Johnny Comes Marching Home
16 Months. 19 Months. 23 Months. I don't really care. All we've heard for close to six years is talk about drawdowns, discussions of withdrawals, standing up when they stand down and vague promises of troop reductions at some future point when we'd made enough "progress on the ground". Which, of course, was never defined.
I'm not concerned about the "residual force" of 35-50,000 American troops that Obama tells us are necessary. We've seen nothing but increases in the number of American servicemen and women deployed to the theater since the buildup to the invasion. The thought of having our troop presence reduced to under 50,000 fills me with joy. In theory, the SOFA takes care of the rest.
I am somewhat concerned about they way the withdrawals are structured-that is, the process is so heavily back loaded. That's an indication of some substantial doubts that the withdrawal process will proceed without major complications, and it leaves open the possibility of delays in force reductions that would not be so likely if significant troops have already been withdrawn. But at this point I'm willing to offer President Obama the benefit of the doubt, accepting his commitment to a complete American military withdrawal from Iraq by the end of 2011, as per the Status of Forces Agreement in place.
And for this process to be completed, it has to start somewhere. It starts with an order from the Civilian executive to bring the troops out, and a deadline for having that accomplished. So now, finally, after six years, a genuine end to this insane, wasteful and tragic war has begun. That's a great deal more than we've gotten before, and is cause for real joy and celebration.
The larger question, mostly left unasked, is why exactly we can't just bring all our troops home now. What are they doing there that is so vital to our interests? If you set aside the mad neocon desire to have a dominant American military presence on the oilfields to ensure that other nations didn't choose to do something with their oil that we wouldn't approve of, then it becomes a real valid question. The disturbing thing about any potential answer is that none of them explains this use of American forces in terms of defending America's own interests. Are the troops there to defend Israel? Sure seems like Israel hasn't had a great deal of trouble "defending" herself. Are they there to ensure free navigation of international waters, including the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz? When has that ever required ground forces? Are they there to play a more symbolic role, keeping governments as diverse as Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt from behaving in a manner the American leadership deems detrimental? If the American military needs entire divisions already on the ground in a given region in order to intimidate the nations of that region, we've squandered a lot of Trillions building the thing.
Certainly, part of it is guilt. The American invasion unleashed the forces that led to the Iraqi Civil War, the ethnic cleansing, the killings and the destruction. If America turns her back, the reasoning goes, and more killing results, that too will be on America's head. But while it's true that America is responsible for the state of affairs we see today, how long must she continue to police the Iraqis? When will the actions they choose to take be accepted as THEIR decisions, and not a result of an admittedly criminal and misguided occupation?
The shape of the larger outcome is mostly decided, at this point. Iraq will not be a democracy, not in the way the US or France is a democracy. She will be ruled by the tyranny of a Shi'a majority, dominated by a corrupt political party heavily influenced by Tehran, with an increasingly bellicose separatist group operating autonomously in the North. The Kurds are a special problem, completely surrounded, as they are, by nations and governments that fear and loathe them. They have been empowered all out of proportion to their actual role in the region by their partnership with the Americans since the First Gulf War. Once the Americans are no longer in a position to protect them, there is very little to prevent the Iraqis, with the support of the Iranians and the Turks, from crushing them in an afternoon.
It's at least possible, and perhaps likely, that as a result of the American withdrawal from Iraq, more blood will be shed. And it is certainly fair to say that the American occupation led inevitably to that outcome. But at some point, and this seems very much to be that point, America has to look inward, to her own interests. The time for international adventuring with neither goal nor reason is past. Obama is bringing this chapter to a close, every bit as much for pragmatic as for political reasons. Now, we can only wait for him to reach the same conclusion in South Asia...
In a World of Steel and Death and Men Who are Fighting to be Warm...
I don't want to live in Rick Santelli's world. It is a cold, dark place where you seek by any available means to accumulate wealth, and fight alone to hold on to it. A place where it is not only foolish to care about your fellow human beings, it may well be suicidal. A place where your only ethical signpost is rapacious greed, and your only salvation is your own savagery.
It is a relatively new, and completely artificial development that a society could even develop that would support this kind of hardcore, unrelenting selfishness. Human survival has always, from the very earliest times, been entirely dependent upon community. Community to create, to build, to care for the sick and injured, to educate the children and grow the food and yes, to help those in need. It is community that defines us, but note that it's requirement is SO necessary that it has evolved as a survival strategy for many other creatures as well.
