On the Contrary

This weekend’s round of Sunday talk shows was like a never ending recycling of the same old issues.  There is the health care muddle, the Afghanistan debate, the Iran nuclear program, cap and trade being watered down, and least I forget, Glenn Beck getting the key to some city in Washington that I never want to go to.  Banking reform is going nowhere with all the usual suspects.

On the President’s rethinking the Afghanistan war and a troop increase, there was Senator Kyle for Arizona saying what hawkish Republicans have been saying since time began.  We leave and the enemy will see this as a great weakness and they would fill the vacuum.  It will be our downfall.  It must really be comforting to have such a simple world view of every conflict where wagging our…..well you get the point.  What I find simply fascinating is there is no consideration of the cultural or historical record of this country or trying to understand this conflict in terms of what can really be accomplished with more blood and money.

On “60 Minutes”, there was a nice piece about General McChrystal and how dedicated he was to changing the way the war was fought.  He definitely is an admirable man, but that doesn’t make his approach any more appealing.  He is a fine general but this war is not about fighting, it is about minds and we still think like Western white men instead of Afghans (Note: after working on many projects in Afghanistan, Afghans are the people, Afghani is the currency).

I am sure his approach is the only way forward for “winning” the war, if we had 20 years and unlimited funds.  Or would that be 50 years?  Remember we have been there eight and things have gone from bad to worse. The real issue is can we afford it and is it really that high on our national priorities?  If we spent that money here at home making us a stronger economy, would that greatly increase the security of the average American?  I think it is time to quit being terrified of Al-Qaeda.  If the Afghans won’t fight the Taliban, let them live under them for a while and see how they like it.  Maybe it is a problem they have to work out for themselves.

Then there was the arrest of Roman Polanski in Switzerland for having sex with a minor fourteen years ago.  Note that the child, now an adult, wants the charges dropped, but since Polanski was convicted before he ran, apparently California authorities just can’t let it go.  Why do I say that?  This is a horrible crime.  Maybe, but California is broke.  They have a population in prison that is breaking the bank, and they release roughly 120,000 inmates a year.  Many of these are truly dangerous sex offenders that we now no longer have the resources to track and monitor.  So we spend our precious dollars to see that the letter of the law is followed, while we drain the resources from those who could prevent truly heinous crimes.  Sooner or later we need people in government who can prioritize societies needs, not pursue some personal quest at the expense of everyone else’s safety.

The level of stupidity and inaction is reaching intolerable levels, while those in Washington continue to have debates about issues that most of us moved beyond years ago.  Of course banks and Wall Street need to be regulated and the tougher, the better.  If it is too tough, adjust it later.  The evidence for global warming is not just abundant, it is accelerating at an exponential rate (the evidence and the global warming), and yet Washington does nothing except wrangle about protecting vested interests as though disaster is not on the horizon.  Our addiction to oil is being facilitated by low gas prices and yet we know the other shoe is going to drop.  If you don’t buy the global warming thing (you are moron), then look at the transfer of our wealth to the Middle East.  The answer is clean, green energy both for our addiction and for our economy, and yet we do nothing.  Then there is health care.  Oh why bother.  The answer is obvious.

What we seem to be really good at today is denial.  We now have a whole party whose total platform is a denial that that platform has bankrupted us.  If we have health care today that we think is fine, there is no pressure for change because we can’t seem to grasp that health care costs are out of control and today’s satisfaction is tomorrow’s sticker price shock.  Wall Street seems to be coming back so why fix anything?  I don’t see no stinking global warming, and cap and trade will hurt some of my biggest contributors.  Did it ever occur to anyone that we have become a country that can’t?

Here are a few of the tidbits of news that shed some light on where we have been and where we are going:

