, and every veteran deserves the respect of us all. They have earned it the hard way. There is little of the trivial about these men. But there is compassion and brotherhood and all of those noble characteristics we don’t have enough of these days. Heroism is a combination of many things. To me, the greatest of all is keeping on even when the fear in your heart tells you your number is up. Every one of these men, old and young, meet any definition of the word you’d care to use.

So when you’re at the store or work or any of the places you go tomorrow and you look around, remember not just these men, but all of the men and women who have served. When you take the oath, you commit your life to your country. It is one of the great callings, especially in America. Also remember that overseas, the French and British and Canadians and Australians and many other countries remember their veterans tomorrow as well. And give a thought to every one of them around the world.

The United States Ministry of Propaganda

Patrick Courrielche at Big Hollywood wrote an excellent summary of a meeting sponsored by the National Endowment of the Arts on August 10th on which he attended the conference call. It was hosted by the following organizations:

National Endowment of the Arts

White House Office of Public Engagement

United We Serve

They held this meeting, which included Rock the Vote and a representative of the hip hop producer Russell Simmons, with 75 leading artists, musicians, writers, taggers, and filmmakers who were urged to help propagandize the American people.  President Obama was putting the call out for service to help push his health care and cap & trade agendas. There was little subtlety in the message. They used Shepard Fairey’s “Change” image and will.i.am’s “Yes We Can” song as examples.

After 30 years of heated discussion of the apolitical nature of the NEA, the President has clearly stepped over the line.

The NEA has a budget of $155 Million this year, and was formed as an independent agency to fund the arts. There have been a number of controversies over the years about some of the artists supported, including Robert Mapplethorpe, whose photography, while brilliant, was also graphically homoerotic at times as well. Andres Serrano, whose “Piss Christ” outraged Christians, was another recipient of NEA grant money. The merits of individual works can be debated  as can the role of government in supporting controversial artists or the arts themselves. I believe there is a strong argument for the promotion of high art myself.

But there is absolutely no place for the government funded and organized politicization of art in this country. This is a hallmark of statist regimes such as Mao’s China, Soviet Russia, and the Fascists. It is pure, distilled propaganda. Today, it is seen in art books or if you happen to visit Castro’s Cuba or North Korea. In Europe, it recalls the memories of World War II. This is not Roosevelt’s FSA or WPA support of great American photgraphers like Dorothea Lange or Ansel Adams, or even Diego Rivera’s murals. This is not Frank Capra or Preston Sturges idealism. This is Chicago style bare knuckles win at all cost pull the plugs out and hope we don’t get caught and screw ‘em as long as we win politics. That it supports two of the most poorly conceived and ill defined pieces of legislation in 50 years on throws more gasoline on the fire.

This not the camel’s nose under the tent. This is the whole herd. The call went out and it was answered. The crime has been committed. We will see, in addition to $150 Million in Big Pharma money, hundreds of millions more from the AARP, who have removed the fig leaf; the SEIU, and even some of the large corporations like GE (who own NBC) who stand to gain if they can slough off hundreds of millions in insurance costs. It is an all out effort to con the American people that has never before been attempted. Josef Goebbels would be proud.

I believe in the arts. It is one of the things that separates us from the animal kingdom. I believe in much of the role in the NEA. But when a corrupt president bends all agencies of government against his opponents, he must be opposed by anyone who believes in free speech and the First Amendment. The President must be held accountable.

Paging Mr. Fitzgerald

Way back oh, 9 months ago or so, we were treated to the conviction of Tony Rezko and subsequent indictment of the Governor of Illinois, Rudy Blagojevich on corruption charges. Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who convicted Lewis “Scooter” Libbey and got a 6 year term for perjury for his defense of  his boss, Vice President Cheney, seems to be hung up on both of these cases now.

That we now know that the leak of Valerie Plame’s status as an undercover CIA agent was the result of conversations between Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage and recently deceased journalist Robert Novak never stopped a witch hunt that included the imprisonment of New York Times reporter Judith Miller for 18 months. How is this just?

We are seeing a pattern of illegality within the Obama Administration that is disturbing. From his appointment of tax cheats indictable on felony charges to Cabinet positions to his use of “czars” outside of the normal chain of command who operate in virtual secrecy, to his recently instigated witch hunt against the CIA in reopening closed cases, we have a President who is at the least not afraid to push the limits of power and may well have broken the law. And Mr. Fitzgerald has been silent for 7 months. Tick, Tick, tick…….

Mr. Rezko was convicted at the height of the election campaign,  and promised to cooperate with further investigations. Mr. Blagojevich was caught on wiretaps in November/December auctioning off Obama’s  seat in the Senate to the highest bidder. Jesse Jackson Jr. was caught on tape negotiating a price for the seat.  Rahm Emmanuel’s name was mentioned more than once. So what gives?

Rezko is on record as having been Obama’s first major contributor even as our now president graduated from law school. The ties are long and deep. Rezko seems to have offered a sweetheart deal to the Obamas to purchase a home that was at the time beyond their means. His conviction on 16 of 24 counts of corruption involving the Chicago machine is a matter of record. He was wired tight into the heart of darkness, and seems to have promised to reveal some of those deep Chicago secrets to an ambitious prosecutor almost a year ago now. What we are left with seems to be a dry well.

So Mr. Fitzgerald, you convicted a Chief of Staff for doing his job protecting his boss and put an innocent reporter behind bars for 18 months and have the Mother of All Political Scandals handed to you on a silver platter, and are silent.

I used to believe in a phrase called “for the good of the country”. Most of the DA’s and prosecutors I’ve met have a hard core streak of justice running right down their spine. They are hard wired to find  evildoers.  My grandfather told me in a letter on my 7th birthday to be a credit to God, to my family, and to my country. These are the kind of men I hope are the backbone of our justice system. Fair, correct, and who believe in our Constitution.

We now have the news that senior officials at the Department of Justice, not the career prosecutors running the case, have closed the investigation of New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson in a “pay for play” scandal that forced his withdrawal from consideration as Commerce Secretary in January. Add to this the decision not to prosecute Black Panthers in Philadelphia for intimidation at the polls and Attorney General  Holder’s decision to reopen a closed investigation of the CIA , and a pattern of impropriety seems to be emerging.

So what ever happened to those investigations, Mr. Fitzgerald?  Where are we?  Bueller? Bueller?

California Sneaks Through Higher Income Taxes

These are the last days of summer vacation for most, and most of our ruling class are away on Martha’s Vineyard or in the Hamptons or Malibu soaking up the sun before going back to Washington and Sacramento to stir up more mischief. But the late night drops over the transom have continued like a leaky faucet. Bill Richardson of New Mexico skates on corruption charges as “high level” decision makers in the Attorney general’s office overrule career prosecutors and the Attorney General opens a witch hunt at the CIA over events years ago and probably outside of the statutes of limitations and the NEA is caught organizing Obama propaganda fests.

Here in California the hobgoblins have been busy as well. The LA Times reported today that the California Tax Board, who we really have not heard from in quite a while, has lowered our tax thresholds, bumping most of us into higher tax brackets. They claim it is inflation indexed, but with some of the lowest inflation on record for the past 10 years, it is obviously a subterfuge. The net result to the state treasury is a $140/family tax increase.

So far this year the state has doubled the vehicle tax and also increased income taxes by a quarter point. If you recall, the car tax cut was Arnold’s ticket to Sacramento. Sales taxes, use fees, and all sorts of hidden scams by the state to gin up revenue have all done very little to actually bring in more revenue as the state government has done its best to screw up the world’s 8th largest economy. The state just got $14 Billion+ in “stimulus” money just to help balance its budget, but it’s not enough. So they figure they’ll squeeze a little more.

Here in California we have some of the highest costs in the country now; for housing, for gas, for most of the basics. The same gallon of gas they pay $2.55 for in Texas costs us $3.00 here. Now, a family of 4 earning $100,000/year, which believe it or not is considered middle class, will get hit with a 22% increase in their income taxes, or $715.00, all courtesy of the bureaucrats in Sacramento. So more jobs will leave and the schools will suffer and our quality of life will decline. And still nothing changes. Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose, as the the French say.

The only public servant on record so far is Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, who pointed out that it “takes more money out of the taxpaying productive sectors and scoops it into the government’s coffers at a time when taxpayers are already reeling”.

Funny things happen in the late days of August because they figure no one is paying attention.

The Mary Jo Kopechne Right to Life Bill

This week we are faced with the loss of Senator Edward Kennedy, the Lion of the Left, who has been idolized almost nonstop since his death yesterday morning by the networks and major media. Senator Kennedy had a long and storied career fighting for wider access to opportunity and fairer laws for all. But he also had a troubling personal history.

While nominally Catholic, he was one of the most prominent advocates for abortion rights, and womanized and drank his way through 50 years of privilege. He was also  complicit in the manslaughter of Mary Jo Kopechne, who idolized him and was in the car the night he drove off a bridge and into a channel under suspicious circumstances. This seems to have been forgotten.

This morning, it took all of a few hours for some Democratic Party strategists to begin renaming their health care efforts in honor of Senator Kennedy. Forgive me if I find this to be just a little hypocritical. In an environment of win at all costs when the legislation proposed is so deeply flawed, I must assume that there is opportunism at work.

Loose  wording  has opened up the possibility of an unfavorable reinterpretation of the health care bills under consideration. The Congressional Budget Office has already declared that any legislation will cost trillions more, and leading advocates of the various bills are already calling for a reduction of billions in Medicare benefits. Logic dictates that the quality of care will inevitably suffer.

At the same time, there is overwhelming opposition to late term abortion in this country. We have become barbaric in some ways with less and less respect for human life at its beginning or end. A fetus is viable according to  scientific metrics at 25 weeks. It deserves the simple right to survive. We may disagree about abortion, but objectively, we are taking a viable human life with late term abortions.

Our elders are afraid of “death panels”. The bureaucracy of managed care, whether through public or private options, can encapsulate the banality of evil. We all deserve a fighting chance. And if we are at life’s end, it should be our decision with our families, with the consultation of our physicians, to make that choice. This must be enshrined in any health care bill that passes.

Federal funding for certain controversial procedures such as abortion at a time where the cost of care is skyrocketing and there is such moral dissonance on the issue should also be questioned. If the government wants to limit obesity and smoking, surely we must look at other areas of personal conduct and allow  the choice, but not a publicly funded one.

One thing we know from the history books is that Mary Jo Kopechne was a  moral person, a true believer. She died far too young in a senseless accident late at night on a dark road, abandoned to her fate.  While we remember Senator Kennedy we should also remember Ms. Kopechne  as well.

Change You Can Deceive In! The Left’s Coming Health Care Propaganda Campaign

September 8 the fun and games will begin in earnest. We have been watching Town Hall meetings throughout America with a common theme, concern with the governments actions on spending, health care, and its direction. Congress members have been hearing from their constituents, and will return to Washington in full knowledge of the stakes at risk.

But to the Administration and Congressional leaders, this hardly matters. They are rallying around the still warm memory of Teddy Kennedy and gathering their forces to come out swinging. The ads are being tested with focus groups, The AARP and Big Pharma money is being spent reserving television and radio time. The unions are printing up hundreds of thousands of T shirts and identical posters for mass rallies. Paid organizers are being trained to hold rallies which will of course be aired on the major networks with tight camera angles to ensure the images and sounds we hear will hit exactly the right note. Leni Riefenstahl would have been proud.

The Journo List will have their talking points written up for them and every leader on the Democratic side will have their role, just like a kabuki play. The sympathy mob has their props ready to trot out for the cameras. Obama has enlisted the National Endowment for the Arts to rope in every leftard graffiti artist, musician, writer, and videographer they can spring from jail or rehab to Rock the Vote for their hero.  MoveOn.org and ACORN are funded and ready. This is the Super Bowl and the  Democrats have their Red Zone offense good to go.

They have cowed the AMA and hospital lobby and Big Pharma into supporting their agenda, and there is an ominous air in their dealings with the insurance industry. They are, of course, Public Enemy Number One. They are figuring out who in Congress can be bought and at what price just like they did with the Stimulus bill. Maybe a few more Republicans will take their salt.

In the meantime, ABC and NBC have refused to air opposing ads, and editorial commentary will be scornful in their derision of astroturfers, bitter clingers, the evildoers and guns and religion crowd. You know, the morons, as they think of us. Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich and Paul Krugman have been mainlining Red Bull shooters and are so wired up they may be incoherent, but you see, logic is not the point. It never was. This is the nuclear option.

And basically, the only thing standing against them is the common sense of the American People. The Left figure that if they can manipulate and triangulate and obfuscate enough of us this stinkeroo may squeak by. It has so many loose ends it will unravel in weeks, but by then it will be too late. Common sense doesn’t matter. This is a pure power play.

They will then have health care and the auto industry and banking in the palms of their hands to loot at their leisure. The insiders will get paid off and the rest of us will be the poorer off. The country will be broke beyond redemption, but somehow this won’t matter. It’s all about Teddy, it’s all about the Dream. And it has no basis in reality.

And in 6 months or a year or two, it will all go kaboom and of course it was never their fault. It was someone else’s. It will be ours. Because that’s the way they think.

More Kennedy Nepotism?

It would seem that our oligarchy has once again gone off the deep end. In today’s edition of The Hill, Senators Orrin Hatch and Christopher Dodd call for the selection of Teddy Kennedy’s widow, Vicki as his replacement. As if Massachusetts politics was not bad enough, this is indicative of the Roman mindset prevalent in Washington today.

Over the last month of his life, Kennedy’s primary focus was on overturning  a state law he himself proposed in order to prevent a political opponent, Gov. Mitt Romney, from appointing a replacement should John Kerry have been elected president. Now, you see, this same legislation works against the Democratic Party’s interests as it prevents a supermajority at a time when all indications are that they want to ram through their health care bill at any cost.  It’s a hell of a thing to be thinking of this as you prepare to meet your Creator.

The mention of Mrs. Kennedy’s name was not hers, but rather made by Senator Hatch. In the spirit of bipartisanship Senator Dodd, Teddy’s partner in debauchery for 30 years, seconded the motion. You see, it’s all one big happy utterly irresponsible family in Washington these days. It’s the ultimate in bipartisanship.

Senate and Congressional seats make great Christmas gifts, and it is the gift that keeps on giving as well. Just imagine the take for even a short term. Political favors can be handed out, legislation can be bought and sold, and the speaking fees when you have the word “honorable” prefixing your name are nice. These are not, I believe, Mrs. Kennedy’s thoughts but rather the nature of the position as defined by many in our political class today.

I have nothing against Mrs. Kennedy and only condolences for her family, but we are faced with a truly scary spectacle . We are seeing our democracy under siege. We have Representatives and Senators who, having been caught in bold faced lies, only shout their lies louder. We see many of our representatives not engaging with their constituents, but rather hiding. We see our Administration acting like the Corleone’s in making offers Big Pharma and the banks cannot refuse. And we see our leaders ridiculing us as uninformed rubes and tea baggers.

It is time to seek out the best in our country. The problems are massive. Instead, we are seeing our leaders at their worst. We must take back our democracy. It is not a gift, and it is not a bribe. This is not Rome. Democracy is a responsibility, not a hand out.

Are The Democrats Going to Sell out Afghanistan?

Paul Wellstone in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal is proposing that all is well in Afghanistan and perhaps we can declare victory and start drawing down our troop levels there.  Ironically,  this is just as Generals McChrystal and Petraeus are requesting additional forces.

In the U.K. there has been scandal week after week regarding the governments mismanagement of the Ministry of Defense and the war. Public approval is at a low for the conduct of the war, and yet high for the performance of the military.  The latest rumor is that Prime Minister Gordon Brown may shortly announce the withdrawal of the 9,000 British troops stationed there.

The government of Afghanistan is setting records for corruption and the country is still by far the world’s largest source of  heroin. The poppy fields are there. They fund much of the Taliban’s war effort as well as the nominally loyal war lords who still act like 16th Century brigands. This issue is now part of our mission portfolio, as is nation building. For 7 years, Afghanistan was on the back burner. Now we must succeed.

For the past 6 months, General McChrystal has studied and formulated his plans and is now acting to implement them. It is agreed across the board that the effort will require more troops on the ground, more helicopters, and more close air support as well as building schools and infrastructure and trustworthy public institutions. Afghanistan was the shoestring war until recently. We are finally committing the resources, and on their side of the border the Pakistanis have realized the danger to their own government and begun to act. Progress is being made.

Just as the death toll in Anbar indicated success in Iraq, so does the rise in activity in Afghanistan. Soldiers bleed when they are making a difference. The Taliban is willfully inflicting casualties on civilians to achieve their ends, and the innocent are caught in the crossfire.  It is the price of freedom.

The Taliban are demonstrating their ability to get things done in the territory they control; the old filling potholes route just like Brooklyn pols did 100 years ago. Except the potholes they are figuratively filling are those they caused with their own IED’s. But they are, according to JCS Chief Adm. Mullen forming courts and helping the displaced poor claim stolen lands. Land theft is a problem that goes back centuries in Afghanistan, and the Taliban in the past were just as guilty as anyone else. But now it works to their advantage.

Their brutality is the same as it was when we first got involved, and there is one central question above all others that will decide the war in the end. The Afghan people are asking us “Will you stay with us?”.  Otherwise they will simply make their accomodations with the Taliban and all the lives lost and money spent will be for nothing. They may be uneducated, but they are by no means stupid.

Many experts and the think tanks are questioning the focus and direction at the top here in America. The Administration seems not to know what their end goals are. The mission has been redefined as a “Contingency Operation”.  Obama’s claim of Afghanistan as “the good war”  raises the stakes and he owns this one. What is funny is that Iraq very slowly seems to be sorting itself out on their own. Both wars seem to have fallen off the front pages. Funny how that happened.

Attorney General Eric Holder has complicated matters even further with his investigation of the CIA’s actions. In one fell swoop, he has put politics ahead of policy. The CIA investigated it’s interrogation programs and reported back to the Executive Branch, and now those same reports are being read in a different light, redefining criminality. So you have the generals looking over their shoulders now, the Secretary of Defense looking over his shoulder, and the entire CIA looking over its collective shoulder to see if they are going to be sold out. Sounds like 1973 to me.

You see, we have a leadership in the Democratic party that is hard left. We are seeing the President playing more to the liberal wing of the party than ever before. Then we have Wellstone and Brown ready to drop the other shoe. One can now envision Congress tip-toeing out the door in Afghanistan.

And yet, the new strategy has not even been given a chance yet. We have two of the smartest Generals in modern history, Petraeus and McChrystal, and the chance to actually build something good, and once again our leaders may be ready to blow it all to hell.

If we withdraw, you will see more heroin on the streets of Europe and America and an implacable enemy back in power, funded with those profits. The Taliban are amoral. You will see North and South Waziristan become even more dangerous, and the fears of radicals obtaining weapons of mass destruction will once again be real and tangible.

We let many things go too long in Afghanistan; the corruption, the warlord culture, the drug trade, and the lack of real nation building. We also starved the effort of resources. The Taliban are counting on us tiring of the fight and using this fear to intimidate the population further. After all, it has been our history and theirs.

We must let our people do their jobs as they have proven themselves capable of, and we need to stay the course. Otherwise, every death from 9/11 to date will have been in vain. Every death in vain.

Alternate Realities – Right versus Left versus Islamic Extremism

We have, over the past 7 months seen a complete redefinition and rebranding of the conflict with Islamic extremism. We have also seen the Iraq War fall from the front page almost completely, and the news on Afghanistan has been reduced to a trickle. American casualties in both countries have been under the radar for months, which should be some metric of our success, and our generals have some excellent strategies going forward. But we are going to lose if we do not stop the political gamesmanship at home.

Under Bush, there was a huge outcry of manufactured rage against these conflicts. It has virtually vanished under President Obama. The far left is still very upset and feels betrayed, but the most prominent demonstrators like Cindy Sheehan are almost completely ignored now. In the cities and suburbs, you would hardly know there is a war (or two) on.

Let’s look at the Obama administration’s actions after 7 months in office:

. Withdrawal of troops from Iraq to 50,000 garrisoned outside the cities.

. Renaming the Global War on Terror to Contingency Operations, a meaningless Newspeak term.

. Retaining most Bush era policies and powers while renaming them. Remember, Obama excoriated Bush’s human rights record during the campaign, and is now doing the same thing,      whether you agree or disagree.

. An aggressive use of unmanned drones across the Pakistani border. Sometimes with their approval, often not.

. Dismantling many of the joint agency programs established after 9/11 to improve interagency intelligence gathering and information sharing, and reprioritizing the FBI as the lead agency in terrorist investigations. This is simply a return to Clinton era policies which are now recognized to have failed to keep the nation safe.

Bush was vehemently criticized and accused of being a war criminal by the Left beginning in 2003 with the Iraq invasion. In the aftermath of the most effective terrorist attacks in history against several of the highest profile targets in the United States, the reaction by our government and both friends and foes to the horror was concerted and consensual. It wasn’t just Bush. It was Spain and Britain and France and Russia and even at one point Iran. We seem to have forgotten that the intelligence consensus cited by Colin Powell came from multiple agencies around the world. The Taliban had already been defeated in Afghanistan. The future held additional bombings in London and Madrid. And Al Quaeda was still very very active. If nothing else, it was thought that Saddam was an enabler who had already cost millions of lives with his adventurism.

We won the war, but almost lost the peace. Iraq is still problematic. It is still the Americans they look to to be good faith brokers and keepers of the peace. Now that we are leaving, we are seeing an increase on bombings which could undo all of the progress of the past 3 years in months, leaving us with nothing to show for billions of dollars and thousands of lives lost. And yet we still had the Left declaring the war lost up to election day. This includes noted intellectuals such as CNN’s Peter Bergen, Glenn Greenwald, and most of the New York/East Coast intelligentsia.

And now George Will is said to be preparing to oppose the Afghanistan war just when we have shifted focus to this theater. Shame on him. Somehow, even with Generals Petraeus and McChrystal in charge, we have already lost what we never really won and never tried to win according to this emerging consensus of left and right. To them, it’s time to say the hell with it and go home.

This afternoon, the National Security Advisor, General Jones, had the audacity to claim that “President Obama’s greater success with international relations has meant more terrorists put out of commission”. I say “where”? Pakistan, perhaps, where the government finally realized the danger to itself and acted in its own self interest? The General provided no numbers or examples, but surely after 7 months on the job this is highly optimistic.

Our Attorney General as a member of President Clinton’s administration successfully advocated the release of 11 Puerto Rican FALN terrorists who had in fact committed terrorist acts to assist in Hillary Clinton’s Senate bid in 2000, a blatantly political move. The one of these terrorists was later killed in a shootout with police should weigh on his soul.  After President Obama’s public statements to the contrary, Mr. Holder has now cast CIA officers and interrogators who acted under orders and in good faith as criminals convicted without a trial in the court of public opinion. The fact that the statutes of limitations have almost certainly expired makes the farce all the more political. How can we take these actions as a part of a serious defense of our nations security?

The mantra of “blame Bush” has continued and will probably do so throughout this administration. We have seen a Derridan deconstruction and reassembling of the objective truth.  In Iraq, we didn’t take their oil. We didn’t prop up a fascist dictator. We simply tried to remove an enemy who had already proven himself as such and who had the will and the means to cause infinite suffering. We then helped establish a democratic government and have met with some real success. The Left must recognize this and respect the achievement.  In Afghanistan, we are doing the right thing and yet the professionals are deeply concerned (read last night’s post). The Left and Right must allow the plan to unfold without breathing down the necks of the commanders and diplomats. The enemy is still out there and still hates us whether Democrat or Republican or Independent.

One of the primary rules of war is unity of mission and purpose. The President gives the orders and the military follows them. The orders have been clear and need to remain so. But an administration that does not act realistically is more dangerous to our troops than it is to itself.  This is not about politics at present, and the Right must respect this as well. The people on point are as realistic as it gets, and will state their honest opinions and the options. Listen to the professionals we pay to do the job and let them do it. We lose wars when politics and emotion overrule common sense.

Cash for Clunkers Cars – Unintended Consequences

One of the  issues facing the new owners of cars purchased through the Cash for Clunkers program is that these cars can not yet be registered in their  names, and in some cases  may need to be returned to the dealers. The catch is that the dealers cannot register the cars in the new owners names until they are completely paid for. Since the federal government is so far behind on their paperwork, there is nothing most dealers can do until they receive funds.

Dealers must fill out a 20 page form  for the program, and the rule book is 136 pages. A significant amount of paperwork is being returned for errors, thus clogging the system further. In addition, many dealers and consumers are concerned that someone will be left holding the bag if a deal is not approved. $4,500 is a considerable sum. With the backlog, no one quite knows whether many deals will make it under the wire.

Thus these cars must legally sit in the driveway until the funds and paperwork clear. Most dealerships can get this done in hours with on line registration under normal circumstances, so there is no other excuse.

On top of this, the dealers have only 90 days to strip parts from the cars for resale before being crushed. Since they are not allowed to transfer decommissioned cars to wrecking yards, millions of dollars will be wasted as most dealers are not set up for recycling and salvageable cars will end up as scrap.

And now they want to run healthcare?

Blackouts in Britain – Are we next?

I remember shortly after arriving in the UK back in the 1970’s in a dark and dreary Manchester November being stunned that the power workers union had gone on strike, shutting off the electricity purposely to press for their demands. It was as much about control as it was money. The unions ruled Britain at the time. I was one of the lucky ones. While I had to use candles, the flat I had rented had gas heat that still worked. Hospitals, offices, factories, and homes across the country were faced with temperatures in the 30’s and no way around the problem. Many people died because of the cold and loss of electricity. Eventually, it brought the government down and Margaret Thatcher to power. The lesson I learned most was the folly of man. Once again, Britain seems to be on the verge of another man made disaster in the power sector.

Irwin Stelzer in the Telegraph reports that by 2013, Britain will be in the midst of a power crisis.  The resulting blackouts and brownouts will be the result of not enough clean energy sources and poor planning. According to their treaties, the British government must reduce carbon emissions by 34% by 2020 and 50% by 2050. Mr. Stelzer calls for clean coal research as one answer, as they still have an abundance. This could benefit the United States and China, the two largest industrial economies as well.