It is not central to the important argument, but it is worth noting Santelli's foul hypocrisy. If his house caught on fire, would he fight the fire himself? I suspect he would call the fire department, part of his community's commitment to it's citizens, collectively supported by that community. If Santelli's neighbor's child gets into the cleaning products under the sink, is he outraged that the Poison Control hotline that saves that child's life was paid for by the taxes of citizens like him? Nope. His is a kind of ignorant, faux-populist selfishness that could only develop in a human being with a narrow, stunted worldview. Perhaps someone like a derivatives trader.
How dare he pass judgement on people in his own community in their time of need? How can he feel it is within his purview to judge them worthy of assistance, or just too stupid or venal to "deserve" help? He should seriously consider what he might think if he was judged in the same way. If a child falls out of a tree and breaks his arm, we do not refuse to care for that child because climbing the tree was stupid or irresponsible. It is bad enough that we have allowed our society to become divided between the haves and the have-nots. Are we now to further divide our communities between those deserving of community services and those somehow less so?
The PURPOSE of community, and the reason it has been so fabulously successful as a human survival strategy for eons, is that it provides safety in numbers. It allows the costs of distributing resources to be spread out, and allows it's people to live and prosper because nobody is on their own. Just as Rick Santelli is not on his own. He only needs to look beyond his fear and greed to see it...
Bits n Pieces, Nuts n Bolts, Miscelaneous Crap and Random, er, Stuff
That Bernie Madoff was one brilliant fella. Turns out he wasn't in the investment business. He was in the mailing-out-statements business. And he knew that all he had to do was show great results on those statements and people wouldn't WANT to withdraw their money - they'd want to leave it in so it could grow and grow at these unusually excellent rates of return. And other people would want to invest in this amazing opportunity too. So Madoff's fortunes grew huge, not through savvy investment strategies but merely through a highly automated application of applied psychology. And there was plenty of cash for the occasional "investor" who wanted a payout. Sometimes, the simplest scams, the horrendously blatant simplest scams, are by far the best. I think he's my new role model.
I see where DiFi let slip a little open secret that maybe should have stayed unconfirmed. Oooopppsss. This has been a nice, well choreographed dance. America launches targeted assassinations against Islamic militants in Pakistan. Pakistani people are pissed, and the Pakistani government howls in outrage. Of course, oddly, America never responds to these perfectly justified complaints about the violation of their sovereignty by an ally, and Pakistan never seems interested in elevating the complaints to a serious government-to-government issue. It's pretty obvious that the Pakistanis actually approved the strikes, and we just had this agreement that they could complain about them to provide them with deniability. The people would be pretty angry with their government if they kept allowing the US to kill Pakistani citizens on Pakistani soil. So along comes Senator Feinstein, the poster child for DINO. Among the many traits she shares with her more honest Republican colleagues is a depleted uranium level stupidity. So she blunders in a news conference, telling the world that the US Predator drones doing all that killing in NW Pakistan are based, not in Afghanistan as one might expect, but - wait for it - in Pakistan itself, clearly with formal agreement from the Pakistani government. Go ahead and explain that, President Ali Zardari. This oughta be good.
Waitaminute. You're telling me Roland Burris LIED? Really? Somebody involved in the whole seedy, reeking process was dirty? You sure? 'Cause I'm finding this story that the guy Blagojevich appointed to the Senate seat he was impeached for trying to sell was ALSO a crook just a little shocking. OK, not really. It really couldn't have had any other ending, could it?
What a surprise. The Kyrgyzstan government went ahead and evicted the US from the airbase at Manas that was the primary source of logistical support for the US and NATO troops in Afghanistan now that the Khyber Pass is pretty much impassable due to it's vulnerability to insurgent attacks and sabotage. It's kind of telling of how difficult it is for a 21st century military to fight in 18th century Afghanistan that you hear no talk of "hardening" the Khyber Pass route from Pakistan into Afghanistan. It's not even possible to kid yourself that it's possible, and American Military leaders are second to NONE when it comes to self-delusion. There's a lesson here. The lesson is that what we SAY we want to do in Afghanistan cannot be done, and what we need to do in Afghanistan requires far less than the troop commitment we already had there, even before the new Obama "landing at Danang" surge. Maybe there's a bit of a silver lining here. Maybe this will force the Obama administration to recognize that there are limits to what American power, soft, hard or turquoise, can accomplish in South Asia, Africa and other places where hate, violence, poverty, culture, infrastructure, resources and terrain conspire to prevent simple solutions. Maybe it's time to stop acting like a colonial power and start thinking practically about what we actually NEED to do and how best to do it. Or maybe we'll need to have that lesson repeatedly pounded into our national consciousness
with a nail-studded 2x4. **SIGH**.