• “Many Republicans are already angry over the emphasis Mr. Obama placed on the public plan (health care) in last weeks letter.  Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, said Friday that ‘the key to a bipartisan bill is not to have a government plan in the bill’ (New York Times).”  Said another way, the Republican idea of bipartisanship is their way or the highway.  We have already had enough of their failures haven’t we?  I wish they would just get the hell out of the way.  The real issue here is do you want something bipartisan or something that works.
• Here is another thought on health care:  The big question is how to pay for it and one of the suggestions is to tax health care benefits.  Another is to tax sugar in soft drinks. I find this whole discussion to be an indicator of how troubled our whole tax system is.  It also indicates how entrenched are the forces to prevent any change in our tax system when the suggestions are just to pile on more obscure taxes instead of reforming the whole system.  One way or another you already pay for health care so why not just get rid of all those hidden costs and include it as part of our income tax.
• Watching the banks maneuver is always entertaining, if not somewhat appalling.  Most of us understand that derivatives got us into the financial mess we are in because they were unregulated and basically invisible to the investor to understand their makeup and risk.  The Obama administration has proposed regulating them, but left a loophole for “customized” derivatives which would leave them, let’s just say, less than transparent.  Most agree that the best way to not allow speculation to get out of control again is to be able to evaluate the risk in each investment through the transparency of trading them on an open market.  So why are we opening ourselves up to “customized” derivatives?  So the banks can once again make fabulous amounts of money by hiding their risks and preventing open competition.  Isn’t it amazing that the boys who tout competition are the first ones who try to undermine it if it impacts their goose who is laying their golden eggs?
• President Obama has told Israel no more settlements.  This apparently broke an agreement by the Bush administration (verbal) that we would continue to say that, but normal growth is okay.  I think this is the pivotal “no duh” moment.  The Israelis have a problem here because much as we have our radicalized Republicans who want no government unless it prevents a woman’s choice or two consenting adults from marrying, they have their fruit loop religious radicals that think God made them special and they can take what they want (very similar to Republicans).  Until Israel decides on an equitable swap of land, there will never be peace there.  That means marginalizing their religious nuts.  So when the Republican Party can marginalize their nuts, maybe the Israelis can marginalize thiers and there may be hope for the future.  I am not holding my breath.
• It appears the administration is considering whether they can accept guilty pleas from some of the detainees for the 9/11 murders, skip the trial, and go directly to execution.  It solves so many problems like the law explicitly prohibits accepting the plea, and the fact that much of the evidence was gathered using torture which makes it problematic.  Note I am not saying abusive interrogation techniques.  Let’s just call it what it is.  Sometimes in our rush for retribution we forget what justice is about.  Yes a trial would be messy, but it would be honest.  And it would take what everyone knows is the PR approach to what a wonderful country we are off the package and expose our ugly underside.  But it would be what the world and we American citizens are really yearning for, honesty.  It would reemphasize that we are about, justice not efficacy, and it would help to expose what animals these people are.  Oh and on the execution thing, make it life without parole.  Execution just plays into their hands and makes them martyrs.   When will we ever learn that the hard road is the only road that will get us to where we want to go?
• Liz Cheney is still making a fool of herself along with most of the media.  She is still operating under the impression that saying it is so makes it so.  The media is also helping that impression by unquestioningly repeating whatever she or her dad say.  Ah, but the problem is video of what really happened and what they really said.  Liz is claiming that there was no attempt to link the 9/11 attack with Saddam Hussein.  Roll the video.  The only thing that worries me about all this is that the press seems to have learned nothing from their failures during the run up to war in Iraq.  But we still have The Daily Show, Colbert, and MSNBC.  The rest of them just sit there like idiots and accept this garbage or repeat it endlessly like it were true.  That’s entertainment folks!
• One last thought.  A friend of mine was trying to convince me that the whole economic mess was caused by Fannie and Freddie (government) and irresponsible home buyers.  That is like blaming your kids for their bad behavior without looking at how you set up an environment in which they could act out their worst impluses.  The banks were making a fortune repackaging debt and selling it to the rest of the world.  All the rest follows from this.  It is the root cause.  Why can’t we ever remember the simple rule, “follow the money.”

Are we getting anywhere yet?

I have been listening to the Republican allegations about Judge Sotomayor and it is truly repugnant.  No repugnant is not the right word, it is nuts.  Have the psychos taken over the Republican Party?  I listened  to Rush Limbaugh talk about President Obama and I thought to myself, has hate speech come into vogue?  No, I am serious.  Rush Limbaugh and some of the others are inciting to violence.  This is not entertainment.  This is encouraging the demented in our society to take up arms.

Even some Republicans have asked the mouths of Newt Gingrich and  Rush Limbaugh to tone it down.  They are realizing that these racist attacks could alienate one of the biggest voting blocks in the future, but I have no idea how Republican ideology could appeal to them anyway.  I guess what is so shocking to me is that the whole debate is one smear campaign.  Is that what the Republican Party has come to?  Instead of standing firm on their values, they just make outrageous claims about their opponent and hope the feeble minded voter buys into this slander?

I think we are seeing the bankruptcy of Republican ideas in these attacks.  I think what we are seeing is frantic behavior resulting from Republicans starting to realize that their ideas no longer have merit.  They are having a panic attack.  The debates on torture and closing Guantanamo are a case in point.  They have become shrill.  There is no more give and take, but rude interrupting and shouting.  I guess it is hard to continue the torture has value mantra as more and more evidence is mounting that it didn’t.  So out shout your adversary.  Get more frantic.  It reminds me of a discussion I had a while back where a very conservative, conservative explained to me that George Bush wasn’t a conservative, but a liberal.  They are grasping at straws and the straws they are grasping at are less and less rational.

The problem is our 24/7 news media who looks at these shouting matches as entertainment and that is how they cover them.  As Frank Rich pointed out in his column this morning (Who is to Blame for the Next Attack)  and I pointed out in my blog (We Moved On, But They Haven’t) the press is making the same mistake it made before 9/11 allowing false information to go unchallenged.  Dick Cheney’s speech last week is a case in point.  When one side is making outrageous statements, and the other is trying to be rational, the media should not be a neutral moderator of this discussion, but debunk the outrageousness instead of letting it be presented as fact.  If they keep this up, we are doomed as they repeat their errors of the post 9/11 reporting.

I think when you look at the details of some of the allegations that are being made, you really start to see the irrational emotionalism of the Republicans.  Pat Buchannan, who MSNBC keeps giving a microphone to, has attacked Judge Sotomayor about the reverse discrimination suit involving white fire fighters.  Is his emotionalism he missed the whole point of the case, which was that throwing out the test as being unfair because no black firefighters had passed it was not a question of fairness. It was a question of whether throwing out the test was legal  Had she ruled as he felt she should, she would have had to ignore current law and precedent, and in fact, be an activist judge.  For a Republican there is no definition anymore of activist judge except one that doesn’t agree with them.

