Stoopid Stuff

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...

posted by mikey @ 5:57 PM