Our Congress goes back in session next week, and after the health care bill, the Senate will take up Cap & Trade. There have been many concerns voiced on both sides of the aisle and in the environmental community with a poorly crafted House bill. But the Administration is under pressure to present major legislation at the the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen beginning December 7. This is meant to build on the Kyoto Protocol, and the president needs a big win.  Instead he is faced with an intransigent China, the world’s other largest polluting nation, and a bill that does nothing to actually reduce greenhouse gases. We all suffer from this outcome.

At the same time, our power infrastructure is falling apart. We are relying on outdated coal power generation technology and many nuclear power plants are over 30 years old. The transmission system needs a serious upgrade as well. If demand for electric cars is as predicted, the system will be heavily overloaded and we too will be faced with blackouts.

It takes 10-15 years to build new plants. A number are already moving forward, but not enough to make an impact on any of these issues. Photovoltaic will not provide enough power, but the good news is that it can be localized. The president and policy makers must stand up and get it right this time. The solutions are there, but we need to begin work immediately. the president has the opportunity to change the agenda in a truly meaningful way and steer American industry back on course. But if we blow it, you’d better stock up on candles and propane.

Why is Homeland Security Involved in the H1N1Flu pandemic?

I have been following the news on H1N1 flu for the past year like most people who are addicted to the news. We have seen outbreaks throughout the world, and it seems that H1N1 so far has a somewhat higher mortality rate than most strains of the virus, but not abnormally so. Recently, in an incoming class of 1,300 cadets at the Air Force Academy, 67 were diagnosed with H1N1 on July 14. This is an infection rate of 5.1%. In a typical year, 1 out of 3  inhabitants (33.33%) of the United States is infected with the flu. The typical mortality rate for influenza is 0.7%. According to Wikipedia this morning 301, 894 cases have been reported worldwide, with 3,097 deaths confirmed, for a mortality rate of 1.06%.

In 1918-1920, the Spanish Influenza epidemic saw an estimated 500 million people worldwide infected of a global population of 1.5 Billion, the same 33.33% that tracks with the average flu infection rate. But of these cases, between 50-100 million patients died. The death toll among the healthiest sectors were the highest. This was also a H1N1 variant, which is what has health officials so concerned. It seems the mechanism of this strain produced such a strong reaction from the body’s natural defenses that it weakened the strongest patients most aggressively, most of whom then contracted bacterial pneumonia as a secondary infection and died very quickly. Deaths caused directly by the flu were also high, and it was not a pleasant death. It is estimated that this was the worst plague to strike humanity in history.

At present, the first outbreak has been relatively benign. However, if the virus mutates, there lies the rub. In Mexico, where it was first reported, it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of cases went unreported. It is likely that this is the case around the world. This may be no defense at all if the virus mutates again. The CDC tracks mutations every year and lists them and works to develop vaccines for this reason. Influenza  is always around, and it is constantly mutating.

We are seeing government at all levels preparing for the worst. This is their job, to try their best to keep us safe. In 1918 and 1919, the authorities were unprepared and did not take quarantine measures in time until late in the pandemic after the worst damage had been done. Patients infected but not yet showing symptoms spread the disease without even knowing it in public places, increasing the rate of infection of a highly infectious disease. Today, the focus in the news has been on the Department of Homeland Security taking the lead, which to me is odd. The Surgeon General, who, after all is a member of the uniformed services and commands the Public Health Service, yes. The Centers for Disease Control, absolutely.  But to have Homeland Security as the face of the fight against the a pandemics smacks of statism. I don’t disagree with goal, only the means to that goal. Or perhaps the way the press has portrayed it. The effort to sell papers or ad space on the TV news leads many in the news media to sensationalize even the trivial.

So imagine having TSA employees as the face of the new effort. They have already earned a rather oppressive reputation simply by the nature of the job. In some cases employees have exceeded their authority and both threatened and detained law abiding citizens. This is not the image that government needs to project to help contain the flu. The White House meeting yesterday involved agencies across the Federal spectrum and yet the headline from AP focused on Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano. The media must take the blame for this kind of alarmism.

Should the virus mutate into something horrible, we must all be prepared to contain it as best we can.We must be prepared to quarantine ourselves at home, and if necessary in some cases, in hospitals, school or other facilities set up to handle the disease and treatment efficiently. After all, these places will have the medicines, the doctors and nurses, and the tools necessary to cure us. Expect a mess and be prepared for it. The system may become overwhelmed, and we may have to take care of each other.  In the case of SARS, as in the 1918 epidemic, the loss of common sense cost lives and did terrible damage. Above all, proper prior preparation will help us get through this together.

The political atmosphere today is highly charged. Citizens are honestly concerned with government intrusion into their private lives and the direction of our government. The government, the media, and we ourselves must do our best to set aside politics and work together for the common good. We are all responsible. This may all come to nothing, but we must, as the Boy Scouts say, be prepared.

The Banality of Evil – The Liverpool Care Pathway; Patients Sentenced to Death by NHS

Today’s Telegraph includes a very important article germane to our national discussion of health care. Experts in the United Kingdom, including several of the top professors in palliative care, are insisting that recent guidelines known as the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) are in some cases a wrongful sentence of death of patients who might otherwise survive. The very nature of LCP is itself highly controversial.

These guidelines, which include a determination of patient consciousness and the ability to swallow medication, can be misread and if the action is agreed upon by  doctors, intravenous drips and food are removed from the patient. Further, deep (terminal) sedation can then be administered.

With a limited staff in many hospitals, doctors are also at times not as well informed on each patient’s condition in order to be able to determine their true status, and some patients removed from the LCP have gone on to recover.  The administration of deep sedation is especially troubling.  In England, 16.5% of deaths came about after deep sedation, twice the percentages of those in the Netherlands and Belgium.

This is the banality of evil. It is the  codification and bureaucratization of the taking of life by the state. The decision is solely that of the attending physicians, and the process is inherently flawed. It is an Orwellian arrogation of power to the state. This is exactly what so many of those concerned about the current health care debate fear.

Comrade Obama Leading Us To Glorious Future!

Just messin’ witcha Mr. President!

Political Alternate Reality Syndrome (PARS)

It seems these days there are two distinct alternate realities at work among America’s political class these days, neither of which is necessarily connected to objective reality.

E.J. Dionne, in today’s Washington Post attempts to redefine the voter outrage at recent town hall meetings as aberrational behavior by a small minority blown up by a sensation seeking mass media in order to increase ratings.  He goes on to report that a stringer for one of the major networks told Rep. David Price (D-NC) “your meeting doesn’t get covered unless it blows up”. He then concludes that “the only citizens who commanded widespread media coverage last month were the right wingers”.

Let’s start a roster of some of the strange events being reported in both mass and internet media:

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) – “I’m not going to give those people a forum” – 9/2/09
Rep. Baron Hill (D-IN) – “This is my Town Hall meeting” as he has a videographer removed – 9/2/09
Rep. Jan Schakowsky – (D-IL) – insists that 80,000 people in her district who do not have coverage will get it if health care reform passes. – 8/31/09
Rep. Carol Shay Porter (D – NH) – has constituent arrested for disrespect, calls tea party participants tea baggers – 8/29/09
Rep. Steyn Hoyer – (D-MD) – maintains support for “public option” at town meeting – 9/1/09
Sen. Harry Reid – (D-NV) – “Kennedy’s death will help us on health care” – 8/30/09
Sen. Harry Reid – D-NV) – slams media coverage of health care protests – 8/28/09 – Politco
Rep. Rush Holt – (D – ) – “Cap & Trade didn’t go far enough” & “Medicare is solvent” – 8/26/09
Rep Tim Bishop – (D-NY) – has union organizers bused in from outside district who then shout down opponents – 8/28/09
Rep. Betsey Markey – (D- CO) – “There’s going to be some people who have to give up some things” referring to the health care bill – 8/26/09 – The Coloradan
Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) – Holds town hall meeting described as chaotic. – 8/25/09 – Washington Post
Rep. Maxine Waters – (D-CA) – calls health care bill opponents neanderthals at town hall meetings- Fox News – 8/25/09
Howard Dean – Former Dem Party Chairman – “opposition to health care bills is undermining the country” – 8/25/09 – MSNBC

The sources for many of these reports were not the media, but rather guerrilla videographers with cell phones and video cameras blogging to sites such as Youtube and Twitter. The media, seeing this, extended their own coverage, and once the bright lights were turned on, the professional agitating class got involved. But the reality is that the narratives differ considerably depending on the source. The bloggers footage is raw and documentary while in some cases individuals and groups play to the cameras when the evening news shows up.

You get the idea. There is strong opposition to the current health care and other proposals, just as there is strong support. These are some of the facts. What is also a fact is that the approval ratings for both Congress and the president have sunk to new lows in record time. Disapproval of Democratic politicians is at a record high as is disapproval of the president. Not that the republicans are all that popular either. The polls seem to all agree on these points.

The Left is upset, with Paul Krugman, the Daily Kos and their allies saying that the president has not done enough. Bill Moyers denounced Democratic legislators as “spineless” on”Real Time with Bill Maher” last Friday. The Financial Times reports a “seemingly unbridgeable rift between the centrist and progressive wings of the party”. 60 liberal Democratic legislators wrote a letter to the president in mid-August saying they would vote against any bill that excluded the public insurance option.  This discord comes from within the party, not its opponents.

The tea party protests, whether one agrees with them or not, are a new phenomenon to American politics. Never before have we seen Middle America step into the limelight in this way. There is concern throughout the country about Federal spending, the type of spending, nationalization of key industries, and the direction of the government. All of these themes have been quite clear from the beginning, and many cross party lines. These events did not start in a vacuum, but rather were a response to reading and seeing the news every day for weeks and months prior to taking to the streets. Mr. Dionne, you see, has put the cart before the horse. This seems to be typical in Washington and the Blue States today.

Whether Republican or Democrat, the leadership class and media has been out of touch with the ordinary voter for a long time.They parachute in for a sound bite or 30 second video clip and then fly back home. In the meantime, the internet has become a stronger tool than ever before in direct communication. Contradictory opinions to those of the elite are now available instantly, and in many cases, the video and  reporting is directly at odds with with the media’s narrative. Fox News has also established peeeminence with their counterprogramming to the mainstream. Time and Newsweek, formerly the two preeminent news magazines, officially and publicly dropped all pretense of objectivity last year, recasting themselves as opinion journals, and have clearly established their liberal bona fides. In a world with more communication tools and the ability to verify the truth, it seems those who once delivered “just the facts” no longer do so very well.

On the right, the message from the establishment media is muddled as well. George Will has tossed in the towel on Afghanistan even before the McChrystal Plan has been made operational. The backbiting of Sarah Palin during last yea’s campaign was strangely dissonant with the popularity of the candidate among a significant percentage of the population.  You see, if you are not from the same tribe, this is how it works these days. If you do not subscribe to the same groupthink, you are the heathen, the “tea bagger”, the astroturfer.

And yet the one quality recognized to be most lacking in Washington is common sense. The rules are Byzantine and vendettas a way of life. It’s an Alice in Wonderland world of Kabuki in the halls of Congress and then cocktails in Georgetown with the same people you just tried to destroy. Revolving doors ensure the same people think the same things. They have gone to the same schools and through the same programs and every couple of years a new crop shows up who are for the most part quickly indoctrinated in the Washington Way. And they have lost touch with reality.

Most of the country is hurting from this recession and the effects of 60 years of poor policy decisions. Debt is out of control, and both Social Security and Medicare are in a real, objectively determined danger of collapse.  Cities and states across the country are in danger of technical bankruptcy, and we have many crises to deal with at once. Our military policy has become a shambles. Just today it was reported that the Department of Defense is considering a reduction of our primary military projection platform, our aircraft carriers, by 35% (per DefenseTech). This hasn’t made it to the front pages yet, but it will. To the average intelligent observer, big changes are taking place, few of them positive, and still our leaders are living in a bubble.

When studying a new strain of illness or type of conduct, the scientific method teaches us to try and describe it accurately and effectively. The symptoms described in this case are not the result of party politics, but rather of an alternate worldview to that arrived at in a non-objective manner. Sufferers see what they want to see and base their assumptions and decisions not on the facts, but on either emotion or desired outcome. We could call it Lewis Carroll Syndrome, as it is a looking glass world, but instead, I would like to propose that we name it Political Alternate Reality Syndrome, or PARS for short. This description covers a wide range of conditions within an overarching hierarchy and can then be studied more effectively. Universities can establish programs and chairs and apply for grants and hold conferences, or we could all just use a little more common sense.

Breaking down the Democratic Health Care Offensive

He would like you to believe that he’s been on vacation this week, but in reality, the president has been hunkering down with his top advisers planning his health care offensive. The ads are in place, he has two consecutive high profile speeches, and he knows on Wednesday he must make the speech of his life to retrieve any form of the health care bills now in front of Congress.

He also knows that he must now put his political reputation on the line. The Left Wing of the Democratic Party has failed. They may try to brute force a bill through, but the reality is that across the country, apprehension and resistance is so high that passage would be an invitation to electoral suicide in the 2010 elections.

The president knows he has to move closer to the center, and he now knows the whole country is watching every move he makes. He also knows that his liberal supporters are demanding the public option. With his approval rating below 50% he is in danger of becoming ineffective. Moderate Democrats may begin to distance themselves, making it much harder to move his agenda forward.

What we know now is that the unions are ready to roll with both cash and foot soldiers. The paid activists have finished their boot camps and are ready to get the message out.  Over $200 million has been budgeted in advertising Remember, this is a short term blitz.  In comparison Obama’s direct spending in 2008 in the general election was $315 Million. The McCain campaign spent $84 Million. This will be the most expensive single issue campaign in history.

The experts have been given their background briefings so they  are ready to hit the airwaves, and Journo – list will have a list of talking points that is pre-programmed for the next month.

“Harry & Louise” have been re-branded. During the 1993 legislative battle they were against the legislation. This time, with Big Pharma bought and paid for, expect to see them urging it for the good of the children or elderly or whichever other focus group is seen as the key demographic.

The AAAP will do the same, shilling for the bill under a false flag. Big Business may enter the fray as well. NBC (GE) has become the unofficial network of the administration, while CBS is right there with them. ABC seems to at least have a modicum of presenting both sides. Wal – Mart will chip in so they can get out from under health care costs.

Confusion favors the President. He is extremely adept at being all things to all people while achieving his core goals. He will drop a direct reference to the public option, but will attempt to use a back door approach. The Democrats have, over the past 60 years proven incredibly adept at conjuring new meanings out of existing legislation to rationalize and expand programs beyond the original intentions written into law.

We will see the duck and fake and enough misdirection to fool the rubes for the time it takes to get the bill passed. We will see old fashioned arm twisting and even more pork doled out. Rangel and Dodd and the other crooks will get a hall pass  in exchange for their support and campaign committee donations.

Next week is the key. If they do not see their numbers improve significantly after the president’s first speech and the initial ad campaign, they will pivot to a more moderate approach. The past month has been  prologue. Act I begins Wednesday. And remember, once they have their legislation, they will do anything they damn well please. It’s the Chicago Way.

Make Love, Not Capitalism

Just Say No To Socialism

Just Say No To Socialism – II

Carter Squared

As the days grow shorter and our children go back to school and the nation settles back down to business, the unease and anger seen across the country over the summer will be gauged again on September 12, when Tea Parties across the country register their disagreement with the government’s current direction. Whether it is the TARP bailout or the Stimulus or Health care, a growing majority in the country are deeply dissatisfied with our president and his policies. And that majority is our middle class, not the radicals this time.

The Treasury has been printing money at an unprecedented rate since last year, and our debtors are saying “enough!”. This week, the United Nations joined those suggesting an alternate to the dollar as the global reserve currency. The fact is that economists and accountants and businessmen throughout the world know that the dollar is in for a very rough time over the next several years. Here, it will be seen in skyrocketing oil prices, over 50% of our imports, and an even more distended trade deficit. Import prices will skyrocket as we don’t make a lot of the products we need anymore such as computers, cars, and the most basic consumer products. We really won’t be able to take advantage of a lower dollar either because we don’t make a lot any more.

The economists are also predicting a jobless recovery, which to me is not much of a recovery at all. The banks and large corporations will apparently weather the storm, but the rest of us are on our own. Our government is changing the definition of recovery as we watch. The same thing happened under President Carter’s administration, except this time the numbers are much larger and scarier. We used to speak in billions. Now it’s trillions. There is a real danger of hyperinflation. The only tool left to the Fed will be interest rates, and we may see those 18-20% of the late 70’s come back again. What choice will they have to maintain any semblance of credibility of our currency?

So where will the recovery come from if people aren’t working? How will they pay taxes? How will government fund its ambitious programs if it does not have the  revenue? Every one of the president’s programs has a massive price tag, and yet he seems to ignore the costs completely. That’s what happens when an elected official has no real world experience, unfortunately. There is a disconnect between putting dinner on the table, whether at home or as a nation when one has never held a real job. At least Carter had to run a state for several years. And how can the president say with a straight face that there will be no tax increases in the face of such spending? Are we to believe there is a magical plan to generate wealth once again? How will state governments survive in the face of bankruptcy and reduced revenues?

The entitled sector, whether unions or public sector jobs is growing rapidly as the private sector, especially our manufacturing economy, once the engine of growth, shrinks. This is another very unhealthy trend. The president says he held the line with a 0.4% cost of living increase for federal workers when the cost of living has dropped considerably. How does that make sense? How does adding hundreds of thousands of federal employees in the middle of a recession make sense when our economy is shrinking and we can’t pay for them? How does paying those employees significantly more than their private sector counterparts make sense?

Our military is being hollowed out before our very eyes . Vital programs to replace Air Force tankers, cargo aircraft and helicopters are being chopped wholesale even as our military needs simple replacement of these assets as they wear out in two wars across the world. There is serious discussion in the Pentagon of a 9 carrier Navy, down from 14, by 2013. Other major Navy programs are on the chopping block. Our nuclear weapons programs are in utter disarray.We have not updated the technology for 30 years, which is technologically and militarily foolish. Our missile defense systems are being cut as well. After Vietnam, our military was a mess. It can happen again if we are not careful and wise.

We flirted in the 70’s with high gas prices and did so again just last year. Somehow we got through that one, but with a weak dollar it is more likely we will be paying much higher prices in the near future. Remember gas lines? We will have gas this time, but it will just cost $5-$6/gallon. Add on the billions in additional costs associated with the Cap & Trade legislation, and the burden will fall squarely on the working man more than ever before.

Just as in the late 70’s the mood of the nation is pessimistic. The polls tell us that many believe our greatest days are behind us. Ronald Reagan famously said “a recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose your job, and a recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his job”. We are only 8 months into the new administration and half of the people in the country feel this way already.

In many ways we are living in a more dangerous world than ever before. There is a real likelihood of significant nuclear proliferation. There is a real possibility someone might use those weapons as well, if not on us then on Israel or India or Pakistan. What then? With the United States seemingly descending from superpower status at record speed, it is likely the world will see more wars as countries scramble for resources and advantage. Our Afghanistan policy is drifting out of control as if there is no hand at the helm. Our relationship with Israel is as bad as it has ever been. Our president is apologizing around the world and finding strange bedfellows.

By 1978, our country was deeply divided by our government’s direction. We are once again. At a time when we need to apply all of the quintessential American virtues; thrift, charity, hard work, inventiveness and good will, we are seeing less than ever before. The Spanish philosopher George Santayana wrote that overused phrase which is ever so applicable I will use it again…”those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it”.  We have been there and done that, and we are about to do it all over again. We should learn from those lessons rather than repeating the same mistakes once again.

Why We Fight

During World War II, Frank Capra collaborated with our government to help reinforce the message that the war was both just and proper. This series of films, “Why We Fight” were propaganda, but even so, were based on the facts. The first outlined the rise of Fascism and Imperialism, then the near imperial conquests of Czechoslovakia, Austria, and finally Poland. The balance closely followed the expansion of the Nazi and Japanese empires from 1940 onwards. It put a face on why we were sending our best and brightest to risk their lives for people 5,000 miles away. It was the right thing to do, and it was also necessary to the continued existence of our ideals and country.

Today, it seems we are once again faced with the question of  the right thing to do. Will Afghanistan be another Vietnam, where we abandoned the people to their fate, or do we stay the course? In Vietnam, thousands died in the purges and camps, and millions more were abused and degraded. Thousands of them endured the worst sorts of hardships to escape a brutal dictatorship, and today over 500,000 Vietnamese Americans live here because of that clash of ideologies.

After 8 years of war, Iraq has become relatively quiescent and now has a real chance at integrating into the regional and global community as a peaceful, constructive partner. Despite the propaganda to the contrary, our strategy in Iraq has worked so far. It wasn’t easy, but it should be remembered that in any war that it takes two years to change course. The best plans in the world rarely survive first contact with the enemy, and mistakes were inevitably made. We lost some of our best there, but their sacrifice was not in vain.

Afghanistan was by executive decision put on the back burner while we concentrated on Iraq. Through 2008, Generals Petraeus  began to shift focus, and today, Afghanistan is the front line.  On June 15, only 90 days ago, General David McKiernan was relieved of command, primarily because he had repeatedly and forcefully requested additional troops and support to be able to provide better security. The fact is that outside the cities, we have a series of ever smaller bases, culminating in forts way out in the middle of nowhere the French Foreign Legion or Buffalo Soldiers would have been uncomfortable in. We are running a shoestring war there. There are not enough helicopters or transport planes or trucks or any of 1000 other essential tools of combat, and we have not done nearly the job we did in training  the Afghan security forces as we did in Iraq.

Leadership from Washington or London or the Continent is nonexistent. In the UK, there is a civil war between the Army and the Government. It is a dereliction of duty, frankly, by the men who send younger men off to war. They play politics while our men and women out on the line pay the price in blood.

In this country, an unholy cabal of Left & Right is now arguing for a pullout. They cite Afghanistan as the graveyard of empires, but somehow conveniently overlook the  Gandharan Empire in the Khyber, which lasted from the 6th Century BC to the 11th Century AD and which traced much of its origins to Alexander himself. From Persian to Indian to Greco – Bactrians it stretched from Kabul to Islamabad and had a polyglot history that is reflected in the Afghani people themselves today. The country is at a confluence of cultures, and while primitive by today’s standards was once a sophisticated crossroads between India, China, and the West.

But as in 1996, the barbarians are once again at the gates. In that yea the Taliban came to power after dividing and conquering the diverse ethnic groups and initiated a reign of terror financed with drug money. You see, this is the recent history of Afghanistan. While family and clan have come first for centuries, the madrassas, the home of the Taliban, have always been a breeding ground for bandits and terrorists. In the 1870’s Robert Warburton, a British political agent, arrived in the Khyber and over 20 years was able to maintain cordial relations between the tribes and the Crown. He was fluent in the languages, and had a real empathy with the people. This is the strategy proposed by our military leaders today. It worked then, and should work again now.

The Afghan people are tired of war. They are destitute, and like any other people see modern technology and opportunities and want to benefit from them. They do not want their children to die of medieval diseases. They want their children to get an education and live a better life than their parents. They want what all of us want. To be left alone and to work and feed their families. But they need security and they need the infrastructure that will help them advance.

We can compare the billions spent in Africa or other parts of the world and say the same thing if we like. What have we accomplished? We did not get involved in Afghanistan because we wanted oil or resources. We did so because 2,974 of us were brutally murdered on 9/11 and the threat originated in that country. It is ideological, you see. The Taliban and their Al Quaeda allies are and will always be our sworn enemies. If they can expand their empire into Pakistan as they have been trying to do, they will acquire nuclear weapons and with their suicide culture we can be assured they will be used. Isn’t this worth fighting for?

Millions of Westerners are addicted to heroin that comes from the poppy fields of Afghanistan. We must root out the warlords and stop this trade as best we can. It is a moral obligation. And lastly, our best and brightest offer the best hope of a peaceful, modern Afghanistan. It won’t take 2 years, or 5, but 10 or even 20. But we have to devote the resources now, and we have to have the will to win. It has never really been about money or motive, it has been about commitment. We need principled, disciplined leadership and we need it right now.

Remembering 9/11

I just got off the phone with a close relative, a cop who was a first responder at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, as we do every September 11. A lot of the cops and firefighters who were there take this day off. The things they saw and the pain they experienced are almost beyond comprehension. The thousands of people running from the smoke and dust and flames, and the empty emergency rooms waiting for ghosts. It was terrifying. That day was seared into all of our minds, but especially those who were there, and at the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Across the country, everything stopped. Every single private aircraft in the country was grounded and we were in absolute fear of additional attacks.  I was lucky. I was out of town but able to drive 8 hours home. Many people were stuck for days trying to get home in the aftermath. We huddled around the television, trying to find comprehension of why this happened and why we were chosen as the target of these attacks.

Osama Bin Laden released a videotape that day, coincident with the attacks, laying claim to a great victory for Al Quaeda and his vision of a radical, inhumane Islam. Throughout the world, leaders of almost every state, both our friends and enemies immediately condemned this heinous act of terror and offered assistance and solidarity. We were all New Yorkers or Washingtonians that day. We came together as a people in our grief and anger. We went to war with those who had declared war on us years before that day. We had ignored the first World Trade Center bombing, and the Khobar Towers, and the U.S.S. Cole incident, and the Kenya and Tanzania bombings. All of the evidence always pointed to the same people. there was not the shadow of a doubt of who was responsible.

We launched a war on terror that day. We had lost 2,975 civilians lives  in a premeditated act of terrorism and the perpetrators took immediate credit. And yet 30% of the people in this country today think it was a conspiracy hatched by our own government. This is how insane the discourse has become.

Our new president has fed this madness and completely redefined our efforts against these terrorist enemies. There is no more war on terror. It is now a contingency operation. He is investigating CIA officers who were exonerated 4 years ago for their actions in carrying out necessary interrogations. He has once again made the FBI, who were taken unaware prior to 9/11, and once again made them the lead agency in our efforts against terrorism. He has dismantled the interagency task groups that were created to make sure we were not taken unaware again.  He is re-writing history before our eyes.

At the site of the World Trade Center is a giant hole in the ground, 8 years later. The city and developers and other participants are still bickering over what to do. It is a disgrace and dishonor to the memories of all of those who died that day and who sacrificed their lives afterwards in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world. It is a disgrace to the dead of Madrid and London as well, as they too were victims of this battle of ideologies.