What we are finding is that Republicans have no argument on the issues based upon the facts because more and more, the facts are not supporting their arguments.  So they are turning to fear and wild emotional appeals not based upon a rational considerations of the actual reality.  Their mantra of small government, low taxes, and faith in the market place with minimal regulation has failed miserably.  That doesn’t mean there isn’t merit in these ideas, but they need to evolve to meet the reality we find ourselves in.  In order to do this, they must jettison their base because it is what mires them in their intransigence.  Right now the Republican’s base are the irrational psychos that need to be marginalized.  Said another way, If the Republican Party is going to be rejuvenated and become a big tent organization, then this base will have to be jettisoned. They are going to have to accept some moderation that their base will never stand for.  Until they are up to this task, we will continue to see the kinds of irrational and emotional attacks and wild claims instead of reasoned and thoughtful debate about our problems.  As long as the 24/7 cable media continues to feed on this circus, we are all done a great disservice and if we fall for it, we are doomed.

Bits and pieces is just some random thoughts about some of the events we are seeing swirl around us and that might give us some perspective and insight into our world and our perception of it.  To Wit:

• Bernie Madoff and his Ponzi scheme should have been no surprise to anyone.  Recently on PBS Masterpiece Theater they ran a wonderful production of Dickens’, Little Dorrit, which he wrote in 1855.  One of the pivotal characters was Mr. Merdle, who everyone paid homage to as the great and wise investor who made money out of thin air.  Of course his and all his investor’s houses came tumbling down when they discovered he was running a Ponzi scheme, paying off old investors with new investors investments.  So with the history of this type of unscrupulous behavior so well chronicled in our literature, why were we surprised when what seemed too good to be true, turned out to be too good to be true?  Maybe because most people don’t read anymore.
• The other night on the season finale of House, in one scene a doctor is in the operating room performing a critical and delicate surgery and the other doctor starts talking to him about his personal life and his problems.  This kind of behavior is reflected in many of our TV dramas, NCIS comes immediately to mind.  In the real world, it is becoming apparent that the commuter airline that crashed near Buffalo last winter was caused by pilot error and part of the problem may have been pilot distraction as the pilots were chit chatting during a critical phase of the flight.  Now some might say this is why women should not be in the cockpit as though men don’t do this.  But I would say this is a much more prevalent problem and it is simply a lack of professionalism and self-discipline.  I thought  television mistakenly portrayed this kind of chit-chat as some kind of steely eyed professionalism that allows you to multitask during critical times.  But as real life is showing us, real expertise as a professional is to be totally focused on your task during critical phases of it.
• Charley Crist, Republican Governor of Florida has announced that he will run for the Florida Senate Seat.  In announcing his bid he said, “The challenges we face are national issues.  We have to understand that, and I want to serve where I can serve the people of my state the very best.” Gee, is that a Republican recognizing that the role the federal government plays is extremely important and instead of “states rights”, most problems will have to be solved on a national level?  Could this be a shift in the Republican dogma of small government?  I doubt it, just a shift to suit a personal agenda, a.k.a. Arlene Specter.
• Liz Cheney was on the airways trying to defend her father again.  I actually felt sorry for her.  She loves her Dad and is blinded by that love.  Not so much different than anybody else’s daughter.  But in this case she came up against Eugene Washington of the Washington Post, who is unafraid to challenge circular and sordid logic.  Liz was saying that we did not do torture because we had legal memo’s that said it wasn’t torture.  Eugene pointed out that if you follow this logic then any country can get lawyers to justify anything and there is no law.  Poor Liz thinks these memos justified her Dad’s behavior when the reality is he went lawyer and memo shopping to get them to justify what he wanted to do anyway.  The fact that these memo’s are now being totally discredited as legal justifications just doesn’t penetrate her wanting to defend her Dad.  Somebody take these people off the air and put them out of our misery.
• Miss California has given an impassioned speech about her right to have her own views and not be attacked for them.  But that wasn’t why she was at risk of losing her crown.  She did pose semi-nude (I am taking this on faith because I am not allowed to Google her pictures on penalty of death) and starting work with political action groups against gays, which clearly was a violation of her contract.  In addition, she seems to think her right to speak her mind should not be criticized by others who want to exercise their right to speak their minds. She seems a bit schizophrenic to me and a great recruit for the Republican Party.   Then of course we have Donald Trump forgiving all sins.  No surprise here, but if she were unattractive or only mildly attractive, do you suppose he would have cut her the same slack?  If you are a woman watching this travesty, doesn’t it tell you everything you want to know about sexism?

Just another day where stop making sense is now a life style.

The news this week has provided ample ammunition for some pondering and edification.  To wit:

