A Litmus Test

Hey, I’m with this guy.

I am beyond frustrated with the current junta, and am now convinced that for present-day Democrats, Neville Chamberlain is their God. I will now officially vote for anyone who plots a simple path to exiting these situations that have nothing to do with US.

The Last Word on “Betray-Us”

Following is excerpted from a comment left by Steve Alber after our post (below) on General Petraeus. All we can say is Amen.

“…..The ad should have been directed at the Bush Administration whose unimaginable stupidity and cavalier attitude toward the rest of the world gives credence to the belief that George W. Bush in indeed the worst president in the 225 year history of this country. They lied us into a war, structured it so that we can’t win, invaded the wrong country, killed the wrong dictator, squandered untold billions in treasure and spilled untold buckets’ of our countrymen’s blood all in the futile pursuit of an inchoate and unreachable goal, namely, “victory”. My question remains: How will we know when we’ve won? And what, pray, will be the spoils?”

Big Number Bingo

Alright, so you don’t have the biggest house or the biggest car on the block. At least you can have the biggest number.

I just found some behemoths, and they’re all yours.

There are now $750 TRILLION in derivatives sloshing around in the world’s financial system. How big is that? Well, the combined GDP of all the world’s countries – everything of value that earth produces in a year – is $45 trillion.

I don’t know how many football fields $750 trillion would fill, but I know how many it would buy – 3,750,000 NFL-style stadiums, complete with domes and skyboxes, at $200 million apiece.

As Stephen Jay Gould once remarked, we used to talk about astronomical numbers. Now they’re economical numbers.

You have to understand, most of those derivatives – options, futures, spreads, hedges, etc. – are two-party instruments. If a market or a currency rises or falls, somebody wins, somebody loses, and society as a whole breaks even. The system doesn’t collapse.

Unless – there’s a concentration of losers in one critical sector, like banking, hedging, or market clearing that makes the whole sector insolvent, so the world’s financial plumbing suddenly clogs.

Or, unless – the financial markets seize up in a spasm of uncertainty, afraid to risk a new loan or money transfer (as they almost did recently on the question of who was holding the bag on sub-prime mortgages) so the losers can’t get help, the winners can’t cash in – and everybody loses.

Or, unless – huge losses in one sector of the market strike fear in the hearts of bankers and traders, panic takes over, fist fights break out, and even the lifeboats hit icebergs.

Or, unless – there is some massive computer attack or accident (as many expected with Y2K) that loses or freezes or buries the data. Unlike claims on solid assets such as mortgages or equity shares, derivatives are mathematically ‘derived’ from other financial instruments, sometimes from other derivatives. They’re made of arithmetic: ratios of prices, ratios of other ratios and indices, and all as ephemeral as angels. Since their primary residence is in the computer, if that shuts down for a while, the Economy … our shared dream of who owns what … evaporates in a cloud of electronic amnesia.

But so what? A comet could strike the earth, the sun could explode, a tsunami could flood the bomb shelter you dug in your back yard, termites could undermine the cabin in the woods where you stashed your Spam and emergency guns. You could need a root canal.

And yet we’re still here. And we’re protected by the Endangered Species Act. Aren’t we?

Betray-Us? Blame
The Betrayer-in-Chief

Following is an e-mail exchange with two conservative friends, both proud ex-military men and both unhappy with the reception given General Petraeus by the Senators at his hearing and by MoveOn.Org in its New York Times ad.

(John objects to the Times ad)

(My generous offer)

Fair is fair, John. I’m offering a $64,000 rate on my blog site for a right wing hate group to run an ad with a rhyming couplet in the headline.

But I’ll be interested in seeing how this one plays out. Could be a major embarrassment.

On the other hand, if you had watched those hearings on C-Span you would have no inkling whatever about what is really going on because the testimony was half fiction and half evasion, garnished with a scanty figleaf of fact.