Will we see prosecutions of Bush administration officials for War Crimes, Constitutional violations and just straight-up felonious lawbreaking? Man, that one's still fuzzy, but a few things are going to become clear. First, sorry Senator Leahy, we're not going to go with a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission". That dog is not gonna hunt. Nobody will participate, everybody will stonewall, and they'll just dare you to prosecute them. And the fact that you were afraid to do so, which lead to your silly "Truth Commission" proposal in the first place, indicates that they'll win. It's also pretty obvious that the actual hands-on torturers, murderers, wiretappers and assorted street hoods our government employed as it experimented with some hybrid form of organized crime and representative government perhaps best referred to as "Sopranacy" will not ever be called to account for committing the actual crimes the administration ordered. The best we can hope for, at this point, is some high-profile prosecutions of the administration's lowest hanging fruit. Rove, Gonzales and Miers for certain. Addington, Yoo and Bybee maybe. Rumsfeld, Wolfewitz and Perle, probably not. Here's what I think from where we are now. Not only will there never be a satisfying outcome to these horrendous crimes, but the criminals won. Watch Obama, and future executives. Watch them break the law with impunity, and without fear of ever paying a price. Bush/Cheney changed the game for all time. America is no longer what we were taught she was - oh no, that was based on everybody being willing to agree to a set of values which are no longer in play, and there are no longer any real rules. It remains to be seen how this experiment in autocratic faux-democracy will work. My guess is we haven't seen the real downside yet...
Stoopid Economic Analysis III - Solvency, Liquidity, The Japan Example and the Swedish Solution
Big Stim is out of the barn. Smaller, and significantly less effective than it should have been, it is nonetheless the law of the land. Dollars, some actual, some imaginary, are about to begin flowing in a large-scale attempt to create jobs and thus "stimulate" consumer spending. After the madness, heartbreak, horror and disillusionment of the last 4 weeks, this may be hard to grasp, but that was the easy part.
Next up? What to do about the banks. In the final analysis, the answer to this question will be determined by the willingness, or lack thereof, of the American government to be honest with itself and the American people about the real state of the banking and credit institutions.
Put in it's simplest terms, a lending institution is supposed to have assets, money or things of value, to support the loans they make. A common rule of thumb is they should have 1 dollar of real assets for every 10 dollars of outstanding loans. And banks have always be very vocal about their assets, as a way to talk about their strength and stability. Since the Great Depression, there has been a regulatory and oversight regime in place that would ensure that banks were bona fide lenders and not just a ponzi scheme.
Along comes the "Reagan Revolution", wherein we learned the conventional wisdom that the government was incapable and incompetent, and therefore should do nothing. "The Market" was described as this perfect force for good, that would reward sound business, innovation and risk-taking. Over the decades, as this belief became unchallengeable fact, regulations were removed, oversight was dismantled and, while everyone was perfectly aware that this only left the fox guarding the hen house, all the right people were making tons of money, so, while a few voices shouted easily ignored warnings from the wilderness, the system entirely unravelled.
At that point, it was only a matter of time. The housing bubble allowed the creation of all these ridiculous derivative investments, CDOs and CDSs, primarily, that the rating agencies were essentially bribed to rate as AAA and the financial industry bought, bundled, traded, divided, sliced, rebundled and resold until you had $60 trillion in securities backed by $15 Trillion dollars in actual mortgage loans. All completely and specifically outside the oversight of ANY regulatory body.
Which brings us to now. Some very large but as yet unknown percentage of the banks stated assets are represented by these types of securities. The banks know two things. First, they DO know what they actually paid for them. Second, they know that at this point they can't GIVE them away. If these securities are merely worth less today than they were when the banks bought them due to the bursting of the mortgage bubble and the recession, that is, if they still have inherent value, the banks are merely illiquid and require only additional capital to make it through to a future time when the inevitable upswing in the business cycle re-inflates their value. At that time the banks could pay off their bridge loans and go back to being profitable businesses again. Unfortunately, almost no one, at this point, believes that to be true.
Instead, it is likely that these securities are nothing more than fraudulent pieces of paper, worthless now and forever. Which, depending upon how much of their stated assets were represented by these artificially - valued securities, would make some number of America's larges banks insolvent. We have a mechanism for dealing with insolvent banks. The government seizes them, recapitalizes them, cleans them up and runs them until they can be re-privatized. The new owners pay off the government and thus the taxpayer is made hole. This is what they mean when the talk about the "Swedish Option". Sweden was forced to nationalize it's banks in 1992, and it all worked out quite well. You can look it up.