• The Senate defeated the bill to allow bankruptcy judges to adjust mortgage rates (USA Today).   All the Republicans voted against it along with 12 Democrats.  President Obama did not fight for it.  Apparently Banks rule in Washington.  I wonder when the interest of the general public will finally overcome the interest of the rich?  Makes you wonder if we will be able to do the right thing in identifying and taking over banks in the Bank Recapitalization Plan.
• Arlen Specter has changed sides and everyone thinks that is just peachy.  I don’t.  He would have lost to Attila the Hun in the Pennsylvania primary and then we would have probably gotten a real progressive in the general election.  As of now we are saddled with Senator Arlen, “big ego” Specter who is just too big to fail.
• The Republicans are heading out on a road trip to reinvigorate their party’s ideas and looking for “outside” Washington thinking (Fox News).   Let’s see, that would be John McCain, Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Bobby Jindal, Haley Barbour, and they are thinking about asking Sarah Palin.  So we are looking for new thinking with the kings of conventional Republican wisdom and our first stop is Arlington Virginia?   The George Washington bridge is a mighty thing to conquer when you are on a quest not to learn anything new, but to reinforce old thinking.
• In California and Oregon, the Federal government released $53 million to help the salmon industry that has been hurt by the collapse of the salmon population.  Now I happen to think this is a good idea because these are hard working Americans, and through very little fault of their own, lost an important industry that just might come back.  But if I had my conservative, banker glasses on, I might see this as a government handout to an industry that we ought to let die.  I guess it all depends on your perspective about who should get corporate welfare.
• The media is making a big deal about Joe Biden’s gaff when he honestly told us that he had advised his own family members to restrict their travel in confined spaces while the flu bug is out and about.  Now I understand that a public official is suppose to also support the economy and keep dollars flowing, but I cannot help thinking about the mayor in the movie Jaws who kept telling everyone that it was safe to go back in the water.  I actually found Joe’s honesty refreshing and it is the same advice I would give my loved ones until we understand the true nature of this bug.  Sadly he is one of the few politicians who some people think is a loose cannon because he actually tells us what he thinks and believes.  Thank you for being you Joe.
• There is a rise in the violence in Iraq and some are wondering if we need to rethink our withdrawal plan.  Talk about ultimate denial.  Iraq is going to become a very violent place, but the violence is going to be a civil war that has always been festering and it is not our job to police the world.  Iraqis have to solve their own problems and not with our blood.
• It is interesting to watch the torture debate.  Many, myself included, are calling for a full investigation including whether it worked.  President Obama has avoided this like a plague and the media interpretation is that he wants to look forward (he has said that himself) and avoid a political food fight that might endanger his agenda.  I thought this meant he did not understand that we could not heal and reconnect with our basic values without a full airing of the facts and was taking the easy route out.  I may be wrong.  He may understand that a partisan food fight would be bad, but if he just stays back and continues to let the facts dribble out, the swell of public opinion might force the issue and he could stay out of the partisan rancor.  I wonder if he is really that smart and calculating?
• “A North Carolina congresswoman said Thursday she chose her words poorly when she called claims that a Wyoming college student was murdered because he was gay a “hoax.” Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx said during debate in the House that Matthew Shepard’s 1998 death wasn’t a hate crime and shouldn’t be invoked by supporters of a bill to expand the definition of such crimes to include violence motivated by sexual orientation.” (Associated Press) I am amazed at the level of stupidity we elected to represent us in our government.  Then I am struck by the even more fearful thought that they are representative of the level of stupidity in the electorate.  I would blame this on the South, but when I look at my own California fruitloops, especially the Republicans, I have to relent on the South.

All and all, another fine week.

With Arlen Specter’s switch to the Democratic Party, one has to wonder what is going on.  Well for one thing with the Republican Party only representing 21% of the population and shrinking, the math for the primary in Pennsylvania was fairly straightforward.  He could not win the primary against a hard-line conservative, but could probably win the general election.  So from this calculation, it was the only choice for a chance to survive.  But this raises all kinds of issues.

First is how Pennsylvania would see this.  From the Democratic point of view, they had a good chance to run a more liberal Democrat to win against a hard-line conservative.  This scenario presented the Democrats with someone more supportive of their agenda. Whoever was going to run for that seat from the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania must feel like he just got his legs cut out from under him.  Is Senator Specter moderate enough to be elected?  I don’t know and this is the chance the Democrats are taking.

The press is making a big deal about getting the 60th vote in the Senate to be filibuster proof, but it is a foolish claim.  Senator Specter will vote as he always does, and that is independently.  Additionally, the Democratic Party has a large spectrum of political beliefs from liberal to conservative.  They usually don’t vote in a block.  It may help, but probably not when it really counts.

Here is the really sad thing.  There is no room for moderate Republicans in the Republican Party.  They have moved to a party of litmus tests for the radical right.  On the other hand, the Democratic Party is really a party of three camps.  You have the very liberal side, which is how the Republicans paint everyone in the Democratic Party and is actually a small minority of it; then you have the moderates who are really progressives, which is the majority of the party; and then you have the conservative Democrats who really can not be distinguished from moderate Republicans a few years ago.  No there aren’t any socialists in there.  The Republican Party is being made irrelevant by their hard-line dogma, which they refuse to examine.  More about that in a moment.

The final issue that is raised by Senator Specter’s defection is what does this say about primary elections?  If the primaries are really a function of the hard left and the hard right, the nation is not getting choices that represent their views.  If hard-line Democrats or hard-line Republicans control the primaries, the choices we all get at election time are no choice at all.  In this environment where the Republican Party is a small and radicalized party, it may be time to rethink open primaries.  California is moving in that direction at the behest of the Republicans here because they feel disenfranchised in a Democrat controlled State legislature.  But they may rue their plan when they find out that the independents will vote most of their radical brethren out of office and instead move much more to the center.  In my small mind I would like to see an open primary and top two run off for the office in November even if it turns out they are both from the same party..

Finally, what do the Republicans have to do to stem what is going to be an ongoing desertion of their party members?  First they have to understand, as well as the press, that the middle is in the Democratic Party and the Republicans are a right fringe party.  If Arlen Specter is center right and he has moved to the Democratic Party, just where do you think the center is?

I listened to Michelle Bernard, a conservative political analyst on MSNBC, tell us that the Republicans need to find their soul: “That doesn’t mean Republicans should give up their belief in limited government or free markets. I don’t think that’s the case at all. But the Republican Party needs to find a way to reach out to many, many people, not just the religious right.” The problem with that prescription is that in order to reach out to more people, their basic belief in limited government and the free market needs major modifications and just dropping the right wing and the religious nuts isn’t going to solve that because it just makes them smaller without solving the root problem.  Limited government and what they mean by free markets is no longer selling in the market place.