In Washington, the Left declared Iraq a loss under Bush despite the incredible progress made, and now those same voices are urging a pullout from Afghanistan. Suddenly that war has become unwinnable. Suddenly “Yes We Can” has become “No We Can’t”. We see a defeatism across our society, blaming capitalism and conservatism and religion. And yet those same virtues have served this country well for 233 years.

John Adams said ” Facts are stubborn things; and whatever our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence”. We seem to have forgotten this as a society. There is a distortion today and revisionism that has run rampant. We all saw the same live feeds on that day. We all saw the Bin Laden tapes. We all know the right thing to do, and yet now, for political and monetary gain, the insiders distort the truth and game the system, lying at will and getting away with it. Is this how we will remember 9/11? Revisionism and distortions?

The same people still hate us and have been forced underground. Many plots have been foiled, but if we continue on the current path, we are almost certain to once again face unnecessary death and destruction.  A lot of us said that day, Never Again. And if, God forbid, we are once again attacked, we must hold those who have chosen this path responsible. We know better now, and have no excuses.

Pelosi begins Afghanistan sell out on 9/11

Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger of the New York Times yesterday reported that Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee gave a speech on 9/11 in which he said he is against sending more American troops to Afghanistan until more Afghan security forces can be trained.

On Thursday, the eve of 9/11, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi stated that the president would face opposition if he requested additional troops. She was quoted by reporters as stating ” I don’t think there is a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan in the country or in Congress”.

In the Democratic Party, there is a deep divide between the left wing and the center. Unfortunately, we are now seeing clearly that the Left Wing is doing its best undermine the war effort in Afghanistan, as it did in Iraq. But now they are the ones in power. To say such things on the 8th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, of all days, is truly indicatative of the contempt in which they hold their own country.

Political Alternate Reality Syndrome – Media 9/12 Edition

Somehow, somewhere between 700,000 and 1.2 Million middle class Americans protesting against the administration’s policies last Saturday made nary a blip on the radar of the political elite and their media cohorts. The sight of hundreds of thousands of well behaved but very pointed, and scarily normal critics protesting excessive spending, insider dealing, political corruption, and the general direction of our government hardly registered on the people who should have been listening most closely.

If you didn’t catch it on your tv or in your newspaper, it wasn’t just in Washington. It took place  in 100 cities across the country. 5,000 in Los Angeles, another 3,000 in Orange County, CA; Illinois, Texas, Ohio, Indiana; in fact most of the 50 states had their protests as well. But there was almost nothing in the large circulation press. The typical article, when found, stated “thousands” when tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or even 1 Million+ would have been more appropriate. What gives?

On top of this, today’s Washington Post headline reports on the health care bill(s) that “Opposition Is High But Easing”. Their questions posited the dropping of the public option, and yet David Axelrod of the White House said yesterday on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that he is not willing to accept that this alternative is dead. The leadership is adamant on this issue, but many in Congress across party lines have stated that they will not accept such legislation. The poll also stated that the supporters of the bills have become more active. And so the dialog begins once again. But once again, we see selective journalism.

In addition, virtually no one has followed up on Nancy Pelosi’s statement on 9/10 that she would not approve more troops in Afghanistan, just as the fight gets serious and we need them the most. Nada, zip in the mainstream media. She dropped this bombshell to a roomful of reporters  on a sacred day in our history and no one said a word. How indicative of the Democrats 9/10 mindset can you get?

There is serious discussion of reducing the Navy’s carrier fleet from 14 battle groups to 9, and nothing in the mainstream media.

The Iranians and North Koreans have embarrassed our administration once again just this weekend, repudiating direct talks after Obama did a 360 on U.S. policy and opened dialog directly, and nothing has been said. Our government torpedoed the 6 party agreement on North Korea, and in response the North Koreans  announced another nuclear test. Isn’t this newsworthy?

Our media is more than asleep at the wheel. They are so far gone that I doubt they can be saved. And our country is much the worse for this. The Pew Center reports today that since they began tracking the public’s assessment of press accuracy in 1985, our trust in the truthfulness of the news is at the lowest level ever, at 29%. Somehow, 30% of respondents in another recent study believed that 9/11 was the fault of the Bush Administration despite the overwhelmingly contrary evidence.

The issues are simple. A vast percentage of those who have lost faith in the stewardship of the facts by the media have done so because there are too many alternative news sources with which to compare stories. They are finding the emperor has no clothes. There are those at the fringes who will believe what their emotions lead them to believe, usually in unsubstantiated screeds. But the rest of us can see the original video or text without media filters and decide for ourselves. Independent reporters with sound integrity are taking on the hard stories. Ordinary citizens are looking for the fire behind the smoke.

The mainstream media was looked upon as reasonably honest brokers   (I hate these qualifications)  until 25 years ago. This consensus has completely broken down.  They have to the  become obsolete and irrelevant, only good for sports and fish wrap. Television has become ever more mindless. At this point they are no longer even propaganda outlets. As they used to say about the two government owned newspapers under the Soviets “There is no Izvestia (News) in Pravda (Truth), or Pravda (Truth) in Izvestia (News). The same now holds true for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and 100 other formerly relevant outlets.

Jim Carroll, R.I.P.

Back in the early 70’s, I went to New York to see the elephant; to experience one of the greatest challenges a 17 year old male could take in a country where a war had just ended and there weren’t a lot of those intense environments where you had to pit your wits against the random brutality of life. I found it in Hell’s Kitchen for a while, and later living all over the city as a student. My education was as much on the streets as it was in a classroom, and I lived a lifetime’s worth of experience in 4 years. At some point later on I discovered “The Basketball Diaries” by Jim Carroll and said wow, that was close.

He wasn’t a role model, but he was very real. The book combined his love of the game with the mean streets long before they became fashionable. He was another one of those guys who could have gone either way, good or bad, and he went pretty spectacularly bad, even though his poetry and writing and music made him famous. He walked the same streets and saw a lot of the same things I had and when his first album came out it was like some of the memories I had taking life. Alphabet City, people I knew in doorways, violence, bad things. It was cathartic.

His work was too raw for a lot people. Far too scarily real. When he wrote of heroin addiction or suicide or murder or hustling in Times Square, he had first hand experience. Like him, I skated too close to the edge at times, but I was one of the lucky ones. It tempered me and made me harder without losing too much. Jim had it all; the look, the voice, the skills, and his demons drove him towards destruction. He had a sometimes Kerouac manic ADD I could relate to at times. He ended up with the Warhol crowd and got his 15 minutes. They were a glorious 15 minutes, though. City Drops Into the Night and People Who Died ended up at full volume whether I was in Europe or California, light years away. He always reminded me of that edge. And for that I am very thankful. I salute you, brother…..

Political Alternate Reality Syndrome – Volume III

You really can’t make this stuff up. Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY), Chair of the House Rules Committee, has come up with her own brand new set of rules for conduct on the floor of the House in response to Congressman Joe Wilson’s outburst at the President during last week’s address. This after 8 years of Democratic name calling on the floor of the House, including during at least one of President Bush’s addresses to a joint session of Congress. The censorship and double standard to which the Democratic Party majority holds itself is truly pathetic.

Ms. Slaughter’s own statements are an example of these double standards:

This House cannot function without an open, accountable, and independent ethics process; and the molestation of that process by the majority is an abuse of power that cannot stand.
Louise Slaughter

Honesty, integrity, and accountability, the values, which should be the hallmark of this government, have instead been thrown under the bus by an arrogant majority, casualties in a misguided campaign to shield from accountability those who abuse this House.
Louise Slaughter

These were, of course, her comments during the Bush administration. My, how things have changed. Censorship, graft, and corruption are now part and parcel of Congress’ business today. So where does the Honorable Ms. Slaughter stand now? One more example of PARS to me.

TEXT

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Rules Committee Approved “Decorum” Guidelines for House

Washington, DC – The House Rules Committee today provided a summary of approved guidelines for all members to follow during floor debate. The Rules are approved by the entire House and are posted on the committee website. They can be found here:

http://www.rules.house.gov/archives/house_comm_dec.htm

Decorum in the House and in Committees
Under clause 1(a)(1) of Rule XI, the rules of the House are the rules of its committees as far as applicable. Consequently, Members should comport themselves with the rules of decorum and debate in the House and in Committees specifically with regard to references to the President of the United States as stated in Section 370 of the House Rules and Manual.
As stated in Cannon’s Precedents, on January 27, 1909, the House adopted a report in response to improper references in debate to the President. That report read in part as follows:
“It is… the duty of the House to require its Members in speech or debate to preserve that proper restraint which will permit the House to conduct its business in an orderly manner and without unnecessarily and unduly exciting animosity among its Members or antagonism from those other branches of the Government with which the House is correlated.”
As a guide for debate, it is permissible in debate to challenge the President on matters of policy. The difference is one between political criticism and personally offensive criticism. For example, a Member may assert in debate that an incumbent President is not worthy of re-election, but in doing so should not allude to personal misconduct. By extension, a Member may assert in debate that the House should conduct an inquiry, or that a President should not remain in office.
Under section 370 of the House Rules and Manual it has been held that a Member could:
• refer to the government as “something hated, something oppressive.”
• refer to the President as “using legislative or judicial pork.”
• refer to a Presidential message as a “disgrace to the country.”
• refer to unnamed officials as “our half-baked nitwits handling foreign affairs.”
Likewise, it has been held that a member could not:
• call the President a “liar.”
• call the President a “hypocrite.”
• describe the President’s veto of a bill as “cowardly.”
• charge that the President has been “intellectually dishonest.”
• refer to the President as “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”
• refer to alleged “sexual misconduct on the President’s part.”
However, the Senate rules on decorum and debate do not prohibit personal references to the President. Senate Rule XIX governing decorum and debate is applied only to fellow Senators and “does not extend to the President, the Vice President, or Administration officials and a Senator cannot be called to order under rule XIX for comments or remarks about them…” (Senate Procedure, p. 741). The Senate rules also provide that Jefferson’s Manual is not part of the Senate rules (Ibid, p.754).
By contrast, the rules of the House specifically provide that Jefferson’s Manual does govern the proceedings of the House where applicable (Clause 1 of Rule XXVIII). Section 370 of Jefferson’s Manual states that the rule in Parliament prohibiting Members from “speak{ing} irreverently or seditiously against the King” has been interpreted to prohibit personal references against the President. In addition, Speakers of the House have consistently reiterated, and the House has voted, to support the proposition that it is not in order in debate to engage in personalities toward the President. The Chair enforces this rule of decorum on his own initiative.

Wearing White Hoods & Riding the Countryside?

“White hoods”

This is getting carried away…

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) suggested to CNN that Wilson’s outburst — if left unsanctioned by the House will encourage racists to don “white hoods and ride through the countryside.”

Really?

The craziness on the Left is getting way out of hand. It seems that those who disagree with the President are now Klansmen and women.

Better Than Springer – The Acorn Files Videos

Over the past week, we have been treated to some of the most tantalizing video not produced by a major studio in a long time. Daytime television would kill for this footage. Count ‘em, 4 times now, James O’Keefe, the new bete’ noir of the Left, has caught ACORN employees engaging in some of the most outrageous behavior ever caught on documentary film. It’s better than Springer or Maury Povitch.

In Baltimore, in Washington, in New York, and most recently, in San Bernadino, California, O’Keefe has used the same routine; a hidden camera and flagrantly outrageous acting skills by himself and his co prankster, Hannah Giles as they act the Pimp ‘n Ho strolling into ACORN offices looking for assistance is setting up a bordello using Federal housing funds. Each time, the responses, apparently legitimate, get more outrageous.

The patter is that O’Keefe needs a mortgage to buy the house of ill repute, and that Giles will then import underage girls from Central America to work there. They are clear in their explanations, and in every case the ACORN employees do their best to assist them in either using subterfuges to obtain fraudulent mortgages, suggesting the best locations, and counseling them on ways to avoid being arrested. In San Berdoo, the ACORN employee actually explains how she got away with shooting her ex, which may result in capital felony charges. These people are DUMB.

The conversations are both damning and scathingly hilarious. Instructions in hiding the money in a box behind the house; how to set up the illegal immigrants as quasi-legal residents, money laundering, hookers, and mortgage fraud. This has it all. With the penchant of the cable networks for miniseries, it’s perfect.

And yet nary a word from the mainstream media. Congress is caught in a vise, having funded an obviously corrupt organization to administer housing programs, register new voters, and help take the 2010 Census. But it’s as if there is a void in our national dialog. Congress is now beginning to cut funding and the Republicans are demanding a complete severance of relationships, and yet if you read the New York Times or watch CNN there is no context. It is a disconnect. Congress and the president are caught with one of his closest organizations caught in delicto flagrante and no one seems to want to say why. It’s like reading the Da Vinci Code minus the first 3 chapters. It makes no sense.

But for sheer entertainment value, go to www.biggovernment.com and be prepared to be amazed, shocked, tittilated, amused, and outraged as the trusty reporters do what 60 Minutes used to do so well. Springer’s got nothing on these guys….

Jumping Into The Sewer – The Left and The Race Card

I didn’t want to have to write about this, but there seems at the moment to be a chorus of accusations against the president’s opponents of racism. Only today, former President Carter joined the chorus, and Representatives Mike Honda (D-CA) and Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), as well as Barbara Lee (D-Berkeley) echoed the sentiment. Representative Hank Johnson (D-GA) invoked images of the Ku Klux Klan and white hoods when referring to Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst during the president’s address to Congress last week. This is just plain nuts.

The country has the highest unemployment in 30 years; we seem to be adrift at home and abroad, and the perception is that spending and graft are completely out of control.  Theses are objectively demonstrable concerns across race and party, not wild eyed conjecture.

Charles Rangel (D-NY) is playing the race card as he is being investigated for unexplained income and unreported income. This echoes Adam Clayton Powell’s accusation before he was ejected from the House for similar transgressions in 1967. Henry Louis Gates, who should have known better, accused a cop of the same after he had an altercation in his front yard in which a black police officer was also involved. What gives?

In a country which has become ever more a melange of race and creed and ideas, the most charged accusation is racism. Whether it is La Raza in LA or now, especially with our elected leaders, the word carries terrible freight from the past. It evokes lynchings and segregation and economic exploitation. And yet this a part of the history of our country regardless of race.

Whether you are Irish or Italian or Jewish or Black or Latino, those in power have always taken advantage. And yet, at the same time, we have as minorities been able to ascend the economic ladder based upon those ultimate American values; hard work, frugality, sacrifice, and faith. Breaking through economically has meant that we have also broken through socially and culturally. Today, America is the most ployglot society on the planet and the most uniform in its treatment of its citizens. It is also the most generous of societies towards the weak.

I grew up in that generation which condemned racism. When I was 8 years old, I remember Martin Luther King’s address on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It hurt me that my uncle, a black man in Brooklyn, might face discrimination. I read Malcolm X and believed deeply in equality. I also knew human nature from an early age.

I knew that in place like Philadelphia and Brooklyn, one ran with their tribe. Whether it was Italian or Bohemian or Black or Irish, there was safety in numbers. I was horrified that in some places down South attitudes had not changed that much from Jim Crow, but at the same time, people, both black and white, were changing this. It was about education and succeeding on one’s merits, not one’s class or race or advantage. That is the American Dream.

And yet here we are, 50 years after Martin Luther King, being dragged back into the gutter. Why? Our schools stink, frankly. Political correctness is rampant in academia and government and corporate America. We are losing our exceptionalism not through our individual efforts, but through being told we are by elites who segregate themselves from the rest of us.

We have an ever increasing oligarchy, not a democracy as Jefferson and Adams and Washington and Franklin and Lincoln envisioned. We have the aristocracy of Goldman Sachs and Bernie Madoff and George Soros, all of them  buying power and favor as the working man suffers. The worst description of all today is a jobless recovery. The rich have it covered.

And yet, when all of us have our backs against the wall, the Left yells Racism! There is 40% unemployment in California’s Central Valley, and the vast burden falls on the Latino community. In the Midwest, it is manufacturing that is taking the hit; good working and middle class people. In the cities, the financial industry has been devastated. It is the lower and mid level employees who have been hurt, exactly where our minorities have made their best advances. But the public sector and the unions are relatively unscathed. You see, today, if you are on the inside, you’re protected. The fix is in. And if anyone disagrees with you, you can call them a racist and get away with tossing hand grenades.

I had an ex like that. She would accuse me of the basest of crimes and threaten me by calling the cops. I had thick skin, luckily, and ended up battered, but proud that I had maintained my morality and my integrity and decency.

What I found was that we can all think certain things, and in the proper company, we can say things that might seem inappropriate to the thought police. But in the end it is our humanity and love for one another that sees us through. I remember a Broadway song from a few years ago, “Everyone’s a littler bit racist” from a play called Avenue Q. Yes, we can be. It’s fun sometimes to take the Mickey, as the Irish say. But there is also a deep respect among all of us that recognizes virtue and achievement and hard work. That is, after all, what makes us Americans.

And Mr. Carter and the left must recognize this, or they will imperil us all. Crying “wolf” works only once. The politics of divisiveness must be put aside, especially in times like these. There are serious differences of opinion and policy at issue, but racism has nothing at all to do with this.

From Seeking Alpha – Japan to U.S.; “We don’t want to exclude you but…”

Gaming the collapse of the dollar reserve system remains a favorite pastime of forex and commodity traders. Japan’s new prime minister Yukio Hatoyama is talking about an “Asian community.” The Reuters dispatch cited below indicates Japan’s dilemma. Japan doesn’t want to “exclude” the US or the dollar from an Asian community or a new monetary arrangement, but the risk is that the failure of American policy on all fronts will force the rest of the world to do for self. That, as I wrote earlier this week, is why the gold price continues to rise.

TOKYO, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said on Wednesday his vision for an Asian community didn’t mean he wanted to diminish the role of the dollar or exclude the influence of the United States from the region.

Hatoyama’s comments may do little to ease market jitters about Japan’s new government and its stance on the dollar after remarks from newly appointed Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii caused the yen to jump to a seven-month high against the greenback.

…

“I think (a community) is the right direction to consider in Asia, in East Asia in particular, over the medium- to long-term,” Hatoyama told reporters after his Democratic Party took control of the government.

…

“That is not aimed at excluding the dollar or the United States. Rather, I envision an Asian-Pacific community beyond that.”

…

The dollar slid to 90.12 yen, the lowest since February, after Fujii said he didn’t think the yen’s recent gains against the dollar were rapid and that a strong yen could benefit Japan. It was later trading around 90.35 yen.

Other Democratic Party lawmakers have also made comments suggesting they would rather let the yen strengthen to benefit households and that Japan should generate more returns from its $1 trillion in currency reserves, the bulk of which are believed to be held in dollars.

Of special interest is the bit about benefiting households by allowing the yen to strengthen. As I’ve argued in the past, an aging population depends increasingly on savings invested in fixed income. Inflation generally represents an intra-generational wealth transfer because it benefits debtors (who tend to be young) at the expense of creditors (who tend to be old). An aging society has a stronger constituency for deflation.

In the past, Japan’s export industries (and their workers) protested vehemently against a rising yen, which of course prices some of Japan’s exports out of the market. As Japan becomes a nation of pensioners and rentiers, the coupon-clippers’ constituency for deflation may prevail.

More broadly, the world in the wake of Obama’s first sallies into the big world brings to mind Robin Williams’ 1970s nightclub act. He’d announce an impression of President Carter addressing the nation on the eve of World War III, and say: “That’s all, good night, yer on yer own.” Even the Israelis are considering alternate arrangements to their longstanding alliance with the United States, not only because the Obama administration seems willing to throw them under the bus, but because the United States has become unberechenbar – incalculable, as former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt used to say of Ronald Reagan.

But Reagan was quite a calculable. No-one knows what Obama has in mind. WIll he surge or scurry out of Afghanistan? Will he brown-nose or bomb the Iranians? Will he placate or plaster the Pakistanis? Will he start a trade war with China or forge a new economic alliance? And what will his economic policy turn out to be?

Speaking of economic policy, it is quite unclear who is running what in Washington. Larry Summers, who wears his ego on his waistline, earned himself a long stay in the doghouse by talking down to the President at a number of late-night sessions. Timothy Geithner’s impression of Stan Laurel continues and persuades no one. For all intents and purposes, Ben Bernanke is running American economic policy, but his board is more split than a Fed board has been since the 1980s. American economic policy is the most incalculable thing of all.

No one wants the United States to disappear from the scene: No one wants to shoulder the burden of being the world’s policeman-cum-mediator, of providing a global reserve currency, of sending aircraft carriers to put the bad guys in their place. An Australian politician with a longstanding interest in foreign policy was seated next to me at a Melbourne dinner a couple of weeks ago, complaining bitterly that Australia would have to start spending huge amounts on defense to replace the lost presence of the US.

No one wants to see the US go, but everyone is busy making alternative arrangements. It reminds me of the end, rather than the beginning, of the Carter administration. It’s going to be a long, long three years.

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Obama as Hamlet – Our dangerous foreign policy

This morning it was reported that Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs Ellen Tauscher has flown to Poland and the Czech Republic to formally notify the governments of both countries of the withdrawal of the United States from its commitment to the “Third Site” anti ballistic missile defense system agreed to by treaty in 2001. There were to be 10 missiles in Poland and a radar installation in the Czech Republic. Enough to shoot down several nuclear tipped ICBM’s, but just that.

This decision by our president represents a major reversal of American foreign policy and a betrayal of our allies from Poland to Georgia.  It also represents a propaganda victory for Vladimir Putin. Putin, if you recall, went toe to toe with President Bush on this issue, raising the threat of “mutual destruction” in his rhetoric to try and stop this deployment. He also threatened to withdraw from the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty at the time, the central pact with post-Soviet Russia. That these missiles were strictly defensive in nature and were a response to potential threats from rogue states did not matter.  It was perceived in Russia as another slap at the Motherland and an excellent excuse for Mr. Putin to fan nationalism, a very old tool of Russian rulers.

Our president’s speech announcing the decision is in line with his misstatements on so many other subjects. This morning he said that somehow with the elimination of these missile defenses with no alternative program that ” Our new missile defense architecture in Europe will provide stronger, smarter, and swifter defenses of American forces and America’s allies”.  He went on to say that this  is “more comprehensive than the previous program; it deploys capabilities that are proven and cost effective, and it sustains and builds upon our commitment to protect the U.S. homeland”. The only problem is that there is no new plan. It’s the old plan pre- 2000, only worse. It has degraded since. These misrepresentations have become a major theme of the current administration. Calling a pig a duck is now national policy.

On top of this is another serious problem. We have seen rebukes from both Iran and North Korea on their nuclear programs in recent days. Israel is ever more vocal about the Iranian threat and is trying to build support for military action. If they do so, we will have a major crisis on our hands once again. The Israelis do not fool around. And yet our government seems to be running by the seat of its pants.

Under President Carter, the United States was perceived as weak and indecisive. This cost us dearly as the Soviet Union and other adversaries sought to gain advantage. Today, we are under even greater strain. Our economy and infrastructure are vulnerable to economic warfare and asymmetric attacks via the internet. In South America, anti – American leftist Caudillism is the leading ideology. Japan is concerned with Chinese hegemony and North Korean nuclear blackmail.  Pakistan/Afghanistan, if we do not get it right, could become a nexus of incredible instability and violence. We must act with resolve and clear intentions. But yet even in Afghanistan, where our president was supposedly resolute, our policies are  now indecisive and unfocused.

Was Undersecretary Tauscher simply sent on an errand?   This would fit if Secretary of State Clinton has in fact been marginalized. The problem is that the news from Washington is of a disorganized and unfocused administration. What are our policies? What is the thought process?  Where are we going and what is our message to the world? Indecisiveness is fatal. Are we faced with a political Hamlet; self involved, distracted, and in the end doomed?

Missing in Action

The president will be on five of the television talk shows on Sunday and on another on Monday night in a full court press for his health care proposals. That we still don’t know precisely what they are is of concern. Only today, he alluded to the inclusion of illegal immigrants through the mechanism of making them legal immigrants. This is sure to stir even greater controversy. He has lost that ability of his during the campaign to be all things to all people.

Ms. Speaker Pelosi is so alarmed with the response of a large percentage of the American electorate to this and other issues that she now sees assassins in the wings, and the use of the word “teabagger” has become part and parcel of the left’s lexicon.  That it has a deep sexual connotation  seems not to matter. There is a smell of desperation in Washington.

In the meantime, back in the real world, our generals and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have been begging for weeks behind the scene, and more recently publicly, for additional resources in Afghanistan as the British government wavers in its commitments. The president seems to be AWOL in this discussion. There are multiparty talks scheduled with Iran. The Israelis are telegraphing their intentions should Iran announce a nuclear capacity. The North Koreans have scheduled a nuclear test just as we announced the possibility of direct talks, and there are deep and serious rifts with many of our allies,  including Poland and the Czech Republic after the abandonment of the missile defense program. The Japanese and Chinese are rapidly moving away from the dollar as the reserve currency because they see no firm course at the Fed.

Each of these issues in itself is of deep concern. Together, the confluence of crises could spell disaster.  In all of this, Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, seems to be sidelined. But it is not just our international interests that are in turmoil.

At home, there are serious doubts about the economy. Despite rosy predictions unemployment is over 10% in many states and people are worried. Global indicators such as shipping tonnage and air freight utilization are still at historical lows, and the manufacturing sector is still clunking across the bottom of the crater. The financial sector seems to be continuing along the same general path that got us into the mess in the first place, and every day there is a new, divisive pronouncement from the government, whether it be the takeover of student education loans, the union card check issue, or a wide range of other issues.

So when has the president taken the time to actually run the government between engagements? Even his supporters and senior advisers must be getting whiplash by now. The president has had a bully pulpit like few of his predecessors, but seems to have squandered the opportunity. We are now more divided than ever and more confused about the future. And the more we see and hear him, the more questions are raised.  And despite more coverage than any of his predecessors, it appears that every day into this presidency, he is missing – in  – action.