On the other hand, there is Japan. When growth slowed in the '90s, Japan's banks found themselves with grossly overvalued assets. Government's unwillingness to aggressively address the problem lead to nearly a decade of deflation and stagnation, with businesses unable to acquire the credit for investment and banks unwilling to take on any risk that might expose them as insolvent.
Of course, this is America, and in spite of the lessons of economics and history we must fear anything that the most dishonest right-wing politician or pundit might rail against as "Socialism". We're not sure why, most Americans don't even know what Socialism is, but they're certain it's a bad thing to be avoided no matter what the benefits of nationalization might actually be.
So here's the next big event. Watch the Obama administration closely. They got burned by the republicans on the Stimulus plan. They are much more likely to take more of a "My way or the highway" approach to the bank bailout. But therein lies the key question: What will represent "Their Way"? Will it be Sweden or Japan? There is speculation that by adopting a marginally incoherent "go slow" approach, where the Treasury "stress tests" the banks, ostensibly to determine how much of their assets are overvalued, the administration will actually force the banking industry to determine the actual market value of the Mortgage Backed Securities now being referred to as "Toxic Assets" and therefore will be forced to admit they are insolvent. At that point there is no real option but to take them into receivership. This plan, of course, fails to take into account the survival instincts of the banking executives. They are, it must be accepted, less concerned with the viability of the American Economy than you and I, and as such must be recognized as an obstacle to a good outcome, and not a partner.
History has shown clearly that now is the time for aggressive, decisive action on the part of the government. So far, they've appeared timid and uncertain, which does not bode well for our financial future. But at this point all we can do is email our congresscritter and the White House, then get a big bowl of popcorn and watch the fireworks. The collapse of the largest economy on earth should at least provide some entertainment value....
Judd for the Dénouement
Bipartisanship. Word gets tossed around like the new girl at a biker bar. But what does it mean? How does it apply in 2009? And what the hell is President Obama seeking in his frantic search for post-partisan government?
Intermingled in the definition problem, there is an execution problem. And our man Obama's up to his eyebrows in both, and is losing on every front. First, we have a condition where bipartisan politics are not workable because the minority party doesn't see any benefit in supporting the majority's agenda. Second, we have politicians in general, in this era, exposed on ethical fronts for the money the have to raise, exposed on legal fronts for enabling criminal activity and exposed politically for their responsibility for domestic, foreign and economic catastrophe. On the one side we have Susan Collins and Olympia Snow, seeking power and recognition not through any reasonable legislative act, but simply by doing, acting against the interests of BOTH sides in order to control the conversation, unable to defend their actions but not being required to offer a coherent explanation. On the other side, we have Feinstein and Rockefeller, criminal enablers of the worst excesses of the Bush/Cheney administration, and seeking, at this point, only to stay out of prison.
Which brings us, in a kind of roundabout fashion, to Judd Gregg and the amazing Post Partisan Technicolor pony that is the Obama Cabinet. Bush appointees, Clintonistas, Republicans, hell, I think he's got a three-legged dog in there somewhere. Everything but the kitchen sink. Oh, and the solid center of Americans that want government to make life better for Americans, who can't see a good reason to spend trillions killing people half a world away just to earn their eternal enmity, who want help with their jobs and educating their kids and their health care, the people who turned out in huge numbers for the innaugauration because they had been convinced there might be something there to hope for? How does this stupid, cowardly "centrist" approach help them? Every courageous proposal watered down to ineffectiveness, every populist proposal shot down because some right-wing dead ender wants to play ideological games while holding the American economy hostage just because he can? Mr. President, with all due respect, fuck that.
Stop it. Just fucking stop it. Stop playing games, Mr. President. Stop playing word games, puzzles, jumbles and hide and seek. There is a personal reason for you to stop all this outreach to people who hate you - you will be judged on outcomes. Sure, you and I, we both know you don't have as much control over outcomes as you get credit for, but you damn well better use what control you have. Reagan got credit for the end of the Cold War. Clinton got credit for a budget surplus he had no idea was even possible when he took office. If, in four years, we're treading water, Mr. President, you are the one who will be blamed.
So maybe you better start listening to smart people, and stop trying to create some post-partisan Camelot where everybody agrees with you. Maybe you better start thinking about ramming through YOUR policies, YOUR agenda. At least, if you go down in flames, it will not be because you came out with a set of watered down symbolic actions that were never designed to accomplish anything but pacify the American people while all around them the unsustainable political and economic system was crumbling.