First, right now we are having two immediate crises, economic and medical (swine flu).  In both cases the people expect our government to be there to resolve these crises.  How does that fit into limited government?   Republicans want to starve so it will never have the resources to help anyone.  Remember Katrina?  If this argument is going to have any credibility at all in the future, then the Republicans have to stop their knee jerk reaction to government programs and understand that government is part of the solution.  Then looking at what is appropriate to government and what is appropriate to the private sector might have a little more credence.  The swine flu epidemic is a case in point.  They cut funds for the CDC and preparation for just such a disaster.  Now they see a need, but their present ideology doesn’t allow for government planning and funding of the results of that planning.  By hating all things government except the military, thinking the private sector will provide all the solutions, the are emasculating the very solutions people are crying out for and we have found we need to address many of our complex problems that face us in our future.

On the free market thing, who ever said Democrats were against the free market?  What this is code for is little or no regulation or interference in business.  Think about the economic crisis we are in and then consider why no regulation is such a jim dandy idea.  It is out of touch with the reality of what is happening around us and our changing world.  A moderate approach, which may I add many Democrats are proposing, is smart regulations.  If Republicans could get off their “No” soapbox and say that the free market needs some fixing and requires more regulations to make our economy more stable, then we can have an honest debate on what those controls should be.    But they still hold to climate change isn’t happening, regulation of the environment is unnecessary, anything that impacts business is bad, and government is bad at everything.  These beliefs make them irrelevant in today’s world.  And it is forcing moderates to move to the Democratic Party where dissent and real debate are still allowed and real solutions to our problems can be proposed.

So what have is real diversity of both race and ideas in the Democratic party on all issues from health care to stimulus.  The Republicans have become the party of the white southern bigot.  The Republican Party has made themselves irrelevant by their hard-line, no compromise positions and until they change their own ideology to reflect a changing world, they are irrelevant.  The only way they are going to appeal to a wider electorate is take this radical step to reinvent themselves.  I don’t think they can do it because it requires tolerance and they don’t have any.  It’s like giving up religion for them and they are Republican bible thumpers.  Without their dogmatic beliefs, their world would crumble.  Suprise!  It is crumbling.

Here are the things in the news that prick my sense of “hello?”:

Iraq – Violence is trending upward there.  Apparently our strategy is to keep doing what we have been doing and hope things calm down until we can leave.  It is not going to happen.  Iraq is a mess with seething unresolved power stuggles between the Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis.  They are all vying for position when we do leave. Remember that we gained the Sunni support by buying them off.  The Shiites will not want to continue buying them and would like to take away their weapons.  Most of the nation has segregated into their sectarian groups.  Many of the critical issues about sharing power have not been resolved.  I am afraid our sense of holding the top on this boiling caldron is misplaced responsibility.  It is time to set a date certain and get out understanding that there is going to be a great deal of violence before all of this settles out.  The alternative is to stay forever which just exacerbates our problems elsewhere.

Ted Stevens – Ted Stevens, his legal team, and Chris Mathews have been declaring that Uncle Ted has been found innocent and that he unjustly lost the election because of prosecutorial abuse.  Two problems with this:  First, he wasn’t found innocent or guilty, the conviction was overturned, rightly so, because of the misconduct of the prosecutors.  But the evidence about his accepting unreported gifts stands.  Several jurors have stated that they would have convicted him anyway.  Second, the conviction did not come until after the election and the facts about the gifts he did accept and the cozy relationship with those that sent him campaign money were probably more a factor for his defeat.  Ted was business as usual and it was time for his ilk to go and that is what Alaskan voters decided.

The Stock Market – The stock market showed signs of a gain and pundits are starting to say maybe we have bottomed out.  What fools these people are.  For one to understand the crisis we are in, one must look at the world economy, not just the United States.  Our ability to buy and sell will be a function of the health of the world economy, and right now things appear to be worsening.  This rosy outlook also assumes our economy is the stock market instead of the ever increasing unemployment figures.  Think of it this way:  We can not go back to our number one export item, packaged debt, and take up where we left off.  So just what is it that we are going to sell to the rest of the world to make ourselves solvent again?  Right now the economic engine just continues to slow down because we haven’t faced this truth yet, the truth that we are not the great innovators we once were and our failure to invest in ourselves is the root of our problem.

Cutting Services to Balance the Books – States are cutting way back on services to reign in their deficits but many of these cut backs will actually result in bigger bills later.  Aid to the elderly is one of those items, and as they don’t get the help they need, they get sicker and then the costs for the taxpayer balloons.  You can think of many other examples.  Just maybe an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of down the road expenses.  Maybe states ought to do a long-term cost analysis before they go slashing services.  Or maybe our politicians are finally thinking like businessmen, short term.

Heroes – What got me going on this one is the rescue of the Captain of the freighter that was hijacked by Somali pirates.  I listened to CNN report this and use the word hero over and over again in their description of his actions.  Maybe he was, but just when did it become heroic to just do your job.  Our military are heroes or so the press tells us at every step, but actually they are just doing their jobs.  Captain Sullenberger is a hero when what he did was his job.  All of these people are thrown into extraordinary circumstances and they do what they are supposed to do and we are so shocked we call them heroes.