The Obama CIA Vendetta – Act III – 7 Former CIA Directors Turn Up the Heat on Obama & Holder

The London Telegraph reports in tomorrow’s edition that Michael Hayden, Porter Goss, George Tenet, John Deutch, James Woolsey, William Webster, and James Schlesinger have joined together to publicly and formally urge President Obama to end the criminal investigation of CIA officers initiated by Attorney General Eric Holder. This represents almost every director, with the exception of current Defense Secretary Robert Gates, since 1987 and crosses the political spectrum. Current Director Leon Panetta is already on record against White House is a measure of the gravity of the issue. They warned that other countries feel they can no longer safely share intelligence or cooperate with the U.S. government on counter terrorist operations. “They simply cannot rely on our promises of secrecy”. In the intelligence world, this is a fatal error.

Admiral Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, has also gone on record in a memo to his staff outlining the successes of the interrogation program under question. That memo was sent the same day in April as the administration released secret Bush Administration legal memos authorizing the use of harsh interrogation methods. This both undercut and embarrassed Holder, the President himself, and Speaker Pelosi, who has been adamant in denying she had been briefed on these methods.

On August 24, former Vice President Cheney was vindicated by the release of previously secret memos in his statements that these interrogation techniques resulted in actionable intelligence that prevented terrorist attacks. We now know those attacks included a 9/11 type attack on Heathrow Airport and the use of weaponized anthrax. In addition, the interrogations provided invaluable intelligence on Al Quaeda’s organizational and financial networks.

This vendetta began with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and AG Holder all trying their best to damage the previous administration as best they could. The President was then drawn into the arena and took the low path, accusing Cheney of lying and blaming Bush. We now have the spectacle of a brawl between the two primary intelligence agencies at a time of global discord. Only today, it was announced in the Times of London that Special Envoy George Mitchell’s efforts to broker 3 way talks with the Israelis and Palestinians have broken down.

In a world with more than enough problems, a political vendetta is the last thing our country needs.

Terra Valentine

Terra Valentine is one of the off the beaten track vineyards in the Napa Valley. On the middle reaches of Spring Mountain, it encompasses some of the old vineyards from the late 1800’s that were overgrown and only found when Fred Aves, the inventor of the original curb sensor (remember those weird vibrating protrusions from the wheel wells of your grandfather’s Pontiac ca 1958?) bought the land and cleared it and planted vines.

Fred was an odd one, very reclusive, but he labored quietly and sold his wine without a lot of fanfare. he also built a wonderfully eclectic winery nestled on a hillside. Think a little Italo/German Gothic, a little Hansel & Gretel, and a little 1970’s flower power, but tastefully done and with a real attention to detail. And it’s all about the wine.

The Wurteles bought the place @ 10 years ago and opened it up a lot more. Their goal has been to make 7,000 -10,000 cases/year of some excellent Cabernets, Sauvignon Blancs, and a little Sangiovese. They have been trending towards Bordeaux style blends as well. It’s all good, and it is all very reasonably priced. Their cabernets, which typically rate 90+, are in the $35-$38 range, well below the median for the valley.

We had a chance to open a bottle of their 1998 Cabernet last night, which prompts this note. We drink Italian, French, and  California wines for the most part and like our reds. The ‘98 Terra was as good as it gets in California.

The color was a deep velvety ruby and the wine danced in the glass with wonderful legs and a grace that made it seem alive. It had some of the best qualities of Bordeaux, but the wine was definitely Spring Mountain; rich, elegant, and concentrated.

The first breath was heaven. Cherry and cassis, cedar and black coffee. Tasting it for the first time, we had those same flavors with the slightest hints of apple in the mid range and Creme Brulee’ in the finish. There was a fullness and ripeness that felt just right. Not a lot of tannin, but just enough to keep it interesting.

It was approachable, much like California itself, but elegant…..Am I glad I’ve got more left…..

Left turn on Afghanistan

In an interview broadcast on “Meet the Press” this morning, the president made it ever more clear that he is going to follow the lead of Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid and the leftists in Congress on Afghanistan. He stated that he is “skeptical” about whether more troops will make a difference, this despite the entreaties of General McKiernan, who was fired for his temerity; General McChrystal, the theater commander, General Petraeus, the architect of our success in Iraq, and JCS Chair Admiral McMullen. He is telegraphing his plans to go directly against the advice of his military commanders.

Washington today is eerily like the Washington of 1975. Nixon had Watergate. This president is consumed with other things and is now being  shown to be deeply hostile to his military not overtly, but by his policy decisions. Every day seems to bring another bombshell; reversals of defense policy, a civil war with his intelligence services, the degradation of our carrier force, and cancellation of critical programs . Planes are falling out of the sky, and the replacements are either delayed or costs are out of control. While our line personnel do their best out in the field, the effort at home is in chaos.

The think tanks on the right and left, after agreeing the Petraeus/McChrystal team had the best odds of success in  2008 have in record time decided there is no chance and it’s best to cut and run. There never was a chance with this administration, truth be told.

When you have a Congressional leadership steeped in the 1960’s antiwar movement and a neocon conservative bureaucracy many of whom were also part of that same mindset, what chance did we ever have? Petraeus and McChrystal were set up for failure on November 4, the day Obama was elected and the Democrats felt invincible.

Obviously, Obama can only mouth Santayana’s quote about history, for he is once again repeating it. Support for the American military and our policy has always been strong. It has not disappeared as the Left would have us believe. Petraeus’ strategy of clear, hold, and build was developed not only for Iraq, but for a wide range of contingencies including Afghanistan. We knew we would need additional troops in 2008 and planned for such. We knew it would take a decades long presence. Now those plans are being ripped up and we will be left with an even greater mess on our hands than in 2001 after 9/11.

The heroin trade finances the Taliban, and will only flourish in our absence. Our enemies in South America are also poisoning our cities with narcotics.  This seems the preferred method of asymetrical warfare today. Just as in 1973, it drains our treasury and our resolve.

You can’ t build walls around countries such as Afghanistan or Somalia or Yemen, and you can’t ignore them. The last time we tried that our enemies flew 2 planes into the World Trade Center trying to incite a global jihad. That threat hasn’t disappeared. It has only been held in check.

Americans have a very short attention span. We forget the lessons of history.  Our enemies don’t. And our allies don’t forget either. We are on a very dangerous path with no apparent plan. This cannot go on much longer, and the consequences will shape the nation far more than health care legislation.

Fomenting civil war in Honduras?

The Al Jazeera network is reporting that former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya called them this morning from Tegucigalpa, informing them that he is back in the country and under the protection of the Brazilian Embassy. This was later confirmed by the Honduran Embassy to the Organization of American States in Washington. Apparently, our government knew this news as well, but withheld it until confirmed by other sources. Zelaya has called on his supporters to demonstrate in front of the United Nations office to call for his reinstatement.  He has also called for the support of the international community.

Zelaya’s thwarted attempt on July 6 to return dramatically and land at Tegucigalpa airport incited protests in the streets, and two people died that day.  But the country was soon on its way back to normal after a few days of night time curfew. There were no graphic images of jackbooted troops shooting or beating protesters, but rather of uncertainty and an attempt to maintain order more than anything else. If a coup, it was a very curious one since even Zelaya’s allies voted for his ouster. Zelaya has now raised the stakes steeply, with a strong likelihood of violence.  Such a move could lead to civil war, or more likely an invasion by outside forces including Venezuelan and Nicaraguan “freedom fighters” as was rumored immediately after the change of government.

Regardless, it is one of the most blatant cases of Mau Mau’ing in recent years.  Zelaya hopes to foment street demonstrations leading to an overthrow of the current government. If nothing else, he has nerve.

Remember, it was the consensus of the Honduran Senate, the country’s Supreme Court, and the Electoral Court that President Zelaya had, by attempting to hold a referendum to allow him to run for a second term violated the Constitution, precipitating the crisis. That his removal from office has been found to be legal by  internationally recognized constitutional law scholars is irrelevant to the UN, the OAS, and the U.S. government. It is their wish to reimpose his populist Chavista agenda upon the country regardless of the legality of such a move. This is an unprecedented interference in the internal affairs of another country. It is also indicative of one more disturbing step in UN involvement in the internal affairs of its member states.

Depending upon the actions of the Brazilian government in the next few days, it will be determined if they are also co-conspirators in fomenting a coup. Are they simply offering a safe haven or are they offering a pulpit? Such distinctions precipitate wars. And in a time when the United States has been repeatedly castigated by the leftist governments of South America for interference and imperialism, it would seem the shoe is now on the other foot or rather, the US seems to be trying to curry favor with its adversaries.

Zelaya did not act in a vacuum. He has the support of the governments of Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador and the other members of the Bolivarian axis. But what of Honduras? What of the upcoming election in November? What of an electorate that has strongly expressed its disapproval by a wide margin? What about the laws of an independent nation? How does any of this end well and to the interest of the Honduran people?

The United States government is a party to these events and there is a much greater likelihood there will now be blood on our hands as well should violence occur. Is this our national policy?

CIA Payback on Afghanistan?

The President went on national television yesterday in a record 5 appearances. When asked if he would increase the number of troops in Afghanistan by the interviewers, he said it was irrelevant, as General McChrystal had not yet asked for those troops.

Today, the Washington Post published an article based upon a leaked copy of General McChrystal’s report, which was sent to Defense Secretary Gates and the White House on August 30. perhaps in the Kabuki world of Washington, the President “did not know” about the report, but we all know he knew. We all now know he lied about knowing as well.

On Friday, seven former directors of the CIA publicly petitioned the President to end Attorney General Holder’s criminal investigation of CIA employees. The unanimity and clear, unsparing language of this letter were meant to send a message that the President’s actions are placing the country in great danger. There are other, more damaging ways to send the same message. I believe that message was sent in the form of a leak. There may be more.

How can we continue to believe in the president if he is found to be twisting the truth like a pretzel? More importantly, how can we have faith in our leaders when they intentionally mislead us on the gravest of matters?

The Congressional leadership is a mix of hard left 1960’s activist types and Obama’s agenda is becoming more apparent every day. He may be sincere and have the best of intentions but history tells us that appeasement, and unilateralism never work. It’s a cold, hard world. And once pegged as a liar, his credibility is gone forever.

MoveOn moves into Action on Health Care

I finally got out of the office an hour ago to get some lunch and was stunned to see a group of @ 50-60  protesters in front of the local Christian radio station building. It turns out the building also houses an insurance company, United Health Care. It seems that MoveOn.Org has scheduled today to begin their “Big Insurance: Sick of It” campaign across the country.

In googling the MoveOn site for Southern California protests, it seems there are protests scheduled in Santa Ana, San Diego(95 registered), Pomona (87 registered), Los Angeles (400) and Woodland Hills (210). From what I saw, the protest was polite and well organized. It was described as a protest against corporate control of health care and of rationing by the insurance companies. MoveOn is advertising media coverage and urging participants to tell their stories of problems with health care or positive experiences in countries with universal health care for the cameras.

From what I saw on the signs and listening to the chants and what I read on their web site it, seems that MoveOn’s role in the debate is to demonized the existing system. Stories will be videotaped and posted on YouTube. In New York City, 400 are signed up; Philadelphia 233, Wilmington 16, Washington, D.C. 129. It will be very interesting watching the media coverage of these protests versus the recent 9/12 Tea Party in Washington, where estimates ranged from 75,000 – 750,000. In Los Angeles, 5,000 showed up and others drew thousands across the country.

MoveOn.Org is a well financed, highly organized media savvy organization, while the tea party movement has no well defined leadership except television newsman Glenn Beck, who promoted the Washington event on his show. It will be interesting to see both how the media reports, and how Congress reacts.

United Nations seeks to ban carbonated beverages in war on climate change

In a room not far from today’s United Nations General Assembly meeting, a group of UN administrators and environmental activists met to discuss an international ban on carbonated beverages.  Lasse Thorbrichtsen of the Norwegian Institute of Science reported that the average dissolved carbon dioxide (CO2) content as measured using infrared carbonation sensors and applying the Beer-Lambert Law, which compensates for alcohol content as measured by grams per liter is 62.2 grams of CO2/liter of normal lager beer and for carbonated soft drinks such as Pepsi or Coke, is 6 grams of CO2/liter.

A recent report stated that the consumption of soft drinks in North America equals 56 gallons per year per person. Based upon a population of 325 Million, the total consumption/emission of CO2 from soft drink products alone amounts to over 420,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year. The average consumption of beer in the United States is approximately 22.5 gallons per person, adding another 350,000 – 400,000 tons of CO2 to the atmosphere. Sparkling mineral waters and carbonated wines such as champagne were not included in the calculations at the request of the French and Italian delegations. Globally, it is estimated at total emissions are in excess of 4 million tons/year.  Haruto Watanabe of the United Nations Mission on Global Warming warned that unless all carbon dioxide emissions were reduced immediately, low lying nations could face catastrophic flooding and reduced tourism.

Industry representatives, who were not invited to the meeting, held their own conference at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel proposing limitations on carbonation beginning in 2015.  The Alliance for Climate Protection proposed a  market in carbonated beverage offset credits to limit environmental impact. Vending machine manufacturers have also expressed interest in incorporating carbon offset technology into their products. Carl Fleem, director of marketing at Acme Vending Machines of Vidalia, Georgia stated “What’s good for Coca Cola is good for America”, and noted the bottom line profitability of selling air. Further discussions are due to be held at the Copenhagen summit in December.

Obama’s Fast Break to Remake America

It seems these days that we don’t know quite what our president will do next; pull out of Afghanistan, sign cap & trade legislation, remake our health care system, reverse our country’s foreign policy or our nuclear deterrent policy, or remake our financial system.  The criticism is rising from every quarter whether it be Ralph Nader, the Democratic middle, or the Tea Party movement. His own personal popularity and that of his policies has been plummeting after he entered office with the highest support of any recent president. His hyperactive pronouncements in the past week will inevitably accelerate the trend.

If one peruses his schedule with its constant campaigning and television interviews and speeches, one must wonder when the actual work of governing takes place. At the White House, he seems to have delegated responsibility to a cadre of very young, inexperienced staffers and policy czars. Diplomatically, he has isolated his Secretary of State more effectively than the Iran embargo using more  special envoys than a football team. He has layered his own bureaucracy on top of the one that already  exists. It would seem to take a Herculean effort to keep up. And yet he seems to have plenty of time for leisure, playing golf and basketball regularly and holding Wednesday night soiree’s.  So when does the work get done?

His lack of attention to the law and good judgment has been evident from the trail of poorly vetted cabinet choices to his selection of  radicals for senior positions to his use of national agencies such as the NEA to advance his political agenda. He also seems to have a problem with the truth. His statements from the time he was elected to today are often at direct odds, and even on policy issues, he seems to want to tell all of us what we want to hear while pursuing his own agenda. Whether his commitment to the supporting our strategy in Afghanistan to his multiple fibs about both Medicare and the overall health care bill or his habit of dropping bombshells over the transom on Friday nights there is a disturbing lack of conviction except to his very loosely defined message of change.

In that he has been the most transformational president in history. Whether it is in committing our country’s finances to between $5 Trillion and $23 trillion over the next 10 years in TARP and Stimulus funds, or taking over the automotive industry, or pushing for the public option in health care as he did clearly last Sunday, our president is taking over far more of our economy than even the admittedly socialist governments of Europe. That there seems to be little accountability or change in the poor practices that got us into this mess is even more worrisome. There is no plan, it seems to pay for all of this largess and people are worried.

In the interest of doing great things, our president is forgetting that it is in the details that we build long term success. Our president is like a hyperactive teenager tipping over trash cans in his rush to recreate the country in his image. That a majority of the electorate disagrees doesn’t seem to matter. He has at least two years and he and his allies know this. But even some of those allies are becoming deeply worried now. The president has recently allied himself ever more with the Left Wing of the Democratic Party, and the rest of the party is becoming shell-shocked. The premonition of political disaster in 2010 is growing ever stronger.

Somewhere, sometime soon, someone or some event will coalesce the opposition. At the moment it is divided. But one thing unites us as Americans, and that is our Constitution. It provides the basis for a fair and just society, and is being assaulted as never before. Statism is antithetical to being American. We are a nation of dissenters, and the one thing the president seems to be doing is unifying that dissent.

That President Obama had a secret agenda is becoming ever more apparent. That most of the American people disagree with it is also becoming more apparent. Perhaps the next campaign slogan will be “Repeal Obama”.

Cliff’s Story

Cliff is a guy I know. He’s in his 80’s and is a highly skilled woodworker. He grew up in the Dust Bowl during the Depression, and then served his country in World War II. After the war, he came to California and worked in the aerospace industry before setting up his woodworking business. He did well, and bought his house not far from mine for around $15,000 in the early 1960’s. Now the bank owns it. How that came to happen is the story.

After 30 years doing well in his business, Cliff owned his home free and clear. The value appreciated over the years, and 6 years ago it was appraised at over $600,000. Today it’s worth $450,000.  Cliff continued to work, but there hasn’t been as much demand for good millwork for years, so he was content getting the odd job here and there and living off of his social security check of $1,200.00/month.

Several years ago, Cliff got a phone call from a nice lady at the bank. She asked if he had ever considered refinancing his home. She asked him if he wanted to remodel or use the money for some other purpose. Cliff had a grandson who needed college tuition and also wanted to help his own children. She pushed, and they set up an appointment to meet at Cliff’s home. She explained how easy it was to do a “stated income” loan, and that he didn’t even need to fill out the forms, as she could do this for him. His equity in his home was enough, and of course it would continue to appreciate in value.

Cliff got a loan on his home in the amount of  $600,000 without documentation and with only his social security income to show. The bank representative made probably $15,000 on the loan and went away. The loan originator made a nice profit when the loan was securitized and sold off on Wall Street. Cliff paid for his grandson’s education, but was frugal. He didn’t need much and banked the rest. He paid around $3,500/month for several years and had repaid close to $250,000 when he got behind on his mortgage payments. He is a proud man and he said nothing. The home is still worth more than the loan, so the bank knew they would win one way or the other. They began foreclosure proceedings.

Back in the 80’s, when life was about the win-win option, banks triedn to show they were just like real people. They advertised convenience and their reputations for fiscal responsibility with their depositors and customers money. After the savings and loan crisis, regulators tightened up lending practices as well as  deposit ratios and capitalization rules. After a big scare, people began to trust them again. Then came the housing boom in the early 2000’s. The Fed made money available at such a low rate they were begging the country to borrow. Liquidity flowed into the housing market and prices rose.

A lot of people bought too much house for their income with the hope that prices would continue rising. All the while the lending industry was becoming ever more creative in qualifying the unqualified for loans. The fees and commissions were huge, and the people at the top, like Countrywide and Bank of America made hundreds of millions in profit. But they also crossed a line somewhere along the way. They began taking advantage of people they knew could never afford to keep their loans in the long run. The poor, the elderly, and immigrants were prime targets for unscrupulous lenders. If everybody else was doing it, it had to be okay, as one person told me.

Next year, the second wave of adjustable rate mortgages will begin resetting, and with the potential for significant inflation, we may see another wave of bankruptcies and foreclosures. We are not out of the woods yet on the housing crisis.

In the meantime, Cliff has lost his house. Some kid a thousand miles away called him this morning to offer him $1,500 to vacate the premises in a “cash for keys” effort to get him to move out voluntarily.  The wolves are already at the door.  It is in their interests to squeeze an old man for every penny they can, and they are doing so. You see, with no penalties, they can get away with anything they please, even now.

Congress has tried to limit usurious credit card lending rates with only limited success, and still, 2 years after the onset of the mortgage crisis, no one has been indicted for fraud. I would think falsifying loan applications and knowingly making loans that could never be repaid to the elderly would qualify. But, in this brave new world of insider trading and ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”, they might be able to get away with it.

One of the things that is uniquely American is our sense of fair play. Over 233 years, we have as a country tried to make sure the playing field is level  and that we look out for the weak. It is a part of our social compact. It is evident in our charity towards others and our laws. And yet over the past couple of decades, we have seen people and corporations and government become harder and harder. Sharp dealing has become the norm. Instead of giving trust when we do business, we have to be ever more wary about the fine print and the weasel words.

Today, the same corporations that were utterly irresponsible and created the crisis Wall Street and who then took trillions of dollars in government bail out money are the same ones putting people like Cliff on the street. How can this be right? How is this just? It is happening quietly all over America. Many of these people come from a time when even asking for a loan was unheard of. Banks were not be trusted, but with marketing and the soft sell, it all sounded too good to be true. They were taken advantage of and they are in many cases too embarrassed to say anything. In their day, bankruptcy was a scarlet letter. Now they quietly move in with family, or into a trailer park or something worse, sometimes all alone. This is an American tragedy that should never have happened, and we must hold those responsible accountable for their actions. We should be ashamed of ourselves if we don’t.

Only A Fool Would Say That

Years ago, Steely Dan did a song with that title. It described the pie in the sky idealism of the liberal left. That was back in the day when Messrs. Fagin and Becker were a bit more coherent. Today, we seem to have the Dan’s imaginary dreamer to the office of President of the United States.

From his desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons to remaking our country in his image, President Obama has taken it upon himself to radically transform not only our own society, but that of the entire world. But there are two very sad truths he must face. We’re broke and with every day that passes fewer and fewer people believe him.

As our president acts to take control of ever greater swathes of our society, he is paying those bills with monopoly money. The presses have been running 24/7 and only today the current year debt issued by the Treasury was announced at $7 trillion. Let’s repeat that together Seven. Trillion. Dollars. That alone is 50% of our GDP offered on the debt market in a single year. It does not include existing debt from past years.

The headline in today’s London Telegraph is that HSBC, one of the world’s largest banks, has declared that the Dollar risk/reward ratio is now on a par with that of emerging countries. Our national debt has risen to over 75%  of our Gross Domestic Product. The Chinese, Koreans, and Taiwanese, who have pegged their currencies to the Dollar can no longer afford to do so. This will result in floating exchange rates and a huge jolt in inflation in this country. The debt and currency crises of the United States and United Kingdom, until last year the two leading economies in the world are at the top of the agenda at the G 20 meeting in Pittsburgh. Suddenly, we are the Sick Old Man of the global economy.

With this realignment, our standard of living will degrade significantly. Those cheap Wal Mart prices will rise and the big screen TV and fancy car will become that much more difficult to afford. The people who have been financing our profligate spending will no longer do so, and this will hit us even harder. We are headed to an age of frugality whether we like it or not.

And all the while the President wants to do more and more to reduce productivity and increase the size of the public sector. At least in the communist countries, the state owned many of the factories. Here, the government only consumes and redistributes. It makes nothing. It creates little.

His dissembling is also catching up with him finally. After a campaign full of broken promises and overwhelming media worship, it turns out that the emperor has no clothes. It’s all been a sham. The majority of us simply no longer believe or believe in him.

And so President Obama is about to learn the facts of life. Living his insulated life in Hawaii and Harvard and Chicago, he might want to consider the lyrics of the song:

“A world become one, of salads and sun, only a fool would say that.

A boy with a plan, a natural man, wearing a white Stetson hat”

Sound familiar? I’d give the song a “9″. I’d give the movie an F.

Why The Obama – Ayers Story is Important

Christopher Anderson has just released a book on Barack and Michelle Obama entitled “Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage” in which he claims, based on inside information and interviews, that 1960’s radical Bill Ayers, a neighbor of President Obama when he lived in Chicago, actually co-authored much of the president’s book “Dreams of My Father”.  The book propelled Obama onto the best seller list and the national stage in 2004. Arguably, it was one of the greatest single contributors to his rise to the head of the pack in the Democratic primaries last year. The charisma generated by this and Mr. Obama’s emphasis on hope and change fueled an election that shattered the color barrier.

But what is  disturbing here is that unlike St. Peter, President Obama has denied his relationship with Mr. Ayers more than 3 times. The media looked the other way, and refused to investigate the close ties between an up and coming Senator and an unreformed Marxist radical despite its relevance to the candidate’s intentions.  And yet we know that Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, hosted one of Obama’s first fundraisers and that Ayers also served on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the high profile sinecure that led Obama into politics. In addition, we know that over $150 Million in CAC money disappeared into the ratholes of Chicago’s education system on their watch. Most people with any common sense would find Mr. Obama’s denials and the whole affair, really,  just a bit difficult to believe in light of the facts. But the media was in the tank and didn’t do their jobs.

Ghost writers are nothing new. They have helped a lot of people who cannot sit down and bang out a book accomplish great things.   But with all the hoopla on Oprah and in the New York Times Book Review or any of 100 other outlets never was there a hint that anyone other than Obama and his editor were involved in the writing of the book. We Catholics have what we call sins of commission and omission. What is not done can be just as much a sin as our actions. When it is a such a close collaboration with a questionable character it certainly has pressing relevance. Or perhaps that is why nothing was said.

The President has a troubling history of associations. Whether it was Frank Davis, the communist agitator in Hawaii when he was a boy, or Ayers and Dorhn, who were some of the most violent members of the Weather Underground in the 1960’s, or Reverend Jeremiah Wright, one of the most vitriolic of black racists, these are not the companions of a moderate.

More disturbingly, we are seeing a pattern of lies emerge with our President. His campaign promises on many important issues have been meaningless. These could be put aside as political rhetoric. But with the high stakes debates on Afghanistan and health care, he has all too easily been willing to suspend his prior commitments and beliefs, if in fact he ever held them honestly. Even by today’s lax standards, a pattern is emerging.

A man’s reputation is based upon trust, whether it in shaking hands to trade a horse or brokering a deal on the floor of the Senate. Empires are won and lost on trust. Our Constitution is based on it. And the most powerful man in the world needs it more than anything else as a fundamental currency in his dealings foreign or domestic.

The President’s reputation has taken some major hits in the past few weeks. This may be the worst yet. It could be a tipping point. I pray that it is not. We are in the most uncertain of times and we need strong, forthright leadership that binds us together. As the president steers left on every front, we must at least have some confidence that his rise to the top has been nothing more than a series of deceptions from the outset. There are already  questions that have left doubts in many minds. If this is true, this story confirms those doubts. And trust once lost is never regained.

The pointless threat of sanctions against Iran

The big news this morning is that the U.S. and U.K. are preparing to threaten Iran with tougher sanctions after the disclosure of a second uranium processing facility. Like what? A blockade? An embargo? Somehow I don’t think so.