Al

(Michael chimes in)

(reply to both)

Well stated, Michael, and eminently reasonable. Certainly Petraeus is a good soldier and a resourceful one — better than anyone in the administration — and a soldier has to believe in his mission or he ceases to be a soldier. In appearing before Congress, his mission is to put the best face he can on a disastrous situation as part of the effort to maintain his troop strength. You have to respect that. But for the same sorts of reasons, he wrote an Op-Ed piece in 2004 which was spectacularly wrong in its assessment of how the war was going and how it would unfold.

In the present case, positive military developments (the most positive of which have to do not with the surge but with the deals we’ve cut with Sunnis in Anbar, who would turn against us in a minute when it behooves them and shoot us with the arms we’re providing) cannot stabilize Iraq because the political situation. sectarian hatreds, civil disorder, and physical infrastructure are in utter chaos. The surge has failed miserably, as everyone outside the White House knew it would. The solutions are not military, and– even if they were–our military is too strung out, undermanned, and exhausted to carry it out, thanks to near-total lack of a strategy and a four-year string of appalling bungles in tactics.

The war was a tragic mistake, one we were tricked into based on the cherry-picked intelligence and outright lies of the mistake-makers, whose ideology left no room for countervailing evidence or logic, and it still doesn’t. Every catastrophic blunder between then and now has been announced with the same smug assurance of worthy outcomes, and anyone who doubted this triumphalist braggadocio has been branded unpatriotic.

You’re certainly right about the abysmal performance of the senators — of both parties — and I’d be delighted to see most of them thrown out. As for Move-On’s ad, it may have been tasteless; mainly, it was misdirected because it wasn’t Gen. Petraeus, it was draft-dodgers Bush and Cheney and arrogant idiots like Addington who betrayed us then and are betraying us still.

Al

Canons to Left of Them,
Canons to Right of Them

Note (lest the blue pencils begin to volley and thunder): I do know how to spell cannons, honest.

Following is an exchange by e-mail with a right wing friend, to whom I had sent a New York Times article about the surprising extent of wiretapping and FBI snooping, some of it just now coming to light. He dismissed anything from the Times as suspect, unreliable, and probably selective in its information. So I sent this:

Gil

I’ve read the New York Times (and worked its fair-and-balanced crosswords) every day for over 30 years, and I’ve often wished it were as liberal as you and others think it is. But that’s a judgment call, so everybody’s right.

In our e-mail exchange on wiretapping, presidential power, etc., you rejected the NYT account out of hand as not to be trusted.

So here comes a book by a blue chip, pure-bred conservative, Jack Goldsmith, an insider on those issues — appointed by Bush to head the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) until he decided that a number of the things they were doing were illegal or of doubtful constitutionality – so he was fired.

The book is The Terror Presidency. Here’s a brief excerpt from the Preface.

Al

(excerpt)

“At first, I paid little attention to the beady stare from behind
the oversized eyeglasses in Richardson’s portrait. (He’s talking about Eliot Richardson of Watergate fame) Two months into my job, however, I had thought a lot about the sixty-ninth Attorney General. During those eight weeks, I was briefed on some of the most sensitive counterterrorism operations in the government.

“Each of these operations was supported by OLC opinions written
by my predecessors. As I absorbed the opinions, I concluded that
some were deeply flawed: sloppily reasoned, overbroad, and incautious in asserting extraordinary constitutional authorities on behalf of the President. I was astonished, and immensely worried, to discover that some of our most important counterterrorism policies rested on severely damaged legal foundations. It began to dawn on me that I could not—as I thought I would eventually be asked to do—stand by or reaffirm these opinions.

(He considered resigning – drafted a letter of resignation – but decided to stick it out)

“So I decided to try to fix the opinions to save as many of the policies
that a sound legal analysis would support. I was pretty sure, in
December 2003, that this decision would put me on a collision
course with my superiors. But I figured it was more consistent
with my oath of office and professional responsibilities, and that my
superiors would let me know when I should leave. Seven months and many confrontations later, I was gone. “ — Jack Goldsmith, from his Preface

(Gil’s response)

Just because a member of the administration does not agree with the legality or constitutionality of certain actions does not make him right. Obviously others in the administration and outside of it - including me - are convinced that the wiretapping is both legal and constitutional. Just what do you not understand about the evil intentions of the radical Muslims. Are you aware of the terrible actions that occurred in the school in Beslin. Osama said that what happened in Beslin will be multiplied 100 fold in our country. In Beslin over 350 people were murdered - including over 170 children who were raped and than slaughtered. I am furious over the likes of the NYTimes and their ilk who by their actions put our country and our children in danger. We are living in different times.