Let’s take Sully.  You are a pilot and your job is to plan and train for bad things.  It is routine discipline for a pilot to think through bad things that can happen and plan alternatives.  So when you are taking off, you think about engine failure and what are your options.  In his case there was only one option unless you think you can land an airplane in New York City, and through his flying skill and luck, he landed in the river with no fatalities.  He made sure everyone was off the plane before he got off.  That is not being a hero, that was doing his job.  Now he is writing a book about his life.  Oh brother.

If you were in any of these guys/gals positions would you not have done the same thing?  What other options do you have?  Maybe the financial community and our “business” leaders are representative of what we think is now the norm these days, those who look out only for themselves, take what they can get, and get out.  So when someone actually does their job in difficult circumstances we think they are heroic.  I think when we just start expecting people to live up to the responsibilities of their job and not call it heroic, then we may be a society that can begin to heal itself.  We need to move away from this personal worship thing and just expect people we put in charge to do the right thing.  It would be a nice change.

There are various news stories out there that give us a real look in the mirror and bits and pieces is my attempt to summarize some of my favorite for your reading pleasure:

• Iraq and Afghanistan – Several stories have appeared recently documenting that in Iraq, there is still seething ethnic rivalries and resentment at the American occupation.  Baghdad is basically a segregated community where many Sunnis have not moved back.  In Afghanistan, similar dislike of the American occupation is being recorded and with the infusion of another 30,000 American troops, al-Qaeda and the Taliban are gearing up for heated battles.  Does it ever occur to anyone that maybe more troops is the problem?  What if they had a battle and no one came?  One thing we are learning is that military action is expensive.  So where does the Taliban and al-Qaeda get their dough?  If nobody cared would there be a problem anymore?  Maybe it is time for them to solve their own problems.
• The Washington Post on Sunday ran a front page story that basically told that the CIA’s first high value detainee, Abu Zabaida, which they tortured, and which Cheney and Bush lauded as a great source of information to justify their torture policies, gave no reliable information.  Well that is not quite true.  He gave some very reliable information before they started torturing him, but the reality was that he was not a kingpin in al-Qaeda as Bush and Cheney claimed.  This comes as no surprise to anyone who has read The Dark Side by Jane Mayer who last year pretty much totally chronicled the keystone cops approach to interrogation that the CIA applied, the torture that led to nowhere, and the murders and brutality committed in our names that was totally unproductive.  Jane couldn’t name sources, but apparently now they are willing to tell their tale so the major news organizations are picking it up.  Welcome America to a story that will make you sick to your stomach.
• In a related story, Spain may indict some of the Bush Administration officials for war crimes in their part in promoting torture.  It is a very sad day when we have to look to Spain to uphold the law that the United States used to stand for.  If the Obama Administration does not investigate our war crimes as required by our treaties and leaves it to other countries, it will further decay our moral standing in the world if not our morals themselves.  Why is this so hard?
• Meanwhile in Cambodia, they have started their first trial on the torture and killing that occurred at Tuol Sleng prison where at least 14,000 people were tortured before being executed during the reign of the Khmer Rouge.  And what is the chief warden’s defense.  I was just following orders and they would have killed me and my family if I did not comply.  It will be the same defense that will be heard in the U.S. if we prosecute those who partook in torture.  Sooner or later we have to establish that following orders is not a defense against these crimes against humanity.  Oh, I forgot.  We already did that at Nuremberg after World War II.  You think we could remember that.
• In North Korea, two American female journalists may face trails for entering the country illegally.  With the North Koreans, there is probably no basis to the charges.  The connection I see is the missile launch this month.  In the warped North Korean mind, it may seem logical to have a couple of American hostages in case we try to shoot down or prevent their missile launch.  If the launch occurs without incident, the situation with these two will probably clear up.  Hopefully.
• President Obama made another trip to Congress this week, this time in the House, to encourage Democrats to support his budget.  Some Democrats (Conseradems as Rachel Maddow calls them) in the Senate are playing right into the Republican’s hands with their idea to force many votes that would be subject to the filibuster.  Let’s get back to majority rule instead of minority rule so we can get something done.  If you are afraid we are being too aggressive, just think back to the last eight years and ask yourself we could do more harm than that.  It is time to try something new and that is what this budget is about.
• President Obama moved aggressively to reject the automakers plan, asked for CEO resignations, and set a deadline for real action.  Republicans are screaming government intervention and others are saying that the CEO should have stayed on.  Just remember the cardinal rule:  When the strategy must change, you need new generals.  Old thinking won’t get us there and that applies both to Republicans in general, and CEO’s specifically.  We don’t need to fight last years wars all over again.
• Simon Johnston and Paul Krugman, both economists, have noted something we all ought to be thinking about:  Restoring the financial markets to business as usual is just setting us up for failure once again.  Packaging and selling debt is not the growth industry of the future and financial institutions can never again be too big to fail.  There are major implications of these ideas in the regulations that must come out of this debacle and in the mindset of Wall Street.  You can bet the vested interests will fight this every step of the way and is why change and progress are so hard.  The pockets of both Democrats and Republicans is lined with Wall Street Money.
• In the debate to overhaul health care, many are arguing that a government program similar to Medicare competing with private insurers would be unfair.  But I have come up with a way to level the playing field.  All government programs would have to charge a 30% surcharge so that the administration costs of the private insurers trying to either deny claims or skim healthy members would be competitive.  Then every one would have the same inefficient systems.
• Our prisons are full and overflowing, and more importantly for most politicians that used “throw the key away” rhetoric to get elected, the costs are now swamping our state governments.  We have the largest incarcerated population in the world with 1 in 10 Americans having been incarcerated.  Why does it take the all mighty dollar for politicians to finely recognize that many in prison don’t belong there and to start doing the right thing?
• Last but not least is that there seems to be a bipartisan movement in the Senate to finally relieve the restrictions on travel and trade with Cuba.  Most now see our economic and travel restrictions there have been an abject failure.  But we still have diehards such as Senator Menendez, Democrat from New Jersey, who see this as rewarding their bad behavior.  Let’s see.  The policy has been totally unsuccessful, but to change it would be to reward them?  Is this not the definition of inflexibility and stupidity?  Reminds me of the Republicans and their continued campaign of denying global warming.  Those melting ice caps and the new studies by the majority of scientists that show the phenomenon accelerating are just liberal tactics to destroy the economy.  See any connection between this kind of thinking and the failure of the auto industry to adapt to change?