The day before yesterday, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad spoke to the UN denouncing the “Zionist Entity” for the enslavement of the Palestinian people.  A dozen nations walked out of Ahmedinejad’s speech:

Argentina – Australia – Great Britain – Canada – Costa Rica – Denmark – France – Germany – Hungary – Italy – New Zealand – United States

All 190+ other countries there  politely listened to him use the largest stage in the world to denounce his enemies. Russia was there. So was China. And while the German and French delegations walked out, their companies still do billions in business with Iran. The rest of the world either doesn’t think it’s their business or is Iran’s camp to some degree or another.  Where the rubber hits the road, we can depend on the U.N. to do nothing.

The reality is that, as found in Iraq in the 1990’s, sanctions don’t work. There is no way to successfully enforce such sanctions. It is simply too profitable for a few countries and companies to get around them. There is an endemic corruption that was already demonstrated with Saddam Hussein’s; in the U.N., in many governments, and in business. Especially during these hard times the profit is simply too irresistible for the corrupt and too many people we should be able to trust are on the take.

So the Iranians have announced a doubling of their  capacity to manufacture weapons grade uranium. At the same time, the IAEA last week announced that Iran is much closer to building nuclear weapons than previously thought.

Benjamin Netanyahu was pellucid in his assessment of the situation. He said “Shame on you for accommodating a war monger”. He also reiterated his nation’s right of self defense. “Never Again” is not a meaningless phrase in Israel. It is national policy. Last November, Israel attempted to gain President Bush’s approval for a strike against the Iranian nuclear facilities. They were rebuffed. They have come back again recently, asking for an international consensus for action against the Iranian government.

Several weeks ago the  Arctic Sea, a freighter that left Russia supposedly bound for Algeria with a load of lumber disappeared for 2 weeks. It mysteriously reappeared off of the Cape Verde Islands several thousand miles away off the coast of West Africa. A Moscow shipping expert later reported that the vessel was actually carrying a cargo of Russia’s latest anti-aircraft missiles to Iran and the Israelis were involved. Netanyahu flew to Moscow recently to discuss the matter with President Medvedev and Vladimir Putin. Nothing was said officially. We do know that the Iranians have been beefing up their missile defenses considerably and they buy Russian.

So we are once again faced with the Iranian government’s defiance of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The Israeli’s are closer than ever to taking military action. And our president proposes sanctions. Mr. Achmedinejad must be terrified. The Iranians have been the most active supporters of insurgent activities in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and we have done nothing. As the world moves in real time towards a crisis President Obama wants to engage the Iranian government in talks.

The Iranians have been playing both sides against the middle regarding negotiations. One minister says one thing, unofficially, of course, and the Western press reports that talks are on. Another minister denies the possibility the next day. All the while they are buying time to complete their first devices.

It’s not just Israel who are fearful. It is all of their neighbors as well as countries all over the world who are now considering their own nuclear weapons program. Could they show up in South America? The Brazilians have suddenly this week discussed a nuclear weapons program. Against whom would they be used? And if Iran holds onto them, we know that Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region would want them immediately. Think about nuclear proliferation in the most unstable region of the world.

The U.S. nuclear umbrella used to be the deterrent that protected all of our allies. A few days ago, President Obama unilaterally announced a major cut in our stockpiles. He tossed aside the 60 year old strategy of mutually assured destruction (MAD) that had, while Strangelovian, kept the world safe. You see, the guarantee was that if someone ever used nuclear weapons against ourselves or an ally, they would be utterly destroyed. Now, under the Obama doctrine, perhaps there is a chance of survival and perhaps it might be worth the risk to strike first. In addition, Obama’s heralded speech to the world the other day pretty much said “you’re on your own”.  He sounded almost isolationist.

We have no quarrel with the Iranian people, either. With the recent demonstrations, it has become more obvious that they chafe under the current regime.  Like everywhere else in the world most people just want to be left alone to live in peace.

But we know that sanctions don’t work, and the Russians and Chinese have made their intentions clear. Even if agreements are signed, they will only be honored in the breach. So what then? The West will be once again humiliated in the Middle East, and eventually the Israelis will act anyway.  Zbigniew Brzinski, Carter’s National Security Advisor, suggested that the United States shoot down any Israeli planes if they try to attack the Iranian nuclear sites. A bizarre statement indeed. And while we know the Middle East will erupt with anger, the reality is that governments throughout the region would be relieved.

Additionally, the only way the Israelis can knock out the deep, hardened bunkers would be with their own nuclear weapons. Only the United States has the bomb technology to penetrate these sites with conventional explosives. But the Israelis are also not stupid. There are alternatives.

In the meantime, one way or the other, the United States will lose. Our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan will become the target of jihadis, however misguided, and we must be prepared for the eventuality. Should Israel act, we will need every available soldier in the Army to reinforce both Iraq and Afghanistan, because the violence will go through the roof. And there is still Pakistan and their nukes to deal with.

The real answer is for enough world leaders  to stand together against Iran and together declare a complete cutoff of relations of all kinds, and if necessary, a blockade. And if the Iranians do declare that they have nuclear weapons we must make one simple declaration. Iran will be completely destroyed should they ever be used or even threatened to be used. We can park enough missiles close by so that they will feel the blast before they take their finger off the button. Ronald Reagan drew the line in the sand with the Soviet Union and defeated them without a shot. We must do the same with the current Iranian regime. There is no negotiating with terrorists.

MoveOn mobilizes against America

Well it didn’t take long for MoveOn.org to begin their push for a withdrawal from Afghanistan. They sent an e mail out today to 5 million contacts urging them to contact their representatives to end the war. The protests will be next. After their slander of General Petraeus in 2007, they should have known better, but being far to the Left it never really mattered anyway. It is a reflexive action on their part, what used to be called knee jerk liberalism.

At the same time, Foreign Policy Magazine today reported that Congressman Howard McKeon, the ranking Republican member of the House Armed Services Committee reported that he was told by Defense Secretary Gates in July that the President ordered that Generals Petraeus and McChrystal to “scrub” their reports, as he was disinclined to send more troops. With his recent statements and seeming desire to ignore the urgent requests of his field commanders, I think we already have the President’s answer to that urgent request. In the U.K. one of the top Generals recently resigned in disgust at the government’s prosecution of the war. While there is a will to win at home, there is no will to win at the top.

Osama Bin Laden only today threatened the German government, and the one thing we know is that many European governments have caved in to Al Quaeda threats. Spain after the Madrid bombings is one example. The Taliban can smell victory. This is another reason they are on the warpath. If they can kill enough foreigners they know the West will falter in their commitment. Which is why now is the time to hit them even harder. Let them get a little more confident and show themselves a bit more, and then mow them down. Give them a false sense of security.

5 American soldiers died today in Afghanistan.  It is to be expected when we push back against the enemy, unfortunately. The Taliban and Al Quaeda are being squeezed hard in Pakistan and Afghanistan and our kill ratio is over 50:1.  But at the same time it is obvious they are receiving more foreign aid. Someone has to be paying the $150/week which is the going rate for a Taliban soldier these days, and someone has to be paying for the IED’s. We know the Iranians are involved and that Afghanistan supplies 70% of the world’s heroin. As the IRS did with Al Capone, we have to go after the money

The problem is that I doubt our president has the intestinal fortitude to do so. Despite his assertions that Afghanistan was the just war in last year’s elections, we are finding with this man that America is always wrong. America is the aggressor. His apologies are offending even our allies. MoveOn was emboldened in the same way as the Taliban. Joe Biden and Rahm Emmanuel have both cast doubts on our strategy, and the Left sees their opening. You see, when dealing with vicious animals, you have to expect them to be true to their nature.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog called “Why We Fight”. These people don’t care.  They never did. Everything is America’s fault. They are American, but they are reflexively anti-American. This was the lesson from the 1960’s. It is the same today. There is a segment of our society who will tear us down just as that same mentality exists overseas. They are not our friends. They are not our allies. They never will be. And if our nation is to survive, we cannot stay silent and must act in the country’s best interest.

If we leave Afghanistan any time soon, it will be a disaster. The enemy will tear our troops apart despite our advantages. They will tear our country apart, as is now happening. We are in an existential battle for the future of our country if you haven’t noticed. So if you give a damn, get involved. Otherwise, be prepared to accept the consequences.

William Safire, R.I.P.

One of the great lights of our discourse died today. There was no prequel, only the announcement that William Safire had died in a hospice in Maryland of pancreatic cancer.

To me  for the past several years there was only one last reason left to read the New York Times, and it was Safire. His common sense, his gift for the English language, and his conviction in the common sense of most of us were a beacon in a world driven by emotion, by the volume of rhetoric, and by self interest. He truly believed in the greater good.

I sometimes did not agree with him, but I delighted in his arguments. Logical, well stated, and always a joy to read. Truth be told, he and Buckley and Wolfe have been the best that the OTL (Other Than Left) have had over the past 40 years.

His columns on language in the Times Magazine on Sundays were always illustrative and helped us in a world that has lost touch with our original principles. He was a touchstone who helped us better ourselves. He said something a long time ago that made complete sense. “Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation and is thus the source for civilized delight”.

Safire understood that depth is critical to perception. In todays society we seem to only study surfaces and even then only according to preconceptions. It is the height of dishonesty when the Journo-list dictates media talking points.  Safire lived his life with open eyes and common sense and an incredible perception and joy. His ability to translate this into words was unparalleled. We should all hold ourselves to his standard. The world would be a better place.

Misplaced Presidential Priorities

NBC News is reporting that President Obama will be heading to Copenhagen, Denmark on Thursday, a day after his wife leaves, to be a part of the final presentation of the Chicago bid committee to the International Olympic Committee. This after the G-20 and United Nations General Assembly meetings last week.

At the same time, the urgent request for additional troops in Afghanistan has been circulating since late August; a request that the commanding general stated was the difference between winning and losing. Only in crisis do our generals speak so bluntly and so publicly, and yet the president has consciously decided to put the war on the back burner. He would rather attend another social function than tend to the nation’s urgent business.

Olympic meetings are grand affairs. Dinners with royalty, tycoons, and superstars. 5 star marketing presentations with a little graft thrown in. I have been there and done that. There is a glamor and grandiosity that one sees little of beyond Cannes and high functions of state. The self-importance factor is off the Richter scale. And the prize is a hundred or so billion in spending for the winner’s political allies while the taxpayers pay the bill. Why am I not surprised by his decision?

And 7,000 miles away, American and British and Allied soldiers are fighting and dying in the heat and the dust while the president and his wife take matching 747’s on another boondoggle. The economy is in the tank still, health care legislation is a fiasco, and CBS News reports that Obama and his leading general have had one videoconference since General McChrystal took command in July. The cognitive dissonance is stunning.

The greatest sin in any military enterprise is uncertainty, and yet this now seems to be our national policy. Our president is emboldening our enemies and sowing the seeds of defeat among our friends.

Go to Copenhagen, Mr. President. Have fun. And remember, there is one thing that the American people will never forgive, and that is the senseless deaths and injuries of our military. Their lives are in your hands.

The California Republican Convention

Let me start by saying that I am not a Republican. I have voted that party for a number of years now because it has been the lesser of two evils. The Democrats simply have been too slick and too pro the bad guys and  too two-faced and too anti responsibility for my liking.

I would say that my party is the No Free Lunch Party if anything. Everyone, and I mean everyone, contributes, because then everyone has a stake in the outcome. And the law means that it applies to all of us. And my party means do what you say and say what you mean and you hold the common values because they are the values that have lasted 5,000 years for the most part.

I find the Republicans tend to hold more of those values, but I still can’t bring myself to align myself with them completely. Leaving aside the corporatists, the slick amorality of the “middle” and the unrealistic right, I believe there are some core values that, if stripped down, can help us get back to where we need to be, which is why I found myself at the California Republican Convention this weekend. I like many am deeply concerned that our country has made some very bad mistakes and that if we don’t get involved and fix them, we may lose our democracy as we know it. I went to the desert for answers.

What I found was a melange of people. These are the activists. It is an off year in California politics, so there is a lot of jockeying for volunteers and momentum even now. Most of the candidates attended and all of them were looking to lay the groundwork for success in next year’s elections.

California is in bad straights right now. Of the four pillars of economic growth; manufacturing, agriculture, construction, and natural resources, the richest state in the history of the Union finds itself striking out on all counts. The land of opportunity is slowly killing itself with self inflicted wounds. Taxes are among the highest in the country. A Federal judge has shut off most of the water to the central Valley, causing 35% unemployment up and down the state; the state has the single most manufacturing unfriendly environment in the country, and in the name of environmentalism we have some of the most draconian policies in the country.

When the aircraft industry or Silicon Valley or real estate were booming and people flocked here, it was okay to rip off the taxpayer. But now, there is no one left to rip off as the state’s spending has gone completely out of control.

So, whither the Republicans?

We got there to hear Steve Poizner, one of the candidates for governor focus completely on getting the state back on financial track. This is great, but it is limited. Meg Whitman wants to be governor, well, because she wants to. She spent more capital apologizing for her poor voting record than proposing the kind of bold agenda the state will need to extract itself from the mess. Unfortunately we did not get to see Tom Campbell, but from my reading, his is a more rounded agenda.

On the Senate race side. It would seem there is a real chance of defeating Barbara Boxer this year. Her popularity has plummeted, and she has gone beyond the toleration of many key constituencies in the middle; the elderly and  moderate middle are particularly taken aback. Carly Fiorina was unable to make as she is undergoing the last of her radiation treatments, as I was told. people wished her well, but there is an uncertainty as to her credentials and she has put forth no ideas yet.

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore worked the convention at a breakneck pace. he may have shaken every hand there, but more importantly he offered solutions and ideas that were both practical and had a lot of common sense. If you remember, DeVore resigned his position in the Assembly leadership as that leadership was trying to make backroom deals with the Democratic majority in Sacramento. He was one of the few who stood his ground, and these days that says a lot about a candidate.

One of the highlights was attending the media matters forum. Andrew Breitbart, the  enfant terrible of new media, was passionate in his description of the dereliction of duty by the major media. He methodically tore down the walls of the newsrooms and television studios, exposing leftist, not liberal bias. The outline of case after case of sensationalizing stories reflecting badly on the Republicans while covering up or burying those unfavorable to the democrats is hard to argue with. He described it as a war, and I really cannot disagree when the major networks focus on the methods and finances of the two kids who exposed ACORN rather than on the outrageous conduct of its employees.

Evan Sayet, a comedian, told the crowd how even moderate executives and industry powers have been tyrannized into acquiescence by leftist activists such as Oliver Stone, Susan Sarandon, and Sean Penn, and Danny Glover. There is a real risk of blackballing by the Left now. Even Jay Leno, who wants to put on the best show he can, is afraid of this juggernaut.

Inga Bark, who has risen from nowhere to one of the leading voices for common sense in the Central Valley described the successes and challenges she sees, and the tremendous opportunity to make inroads with the Latino and other traditional Democratic voting constituencies as their elected leaders have abandoned them. She hasn’t made any friends on the Left, but they now have to listen.

Overall, in meeting with people from all walks of life it’s pretty obvious the California Republicans seem to have gotten the message. Drifting away from core values such as fiscal and personal responsibility only hurt them, and now it would seem they are focused on getting things right.

There is a lot that most of us can agree on. More than that on which we disagree actually. And we are in a crisis. It will take a lot of teamwork to get the state back on track and it will take a majority of fiscal conservatives to make the hard decisions. The state is broke, and that comes first. But even as we see the excesses of liberal leftism, perhaps that will drive the pendulum back to the middle again. The Democrats have controlled the California Legislature for 40 years, and maybe it’s time for a change. I’m still not a Republican, but they’re making a lot more sense these days.

Terrorist Catch & Release

As a fisherman, I have long practiced catch & release. So, apparently does the U.S. government now. The Long War Journal reports that Al Quaeda member  Fahd Saleh Suleiman al Jutayli was captured in Afghanistan in the Tora Bora mountains in 2001 and sent to Guantanamo. In May, 2006 he was repatriated to his native Saudi Arabia where he underwent their much vaunted  de-terroristification program.

Apparently he kept in touch with 11 of his buddies from Cuba who had been released and repatriated to Saudi , and they all made a break for Yemen some months ago. I guess the Mariah Carey tapes and good food didn’t help very much. This is in addition to the 65-70 who we know returned to the Al Quaeda fold after release. Mr al-Jutaiyli was killed in a gunfight with Yemeni soldiers the other day.

As President Obama prepares to release another 100 of the hard cases, I think this news is quite relevant. Al Jutayli gave his parole, a concept of honor that goes back hundreds of years, and even after what has been described as a successful detoxification program, went right back to the terrorist fold. How many of his associates have done  the same? There is a reason we locked them up in the first place.

So far, we have identified 70-80 out of a few hundred Guantanamo detainees who have returned to become  suicide bombers, master planners, and foot soldiers who have jumped right back into the fray after release. What in hell is our government thinking?  The recidivism rate exceeds even that of the worst gangs in America, and Attorney General Holder and the President continue on their twisted path. Will it take another 9/11 to change their ways?

There is something seriously wrong with the thought processes of an administration who continue along this path in the face of the statistics. We are now waiting for the other shoe to drop. We know it’s going to happen, but only the date and method are unclear. How many American and Allied lives will be lost the next time? And will we hold those responsible accountable?

Immoral Equivalency

Immoral Equivalency Posted: 30 Sep 2009 04:48 PM PDT Mike Nichols                                Ethan Coen Isabel Huppert                            John Landis Steven Soderburgh                    Deborah Winger Sam Mendes                              Monica Belluci Taylor Hackford                          Wong Kar Wai Salman Rushdie                         Martin Scorsese Bernardo Bertolucci                   David Lynch Have all signed a petition or expressed support for the release of convicted child rapist Roman Polanski. Other sympathizers include Woody Allen, who has his own issues with underage girls; Pedro Almadovar,  and Wim Wenders. I don’t see a lot of bright moral lights there, I’m afraid. I do see the tastemakers and influencers of 2 generations, however. The petition itself refers to the affair as a “case of morals”, as if it was a simple matter, not the drugging and sodomization of a 13 year old girl. You see, in the cinema’, it’s okay to do just about anything you want. Boys, girls, preteens, and probably all sorts of other weirder permutations combined with drugs and booze to numb or enhance the id. The combination of money, ego, and narcissism is toxic. Since the overthrow of the studio system (which kept some of the more debauched excesses in check) in the 1970’s by directors such as Coppola, Spielberg, and George Lucas, the psychosexual and political spectrums have shifted far to the left. When was the last time you heard of a “morals clause” for example? Whether politically or morally, anything goes except for what used to pass as conservative, or modest, or in many cases law abiding conduct. We see it in the choice of scripts that are produced and we  see it in the quality of the work. Whether it is the lowest common denominator blockbuster or the “high concept” film such as Brokeback Mountain, there is a Sartrean nihilism that life is strictly an aesthetic experience with no moral guidelines. That Nietzsche and Sartre are the guiding philosophers of those who can even spell the word in Hollywood is indicative of the support for Polanski. His art outweighs his crime. Existentialism traces from Soren Kierkegaard’s moral struggle with an ossified religious bureaucracy in Denmark. His awakening was that of the early Christian activist against the power of conventional thinking and mediocrity. Kierkegaard said “man’s existence is an experience of sustained becoming. Man can never be Christian but only attempt to become one”. Not too much about nihilism there. In fact, Kierkegaard’s underlying philosophy is a Christianity devoid of cant and ceremony more closely aligned perhaps with the early Church than today’s. These insights were then extrapolated by Nietzsche into a theory of life without a moral component. Evil exists, so therefore there is no God. The world is beyond good and evil.  This philosophy has dominated academia and the arts for the past 50 years. “Judge not lest ye be judged” was turned from a challenge into a demand. And in this lie the seeds of today’s dissonance. America is portrayed by many of these same tastemakers as a land of benighted Christian fanatics with outposts of rational humanist common sense on the coasts, and yet we are finally seeing that shibboleth for what it is. The sophist Emperor has no clothes. The hypocrisy of  self defined “rationalism” is being undermined every day now as we are seeing its full flower whether on the political or socioeconomic stage. We are seeing it for what it is; a false religion of the self. It wasn’t the people who go to church and work hard and pay their taxes who caused the economic collapse; it was the masters of the universe. That same lack of a moral compass translates across today’s oligarchies in business, government, and the arts. Hypocrisy is king, and there is a war between the truth and propaganda. Objective reality is replaced by manipulated images and emotions. There is no depth, only facade. Well, the facade is cracking rapidly now. The crisis has bred a new realism that is allowing us to reexamine our convictions. Polanski’s crime is no less heinous today than in 1977. So let his advocates cry for his freedom so that we can see them for who they are and what they believe in.

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

We’re going to lose the Afghanistan war. As in Vietnam the reasons are more political than military. The politicians are taking the easy way out, and along the way will make more decisions that will result in an end state detrimental to the interests of the United States. Today we find in the Wall Street Journal that Defense Secretary Gates is leaning against the request for more troops to defeat the Taliban. This despite the advice of his leading generals and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This is the same Secretary Gates, by the way who advised against the surge in 2007 that turned Iraq around.

The physical safety of the populace is critical to success, as is the provision of  basic levels of law and infrastructure. These goals can be achieved. 8 years of international aid projects have already made an impact and the country is better off today than in 2001 in most ways. But taking a subsistence economy into the 21st century doesn’t happen in 8 years. It will take 20 or more. And there must be an Afghan buy-in to the process. Today, with the current administration’s haplessness and dissent, the Taliban are taking advantage of our discord and ordinary Afghans are beginning to hedge their bets. Radios and satellite TV take the words right from Obama’s lips to their ears and Al Jazeera has a global feed.

The Pakistani border is porous and a large portion of our problem is across that border. The training bases and depots are spread across Western Pakistan and ethnically they are much closer to the Afghans than to their countrymen. They are the buffer zone and they know it. Right now, the Taliban’s primary armaments are man portable. They must be humped across 11,000′ mountains or smuggled into the south. But allowing them any freedom of movement in the country will mean the reappearance of the “technicals”, the pick up trucks toting .50 cal machine guns and the intimidation and violence will escalate further. The situation will degrade. Mobility and increased terror go hand in hand, so the concept of cutting off sections of the country as “no go” areas will not in the long run work as provinces fall one by one.

This will embolden the Taliban and somewhere, someone will get hold of heavier weapons and they will be smuggled in similar to the way the North Vietnamese smuggled in artillery onto the mountains overlooking Dien Bien Phu if necessary. They said that couldn’t be done at the time, and the French lost Vietnam as the result. In Afghanistan the concept of laagering in centralized bases and attacking Al Quaeda selectively is fundamentally flawed. It’s a bad idea to allow an army to be surrounded, especially when it’s self imposed. Eventually the Taliban will be able to drop more serious ordnance on American bases as they draw closer, and as they gain every village and province, they will gain strength.

The military effort in Afghanistan has been sold short since day 1. The Northern Alliance took the country with the help of a few B-52’s and Special Forces A teams. Then, Afghanistan was placed on the back burner by Bush in order to concentrate on Iraq, which we almost lost. Now the same men who literally wrote the book on counterinsurgency and who retrieved Iraq from the jaws of defeat are being sold out by our leaders.

American indecision is now offering an escape clause for our allies as well. No one was ever in love with the idea of sending troops into Afghanistan. Now, if they see us cutting out, how can they be expected to do otherwise? Defeat starts with a single moment.  This may be that moment. We won in Iraq because the president had established a direct dialog with his military commander and overrode his advisers in Washington. General Petraeus was able to present his case directly to President Bush, and the president agreed and allowed the strategy to go forward. The result was victory in a war the Democrats, including the current president, had said was already lost. Today, President Obama seems completely removed from the process. It’s as if he is a bystander.  There is a lack of trust in his commanders by this president that his predecessor did not share. This is a Washington war now, as was Vietnam.

Our president has also taken the Clinton strategy to a higher level. In addition to psychologically redefining the War on Terror to “Contingency Operations” he has also reversed virtually every political and defense policy of the previous administration except those which accrue power to his office. With a clear record of recidivism at Guantanamo, he is accelerating the release of the next generation of Jihadi leaders who are now seen as heroes across Islam. Letting terrorists go back to their line of work will both endanger us and our military and breed the cynicism and fatalism that led to the breakdown of our Armed Forces in the 1970’s. Americans don’t like to lose, and yet we are laying the foundations for exactly this outcome with such strategies. What will be the long term effect on our forces if our leaders allow senseless deaths and encumber our commanders with ever more restrictions and changes in their mission? What will be the long term effect on our psyche and that of our military of just quitting and giving up?

And through all of this we are faced with indecision and confusion at the top. Obama never wanted this war or any war for that matter. He seems to wish it would just go away. On 9/11 things changed. Now, the president wants to turn back the clock. We must concentrate on what is essential and important and must act with clarity and purpose. This seems to be lacking, and if allowed to continue, will affect us all tragically.

Our Strange Iranian Policy

As our government and the Iranians dance in Geneva on whether to discuss the elephant in the living room of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, news comes from Iraq that the U.S. military has been releasing Iranian spies and financiers as the Iraqi government arrests same.

Bill Roggio reports that the Iraqi National Emergency Response Brigade, their elite paramilitary police, detained Khalid Masour Ismail, a key Iranian financier of the Hezbollah Brigades, who are trained and armed in Iran before being sent back over the border. The Iranians are neck deep in Iraq now, supporting not only Hezbollah, but other terrorist groups such as Asaib al Haq, or the League of the Righteous. If you go to the terrorist web sites, you can see video of Hezbollah IED and mortar attacks on American troops. So as we release these enemies and the Iranian enablers whom we arrest after a short period, the Iraqis do their best to catch them. It makes no sense whatsoever except if our administration is trying to curry favor with Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

These are the murderers of American and Iraqis and there is a growing body of hard evidence that they have the full support of the current Iranian government. We know where the camps are; how the arms are being smuggled, and who the bad guys are. And we release them after we catch them. In return, Ahmedinejad announces additional an expansion of their nuclear program. I had to laugh when listening to NPR the other day as one of their reporters interviewed an “expert” who claimed that half of Iran’s centrifuges were inoperable. This after the 2007 National Intelligence estimate told us there was nothing to worry about as Iran had stopped it’s nuclear weapons program in 2003. It is all very contradictory. Sort of like in Iraq before we invaded.