Judd Gregg is a
symptom. He represents the fantasy portion of the Obama political vision. He is the living manifestation of why your cross-party outreach camp out must end. Now. You have been played for a sucker, punked by people who never even hid their intentions, or their contempt. Like Charlie Brown, you keep acting like you believe that THIS time you'll kick that 'ol football. But you never will. You need to spit on the Republican Caucus, and you need to explain some real hard facts to the Democratic Caucus. Blue Dogs have to forage for scraps, and the worst of the Bush enablers have a LOT of restitution to pay.
Americans want your leadership, and so far you've offered precious little. President Obama, you're going to run out of time. This Stimulus bill isn't going to do the job, you know that as well as Paul Krugman knows that. If you let the insolvent banks stumble on, if you preside over eleven percent unemployment, if there's no way to see how we get from HERE to THERE, you are going to go down in history as a failure. It's time to get your hat out of your hand, clap it on your head and LEAD this nation. You can. We still believe in you. Now, before it's too late...
Say it Ain't So, BHO!
It is perfectly reasonable to start with the premise that you can't make any real judgements about a political leader during the campaign, but rather must simply wait to see their actual actions and behaviors once elected. After all, if they lose the election they never get the chance to demonstrate their political worldview in office, so they might tend to exaggerate their ideology (or lack thereof) and the benefits that might accrue from the leadership thus motivated. But it is not completely unreasonable, or even terribly naive, to form some set of expectations from the campaign rhetoric, and to believe these expectations might actually come close to defining the political bearings of a given candidate.
Which brings us, inevitably, to Barack Obama. This is indeed, all apologies to John Steinbeck, truly The Winter of My Disappointment. It's not that Obama's political rhetoric in office doesn't match up neatly with his political rhetoric on the campaign trail, no, he continues to offer an uplifting message of hope and change. He even issues edicts and Executive Orders that seem to lead us all out of the wilderness of lawlessness and autocratic excess.
But here's the thing. And it is a VERY large thing. If we say bush/cheney took us a thousand meters off course, to steer back six hundred meters will not suffice. As long as Obama, and his motley collection of Clintonistas and Republican "realists" will not take us all the way back to a place where the stain of blood and hate on the fabric of American values is bleached away, they are only hanging draperies over the abattoir door. I've become more and more concerned with the widening gap between the Barack Obama we elected and the man now in power. He speaks of openness, of transparency, of a return to American Values, of an America that doesn't accept the false choice between our ideals and our safety.
And then he equivocates. And then some of his cabinet appointees say one thing, and some say another. His SecDef is a Bush appointee, who seems determined to keep troops in Iraq forever, damn the SOFA. His CIA Director backed down when a congenital mental defective in the Senate claimed that there was no evidence that America had tortured detainees. What. The. Fuck? How about just standing up and using, oh, I don't know, HONESTY to point out the evidence that is actually available in overwhelming, disgusting abundance? He continues a program of unilateral military strikes against an American Ally, on their sovereign soil. And all we have to show for the twin centerpieces of campaign rhetoric, ending the American occupation of Iraq and closing the obscenity at Guantanamo Bay are vague "statements", promises to "study the matter", and, worst of all, transparent plays for more time, so more people can die in the name of, well, that's a problem isn't it? Nothing. They can die for NOTHING. And I suppose it's worth mentioning that all the indications are that NONE of the worst criminal excesses of the bush/cheney years will ever be investigated, let alone prosecuted. We elected this man for what, exactly?
And then, today, it gets an order of magnitude worse. There was an opportunity for real justice, an opportunity to say what happened and let the chips fall where they may. Extraordinary Rendition victim and continuing Guantanamo captive (um, all charges dismissed, by the way) Binyam Mohamed sued the US over his horrendous treatment at the hands of Egyptian security agents on behalf of the US and British governments. The bush/cheney cabal got the case thrown out by declaring the entire sordid affair (they cut his PENIS with razor blades! Proud to be an American yet?) classified under the State Secrets Act. One wonders if the secret is Mr. Mohamed's dick or the damage done to it. But I digress. He appealed to the 9th circuit court, and the case was heard today. And it was a WONDERFUL opportunity for the Obama Justice department to say "yeah, this guy got treated horribly, and it was unconstitutional, and unAmerican, and we accept at face value his position and want to work WITH him in the name of justice". Or something. Or ANYTHING.