If you do not understand this, I don’t know what else to say.

As far as Bush appointments, he also appointed the current head of homeland security and this guy is a real Bozo. I’m sure that over the years Bush has made a lot of dumb appointments like Chertoff and Goldsmith.

As I said before, the only good thing about the Times is the crossword puzzles.

(and my reply)

At least we both like the crossword puzzles. It’s a start.

As to the rest of what you said, I know all that. I knew all that before you said it. The “evil intentions of radical Muslims” include destruction of the American way of life, our democratic system, constitutional law, checks and balances, and values. For my money, Bush and the radical neocons have done half their work for them, and the judges they’ve appointed are ready to do some of the rest.

I don’t think it’s going to work. The people of this country have an uncanny way of coming to their senses. But it would help if some of the better, brighter, more successful people like you, who are capable of real leadership, would be more alert to the erosion of civil liberties and constitutional safeguards beneath their own feet. No radical Muslim, in his wildest dreams, could have hoped to cause as much damage as our own “leaders” have inflicted.

Just what do I not understand? That’s what.

So now we’ve compared notes again. Let’s see how it looks next year or the year after.

Rob from the poor
Give to the rich

From 2001 to 2006 the average taxpayer got tax cuts totaling $3,593 (you got less) while their share of the national debt increased by $13,000. The reason you got less than average is that the average is inflated by the inclusion of the $236,000 average tax break given to the top one percent of incomes. (Data from the Congressional Budget Office)

Even accepting the average as valid, you owe $3.62 for every dollar you saved on taxes. The richest one percent, meanwhile, owe less than six cents on each dollar of tax savings. For their average tax break of $236,000, each one owes $13,000 more toward the national debt (Later, they’ll figure out how to get out of paying that, too.). The other $223,000 is free and clear – to them, anyway, not to the rest of us.

Someday, in some form, those soaring debts will have to be repaid. By our children and their children and maybe their children.

In other words, the Bush administration has arranged for their dear friends, the richest people in America, to borrow (without permission, and with no intention of repaying – which is called stealing) $223,000 apiece from our grandchildren.

George Bush said his tax cuts were intended to stimulate the economy, so that everybody would be better off. Well, everybody HE knows will be better off – except that some of them will go to jail, because stealing is addictive.

Remember the theme song from the old Robin Hood TV series?

Robbin’ Bush, Robbin’ Bush,
Riding through the glen.
Robbin’ Bush, Robbin’ Bush,
With his band of men.
Rob from the poor!
Give to the rich!
Robbin’ Bush, Robbin’ Bush
That son of a bitch

The Greedy Bastard
Theory of Economics

Disclosure: I love capitalism. It’s the great engine of wealth-creation and prosperity.

Among political theories, I always favored the one enunciated by my ex-wife, Joan More: “The left wing flies the bird.” But in economic theory, there is no escaping the implicit founding maxim of capitalism: “Greedy bastards make the world go ‘round.”

I also favor the steam engine. Until James Watt, brute force had to be supplied by muscles – the muscles of horses, oxen, elephants, or humans. Steam could turn a wheel faster than a human or an ox, although it did present other problems.

As the fire got hotter and the steam gathered force, the engine would run out of control and tear itself apart.

What James Watt actually invented was not just an engine – lots of people knew how to build that – but an engine with a governor that kept the whole contraption operating within reasonable limits. Two arms were mounted on a vertical shaft – like your own arms when they’re dangling by your sides. As the shaft turned faster, centrifugal force raised the arms, gradually closing the apertures that admitted the steam.

You know how an ice skater turns much faster when she draws in her arms? That has nothing to do with it.

In economic systems, capitalism, like the steam engine, provides the power. Greed provides the steam.