I would place my money on the Israelis, frankly, when estimating Iranian intentions. They have penetrated the Iranian infrastructure most deeply and have the most at stake. We’ve got bupkis. And after the debacle over Iraq intelligence in 2003, how can we trust our own sources? In Iraq, the British, French, Germans, Americans, and Russians all agreed there were WMD programs. Saddam, it turned out was the only one to know, according to his own testimony, that it was all a sham. Is Ahmedinejad playing a similar game? Or are we being played?

The Iranians are completely contradictory. One diplomat wants to negotiate, but is placed in check by another. It is obvious they are playing for time. We will see what tomorrow and the day after bring, for this is the bumpiest road in the world today.

But in the meantime, our own government is allowing the Iranians a quasi free hand in Iraq, including the opportunity to kill our soldiers. Why? It is Iranian money paying for these militias. It is Iranian explosives killing our troops.They are operating almost in the open. What’s wrong with this picture? Perhaps the nuclear program is taking precedence, as today’s talks seem to indicate, but as the negotiation goes on and tentative deals are announced the Iranians are killing Americans in real time.

Michelle & I Spent $11 Million in Copenhagen and All I got was this Lousy T Shirt

We now know the 2016 Olympics will be held in Rio de Janeiro. This continues the Olympic tradition of coming out parties for the new global players. Whether Melbourne in 1956 or Tokyo in 1964 or Beijing in 2008, this is a long and historic tradition in the Olympic movement. It places the Games back in the Americas as well, as is also a part of the Olympic tradition,  rotating the Games between continents and hemispheres. I wish Rio all the luck in the world, because they are going to need it.

Bidding for the Olympics is the ultimate marketing program. The IOC expects only the cream of the crop, whether it’s presentations, facilities, tchotchkes, or bribes. There is a small industry associated with this and there is a 12-16 year cycle in the process from the formation of a bid committee to the first of 16 days of glory. The stakes are terribly high, and the prize is  an out of control budget ever since Peter Ueberroth showed people how to put on a profitable Games. Seoul, Sydney, Atlanta, Athens, and now London have all struggled with the demands of a 16 day event that requires dedicated facilities for the most obscure of sports in most cases.

So perhaps in these difficult times Chicago should consider itself lucky. American cities are particularly well suited to major events such as the Olympics. We have an incredible infrastructure, and after all, it is NBC’s advertising dollars that pay for most of the direct costs anyway. It’s when they build subways and stadiums that it gets expensive. Beijing’s Birdcage Stadium is already becoming derelict, so unless there is an economically viable application afterwards, even the centerpiece of an Olympic Games can become an albatross.

Our administration is taking this one right on the chin, though. The headlines read “Obama Fails”. The Washington Post is questioning the president’s last minute appeal at the IOC meeting in Copenhagen. Was he too detached? Is his popularity on the wane? Notice the theme? It is all about him to too many people already. The cult of personality has taken a serious hit. David Axelrod is blaming the inner machinations of the IOC as if it was a grudge game and not the difficult decision it always is. To the Chicago crowd, it was all about politics and the backbiting has officially begun. Madrid and Tokyo are terribly disappointed today as well, but this will not reflect on those country’s leaders.

You see, the Olympics are run based upon ideals, sometimes tarnished, of fair play and sportsmanship. I saw the worst of it in 12 years of involvement in the 80’s and 90’s, but there has been reform and some rededication to de Coubertin’s principles. It’s big business, the biggest in sport, but the process of selection is one of nuance and heart as well as cold blooded negotiation. Grace is critical, but somehow I think we may not see too much of this from the Chicago advocates. The American media is already howling. NBC is comparing this loss to that of New York’s in 2005, and the blame was laid at George Bush’s feet for that one. Even in sports, somehow politics intrudes.

It has been reported that the President and First Lady’s trip cost $11 Million. Parachuting in is never a good idea with the IOC. They have seen it all and know when they are being patronized. Tony Blair spent 3 days with them during London’s final bid, and many more hosting IOC members and committees during the qualification process. It is a hard loss for those with some much time and money and emotion invested, but the Olympic spirit is stoic. Gracious in victory and defeat. Let’s hope we see that tradition continue. The Olympics are meant to bring out the best in us. As de Coubertin said, the important thing in life is not to triumph, but compete.

Where are the Adults?

Ann Althouse linked today to Steve Benen’s column in the Washington Monthly which derides the Right for their schadenfreude at the failure of the Chicago Olympic bid and its reflection on the president. The comment section is especially disturbing, with a tone of deep hatred of conservatives. On the Right, we see hardball mockery of the Administration on a daily basis now. And yet how will we solve our deep and fundamental structural problems?

This country is faced with the most serious crisis we have seen since World War II and we are in the process of tearing it apart. Where is common sense? The country is faced with very hard choices and particularly at the top, we see a lack of direction and purpose on many key issues with  a focus on the irrelevant that is deeply disturbing.

There is one fundamental truth that seems to be being willfully ignored. Economically, the house of cards is collapsing. Stimulus bills and TARP programs do no good at all if we do not address the causes of the problems that led us into this mess, and this has not yet been done. Social Security and Medicare are on death watch. The FDIC has run out of money, and the World Bank is almost bankrupt. Our institutions are failing and we argue over trillions more in spending when the cupboard is bare.

There are now deep concerns that General Motors and Chrysler, despite $50 Billion in government investment, may fail anyway. Sales on many models are in some cases 10% of those of 2007. Everyone involved except the unions lost everything they had on the deal, and yet union leadership bragged that their work rules and salaries, at the heart of the problem in the first place, were untouched.

Our cities are no longer the envy of the world. They are rickety while places like Kuala Lumpur and Shanghai and now even Rio catapult into the 21st Century. It has been 8 years since 9/11 and yet there is still a hole in the ground. In contrast, the Empire State Building took 400 days to complete.

The experts predict a jobless recovery, and most indicators in this country seem to indicate that we are bouncing along at the bottom of the trough at best. Overseas, though, most economies seem to be doing better. Many of those economies are de-linking themselves from the  US economy and creating a new world economic structure. America, the champion of globalization, is now seeing itself passed by.

What we have is not a failure of the system, but of leadership. In the interest of corporate profits companies outsourced and offshored. In the interest of competing constituencies, the entitlement programs ballooned out of control. Pandering became the norm and working the system became the practice.

Whether at the Pentagon or Capitol Hill or at the various departments and agencies, shirking became a career decision. The President himself said during the election “it’s above my pay grade”. Corporately, the people who got us into the mess are lolling on a beach at an undisclosed Caribbean location, and we are the most self involved country in the world. To emphasize our narcissism, one of the few economic bright spots seems to be the tattoo industry.

The wake up call is ringing, but if we continue to dither we are lost. We will at best be a second world economy and our standard of living will fall precipitously. We must act now.

Manufacturing is at the center of reconstruction. We cannot do each others taxes or litigate against each other or build each others roads or provide each other banking services without somewhere along the line making a profit. The same holds true with agriculture and natural resources. Housing will recover when people have jobs. Our leadership class does not get these fundamental truths. We need to work smarter and harder. This is economics 101. Congress wants us to reduce our carbon footprint and yet ignores the most sensible solution; nuclear power. Heath care needs reform and there are 10 great ideas that have been proven to work that everyone can agree on once the special interests and politics are put aside. We know how to win in Afghanistan. We achieved stability in Iraq using similar tactics. But it all takes leadership.

Just as important, we need to emphasize ethics. It is  Nietzschean amorality that helped get us into this mess. Emotion rules over logic. The Judeo-Christian ethic has been Alinskyized.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. And until we recognize this blunt fact, we will continue down the path to irrelevance. For this is where we are headed. We need to buck up, conserve resources sensibly, and invest wisely.

We also need to remember that the Great Depression didn’t become Great until 1932, 3 years after the Crash. Poor decisions  have dire consequences whether then or now. It’s gut check time and we must put aside emotion and act rationally, or we will truly be the most contemptible people on earth. The richest and most rational culture in history will have been brought to its knees because its own stupidity.

Paging General Custer

The Telegraph reports today that the White House is furious with General Stanley McChrystal’s blunt and public assessments of the War in Afghanistan. Just as the President re-named it a “contingency operation”, the enemy began to fight back harder than ever. How inconvenient to the President’s narrative.

Speaking before the Institute of Strategic Studies, one of the most respected organizations of its kind, McChrystal said that Vice President Biden’s proposal to pull back from nation building and laager in central locations to go only after Al Quaeda would lead to “Chaos – istan”. Such language is reminiscent of George Patton or Vandergrift at Guadalcanal.  Spare and unsparing.

McChrystal’s request for an additional 20-40,000 troops has been at the Pentagon since August 30 and has been ignored by the president. His report states the situation is dire. The White House has instead made known its disinterest in the opinions of its military commanders and has back burnered the discussion.

All reports of the 25 minute meeting between the General and the President were that it was best described as strained. That it was the first face to face between the two since McChrystal’s arrival in Afghanistan is in itself amazing. There is a disconnect between the President and his military that is shocking.

After the success of the Iraq campaign, it seems the administration is intent on losing Afghanistan at this point. McChrystal, Petraeus, and Admiral Mullen are the men responsible for the lives of their men, and that is the overwhelming duty of an officer.

An anonymous adviser to the president said “to my mind he doesn’t seem ready for this Washington hardball and is just speaking his mind too plainly”. They should be aware that one of the duties of senior officers is to speak truthfully, and McChrystal did so over a month ago to no avail. 10 more U.S. soldiers died today because we have an administration that cannot or will not face the reality on the ground in Central Asia.

Many of our outposts are more akin to the Fort Apache than a modern military base. Fire support is limited and air resources are exceedingly scarce at times. Afghanistan has been run on a shoestring since the outset. American soldiers are being unnecessarily put at risk.

Not only is Gen. McChrystal warning of losing, but the Chief of Staff of the British Army, General Sir David Richards, did exactly the same in the Telegraph yesterday. When your top generals are warning of disaster, it would seem best to listen. Instead, our President is acting like General Custer, tone deaf to the facts before his eyes.

Freedom of Speech and the Freedom to Listen

The political volume in America is rising from what I am reading when I can read it. I am in China at the moment, and for those who don’t understand restrictions on free speech, it’s illuminating. The old Joni Mitchell song comes to mind. “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”. The internet is even more highly restricted than my last visit a few months ago.

Over here, you see, they have all the trappings of Western society except the underpinnings. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association. You know, that whole democracy thing.

These days, though, in America everybody has rights, but no one has responsibilities. People are yelling at each other louder and louder, and it seems that no one of any importance is listening. Our creditors warn of a worthless dollar, and no one in a position of authority listens. Our generals warn that we will lose in Afghanistan, and no one in authority listens. We are in danger of bankrupting Social Security and Medicare and Amtrak and the Post Office and the World Bank, and no one listens or even discusses the issues. Whether it was Bush or Obama, our leadership has a massive tin ear.

Here in China, they have solved it very simply. Shut up or go to jail. It’s dead serious, and when you see the police in the streets and the SWAT teams smiling warily at the Laowai (foreigner) and the implications of potential violence, you understand what you have lost. Here in China, unemployment is still bad. 50,000,000 new workers enter the economy every year, and economic growth is the only way to absorb the crush. So when the economy even stutters, unrest rears its head. The Chinese government does not fool around when it comes to public security.

And at home we have serious, deep problems that need rapid resolution. The economy is bouncing along the bottom and some of the best economic and business minds are still deeply concerned; There is a growing realization that if we do not get our house in order on the manufacturing side we may become utterly dependent on foreign suppliers; our health care system needs simple reform and yet Congress seems to want to jackhammer through another twisted, corrupt porkfest.

You know, most of us are not really that far apart, believe it not. If you can sit down and have a rational conversation with most people, they will hear you out. It’s when you see the Congressman refusing to just listen at a Town Hall, or the dismissiveness of a Nancy Pelosi towards legitimate dissent or see the arrogance of the Republicans in 2004 that you see the root of the anger. It is in the belittlement of one’s opponents that we see the true face of oppression.

A unique safety valve in China has always been the appeal to heaven. Individuals can if they are not too crazy, appeal to the government. It’s when they appeal too loudly that they disappear. It doesn’t change anything and you risk going to jail for 20 years and losing an organ or two, but as a first step, it is sometimes allowed. We now live in a society that is trying to restrict many of our freedoms in the interest of the state. Whether it is internet laws or surveillance or the Fairness Act, things have become more ominous. Statism is afoot. Seeing it close at hand gives one a different perspective. We need to exercise our free speech now more than ever. The national conversation is vital, and we are at a crossroads. But we must listen more as well.

From Yunnan

Summing It All Up at the Forbidden City

This Pretty Well Sums It All Up These Days – Seen in Beijing on an American Tourist

Talibanistan

In case no one has noticed, the Taliban are taking the war to the enemy on both sides of the border now. As they sit in their madrassas and hideouts watching Al Jazeera and CNN on satellite tv, they can see the impact in Washington, Islamabad and throughout the Muslim world and feel the wind turning in their favor.

The attack on the Pakistani GHQ in Rawalpindi is perhaps one of the most audacious terrorist assaults in recent years. Unlike Bombay, this was a hard target. The attackers were on a one way trip into one of the most heavily defended military headquarters in Asia and succeeded well beyond expectations. The primary goal was to send the message that no one is safe in Pakistan; that the Taliban and their allies are everywhere and will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. When our Secretary of State discuss Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, she should keep this in mind before making rash statements. Never underestimate a jihadi, especially when he’s on a roll.

The attack on FOB Keating on the Northeast Afghan side of the border on October 4, which killed 8 American soldiers, was another unexpected projection of force beyond the normal operating areas of the Taliban. There is a relationship between these attacks. Each was meant to demonstrate to the populace the vulnerability of the established authorities on both sides of the border. This will further inhibit any hearts and minds campaigns undertaken. The Afghan people are already on edge, and now in Pakistan, with a base in Waziristan, the Swat Valley under siege and GHQ violated, the terrorists continues to erode trust in the government’s ability to protect its citizens.

At FOB Keating, the Taliban, spent weeks monitoring resupply schedules, air cover, and watch changes to ensure maximum effect. the attacked was dialed in. This attack also seems from the reports to be similar to the one on COP Zerok in Paktika province, much further south, on July 4, where there was the danger of a small base being overrun. There is a pattern. The FOB Keating assault was, despite it’s ultimate failure, a huge propaganda victory regardless of the Army’s earlier plans to evacuate the base. Perception is reality in the mindspace.

The U.S. Army put these forts close to the Pakistani border to try and limit infiltration. The recent decision to pull back from this strategy and concentrate on urban centers gave the Taliban the motivation they needed to strike hard and strike quickly. They are making it clear that they will own the border zones and project deep into both countries. While U.S. attacks inside Pakistan by unmanned aircraft may or may not achieve the aim of cutting off the head of the Jihadi leadership, the fact is that operationally, the Jihadis have a distributed infrastructure that is fully capable of operating independently in units up to several hundred. We are also now seeing recoilless rifles, a larger weapon, being used as well. The stakes are rising rapidly.

Another reality that is being completely missed by most of the media is that in fact this has been one war for some time. The tribal areas of Pakistan have been the buffer for Punjab and Bengal across the centuries,and it was the mission of the Raj in the 19th Century as it is for the Pakistani Army today to keep the lid on there to protect the population centers. It is my belief that the jihadis now feel the rot is so deep on both sides that they can prevail and create a greater Talibanistan. In today’s New York Post, Ralph Peters argues that we are involved in two civil wars; the first in Pakistan and the other in Afghanistan. I would rather suggest that in the warlordism inherent in the region and desire for a jihadi caliphate, we will see an alliance of the tribes overseen by a mullahcracy headed by Mullah Omar.

On the Afghan side, he was the head of state until 2001. Since then he has also demonstrated an ability both to stay alive for 8 years while our best have been looking for him and to keep the respect of his adherents. Remember, he lost the offensive in 2001, and yet he is still a key player. Then there is  Bin Laden. The Northwest Frontier is not a vacuum, and he is holed up somewhere. To me it seems likely that Al Quaeda is involved at least in coordinating some of the operational aspects of the current offensive. He has demonstrated his expertise at asymmetrical warfare repeatedly. With the recent series of events, there is a logical thread. Terrorism coupled with small unit actions against lower risk targets an at this crucial juncture can create a tipping point.

The Pakistani government has telegraphed their strategy in Waziristan. In response, the Taliban are hitting back 100 – 200 miles east, much closer to Islamabad. Guerrilla warfare dictates melting away when faced with an unfavorable correlation of forces. This is what we may see in the next few weeks.

As the U.S. Army has played whack a mole in Afghanistan, so does the Pakistani Army seem to now be implementing the same strategy. And more to the point, when faced with a common enemy determined on their mutual destruction, our governments cannot seem to coordinate their actions to destroy the enemy. The failure to do so will result in a much larger, more entrenched, more aggressive enemy, and every day coordinated action is delayed they grow stronger. And all the while, our president ponders.

Just my opinion…..

History Repeating

One of the few times I get these days to read uninterrupted is on planes. I bring a stack of books and magazines and work and read my way across the Pacific and Atlantic. It gives me time to focus. One of the books I finished along the way was Bing West and Gen. Ray Smith’s account of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

If you recall, the debate to go to war was vitriolic. Cheri Blair informed us only last week that her husband’s decision on the invasion was “51-49″. The intelligence services were deeply concerned about chemical weapons, and thus the entire invasion force was clothed in MOPP protection suits in fear of the use of mustard or Sarin gas by Saddam. There was a deep concern that the closer we got to Baghdad, the more likely it was he would use these weapons. The mainstream press reported that fedayeen suicide bombers were ready to jump out of alleys and that the Republican Guard could be counted on to resist with fanatic assaults. The intelligence services just didn’t know, and Saddam was doing his best to mask reality. “Baghdad Bob” threatened to crush America in his daily briefings.

On 23, March 2003, 10 days after D Day, General Franks, the commanding officer, called for a pause. A few days earlier, the Allies had taken a number of casualties in Najaf and Nasiriyah. The press had a field day. Reporters questioned whether we could win the war. The Washington Post cited “top Army officers” saying the war might last into the brutal Iraqi summer.

The opponents of the war seized on the delay. Europeans, Muslim leaders and others who had opposed it from the beginning renewed their howls of protest. As West wrote ” Any sign of weakness or hesitation by the American military would be met with glee and would undercut international respect for the United States with long term political, economic, and foreign policy consequences”.

The pause became a “Made in Washington” tempest. In reality, the problem was logistical. The advance was being held up by its success, not the enemy. We had outrun our supply lines.

President Bush called in his advisers, who dissented with the commanders on the ground, fearing that we were losing the initiative and perhaps the war. On television, retired military officers offered wild speculation. Bush then made a command decision; move forward at all possible speed. He listened to the men on the scene. 9 days later, U.S. troops and marines were standing in Saddam’s palaces and Baghdad had fallen with minimal casualties in the overall campaign. And somewhere sometime in 2004 or 2005, the Left caught a case of collective amnesia.

Today, we have the spectacle of the most drawn out policy battle in the middle of a war perhaps in American history.  Lincoln did not act in this manner with McClellan or Burnside or Grant. Roosevelt never agonized in this way over D Day or Okinawa. Truman’s dispute with MacArthur was geopolitical in scope and resulted in a rapid resignation when the two could not agree. And yet, in a war which was put on the back burner for 8 years, it seems the message from Washington is to fight to a draw. And the same press who got the facts wrong in 2003 are doing the same things once again.

In the meantime, the Taliban and Al Quaeda grow stronger and more aggressive. You see, in warfare, the winning side usually has the force of will to win. Ask the North Vietnamese about draws. The Taliban and Al Quaeda are revitalized with the smell of success, and if successful will take the war deeper into Pakistan and eventually the West again.

No, the crux of the problem lies with the puerile anti Americanism of a small coterie of our own politicians. It is the same players who were so vocal on the Iraq invasion, or Grenada, or Panama, or the first Gulf War. The funny thing they forget though is that there is no American hegemony for them to oppose in the first place. There  is no American colonialism, even in Iraq where the oil fields are huge and tempting and the biggest contracts seem to all be going to foreign companies.

Unfortunately, behind the august words and kabuki, it is John Kerry and Joe Biden and Bill Ayers and their allies reliving their protests of 40 years ago with a willing student in the current President. And every day a soldier or airman or marine dies while he dithers, that death lies directly on his shoulders. Another one of the things he’s probably forgotten about the job.

Obama Deals A Joker in Afghanistan

Rahm Emmanuel today stated that the President is more concerned at “whether there’s a credible Afghan partner” than any other factor before making any decision on General McChrystal’s request for additional troops. What a strange linkage. Allied forces went into Afghanistan in 2001 to topple the Taliban, who have been the enemy ever since. Now it seems that the ground rules are changing. That there is no rapid resolution in sight also makes Emmanuel’s statement  curious in light of the urgency of the General’s request.

As the debate see saws between a nation building / hearts & minds program versus counterinsurgency, a joker has been dealt. The Afghan government has been corrupt since its inception and yet this is now the centerpiece of the President’s decision. That he has turned a blind eye towards similar corruption in Iran and in Honduras makes one wonder at the President’s logic.

Afghanistan is a patchwork of peoples, and the August vote was only the second election in Afghan history. The regional strongmen, Abdurrashid Dostum (Uzbek), Mohammed Mohaqiq (Hazara), Mohammed Fahim (Tadjik)  and others acted like true Chicago pols, bargaining for their special interests in exchange for huge blocs of votes. That those interests include vice, drugs, and the odd side deal with the Taliban here and there only proves the analogy. This is and has been Afghan politics since its onset.

The call by the U.S. and U.N. for a run off  has been met by increased resistance from Karzai, who early on seized upon civilian casualties caused by military action  as a club to pressure Western interests. That the polls projected a significant Karzai win seems to have been lost somewhere in the argument. Less that 50% of the population voted in this election, with 12 provinces unable to participate because of Taliban activity. There is no mandate from the people, nor can there be one until there is greater stability. While the Western states have the point, the reality is that they are effectively stuck with Karzai.  It seems our President is more interested in form than substance.

So, being the roughhouse Chicago pols they are, why are the President and Rahm Emmanuel using this excuse? It has been 50 days since General McChrystal’s  request for additional troops landed on the Pentagon doorstep, and military activity across the Pakistani border has ratcheted up. It will inevitably spill over the border as the Taliban regroup.  While the region is heading towards winter, when the fighting winds down because of harsh weather conditions, we are faced with a crisis in Washington of dubious origin.

Legitimacy of a national government is critical to any effort to find a positive end point in Afghanistan, but this situation has been present for at least 5 years. Why this, and why now when the military experts warn us of an immediate crisis? Why the excuses, Mr. President? As your indecision causes dissent and confusion among your own advisers and our allies, the enemy grows stronger.

$785 Billion and All I got was 3,000 Jobs?

There are some scary numbers floating around the internet regarding the jobs created by the President’s Stimulus bill. Some say 3,000 new jobs created. Others have emphasized teaching, police and public sector jobs that have been saved. Any way one looks at it, the President has a big problem. 6 months after the money spigot turned on, the program is by any measure a bust. Even Joe Biden, ever the wit,  half joked about a depression the other day.

The warning signs are everywhere regarding our currency. It seems from what we read the fall of the Dollar and of American economic power are inevitable, and yet Wall Street continues along the same path and our economic policy has not changed an iota. Our president calls for a complete reassessment of the plan in Afghanistan while the most critical issue staring him in the face goes unrecognized.

America needs to reassess many of its key operating assumptions, especially in government spending. As Congress chases after what is clearly a unicorn posing as health care reform, we need to create the meaningful jobs that generate the long term wealth that will provide for our children’s future. As the Stimulus is seen more and more as the pork filled fiasco it is, we need to cut huge swathes of unnecessary spending from it to both exercise prudential oversight and send a strong message to the markets that we are putting our house in order.

As we see more sympathy to Marxism in our government than at any time in our history, we need to reaffirm the principles of the Constitution and of responsible capitalism. It has been an insider’s game for too long, whether on Wall Street or in Washington or in corporate boardrooms. Even today we see the pharmaceutical companies and GE and Walmart and so many others competing not on a level playing field, but to curry favor and tilt the odds.

This isn’t rocket science and it does not require a raft of new laws and show trials. It requires a fundamental recognition that the rules are the rules for all of us. Whether you’re a Congressman or Senator, or Wall Street Titan, or a senior manager at a large corporation with a fiduciary responsibility to your shareholders, your customers, and your employees, existing law needs to be applied fairly and equitably.

It isn’t much to ask. Let’s just start by cutting say, 50% of the Stimulus money and then using the balance wisely. It isn’t that hard to do. Really.

Obama Declares War on Fox News but is AWOL on Afghanistan

How is it that Obama’s senior staffers went on television Sunday not to discuss the important things, but to declare war on Fox News instead? The country is rudderless on the pressing issues of our time and the President is disengaged.

Afghanistan will now have another election, in November most likely, and we will see a similar low turnout with similarly disputed results. Whether it will confer legitimacy on the victor is speculative. It is a 3rd world country with a 3rd world power structure. The issue is not legitimacy, but rather a systemic requirement for the structures of government; the rule of law and security to start.

Whether Karzai or Abdullah wins or loses and whether the underlying issues will improve rapidly is debatable and is a long term issue, rather than short term. We need answers now to immediate issues. In the meantime, the enemy is on the move and growing stronger. John Kerry’s photo ops do not change the situation on the ground.

Still the president keeps his counsel as the dogs of the left and right snap at each other. When the Secretary of Defense only 2 days ago had to call publicly for the President’s attention we know there is a serious problem. The situation was urgent 60 days ago, and is deteriorating as our government is seen to dither.

The American people, the Afghan people, and our allies deserve the President’s attention on this matter not in a week or a month or at some later date, but right now. Someone has to get his priorities in order, Mr. President. Stop picking fights with little meaning and pay attention to the important things.

L.A. Angels – Ya Gotta Have Heart

One of the things I have noticed about the current Yankees – Angels pennant series is heart. A lot of it, and a lack of it.

Baseball is the ultimate team game. It takes all 9 players, well 10 in the AL, to win. We have seen two incredible extra inning games. The fact of the matter is that neither was necessary. Blown plays extended both games unnecessarily, and heart won each of them.