Nope. The Obama administration, without hesitation, took the EXACT same position the Bush/Cheney criminal cabal took. State Secrets. No evidence allowed. Shut it down.I don't know what I hoped for, but it damn sure wasn't this. If Obama doesn't find a way back to his constitutional law roots, and do it damn quick, then we can put an end to this whole conversation. The America we grew up with, the America we read about in our history books, the America that made us proud, that made us, goddamit,
different, with the values and the rule of law and the commitment to the Constitution no longer exists. Bush and his henchmen wounded it, and our great hope Obama killed it. And we can try to figure out how to live in something less than a democracy, with something short of freedom.
Hell, they do it in China, and they even did it in East Germany. We'll be OK. We just won't be Americans.
Stimulatio
Has it really come to this? Have we, at long last, finally reached the point where political leaders are not just irrelevant, not just obstructionist, but are the primary roadblock to doing anything about
anything?
Barack Obama, his economic advisers and cabinet members and respected economists of all stripes have spent the last two months explaining to us in no uncertain terms just exactly what the problem is, how big it is, what the consequences are and what is most likely to be an effective solution package. We have seen the numbers, read the reports. We know, as does President Obama, what is stimulative, what creates jobs and utilizes available resources, and what does not. Immediately upon his inauguration, Obama, working with legislators, began preparation of a large economic stimulus package.
First the Republicans milked the President's naive attempts to "compromise" in order to bring them on board. Many of us wondered, "if you are convinced that your plan represents the best course for America to follow, then HOW DARE YOU allow a losing coterie of rejectionists and obstructionists force you to water down what you presented as necessary to avert catastrophe?" And then, predictably, House Republicans, every one, to a man and a woman, voted against the very compromises they'd demanded.
I suppose this was predictable. The Republican party in America is at a crossroads - representative of only a shrinking fractional slice of the population, but afraid to soften their rhetoric of racial and tribal hatred and failed economic ideologies for fear of losing even the meager support they have today. And it's worth mentioning that due to the large majority the Democrats hold in the house, none of those negotiations were even necessary.
But this awkward dance with so-called "centrists" in the Senate is beyond inexplicable - it is borderline obscene. As much as many of us like Bill Clinton, we were frequently appalled by his political flexibility. He didn't seem to hold any core positions, but would shift and triangulate to whatever was the most popular political ideology. His ideology meant nothing, his promises all turned to ash as he played out a grand game without seeming to care about the actual outcome. What we have seen of Barack Obama in the last couple weeks is disturbingly similar.
Held hostage by a group of bloviating narcissists led by Susan Collins and Ben Nelson, Obama pandered and praised as they weakened some of the best provisions in the legislation in exchange for a ridiculous, regressive tax refund for the purchase of an automobile or a home. Oh, the automobile you purchase doesn't have to have even a minimum set of emissions standards, and the house you buy will likely continue to plummet in value for another year at least. While additional funding for states, who need to spend that money NOW, in your community, was slashed.
Why? What were they trying to accomplish? Cutting 80 or so billion dollars out of a nearly 1 trillion dollar package doesn't seem to change much of the calculation long-term. And yet, much of what they cut was some of the most effective stimulus spending possible for a government to undertake, while the tax credits they put in are worthless in that context. There can be only one explanation, and sadly, it is the obvious one. In 21st century American politics, it isn't about doing the best you can for your country and your constituency. It's about the politicians themselves, what they can gain personally, without regard to any genuine harm or damage done. In our celebrity-infatuated rock-star culture, personalities are something we can cling to, identify with, love or hate without having to invest the time and effort to learn what is actually at stake.
In Washington, the coin of the realm is power, and Susan Collins and Ben Nelson have it. They could thumb their noses at the new administration, tearing much of the heart out of Obama's first big package, and then stand in the glare of the cameras and claim to have facilitated the passage of the bill.
Obama needs to learn that the world is NOT the one in which he'd LIKE to be President, it is the one in which he IS President. The days of good-faith negotiation in the best interests of the American People, to whatever extent they ever actually existed, are well and truly over. He has to stand firm, to say "I believe this is the best course for our nation, and if you won't allow it to be implemented, you need to stand before the public and explain to them why". He needs to say, "the idiot who last occupied this position showed us in detail exactly what doesn't work, so anyone still pushing these clearly failed and discredited ideologies can expect nothing but scorn".
In short, we need President Obama to save us from ourselves, from what we have become. Because if he continues to allow the system to define him, he will fail, and that failure would have serious consequences for us all...
Stoopid Economic Analysis II - The Expectation Gap
Americans, for better or worse, have developed into a society that thinks of itself as somehow fundamentally
different from others. Some of this has led us to some obscene manifestations of exceptionalism, but a case could also be made that it created an environment where we internally artificially minimized the apparent risk of a given undertaking, allowing for great leaps. Of course, it's fair to say that another way to describe this unwillingness to see the world the way it actually is rather than the way we WANT it to be is
delusion. In many ways, we are, as a people and as a culture, collectively delusional.