You know, it is sad when you can see the way forward but you just can’t get the rest of the country to move in your direction.  Whether it is health care, global warming, energy policy, torture investigations, our prison systems, or Cuba restrictions, why is it so hard to do the reasonable thing?

There were several news stories of note to enhance one’s breadth of knowledge, wisdom, and food for thought at this mid-week.  To wit:

• It would appear that the deeply religious hang on to the bitter end in end of life situations as opposed to those who are less religiously inclined (New York Times), demanding aggressive intervention to stay alive in their last few months.  Now this is interesting for two reasons.  First you would think that those who thought this life was the end of the road would try to hang on to it more than those who were on their way to the promised land.  Second, over one-third of all Medicare costs are incurred in expensive end-of-life care for these aggressive interventions.  The study also noted that for these “hangers-on” these interventions are painful and reduce the quality of their last days.  I guess accepting reality has always been hard for the religious (creationism come to mind?) and expensive for the rest of us.
• With the villagers in the streets with torches to string up those guys who got bonuses from AIG, maybe we ought to stop and think about this a moment.  The conventional wisdom is that these people who are getting the bonuses were the very same people who took the company to ruin with their reckless trading.  But wait a minute.  Just how were these bonuses computed?  Sell x amount of the risky credit default swaps and you get y amount of a cash bonus?  And although these transaction did destroy the company, who set up the incentive system to sell all these CDSs?  Should we be punishing the troops when it was the general who told them to charge the wrong hill?  Maybe some of these guys worked night and day to do what their bosses wanted, and from their point of view, now we are depriving them of the compensation they were promised.  No, I don’t think these bonuses should be paid, at least not the amounts publicized, but I think we are stringing up the wrong group of people.  Does nationalization come to mind?  Maybe it is not such a bad idea.
• In the ongoing attempt to reform health care “leading Republicans and insurance companies have expressed alarm at the idea of a new government-run insurance plan competing with private insurers.” (New York Times)  I find this truly hilarious that the free market, competition solves everything crowd can’t stand the heat from a government program.  What are they afraid of, finding out that a single payer system like Medicare is the only cost effective way forward?
• The White House is considering using “budget reconciliation” to get the Obama budget through Congress because this process bypasses the filibuster.  It then only takes 51 votes to approve a budget.  Republicans are shocked, shocked, shocked.  But a look at history tells us that most fundamental change came from using this process including April 1981, April 1982 (think Ronald Reagan here), April 1990 (George Bush), April 1993 (Clinton-Gingrich), and the 2001 Bush tax cuts.  It would seem that when we want to make real changes, our form of government with the filibuster (read super-majority requirement here) has to go to extremes to make it happen.  Sooner or later we ought to let the majority party implement the changes they were voted in to do, and then judge them accordingly in the next election instead of allowing the radical minority to stymie progress.
• There are two international stories to think about.  One is the Russians wanting to base their bombers in Cuba.  To me this is a no-brainer.  It would be a barter chip for removing the missile defense system from our proposed sites in Eastern Europe.  For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  Second is the Obama administration considering further and expanded predator drone strikes in Pakistan.  Although I understand that we are at war with the Taliban, these strikes in Pakistan involve collateral damage that may be more damaging than the Taliban/al Qaeda we are trying to take out.  This campaign seems to violate the lessons we are learning about guerilla warfare being about hearts and minds, not tactical battles (It is sad that some of us learned all these lessons in Viet Nam and they have been conveniently ignored and then resurrected as new ideas in Iraq and Afghanistan).  I also have a problem with sanctioned assassinations that violates our concept of justice.  War is hell isn’t it?
• One last irreverent thought.   The Pakistani woman, Mukhtar Mai, who was gang raped by 13 members of a rival family, sanctioned after an alleged impropriety by her younger brother which later turned out to be false, has decided to get married.  She has been a model of the “new” Pakistani woman because she has bravely stood up to this treatment of women in Pakistani society and against custom, charged these men (beasts) with rape.  My concern here is that she will be the second wife (as in two at the same time) of a man who has pursued her for years, and after his attempted suicide, she finally relented.  I fear for her because in Pakistan, your wife is your property.  Maybe she can turn that one on its head too.

Just some food for thought.

What is on everybody’s mind, the Economy, was the focal point of discussion this Sunday morning, but the discussion was more political than policy based.  On Meet the Press we had Lindsey Graham and Chuck Schumer laying out familiar political positions.  Yawn.  The round table discussion was a little more interesting in that they included Liaquat Ahamed, the author of Lords of Finance, who raised the issued that back in the 1920’s the failure of a major European bank was really the beginning of the Great Depression.  He raised the issue of the collapse of the Eastern Europe Economies and the fact that while we are looking inward, this is a global crisis and focusing on saving us may not save us even if we do all the right things.