In watching a good portion of the Angels 162 game season, I have noticed a couple of trends. First, the pitching doesn’t have a lot of heart at times. There is a lack of focus. From one of the top programs in the majors in 2008 to today’s 20th ranked team in the regular season, we have seen what should have been the best battery in the league underperforming. Surprisingly, it was the Angel’s hitting that got them 97 wins this year.

From the team that owned the Yankees for the past several years we have seen more hesitation and sheer brainless play in this series than at any time since last year’s fold against the Red Sox. The hot bats have gone cold, and it’s not as if the Angels haven’t tee’d off on some of the Yankee pitchers in the past. Even Sabathia this year gave up 5 and 6 runs respectively when he faced the Angels twice, lasting only 6 innings in each game.

With a $152 Million payroll, the Yankees are banking on the World Series this year. They are, as always, the best team money can buy. But the Angels all season had that heart that made them champions. Not that they are slouches in the payroll office, but kids like Morales and Aybar and Kendrick and Mathis made the difference and are making the difference now. When Torii Hunter went down in July, Gary Matthews Jr. gelled and the team was on fire. Since Torii’s return, we haven’t seen that fire.

One way or the other, the Angels need to shake it up. They have to dig deep and show some heart instead of making excuses or embarrassing themselves. Mathis has shown both his ability and his heart. Torii has been cold against the Yanks. Rivera isn’t getting it done. This is all or nothing time. They have to leave every ounce of what they are on the field tomorrow night, no excuses. No brain clouds. Cold blooded and ruthless, but with all the heart in the world.

Thug Life – The Democratic Way of Legislation

After strong arming the pharmaceutical industry into contributing $140 Million to their efforts to pass health care “reform” and bribing the AARP and AMA leadership, Senator Patrick Leahy has now threatened to go after the insurance industry after they had the temerity to disagree with the President’s attempts to ram though the bill in its current form. It revolves around the exemption of the industry from antitrust litigation. It is a clear message that the trial lawyers, along with the Justice Department, will be set loose if the industry does not fall into line.

The House Judiciary Committee voted 23-9 today to repeal the exemption, which dates to 1945. Not that I am a friend of the insurance industry, but somewhere, not so long ago, our President promised to be a uniter, not a divider and a president for all Americans. I guess we can throw that canard into the hopper. I thought we had laws about threats by Presidents and Senators against their enemies.

In addition, AP reports that the $250 Billion bribe promised doctors, along with the rescission of the pending cut in Medicare payments to same was sidetracked in the Senate because it looked a bit too much like a bribe. The fact is that Medicare has been rooking the medical profession for years. Less than $40/office visit is nuts, but that is the going rate which was scheduled to be cut to the mid $30 range. Despite these cuts Medicare still covers Viagra and mobility walkers and 100 other boondoggles written in to benefit specific vendors and interests. This administration has been all about paying off their supporters and stomping the opposition. Pelosi and Reid even now are weaseling, and when that doesn’t work, brute forcing their way around the rules of their respective houses to abrogate the rights of the minority and the checks and balances built in over 200+ years.

Our government is now being run as a thug-o-cracy. Get on their wrong side and they will, as Kruschev threatened Kennedy so long ago, “bury” you. This has nothing to do with sensible legislation that benefits the 15% of Americans who are uninsured and improves care and reduces costs for the rest of us. It is about control and then maintaining that control. As they accuse their opponents of fascism and scare tactics, they are using open threats against the opposition. A year ago, the press would have been howling at full pitch. Today we see where they stand. Mostly silent.

The Senate Health Care bill has been released, but has not been put on line. It is almost 1,500 pages, and the early reports are that it’s a mess. Speaker Pelosi and her associates have yet to move anything out of committee, and with her track record, it is likely it will be a midnight drop the night before the vote. Is this any way to run the world’s greatest democracy?

In the past 10 months we have seen unprecedented irresponsibility at work in Washington. Threats to Fox News. Threats to the banks. Threats to the Chrysler and GM bondholders. Threats to the British to keep secrets on intelligence matters. Threats to the CIA. And the list goes on. This is surely the least mature administration we have seen in a long time, especially when considering it’s theme of “blame Bush” even today.

And all the while, we seem to have the least transparent, most questionable administration on matters of ethics in the past 60 years. It all fits the pattern. Buy off those you can, and threaten those you can’t buy off. The power of the State is terrible to behold, and if it was any administration but this one, there would have been investigations and front page broadsides and lawsuits long ago. This is not about politics. It is about democracy itself. Are we going to conduct ourselves as we have done for the past 233 years or do we subject ourselves to Thug Life?

Who, exactly, are the wingnuts?

In reading this afternoon’s Washington Post update on Press Secretary Gibb’s response to former VP Cheney’s criticism of the President’s policies regarding Afghanistan and the CIA I was struck with the vitriol in the comments section.

The words idiot, fascist, chickenhawk, Mao, Hitler, Stalin, wingnut, Fux news, brain dead, war criminal, coward, ghoul, racist and “Darth Vader” are all used to describe the former Vice President. The Post is supposed to be one of the papers of record in this country, and yet at least in this comments section, it sounds more as if their readership are immature 16 year olds. The foul mouthed cretinism seems to be a theme in the liberal blogs as well. The ad hominem attacks on their political opponents are relentless and use the most vile and hyperbolic language. Is Tourette’s Syndrome more common on the Left than the Right?

Listen to Limbaugh occasionally, it is not difficult to recognize some of his Foghorn Leghorn bombast for exactly what it is; cartoon level entertainment for the masses. The “masses” pretty recognize it as such as well. That he and Fox News pretty much represent the only dissenting opinions in what is otherwise a megalithic media and yet are the objects of such vitriol is a disturbing dissonance in the national discussion. If measured only by the number of publications and media outlets the right would seem to be outnumbered more than the Texans at the Alamo or Custer at Little Big Horn. And I thought America was about fairness. Silly me.

That the president himself has lowered himself into the fray and has attempted to marginalize one of his few media opponents indicates a thinness of skin and intolerance that should be a warning light to all of us. That he first sent his minions onto the morning talk shows to lay the groundwork speaks of a well defined plan of action. That there have been repeated attempts to control and shape the message, including illegally using the National Endowment for the Arts to propagandize his image and policies and the Journo-List to flood the media with the Administration’s message speaks of an Orwellian program to shape public opinion and redefine the truth. Maybe the Nobel has gone to his head already.

That the President then invited perhaps the most biased of his media sycophants into a special “members only” question and answer period only heightens the feeling of leftist bias in the media. Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, E.J. Dionne, Gwen Ifill, Eugene Robinson, Bob Herbert, Gloria Borger, Jerry Seib, and Ron Brownstein have basically shredded any credibility they had left among the vast majority of us. All of them were known as vociferous supporters of the president before. Now they have heightened the comparisons to Stalin’s or Hitler’s pet media during their regimes. At a time when the press has lost most of its credibility, this only confirm many people’s opinions.

It is the leadership of the Left who encourage their followers to scream and rant. It is their followers who accuse their opponents of fascism and teabagging.  I just don’t see the same vitriol from the Right. There is deep and honest criticism, but there is also much more of that main street American decency. Perhaps this is what the president fears most. That, 10 months into his administration, he has lost the respect of the majority American people. Is it any wonder?

Afghanistan Held Hostage – Day 54

The community activists holed up in the White House have still not issued their demands for action on Afghanistan after 54 days, holding the entire world in suspense. On Capitol Hill, legislators from both parties have expressed their deep concerns about the impasse. Commentators and newspapers around the world are stunned at the mysterious tactics. In the meantime, the leader of the activists, Barack Obama, was visited on Tuesday by J. Lo, Marc Anthony, and Sheila E. to express Latino musical solidarity.

Seriously, General McChrystal’s urgent request for additional troops landed on the Pentagon doorstep on August 30 and sat there for almost a month as the White House tried to bury it. They were buying time as part of a strategy that even the most seasoned military, diplomatic, and political operatives don’t quite understand. This request was then formally submitted @ September 22nd, after it had been leaked to the Washington Post. Otherwise, it would probably have been shelved indefinitely as delay now seems to be the President’s strategy. But delay to what end?

We have seen the spectacle of the commanding General publicly and forcefully requesting that his report be formally addressed weeks ago, and then being summoned to Air Force One for a 15 minute meeting on the ground in Copenhagen as an afterthought to the President’s appeal for the Chicago Olympic Games.  This week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates again renewed his call for a Presidential decision.

Senator John Kerry, known for his international experience, delivered the message the other day to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan that there will be a runoff election in Afghanistan in November, which is now only days away, and which sort of clashes with the whole American noninterference in the affairs of other countries concept the President has fostered so well in Honduras, Iran, Great Britain, and Iraq. Consistency and logic seem to be in short supply these days in Washington.

The President did hear from Mr. Kerry yesterday and videoconferenced with Ambassador Eikenberry. Perhaps one of these days, we will get a decision. With the shortness of time and record of violence surrounding Afghan elections, it would seem time to get the lead out and try to stabilize the country, at least so that they can have a reasonable facsimile of  the election the President so desires.

Obama as Major Major

In the novel Catch 22, one of the more absurd characters is Major Major, who is promoted from the rank of PFC through the ranks until he is well beyond the Peter Principle’s point of incompetency. The explanation is an IBM machine somewhere back at Headquarters saw his last name and had a sense of humor. He has another interesting characteristic, which is his complete and total aversion to responsibility. He is a phantom on the air base depicted in the book, climbing out of rear windows and the backs of tents to avoid any contact with his superiors, subordinates, or any other human. He signs the names of others to orders  so that he can never be traced and held accountable.

This evening, our President announced that he would not attend the global climate summit in Copenhagen, but would rather speak out on the subject when awarded the Nobel Prize. The lack of progress on the Cap & Trade bill has him going to Copenhagen basically with empty hands for his fellow envirocrats. There have been no bold policies,  but rather the overturning of specific Bush Administration policies such as on shale oil exploration and offshore drilling. These did absolutely nothing for the environment, but were endorsed by Greenpeace and the NRDC. He wants to raise CAFE standards but that is years off. Solar is also years off and is now passe’, while any discussion of nuclear energy in this administration is verboten. As Al Gore and Ban Ki Moon warn of imminent apocalypse, the president has voted “present”.

The same holds true with Afghanistan. Maybe if he waits long enough and ducks out the back door it will go away. He has blamed his predecessors policies daily on a wide range of other issues for the past 10 months, even when his ownership is clear.

We are seeing the phenomenon spread to New York as well, where both Carter Graydon at Conde Nast and Bill Keller at the New York Times called in sick the day that layoff notices were sent out and exit interviews conducted. Congress is already well on the way to Major Major status as it takes a forensic pathologist to figure out whose fingerprints are on the especially egregious pieces of legislation.

The “leadership” class in this country has done its best to duck responsibility for far too long. Whether corporate, political, or economic, we know who the responsible parties are. We simply need to hold them accountable.

The Truth Comes Out regarding the “Public Option”

So finally the rats are out of the woodwork. After 5 months of prevarication, we see Speaker Pelosi, the President, and Majority Leader Reid all coalescing around what they originally denied three times, which is the Public Option for our national health care system. All the smoke generated by committee meetings behind closed doors and the Gang of 6 and the various factions now comes down to this. The waltzing of Olympia Snowe and the Blue Dog Democrats has been revealed as a subterfuge.

For you see, National Health Care has been the objective of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party for the past 60 years. It gives them control of another 20% of the economy with the payoffs and pork and perks to keep them in power indefinitely. That our government has shown a colossal incompetence in managing any program they have undertaken in the past 60 years matters not. Remember, these are the same people who have run even NASA, our crown jewel of technology, into the ground.

Medicare is by all measurable standards going to be bankrupt in 2017 (or sooner under the current economic conditions), and then the pins start falling rapidly with Social Security slated to go belly up in the early 2030’s. Remember, these dates will be accelerated the longer our economy remains structurally unsound.

The CBO put a $1 Trillion price tag over the next 10 years on Speaker Pelosi’s grandiose takeover. That we don’t have the money just does not compute. They have no fundamental understanding of markets and finance. As the global warning lights on the U.S. economy turn from orange to red, they are ignoring the signs of collapse as they juggle budgets and take more and more of their spending “off the books” to provide the fiction of a revenue neutral annual budget. That they have already doubled the country’s debt in 10 months matters not as well.

Their attempted bribery of the doctors has fallen through, and they have threatened the Chamber of Commerce and Insurance industry for their temerity in opposing this nonsense. Speaker Pelosi is acting more like the Queen of Hearts than an American leader. “Off with their Heads!” will eventually be spouted by this buffoon and blamed immediately by her supporters on right-wing teabagging Nazi’s.

In August & September, millions of Americans who had never taken to the streets made their opinions absolutely clear. Somewhere between 250,000 – 1,200,000 marched on Washington alone on September 12, and the National Park Service ran for cover in estimating the number. It just shows how politicized even the simplest matters have become. These protests were then repeated nationally. The media for their part have ignored one of the most fundamental shifts in the American body politic in 75 years.

Since then, we have seen this administration’s poll numbers plummet to an unprecedented depth. Pelosi and Reid are actually less popular that Mahmoud Achmedinejad in most of the country and yet they still continue with their folly. The President continues to blame Bush for just about everything as he plays dodgeball with responsibility.

All of the purported savings and economies of scale and removal of the profit motive will all fall by the wayside as the special interests rip this carcass to shreds. This country seems to have developed a predilection for self-inflicted wounds that will eventually strangle us for good. Both the Constitution and common sense are under siege. We can be afraid, or we can speak out. Which is it?

Reconciliation

The religious community in the United Kingdom is undergoing a shock to the system that has tremendous implications for religion in America, and the story is being virtually ignored in this country. In an amazing development, it has been reported that conservative clerics in the Church of England have been meeting for 3 years with the Roman Catholic Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to discuss union with Rome. The dissension within the Anglican communion has finally become too much for many.

That there are more practicing Muslims in London than Anglicans is a truly strange turn of events. That the Anglicans have been in what to all practical purposes has been a schism over the issues of gay ordination and marriage and the ordination of women for close to 10 years has been a fault line in matters of faith that simply could not be reconciled.

The Pope sees an overriding need to reconcile all Christians in the face of rising antichristianity masquerading as secularism. He writes of vast areas of the world where faith is dying like a flame with no fuel. People see a world of incredible wealth but with no direction and a culture that flies in the face of logic. Yeat’s poem, the Second Coming comes to mind at times.

“Turing and turning in the widening gyre,

the falcon cannot hear the falconer

things fall apart, the center cannot hold

mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

the blood dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere

the ceremony of innocence is drowned

the best lack all conviction while the worst

are full of passionate intensity.”

5,000 years of wisdom and common belief  is being overthrown by ennui and greed with no ethical or moral replacement offered or expected. Is it any wonder there is a yearning for faith and logic?

So, as the corrupt hierarchy of the Church stood on the brink at the beginning of the Renaissance, we stand as human beings on another brink today.

The word catholic means universal. It goes back to the ancient Greek katholikos, or according to the whole. In this, the fundamental beliefs of Christianity are even today at the core identical.the same. Yes, there are matters of faith, but there is no matter of faith. Belief in God is or it is not, as is the belief in a Christian God.

To me it becomes more evident the more I learn. As the Hubble telescope sees more deeply into the origins of the Universe and CERN and Livermore probe more deeply into the origins and structure of matter and the geneticists find our more and more how only seemingly minor differences in genetic composition define us as human, the miracle of creation is becoming clearer than ever as we see a  perfection and symmetry that is simply impossible without a being so far beyond our understanding that it is incomprehensible as Isaiah mentioned @ 700BC.

The Catholic Church has several rites; Latin, Byzantine, Syriac, Chaldean, Maronite, Alexandrian, and Armenian. Most of us are Latin, the most recognizable rite. Notre Dame Catholics are Latin. Jesuits are Latin. Latin America is Latin. In the Latin Rite, priests are celibate. In the Eastern Rites  there is a difference between monastic priests, who are usually celibate, and non-monastic priests, who have been allowed to marry for centuries. Most bishops are chosen from the monastic priesthood.

The situation with the Anglicans is different as many bishops are married. This will be allowed under the current formula, but what develops next will be discussed between the Vatican and the Anglicans. The funny thing in reading of all of this is that many of those Anglicans who would be affected are “more Catholic than the Pope”. They celebrate Mass in the traditional way. They have trained choirs who sing the traditional songs, and they are overall, more conservative than their Catholic brethren in the UK.

The African and Asian Anglican churches have been outspoken in their opposition to this development, preferring to find their own way forward. For the past 20 years the schism within the Anglican Church has been deep, and the various diocese have been more and more in open warfare between conservatives and liberals. In the United States, many parishes and a few diocese have elected to align themselves with the more conservative African episcopates. This is a flash point which has not yet been resolved.

Whatever the result, there will be dissention. Even the Roman Catholic bishops tasked to work on ecumenical affairs were stunned with this announcement and many are not happy. The fault lines run deep between the liberals and conservatives in both churches. However, in matters of faith, they are constrained by the infallibility of the Pope. It is his job to make the hard decisions, and this surely is one of those.

For American Christians, there is a fundamental change in the landscape. The Catholic Church, if the union translates here, will become more conservative in many ways. At the same time, the influx of Episcopalians would help to strengthen the missions of charity, real social justice, and morality so lacking in our society today. In a world of deep uncertainty and amorality, the Eternal is a strong beacon for all of us regardless of rite.

Losing Iraq

As of today, there are less  than 125,000 American troops in Iraq, most of them on bases outside of the cities where they have become garrison troops. Our government has committed to a reduction to 50,000 troops by August 2010. In the meantime, Iraq is once again experiencing a significant rise in violence. Many of the gains seen during the Surge are being lost.

Suicide bombings are rising, with 130 killed in Baghdad yesterday, and Bill Roggio reported a few days ago that another Iranian Qods force agent was captured in Basra smuggling weapons to terrorists. IED rings are becoming more active again. The Iraqi government has been especially active in rounding up insurgents in the south.

One of the overarching issues today in  Iraq is corruption. Blogger Devil Dawg at Abu Muqawama points out one of the central issues in his entry of the 23rd. In it he describes a ride along mission with the Iraqi Army to distribute food. The problem is that a lot of the food, even when American advisers do accompany the Iraqi troops, never gets to the intended recipients. In this case, the Iraqis snatched defeat from the jaws of victory as they were seen to be loading their own vehicles with food and the crowd turned against them. Any hearts and minds program must begin with accountability and a lack of graft or it will be lost. The trust of the people is critical.

In the north, the Kurdish government has established working oil fields since 2004 that generate much of the country’s wealth. In the South, production is still hampered by theft and decrepitude. Production contracts have been a source of contention, with several of them going to Chinese companies, who are wise in the ways of the third world.  Just across the Shatt al Ahrab in Iran, they cannot even produce their much of own gasoline because the system itself is so corrupt. 40% is imported, fueling more corruption. Much of Ahmedinejad’s reputation was originally founded on his anticorruption efforts, so we can see even that it is an issue that transcend borders.

So Iraq, with a still nascent government is faced with  gross opportunities for graft through Western aid programs and its own oil wealth while the only arbitrators generally looked upon as honest brokers, the Americans, are no longer living alongside their counterparts, which was a major part of the success of the Surge. It is much more difficult to steal if someone is looking over your shoulder. We have always tolerated high levels of graft in Iraq in the interest of national determination, but in a culture of corruption it will be an almost insurmountable task to gain trust on multiple fronts; sectarian, economic, and ethnic. Removing the policeman allows the crooks to flourish.

But this is now American policy. Iraqification, if you will. And as we are finding in Afghanistan now, sometimes the people, wanting simple justice, will even subject themselves to tyrants such as the Taliban rather than crooks. Iranian subversion, foreign suicide bombers, and the ever present danger of sectarian violence mean that Iraq has a long way to go. But in a simple analogy to Vietnam in 1972, the U.S. government only wants out now, whatever the cost. There is no will to see it through even though success there might fundamentally change the long-term power equation in the Middle East for the positive. There is no strategy any more except withdrawal.

American leaders have short-term vision. We knew in 2006/2007 what would be required and started the job admirably. Now it is becoming a dog’s breakfast. That 4,000 American lives have been lost to date in that country trying to do the right thing only makes it all the more bitter to lose.

Afghanistan Held Hostage – Day 58

This afternoon, after American military leaders spent 3 days war gaming the various options in Afghanistan, the President attending a photo op with American sailors in Jacksonville, FL prior to a political fundraiser, once again said he would not be rushed into a decision. He stated “If it is necessary, we will back you to the hilt”. There is nothing like conditional support from one’s Commander in Chief.

Senator John Kerry (D – Winter Warrior Project), who has become Obama’s most vocal supporter and now one of his senior policy advisers on all things military, stated that the plans advanced by the American military are too ambitious. Kerry now wants a modest increase in troop levels, and sees no need for nation building. Thus, the counterinsurgency plan that the Obama administration themselves implemented 7 months ago has been tossed aside. Kerry called the McChrystal plan, “too far, too fast”. He also singled out the State Department for criticism in its lack of oxfords on the ground. There’s nothing like Washington kabuki in the middle of a war zone.

In other news 14 Americans died in combat related helicopter accidents today. The President expressed his condolences to their families during his remarks in Jacksonville.

Presidential Disgrace on Afghanistan

Thursday morning at 4:00am the President was photographed at Dover AFB saluting the caskets of 18 Americans killed two days before in Afghanistan as they made the final journey home. He made sure to have reporters report and photographers photograph, and the New York Times reported that ” the images and sentiment of the President’s 5 hour trip were intended by the White House to convey to the nation that Mr. Obama was not making his Afghanistan decision lightly or in haste”.  The Times wrote in an editorial entitled “The Commander’s Duty Done” that “Mr. Obama erased George W. Bush’s shameful attempts to hide the pain of war from Americans and to shield himself from to the thousands who died in Iraq and Afghanistan”. Once again, it’s all Bush’s fault. It is the constant mantra of this Administration.

Mr. Obama has been under intense criticism for his conduct of war policy in Afghanistan. 63 days after an urgent request for additional troops by the commanding general in Afghanistan landed at the Pentagon and was endorsed all the way up the line, the President has asked for the following in the past few weeks:

. A province by province assessment of the military situation.

. War games on the various strategies proposed

. At least two complete reviews of the various strategies proposed by the Department of Defense

. At least three separate reviews of the troop level options.

After his own hand-picked experts gave him their professional opinions in August, he has prevaricated and delayed for over 60 days now. He has met at the White House for a total of 18 hours with his combined advisers. He met perfunctorily with General McChrystal for 20 minutes on Air Force One 5 weeks ago when he just happened to be in Copenhagen on Olympic business.  He has sent John Kerry to Kabul to inform President Karzai that he would hold a runoff election, which has turned into an utter fiasco as Abdullah Abdullah, his opponent, has threatened to boycott said election.

The Afghan economy has been disrupted with the uncertainty and Afghans themselves are directly feeling the effect of our President’s lack of support. According to the Washington Post’s Sunday edition,  foreign aid and investment have ground to a halt ever since the end of August, when this affair first reached boiling point. The Taliban have disrupted incoming shipments from Pakistan since that government began its offensive in South Waziristan and supplies once plentiful on store shelves in Kabul are now scarce. All thanks to our government’s indecision. The entire Afghan people with the exception of the Taliban have been put on “hold” until the President gives the word. How is this conduct in any way responsible?

His key advisers are now Joe Biden and John Kerry who together were two of the loudest voices against President Bush in Iraq. What other policy would one expect of two of the biggest antiwar activists and morons in Washington? In an interview on Friday morning on NBC, SecState Hillary Clinton was quoted as saying that the U.S. presence in Afghanistan “is not an open ended, never-ending commitment”. “The Hill” reported 2 weeks ago that the President was waiting until after next Tuesday’s elections to announce his decision. Connect the dots. It’s easy, really.

With the recent attempt by the administration to turn the National Endowment for the Arts into a Ministry of Propaganda, it is clear that our leader values image over substance and the political over all else. The Dover AFB visit, which would have been commendable otherwise, has thus turned into a simple photo-op and degraded one of the most sacred of duties. The deaths of our young men should never be politicized, but the current president’s supporters have certainly done so, and under his orchestration. Those facts drip onto the tarmac every day as we find that his special relationship with his sycophants has been fostered since the day he was elected.

On the Pakistani side of the border all we know for certain is that the violence has been dialed up. In Afghanistan, the Taliban have done their best to make headlines and disrupt the election. And all the while our president plays the same old Washington game of being seen to do one thing while doing the opposite and seeking to blame anyone but himself along the way.

One thing is certain. There is no spin left on this one. The facts are in the public arena. And the American people are unforgiving of leaders who lie so publicly as our own kith and kin die in vain.

 

FDIC Seizes 9 More Banks – Remain Calm! All is Well!

The following banks were seized by the FDIC yesterday afternoon:

San Diego National Bank – California

California National Bank – California

Pacific National Bank – California

Park National Bank – Illinois

Citizen’s National Bank – Texas

North Houston Bank – Texas

Madisonville State Bank – Illinois

Community Bank of Lemont – Illinois

BankUSA – Phoenix, AZ

All were subsidiaries of FBOP Corporation of Oak Park, IL, and all were absorbed by U.S. Bancorp of Minneapolis. The banks had assets of over $19.4 Billion. Ironically, Park National Bank received $50 Million at a ceremony in downtown Chicago with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner yesterday morning as regulators prepared to seize the assets. It was reported that several Illinois Congressmen and Senator Roland Burris had tried to intervene with the FDIC to delay the seizure. There’s nothing like a Chicago bank failure.

To date, the FDIC has seized 114 banks this year and is borrowing against future revenue to pay for today’s failures. The government tells us the country had a 3.4% growth rate in the 3rd quarter primarily because of  programs including Cash for Clunkers and the Stimulus bill. Job losses are stable, but new jobs are not appearing.

We’re in the best of hands…..really…..

 

 

 

 

 

John Kerry’s pointless trip to Afghanistan

Much has been made recently  in the mainstream media of John Kerry’s ascension to senior adviser to President Obama on matters of war. He was feted as he left for Afghanistan to demand new elections, an endeavor in which he succeeded. he was feted again when he returned home.  Pity the Afghans don’t see things in the same light.