It has been said that it is nothing less than your best trait that results in your ultimate downfall, and when you listen to the discussion about the economy these days, you have reason to be fearful. These conversations and monologues tend to regularly include two key points. First, a discussion of how effective, or ineffective, a given economic stimulus program might be, and what the world might look like with or without that program. Proponents of any given stimulus methodology always paint a rosy, or at least rosier, view of the world if only their program is implemented, immediately and without alteration. The other point is at least a mention that there are natural cycles in play here, and we will return to economic growth in [insert point in time here].
So okay, pretty good arguments can be made for stimulus spending, and as long as that spending utilizes otherwise idle assets then it will certainly have a positive impact. If it is poorly targeted or just too small, it runs the risk of utilizing resources that would otherwise have been better utilized by the market, while failing to bring un- or under-utilized assets back into action. But it's become clear that the American legislative process is broken, and in it's current crippled state is unable to produce bold, effective action, only watered down symbolic programs designed to demonstrate the superiority of a particular political ideology.
What I'm worrying about today is the perception of those "natural economic cycles", and how Americans hazily foresee life after the Great Recession. For at least 13 years, America has lived in a bubble. First the fondly remembered "dotcom" bubble, with it's "irrational exuberance", technological breakthroughs and ill-considered business schemes. At the end of that period of massive wealth generation, we rolled right on into the "housing bubble". In this period of madness and overheated greed, we saw people with no experience get rich in the mortgage business, and young people with low-level jobs buying multiple houses. And as those houses increased in value, quarter over quarter and year after year, there was so much equity, so much cash, such unlimited sources of credit, that Americans spent like drunken sailors. They bought houses, sure, but they bought TVs and SUVs, they traveled and played, they laughed gaily in the eternal sunshine of a happy present and drank deeply of the promise of an unlimited future.
We now find ourselves hung over, broke, and surveying the wreckage of an economy built on a fairy tale. We tighten our belt, we do what we can to preserve our jobs, we lower our eyes even as we lower our expectations. But we all believe, no, we all KNOW, that we just have to weather this storm, that everything will go "back to normal" in a year, maybe two. Just one of those cycles, right? Oh sure, all the greed and fraud and madness of the mortgage markets made it worse than it should have been, but these things happen occasionally, and they never last forever.
But therein lies the real catastrophe. The fever dreams of Suburban Americans, fueled, as they have been by two consecutive irrational, unsustainable economic bubbles, do not represent "normal". Indeed, they are highly ABnormal. The world doesn't work like that. Economics doesn't work like that. Unlimited credit supported by skyrocketing equity is not a "normal" condition. Historically, a person's, family's or company's spending was required to at least recognize their actual MEANS.
So what actually IS normal? What will it look like? What can we hope our economy, and for that matter our lives, will look like when the downturn looks up? Coupled with the certain long-term rise in energy costs and the restrictions certain to ultimately be imposed to save the very planet, I think we are looking at a very different future. The twenty teens will very likely be remembered as a time of austerity, and the long, slow decline of America as a disproportionately powerful nation. 70% of the American economy is consumer spending. Just think about where that number might ultimately settle, and you'll begin to understand your future.
Now, we're not (hopefully) talking about living in tarpaper shacks, wearing burlap and growing corn in the yard for survival. We're simply postulating that the lives of ridiculous excess lived by most Americans will be talked about in a historical context the way the court of Louis XIV is remembered. Almost fondly, with a certain amount of awe for it's profligacy and shortsightedness. But I expect the collective delusion about the future to last a few more years, until reality can no longer be denied. Then we'll know...
All your base are belong to us
So it's come to this. The Pakistani side of the Khyber Pass is vulnerable to sabotage by Taliban fighters. And now the Russians have successfully convinced Kyrgyzstan to close the US facilities at Manas Air Base. In recent months, more and more of the supplies required by NATO forces in Afghanistan have had to come in by air, as Pakistani militants have had no difficulty interdicting truck traffic on the treacherous road over the Khyber Pass. They've burned large numbers of vehicles and hundreds of containers of supplies, and just this week they dropped a 32 foot bridge - all without meaningful resistance by the Pakistanis.