Now what we need is a governor. We thought we had solved that problem with the idea of government regulation. But since politicians love money, they soon wound up in bed with greedy bastards who then co-opted the regulators, and finally they bought the government. For the past 6-1/2 years, we’ve seen how that works.

The greedy bastards achieved this conquest under the banners of Free Enterprise, Deregulation, and the Magic of Market Forces. (Magic works well if you’re the magician, not if you’re the rabbit who gets pulled out of the hat by his ears and then thrown into a cage to await the next trick,)

The ultimate battle cry was Competition, heralded as the high road to efficiency, productivity, and low prices for consumers.

Electric utilities, for example, had always been regulated. But for the past 15 years or so, state legislatures have been adopting laws – some of them drafted by Enron – to introduce competition to the electricity market. That might have worked, but the referees in this competition turned out to be the greedy bastards who were supposed to be competing, so the costs of electrical power in the “competitive” states quickly rose high above the costs in regulated states. By one calculation, competition has cost rate-payers an extra $48 billion in 25 states, most of which are now busy re-establishing regulation; and Illinois just voted to give back $1 billion of the overcharges.

We’ve all seen what deregulation can do for the airlines, and what the free market machinery of capitalism can do for health care, where several battalions of greedy bastards have installed their toll booths between you and your doctor.

The result is health care that costs twice as much as Europeans or Canadians pay, doesn’t keep us as healthy as they are, and leaves 48 million Americans without coverage.

Part of the reason is the cost of pharmaceuticals. Competition among big drug companies was supposed to take care of that, but Congress passed a Medicare drug benefit bill that prohibited Medicare from negotiating lower costs. The day the bill passed, the stocks of HMOs and drug companies went through the roof of the stock exchange, demonstrating what happens when greedy bastards are running the government.

But there’s nothing wrong with capitalism that a bit of reasonable regulation can’t fix. Here’s a good, conservative idea:

One of these days, we ought to take our government back from the greedy bastards and the corporate welfare cheaters and give capitalism a try.

Maybe even democracy.

Gullible’s Travels

“I came. I saw. I concurred.”

That, give or take a Caesarian section, is what many congresspersons have to report when they return from their two-day escorted junkets to Baghdad.

They see that the surge is working, at least inside their double-armored humvees, comprehensively accompanied by U. S. infantry, armored cavalry, and helicopter gunships as they tour two or three secure havens and potemkin bazaars, islands of security in a sea of chaos. They leave reassured that Iraqi police are stepping up to the plate, reconstruction proceeds apace, and color is coming back to the cheeks of the economy. Life is good and the rugs are cheap—or do I have that backwards? Details, details.

Most of these surge supporters are folks who piously believe that HMOs and insurance companies improve healthcare and lower its cost, so Medicare should be privatized. That the insurance companies busily dodging any claim for damages from Hurricane Katrina would do so much better than the government in a world of privatized Social Security. They believed that the Bush tax cuts, concentrating their benefits on the wealthiest one percent of Americans, were just the stimulus the economy needed to get the other 99 percent to spend more as consumers. They opposed regulation, or even transparency, for the hedge funds and mortgage brokers who were feasting on sub-prime borrowers who are now losing their homes. They’re in favor of government eavesdropping on your telephone calls because you can’t be trusted and Alberto Gonzales can.

Their party proclaimed that war heroes like Max Cleland and John Kerry were unpatriotic, so America’s salvation from terrorism could only be trusted to draft dodgers like Bush and Cheney. They gave free reign to air polluters as part of the “Clean Skies Initiative.” They turned loggers loose in natural forests in the “Healthy Forests Initiative.” They lifted restrictions on dumping cyanide into rivers under the “Clean Streams” Act.

So it should come as no surprise that in the face of increased military casualties, increased civilian deaths, soaring numbers of refugees, a floundering government and a crumbling security force, they would arrive at the happy conclusion that the surge is working.

Veni, Vidi, Vichy.

So what if the sun is going down? It’s morning in America.

A penny saved…

In the Personal Business section of Saturday’s New York Times, Shira Boss has an article about the importance of saving. Its best line is in the headline:

“Don’t splurge on a piggy bank, a tin can will do.”