The elections scheduled for November 7 will probably now not occur, as Abdullah Abdullah, President Karzai’s opponent, has withdrawn from the campaign and expressed his willingness to work with Karzai after attempting to strong-arm him into firing senior election officials 1 week prior to the election. The Afghans themselves as well as many international observers are breathing sighs of relief as the threat from the Taliban may now be reduced and the guaranteed general mayhem of a Central Asian election will be avoided. The one thing Afghanistan needs most right now is stability. The country has virtually ground to a halt since the uncertainty began in late August and needs desperately to restart its economy.

And what of Mr. Kerry’s, and by extension, Mr. Obama’s strategy? According to insiders, this was a key metric in the President’s decision-making process on sending additional troops. Was it all just a waste of time? It would seem so. Once again, the President has come down hard on an ally and been left looking foolish.

The Banality of Evil – Part III

There are many reports that the House Democratic leadership will try to ram through the health care bill this week. Behind closed doors, a small group of legislators and their assistants wrote a 1,900+ page bill which they released last Thursday, attempting to allow a minimum of time for consideration and review. New nuggets of information are still coming out about it.

There will be a public option. The camel’s nose will be squarely under the tent, and we will see government’s takeover of the health care industry grow over the years now that a framework will have been put in place. Remember, the Democrats are especially good at being given an inch and taking a foot, or spleen, in this case.

There is already a funding option for abortions, but we can expect this to sooner or later be expanded as civil rights groups and bureaucrats exploit loopholes and the law. This would  under President Obama include 3rd trimester abortions, as one of the few bill he co-sponsored when an Illinois legislator mandated this procedure into law. What do you think? Pelosi, Waters, Stark, Waxman, Hoyer and the rest are far to the left of the mainstream on this one and its their big chance to ram it through. No one will be paying attention at 1:00am.

There are plans for a Health Choices Commissioner who will decide on coverage, along with 110 other new boards and regulators. There’s nothing like even more bureaucracy on top of the existing bureaucracy.  The Health Choices Czar will decide what even the private insurers left will cover. Nope, no more choice of programs and benefits.

Coverage of illegal immigrants is still up in the air, but again, knowing the way things in Washington work, this will, if not in the first iteration of the bill, only come later.

Medicare will be gutted, partially to pay for the bill, but even then, the CBO’s first pass estimate, complete in 2 days after the bill was released, is saying it will increase the national debt by $1.2 Trillion over the first 10 years. We all know how accurate those numbers are. The elderly, well, this time they will be the ones losing out.

We simply cannot increase coverage to all without huge costs and some harsh decisions on cutbacks. It doesn’t work that way. Certain procedures and treatments will be limited, and somewhere, someone will have to make life ending decisions. Under this bill, there really is no accountability so the finger pointing game will take place locally as some far off bureaucrat mandates the lesser option into law. Even in the UK, there is some level of accountability. Not with this bill.

So you see, we have small politicians looking out for their specials interests who will not themselves be covered by any of this. The rest of us are left without options and herded into an ever degrading system as the money runs out. Then they will tax us ever more for the privilege.

It is the Washington game of theft and hidden agendas, saying one thing while doing another, and therein lies the banality of evil. For people will die too soon as a result. The elderly and the weak, most at risk, have the most to lose. And the Democratic leadership, who tell us they are looking out for the little guy, owns this debacle. They will buy off as many as they can and threaten the rest, because this is really their one shot at this mess.

The Administration’s Foreign Policy Scorecard

Russia’s veiled threat against Poland yesterday was not very veiled, as their army wargamed a nuclear and conventional attack against that country.

North Korea is still ranting against the United States, announcing additional nuclear warheads and demanding direct talks while Kim Jong Il seems to have sent a celebrity impersonator to meet Bill Clinton.

The Ayatollah Khameini has condemned the nuclear deal offered by the United Nations as the Iranian government sends out utterly bizarre mixed signals.

The Secretary of State seems to have personally set back the Israeli/Palestinian peace process by herself over the weekend.

John Kerry’s demand of Hamid Karzai for new elections in Afghanistan blew up in the Administration’s face when Abdullah Abdullah cut a deal with Karzai and the elections were cancelled.

Above referenced Secretary of State tried to engage the Pakistani people and government with virtually no signs of anything accomplished except more scolding

The Honduras “deal” according to the BBC this afternoon, is like an “elephant balancing on a wire”, as each side is interpreting the agreement as they see fit.

Our allies around the world are hedging their bets as they find the American economy to be tottering on the brink and our dollar devaluing.

In Afghanistan, the White House says it may be weeks before the President addresses the urgent situation as laid out by his own Secretary of Defense and military leaders.

It will be a year tomorrow since the election. Hope & Change, Hope & Change.

 

Speaking of corruption, Mr. President, How’s that investigation into your campaign finances coming along?

We have today the spectacle of leaks and counterleaks on Afghanistan and threats by President Obama’s administration against Karzai to clean up the Afghan government, or else.

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill the Democrats are trying to pass what is arguably the most corrupt and deceptive bill in the history of our country. It has become ever clearer that it’s all about power and the leftist agenda, and the corruption and pork are flowing freely to the tune of billions.

In the meantime, the president’s campaign was let completely off the hook by the Federal Election Commission for having raised $750 Million, much of it completely unaccounted for. While half a dozen corruption and racketeering laws may apply, the issue is radioactive to law enforcement and the legal profession. During the campaign last year, donors with names including Saddam Hussein (who clearly exceeded individual contribution limits) , Mickey Mouse, Adolph Hitler and Betty Boop all contributed on-line to the tune of millions. Many more millions simply rolled in with zero accountability. Nope, nothing to investigate there.

You see, under the current FEC rules, once Obama went private, there was no accountability to the FEC. Now that paragon of rectitude Eric Holder (Friend of Marc Rich & Bill) is Attorney General he’s far too busy investigating CIA interrogators and Sheriff Joe Arpaio and trying to explain away how a Muslim screaming “Allahu Akhbar!” as he fires his pistols into a crowd of 300 soldiers is not a terrorist.

And while Wall Street traipses along doing the same old dance with the help of their enablers,and Rangel and Dodd walk free, and Al Gore makes his first billion, remember;  if you’re a friend of Obama, it’s okay.

The truth to this crowd is a very malleable thing and Justice is just another bureaucracy to use to their political advantage. So as they lecture President Karzai and the Pakistanis and everyone else, let’s be clear about the facts. Whether it was TARP or the Stimulus or Health Care, or fraud on the campaign trail, things have gotten much more crooked than they were a year ago.

Krugman Faces His Anzio

Paul “Absurdo the Wonder Clown” Krugman today makes the comparison between Obama’s loss of face in Tuesday’s elections and the bloody assault on the Anzio beachhead in January 1944. Apparently, the President’s economic policy isn’t enough, and we need to spend more. This from a Nobel Laureate in Economics.

Anzio was an attempt to break a stalemate in the Italian campaign. Thousands of Allied soldiers had been killed in the attempt to take mountain range after mountain range as the German Army dug in on the high ground. Anzio was to be the key to Rome. Instead, the Germans rushed in every available soldier to try and drive the Americans back to the sea. It was an undermanned invasion from the beginning and the risk of failure was high. It turned into one of the hottest beachheads of the war. In 2 days, the Germans had 40,000 troops on the line to the Allies 38,000. General Lucas, the commanding officer on the Allied side, was relieved of command for a lack of aggression, which is Krugman’s point in the analogy, but the truth was that a rush from the beach would have led to the piecemeal destruction of the entire army. It is still a controversial call.

Mr. Krugman, acolyte of Keynes that he is, figure that if some government spending is good, more is better. Except that trillions upon trillions have already been spent; under the Auto Bailout, TARP’s I and II, and then the Stimulus Bill. This does not include defense and other government spending which are at record highs, nor the extension of unemployment benefits nor 100 other programs.

That we simply do not have the money and our creditors are at the door does not register with Mr. Krugman, and even to a Keynsian, the bill comes due one day. That there are signs the economy is slowly reviving also doesn’t seem to register. Nor does the truth that the vast bulk of the Stimulus money has not yet hit the economy. He wants more.

So with our system awash in dollars and the presses running overtime and interest at all time lows Mr. Krugman’s answer is to use the Weimar Option. There are a number of famous photos of Germans paying for a bag of groceries with wheelbarrows full of Marks back in the late 1920’s. Mr. Krugman’s analogy really should be “it’s the economy, stupid!”, because our government has mismanaged itself into a mess.

Perhaps Mr. Krugman should look at the way our manufacturing base has hollowed out and how to stabilize and revitalize the creation of real wealth through the four pillars; manufacturing, construction, natural resources, and agriculture. Even Keynes would have understood this. And all the while inside the bubble they play the blame game.

Dances with Pundits

Today, Jake Tapper of ABC reports, the President lunched with:

Mike Allen – Politico

David Brooks – New York Times

Chris Cillizza – Washington ost

Gail Collins  – New York Times

Howard Fineman – Newsweek

David Gergen – Media Whore

Mara Liasson – NPR

Josh Marshall – Talking Points Blog

John Meacham – Newsweek

Cynthia Tucker – Atlanta Journal Constitution

Andrew Rosenthal – New York Times

With his Journo List and the use of the National Endowment for the Arts for propaganda purposes, we have never seen a president waging all out propaganda warfare in this country. To Obama, Obama is the Message. As we see Paul Krugman advocate Weimar monetary policy, it would seem that much of the punditocracy have lost all critical perspective, and perhaps some of their common sense as well.

The President has used these lunches and dinners to communicate his message, which is then interpreted the pundits. No one discussed the religious aspect of yesterday’s massacre, I’m sure, just as no one questioned the foreign policy fiascos that are racking up like frequent flyer miles as the president’s strategies on Iran, Pakistan, Palestine, Honduras, and Central Europe go awry. No one, I am sure, brought up the monstrosity of the Health Care bill before the house tonight.

No, these are party line affairs meant to co-opt his friends and neutralize or win his opponents. The hard questions go unanswered as they build up day by day. The announced unemployment rate is 10.2%. The structural rate including those who have given up on their searches for jobs is closer to 14% or 15%. In parts of the country unemployment is above the levels of the Great Depression.

As the President and his staff have, in an unprecedented manner, waged war against Limbaugh and Fox News, everyone had a nice lunch and oh so interesting conversation. Thomas Jefferson said ” were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter”. He also said “the force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed”.  Obama’s co-option of the message is unprecedented, and if anyone should be wary, it is these very pundits.

 

 

 

Acting Presidential

This morning former President George W. Bush visited the people wounded in the Ft. Hood Massacre at Darnall Medical Center on base. The current President is on his way to Camp David for the rest of the weekend.

After the President Obama’s  performance the other day in barely recognizing the severity and horror of the crime, and his odd plea not to jump to conclusions, we are coming to know more and more the content of his character, and it is of deep concern.

His detachment has become a common thread among his critics. There is an abnormal distance and a disturbing dissonance in his actions and reactions that should have us all worried.  Whether it was his inappropriate comments on the Cambridge Police/Gates case or his demonization of his opponents or his inappropriate gifts to foreign heads of state or his dismissal of allies and friends or his sudden trip to Copenhagen amidst pressing affairs at home, there is a breathtaking lack of depth and common sense.

Hillary may have been prescient with her “3:00 AM” ad during the campaign after all.

Contrast our current President with his predecessors. The phrase “acting Presidential” comes immediately to mind, and too many times now, the current occupant of the office has not.

Another friend lost

I got an e mail this morning that my friends had lost another man on the line in Afghanistan. Spc. Julian Berisford, a man from  West Virginia, was killed by  RPG and small arms fire on Wednesday. C Co. 3/509 at FOB Salerno has been out on the line since February, and have been doing their jobs every day in close contact with fundamentalists at war with moderation. He was 25 and had seen the elephant and was okay with it.

I didn’t know Julian, but I ended up on his MySpace page. He was a typical 509er; brash and self assured; a good man and competent. I got a big kick out of some of his posts. He was someone I would have liked to have known and a man we can all be proud of. He had a daughter just about to celebrate her first birthday. It hurts a lot of people that he is gone now.

Down in San Antonio at Brooks Army Medical Center, they have Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who turns out to have been a whacked out fundamentalist, on life support at a cost of probably $30,000/day. Major Hasan walked into the health services building at Ft. Hood and cold bloodedly murdered 13 infidels and wounded another 32 and they caught him in the act. Now he will get a fair and proper trial and probably use the insanity defense.

The President says don’t jump to conclusions and the media call Hasan the “alleged” shooter. He was caught in the act and shot 4 times by a cop. It makes me sick.  There is something seriously wrong with our society when a hero like Julian is ignored and our President and our media act like craven cretins.

Forgive me if I’m a little bitter tonight.

November 9, 1989 – The Fall of the Wall

All the news about the 20th anniversary of the fall of Die Mauer, as the Germans called it had me thinking about where I was that day.

I had lived in Germany in the late 1970’s working both as a technician and with a side job. The job took me all over Europe, which I loved. I would occasionally have to go into East Germany or Czechoslovakia, and saw what communism was all about. It wasn’t pretty and it  was evil and huge armies stood on each side of the German border waiting for Armageddon and sometimes the Cold War wasn’t so cold. There is a small army of anonymous dead on both sides.

Later, after I came home, my job would take me back to Germany, sometimes several times a year, but always every other November to Messe Muenchen for a massive electronics trade show. I’m a factory junkie, so I would always visit suppliers and customers before and after the show.

Since I had spent time in the East, the protests in Leipzig and Dresden that began in early Fall were stunning. The GDR simply did not allow freedom of expression. But Poland had already seen a loss of control by the state as President Reagan, the Pope and Margaret Thatcher had both overtly and covertly supported Solidarity, and then Gorbachev enacted Glasnost. The Poles were never the best of communists, and nationalism was strong but suppressed in the East Bloc.They were the first to fall away, even before Glasnost.

East Germany was more communist than Stalin, they used to say. The Stasi were everywhere and the country was Orwellian in its dedication to communism with a German face. So when the demonstrations broke out and nothing happened there was some slight hope for greater freedom there as well. What happened next stunned the world.

As the rest of Eastern Europe began to liberalize, the East German people began to leave. Thousands were escaping to the West via Hungary, and that border was closed. Others went to Prague. The border with the West was the most heavily armed and patrolled real estate on the planet at the time and so was no outlet. Huge fences and razor wire and machine guns. Passing through the check points was scary for the Westerners who did so, and there was very little traffic the other way except Westerners going home.

The pressure within East Germany had risen, but no one expected the protests. First a few thousand and then more. Honecker was losing control. In mid October, Gorbachev visited Honecker who had had issued shoot to kill orders, which were never carried out. Gorbachev actually had to pressure Honecker into allowing some reform. The old Cold Warrior wouldn’t change though, and was replaced by Egon Krenz, nothing more than an apparatchik in the right place at the right time.

3 Weeks before November 9th, he took over. The protests kept on growing and there was a sense of change, but even then no hint of what would happen. The protests continued until the government called a special session of the Politburo, where things started to go to hell and 2/3 of the members resigned on the 7th. It was anyone’s guess what would happen next.

The radio in Europe generally sucks. When driving I would usually flip the dial every few minutes trying to find something, anything, to listen to.  Germany is a funny place. A very high population density, but on certain autobahns on a weekday morning there’s not much traffic. I had a big Benz on the morning of the 9th and was probably cruising at 110 and the highway to Boeblingen, near Stuttgart, was empty. I had to be at Hewlett Packard by 11 for an engineering meeting, and then IBM afterwards.

It was probably 10:00 or so when I dialed in Westdeutsche Rundfunk or another channel and heard an announcement that Krenz was speaking to the Politburo. I had a feeling it was very important, as did the radio network obviously. It wasn’t an especially long speech, maybe 15 minutes, but I had to pull over because I began to cry for a moment. I could not believe my ears. Krenz announced that he was opening the border effective as soon as possible. German is not my native language, so I had to listen to the announcer confirm what I had just heard.

To someone who had seen the Cold War up close and knew  the implications of a hot war in Germany, I was simply stunned. I realized, “It’s over and we’re still alive”. There were times when it was close. The Army kept the ammunition close at hand and the trip wire units were always ready to go. The Air Force planes that you saw on the rare clear day were sometimes armed and there were planes sitting on runways across Europe armed and crewed and ready. One phone call could set it all off. Large numbers of civilians and military would die very quickly and in the worst possible manners. And it was over. East Germany was the last possible pillar of aggression, and one man had made the decision to turn his back on the past.

I walked into HP half an hour later, and told everyone I met what I had just heard. No one believed me. I got to IBM later in the afternoon and got the same reaction. I got to the airport that night and the Avis desk clerk knew nothing. By the time I got to the terminal, I was seriously thinking of flying to Berlin to watch what happened next, but I had business in London the next day and got on the plane. It was eerie, even spooky.  The Germans I met simply could not comprehend what Krenz had just done. It was impossible, unbelievable.

By the time I got to my hotel and turned on the television sometime around 10:00pm, the scenes from Berlin were on CNN and BBC. Massive crowds of West Berliners and Easterners were tearing the wall down with their hands or a hammer or even heavy construction equipment. It was a spontaneous and joyous and riotous and somewhat (or maybe a lot) drunken celebration of freedom and repatriation. Family members on each side sought each other out, East German soldiers and border guards joined in and everyone was yelling or crying or both. The Russians quietly stayed in their Kasernes.

We must never, ever forget. The world got lucky that day. Great and good things do come out of nowhere sometimes.

Stimulus II – Why it is a Bad Idea

Several notable voices on the Left, including Nancy Pelosi, Paul Krugman, and Robert Reich have called for a second, massive, stimulus program to create jobs quickly in order to reduce the jobless rate. Unfortunately, none of them have an understanding of the real world economy. After Krugman’s rant last week, Reich joined the chorus.

I read the same message from Krugman the other day. He compared Obama’s jobs crisis to the battle of Anzio, on which I happen to be well versed (see post: Krugman faces his Anzio). He was wrong as are Pelosi and Reich. A new Stimulus will only seal the demise of the American Dream.  The Treasury has flooded an already flooded world with more dollars and debt than at any time in history in the past year and our economy is on the brink of tremendous long term damage. You see, our trading partners have had enough and are ready to pull the plug on our currency, after which the whole shooting match falls apart.

Point 1 – Read the Financial Times or WSJ, or Telegraph or the London Times or Le Monde or FAZ or China Daily. All the signs have been there for over a year. A feature article in the Atlantic over a year ago clearly expressed the intent of China’s central bankers. We have had ample and fair warning about letting our economy run out of control and our currency devalue further. They are buying gold and moving out of the Dollar.

Point 2 – 70% of the Stimulus Bill money has not yet hit the system. When it does it will place further inflationary pressure on the economy at a time when it may have already recovered.

Point 3 – There is a commercial real estate crisis on the horizon next year and in 2011 that may equal the severity of the home mortgage crisis. The reset on variable rate mortgages will also hit next year. Imagine the supercharging effect of inflation on that alone.

Point 4 – The fundamental bases for the creation of wealth; agriculture, manufacturing, natural resources and construction, are all under assault by the existing and proposed regulatory environment. The North American manufacturing base, including automotive is already in critical condition. It cannot stand much further strain. The last major American industry, automotive, is a shambles that was completely self-inflicted. Manufacturing in the high technology sector; aircraft, biomedical, electronics, etc has already been outsourced to a dangerous degree.

Point 5 – there are now signs that the recession is easing as the economy has begun recovery. The economic horse was out of the barn 6 months ago. Stimulus now will be felt in a year. The snake has not even begun to digest the cash infusions of the past year.

Point 6 – The taxation necessary to pay for the massive spending, both of the last 9 years and what is proposed will kill the economy.

We are in manufacturing and have watched as the incompetence and malfeasance of our government and corporate management created a perfect economic storm. We saw the meltdown coming 18 months before it hit. It’s not rocket science.

I spend my time in some of the largest factories in the country on the floor with senior engineers and plant managers as well as corporate management. Our materials business is a gauge of economic activity, as the customers we serve span the entire spectrum where electronics are used. I spend 8-10 weeks/year in factories in Asia and Europe and see with my own eyes the leading edges of trends because it takes months for the raw materials to be processed and make it to the end user. Leave well enough alone. The prescription Pelosi, Reich, and Krugman are offering will lead to hyperinflation on a Weimar scale.

In Germany, the Mittelstand is the heart of the economy. Small and medium sized businesses. We are right in the heart of the American Mittelstand, and our government has declared war on both common sense and best practices. It will be the small and mid sized companies who drive the economy. Most of the large conglomerates are simply transactional these days. They are run by accountants, lawyers and marketers and actually make nothing. Case in point; HP. They went from one of the most brilliant technical and economic wonders of the world to a reseller of other peoples goods. Their key profit center is copier & printer cartridges. Once their suppliers realize the emperor has no clothes, they will go direct, as Vizio has done in televisions and as Sony did to RCA 30 years ago. The same holds true across corporate America. The Chinese own us in more ways than one. And it will be the Mittelstand that turns that around as well. The conglomerate model is slowly falling apart in many fields.

It seems that at the top everyone forgot producing tangible products is at the heart of any economy. Beef does not come from supermarkets, and real wealth does not originate in derivatives. Once the trust in the currency is gone, so is the economy.

Structurally, the United States economy cannot withstand current spending, much less what is proposed with Health Care and the proposed Stimulus II. Since these people say they have the breadth of experience, what happens when Medicare blows up in 2017? Social Security in 2035? Will the government simply nationalize the pension funds as the Argentines did?

As a lawyer, Reich must have read the Federalist papers and the fundamental documents surrounding the Constitution. As Speaker of the House, Pelosi better have, and as an economist, Krugman should know better. They are all intelligent people. In that context, how can we be adhering to the Constitution in any sense with this kind of economic madness? That document is what makes us Americans. Opportunity, not entitlement. And yet all of this spending will in the end kill the Constitution. The Founding Fathers’ intentions were pellucid. Limited government and a strict separation of powers. FDR’s safety net has become a spider’s web.

The Fierce Moral Urgency of Afghanistan

So the President wants to ram through his Health Care agenda,  along with Cap & Trade, the two most flawed bills since the Roosevelt Administration, before Christmas. He has had the time to go to Copenhagen and play golf and basketball. He has war gamed and met and kibbitzed with everyone he can as well. Perhaps by then he will have made a decision on sending troops to Afghanistan. I just don’t get it.

After a unanimous message from his generals, his Chairman of the JCS, and his Secretary of Defense on the need to act quickly, first he sends John Kerry on an utterly fruitless quest to impose new elections on the Afghans, and then at the very last minute delays his decision once again based upon a single adviser. With all due respect to General (Ret.) Eikenberry, our Ambassador there, shouldn’t he have spoken out sooner? Or is this simply another subterfuge.

Our President has managed to confuse his military; his advisers, and the American people, not to mention our allies, with what can only be described as one of the most byzantine decision making processes in history. As terror hits home and the Taliban and Al Quaeda gain confidence, the President seems to have once again deferred a crucial decision indefinitely.

The facts are on the table. They have been since the original plan was put forward in March. Nothing has changed since General McChrystal’s report landed on a desk at the Pentagon on August 30. We know pretty much every single data point there is to know and there are no game changers. We know the Afghan government is what it is.  It is time to decide, one way or the other. On a day as sacred as this, the President is under the greatest of moral obligations to do so.

Obama’s “New Orientation” to Asia

Trying to decipher our president’s pronouncements is becoming an exercise akin to the Kremlinology of old. “What the heck did he mean by that?” is becoming an ever more popular phrase.

His description of himself as the first Pacific President flies in the face of almost every president back to Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s Nobel Peace Prize, by the way was for brokering the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, a very nasty affair in which 150,000 plus lost their lives. If ever there was a Pacific President, it could be he. His relative was also a Pacific President, but one forced into war by the attack on Pearl Harbor. Truman took a stand against communism in Korea in 1950. Eisenhower helped form ASEAN as a buffer against communism in Southeast Asia, and every president since has been ever more deeply involved. Nixon opened the door with China. What greater breakthrough in foreign relations could Obama hope for than this? And what, exactly, has President Obama done to earn his self-appointed title? Nothing, thus far.

He is the first president to go to Asia as an apologist. For what I am not certain. Liberating much of Asia in World War II? Fighting communism? Helping open the doors to free trade and to lift the economies of South Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan and much of the rest of Asia? What is he sorry for this time?

Or was he referring to prostituting our currency and our economy? Is this the new orientation of which he speaks?  Never before have so few slighted so many so readily.

Chairman O Leads Us into the Glorious Socialist Future

President Obama & Afghanistan – This Week’s Excuse

It is now being reported that the cost of the war in Afghanistan is the reason the president has delayed his decision. Two months ago the excuse was re-gaming the war to find the best outcome. Three weeks ago it was the Afghan elections, and now this.

Rest assured, our president knows exactly what the cost to support the war is and has known it since his first budget meetings on entering office. He knows better than any of us that virtually every war material must be imported either over land through Pakistan or by air. This has been a part of our strategic and tactical operations planning from the very beginning.

The Russians, as soon as Obama became president, demanded that the Manas air base in Kyrgyzstan, vital to both the infrastructure and close air support of the Afghanistan War, be closed down. It was simple power politics. Without that base or an alternative, the war would have been in real danger of failing. In June, The United States signed a new, more expensive agreement to be allowed to continue using the base. Manas is a major transshipment point for material and vital for air support.

Transshipment across Pakistan from the port of Karachi is the other major artery. Corruption, theft, and sabotage by the Taliban, Al Quaeda, and their sympathizers add to the cost.   Iraq, on the other hand, had POL (Petroleum, Oil, Lubricants) both in country and from Kuwait. Much was made of the $400/gallon cost of supplying fuel to remote bases, but remember, this is an extreme example.

But all of this is known and was factored into every plan and decision from the outset. It is a key part of the war plan, after all. There is nothing new except the President’s incredible intransigence in making a decision for which he will be held accountable. Our allies have been begging for his decision. Our generals have been waiting since late August. There are no more excuses left. But whatever the decision at this point, our president will have earned a deserved reputation for indecisiveness and prevarication.

Dear Leader Carries The Scrolls Down The Mountain