The thing is, Manas is the only air base available to large American military transport aircraft in the region since the closing of K2 Air Base in Uzbekistan in November of 2005. So when President Bakiyev announced (from Moscow, no less) the decision to shut down American operations at Manas, it was a very bad sign. Bear in mind that the Obama administration has committed to increasing the American combat troop presence in Afghanistan by as many as 30,000 soldiers and Marines. While at the same time the options for resupply have been reduced to one primitive road through a legendary mountain pass that runs directly through the most hostile areas in two countries. Areas that are NOT in friendly control, and appear to be frankly impossible to defend.
I've reached my own conclusion about the American troop presence in Afghanistan. I've concluded that it is utter folly. All of the results of US combat operations in that blighted country are counterproductive to US goals and interests in the world and in the region. They result in more fighters, more hatred, more death and destruction, while contributing absolutely nothing to the economic growth or political stability of Afghanistan.
The Taliban didn't attack us. They are fighting us because we are in their country. If we leave, they lack the interest, funding and operational capabilities to attack us here in America. If there is a hornets nest a hundred miles from your house, the hornets will never bother you. Unless, of course, you drive the hundred miles to where they are and whack them with a stick.
Of course, there certainly IS an al Quaeda presence in the Afghan/Pakistan border region. And yeah, we have a bit of business with those gentlemen. The question, then, is using 50,000+ troops with armor, artillery and air support the best way to fight al Quaeda? If we haven't figured out the answer to that question in seven years, we're simply being intentionally obtuse.
Nope. At this point America is wasting time, money and lives fighting in Afghanistan. It is clear that nothing good nor productive can come from it. It's why the leadership can't just come out and say what our goals are, and how we'll know when we're done. Any goal that had value is impossible to accomplish, and anything that is possible is utterly worthless at best, and in many cases counterproductive.
The Bush/Cheney administration was noted for making decisions based upon ideological theory rather than the actual conditions extant in the real world. Obama's insistence that what's required in Afghanistan is thousands more American combat troops is beginning to look similar. Nothing to be accomplished, much harm to be done, lives lost and money spent, but doing something is preferable to doing nothing. Even when doing nothing - or at least a whole lot less - might just be the wisest course...
Autocrat - Cool
Maybe it's just me, but I can't help but wish that heads of state were a little, well,
cooler. Ok, we've got Nick Sarkozy's singing supermodel wife, but Nicky himself looks kind of Euro-stuffy most of the time. We've got Vlad Putin, he of the dead eyes and the Judo, but in spite of the fact that he wears a mean suit and can have you whacked anytime he wants, I'm pretty sure he's not cool. Barack and Michelle, smart, driven, attractive, erudite, with shirtsleeves in the Oval office and bare-chested on the beach in Hawaii (Barack, not Michelle) are about the closest we can get to a genuinely COOL head of state.
That is, up until now. Show me a dictator with the look of a stoned surfer who digs Ravi Shankar and just took a big hit and is grooving on a zither solo and I'm gonna take the position that dude is cool. I mean the other side of the MATTERESS cool, the kind of brutal autocrat you'd want to have a beer with.
Or maybe a toke.
Hang ten, Muammar...
Springsteen at the SuperBowl
When did 10th avenue Freeze Out become some kind of American Anthem? Am I missing something? I thought that was a pretty subversive song, not like "Lost in the Flood", but not something we could hang our national consciousness on. But I'm not convinced this is a bad thing.
Born to Run, not as the encore, but as song #2. Is it just me or does Bruce look a little uncomfortable with the song these days? He didn't seem to relish the whole "...at night we ride to mansions of glory in suicide machines..." line that spoke to my soul what, 34 years ago.
Now don't get me wrong. If there's a musician whose success I don't for one second begrudge, it's Springsteen. He did it honest, and goddam it he always stuck to his story. But I can only imagine how hard it is to try to sell an insurgent message of anger and alienation when you've been wealthy and successful for decades. I like Bruce, but to be honest I like "Asbury Park" and "Nuns run Bald, thru Vatican Halls, Pregnant, Pleading Immaculate Conception" a whole lot more than I like "The Rising".
The ovation makes me smile. I guess I feel like maybe I own a little of his success, and I appreciate the way he's done it. But there's a bittersweet sadness. Just in case you were uncertain, the things we we really thought we believed when Bruce showed us a way to shout them? They no longer occupy a place in our hearts, only in our scrapbooks.
I guess it's important to get that, but it makes me sad to have to know...
16 Months. 19 Months. 23 Months. I don't really care. All we've heard for close to six years is talk about drawdowns, discussions of withdrawals, standing up when they stand down and vague promises of troop reductions at some future point when we'd made enough "progress on the ground". Which, of course, was never defined.