On GPS we had an eclectic group led by Niall Ferguson (Assent of Money) who was arguing that our expanding of the deficit to solve the slow down in our own country will actually exacerbate the problem as it robs capital from the rest of the world.  What they didn’t tell us was that if that is the case, what is the way forward.  David Frum was trying to make the point that this wasn’t the Republican’s fault.  I do think they made a very valid point that the real problem is global, but decisions on how to solve it, whether in China or America, is political and thus locally focused.  Meanwhile John McCain is railing against the earmarks in the budget (less than 3%) as though this is our problem.

Reliable Sources took on the real issue of whether the press and CNBC were trying to use instantaneous market fluctuations as unfair evaluations of the President’s policies.  The answers were sadly predictable based upon the pundit’s political persuasion.  The automaton from the Washington Times (conservative Washingtown voice) thought it was just fine, while the rest of the pundits thought we may need to step back and wait and see.  She (the Washington Times blogger) even tried to play down the Jon Stewart satire of CNBC’s financial predictions that went bust (See Two Pieces of Wisdom from Jon Stewart).  Sad that politics blinds us to our own failures in logic, myself excluded of course.

So what have learned?  Not much.  Apparently most Americans are looking for a quick fix in America for a global problem that will probably get much worse before it bottoms out.  What we really need is to understand just how serious the problem is, that the problem and the solution are global, and a general agreement on the way forward.  The political arguments we are having are the cart before the horse when we should first listen to dueling economists and historians so we understand the problem. What we are getting now is moderate steps in one direction, amid political arguments that we are all tired of.  When the Sunday shows start bringing in historians and economists, maybe then the political babble will end and we can have a rational discussion about the way forward.

For what it is worth here is my two bits:  Ignore the Republicans.  Doing what Herbert Hoover did in 1929 is not a way forward.  They are locked in their political ideology and their ideas, or lack thereof, are a result of mental constipation.  It is a global problem, but I am not sure that the U.S., even if we knew the correct solution, could bring the EU and China along.  The one example we have of getting out of this is the Keynesian solution, which is deficit spending.   When we did massive borrowing to run World War II, we did it all internally by borrowing from our own citizens.  The conventional wisdom is that we will be borrowing from the Chinese this time and they may redirect their money to their own problem, forcing us to raise interest rates to get the required cash.  Unless you haven’t noticed things are getting very bad in China and unrest is quite possible.

Having said that, we could always print money which causes inflation, which if things get bad enough, may not be such a bad idea since inflation forces people to buy things since they need to spend their money before it is devalued.  At any rate I think we need to proceed with the Obama solution which has three legs; stimulus, banks, and housing, only much more aggressively.  As Tom Friedman wrote in one of his columns when he described the scene in Jaws where one of the major characters (Richard Dryfus) sees the shark for the first time and tells the boat captain, “we need a bigger boat”.  Well, we need a bigger stimulus package.

The next stimulus package will be about the size of the last one, but forget the tax cuts and focus on investments that will create jobs that will be about the economy of the future.  That would be infrastructure, education, energy, and climate.  We need to get that in place right now and the only infrastructure spending would be either repairing what has to be repaired or new green transportation systems.  Continuing to build transportation systems that are petroleum centric is counterproductive.

For the banking system, ditherating is not an answer.  The fear of a domino effect must be overcome (or ameliorated) and we have to identify and remove the bad debts out of the system (along with the present management structure).  Investors, bondholders, and taxpayers must all share in this burden (read pain).  Whether this is some form of the bad bank/good bank scenario or nationalization, it must be done quickly.  One aside here:  One guest on GPS raised the issue of class anger in the United States.  We let the rich get richer because we believe the lie that we would all profit and they squandered everything.  It will be imperative that those who profited from our downfall are seen to pay dearly in fixing the system or there will be rioting in the streets.

Finally the same medicine is going to have to happen in the mortgage industry.  Decide on a reasonable interest rate for all loans, say 4%-5% and establish it.  Then re-evaluate the market worth today of the property and reset the principle balances.  Use a liberal value assuming some middle ground between the present principle balance and a realistic actual worth.  Those that can qualify for these new loans, then fine.  Those that can’t get foreclosed on.  Waiting for the marketplace to do this under foreclosures just extends our problems.  Note that this is almost a double-edged sword because once this is done, much of the banking problem settles at what those toxic assets are really worth and what the federal government should insure them for.  This not only settles the worth of the Collateral Debt Obligations (CDOs) but the Credit Default Swaps (CDSs) and allows us to estimate the real worth of these investments.

Okay, maybe these ideas are a little naïve considering the complexity of the problems, the interconnectiveness of our economies, and the impact of global problems, but why aren’t we having this discussion instead of endless discussion about what is politically possible instead of what needs to be done and making it politically possible?

As much as I see this as a global crisis, and although we need to stay engaged and try to work with the EU and China to solve the problems, the real place where our actions can make a difference is at home.  The critical issue is that this must be our focus and we need to get on with it, aggressively.  Any other delay or Republican obstructionism, and we are doomed. Note there is a bright side.  If we have a global depression, Iran won’t be able to afford nukes, North Korea will starve, and Al-Qaeda will be broke.  This says to me it is really time to start solving our own problems instead of saving Iraq and Afghanistan from themselves by emptying out our treasury.