America’s Political Values Collide with its Economic Interests

Let’s be clear about one thing. America has security and economic interests throughout the world. I wrote about this issue on February 8, 2011. Since then I have read Niall Furguson’s WANTED A GRAND STRATEGY FOR AMERICA in Newsweek and Brendan Greeley’s The Fallacy of Facebook Diplomacy in Businessweek. The two articles converge on the point that I made on February 8. The bottom line is we want economic certainty, physical security, and democracy all at the same time.

Our desires are appropriate but the people who would carry them out do not see the world through the eyes of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin. Facebook calls for neat round pegs in round holes while the square pegs fit into their appropriate holes sort of like the neat way we try to manage our affairs in the West. Neither the potentates of the Middle East nor the populations of those nations see the world as Westerners.

What makes this situation all the more difficult is that Western leaders do not understand the culture of those nations. Thus we have the American government tied in knots. Unfortunately, Barack Obama has not shown himself to be a strong leader and that has resulted in no coordinated plan to address the issues.

If I was betting, I would expect that whoever ends up leading the nations of the Middle East in the future, it will not be the same as it has been over the past 40 years. America’s lack of leadership will result in a more hostile environment for American interests. If we could only figure out what our primary interests are!

Egypt – Oh! It’s Just Another Protest

February 9, 2011: What part of this Daily Beast summary from Reuters do you believe?

The third week of protests in Egypt could be the biggest: Following Tuesday’s enormous demonstrations, in which record numbers of protesters poured into Cairo’s Tahrir Square and Google executive Wael Ghonim spoke, the opposition to President Hosni Mubarak is organizing another big protest for Friday. The White House, meanwhile, had Joe Biden push Vice President Omar Suleiman to end Egypt’s 30-year emergency law and for “prompt, meaningful, peaceful, and legitimate” transition. The BBC says the U.S. is no longer focusing on President Hosni Mubarak’s future, but rather pushing for concrete reforms.

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The United States is the leader of the free world. Most of our presidents throughout the 20th century espoused the idea of democracy but made deals with dictators. Both President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush have been outspoken advocates of spreading democracy. Most recently it was George W. Bush who insisted that removing Saddam Hussein as the dictator of Iraq would spread democracy throughout the Middle East. So America can’t back down. The problem is the confrontation between America’s political values and its economic interests.

Look at the results of democracy in the Middle East. Iran now has a theocracy with a government that does not permit free elections. Gaza had free elections that the United States supported and the consequence is Hamas in control and little chance there will ever be another free election. Iraq’s government is in turmoil because too many people in that country do not subscribe to the idea that there are winners and loser in every election.

We have seen uprisings before and few have ended as we had hoped. The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 ended with the Chinese army killing several hundred people. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the government but ended when the army and security forces killed 41 people. The uprising in Tahrir Square, Cairo will most likely end as those two events did. There is no indication that anyone will remove the government of Hosni Mubarak.

I believe that U.S. economic and security interests will prevail within the American federal government. Thus next February all of this will be just a memory. Perhaps this will be a lesson to Obama and subsequent presidents.

WTF Does Not Mean “Winning the Future”

Is Sarah Palin trying to be funny? Does she know the meaning of WTF? As someone who never uses the F word, I did not know the meaning of WTF. I had to Google the meaning. For her to use those letters says she does know. Wait, she also used the words “blood libel” just last week in her defense of targeting the people she opposes in Congress. Does she know the history related to those words?

Listen carefully to her words. She thinks that the USSR won the space race. We all know that the Russians were first into space but it was the United States that put men on the moon. Where was Sarah Palin? She rambled on about the right of the people to petition the government which had nothing to do with the question asked about civility in government.

The Republican Party cannot be taking this fool seriously. Maybe I don’t understand. Perhaps the party would prefer losing the next presidential election.

A Sputnik Moment

The president may have called this A Sputnik Moment but his speech did not reflect that feeling. There was no call to a vision that inspires Americans to dream of a new day or a new goal. Sputnik inspired America to new achievements. Nothing the president said in his state of the union address prompted that kind of inspiration. There was no vision of the future. Nothing was inspiring.

At least the president should have told us about his ideas to invigorate the economy in a way that would re-employ the 7 million people that were employed before this recession started. His words were “innovation” and “education.” Neither of those events will re-employ the 6 million people who have used their 99 weeks of extended unemployment benefits.

Re-organizing the government, reducing tax incentives for oil companies, vetoing laws that have earmarks, and reducing tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans will not bring the American economy back to life.

Republicans contemplating running for the presidency will be motivated to enter the coming primaries.

Sarah Palin’s Ambition to be President is Toast

Sarah Palin’s on-line video defending herself for her over the top words and postings rather than calling for a period of less rhetoric and more unification of our nation was PATHETIC and REPREHENSIBLE.

Back on November 18, 2009 I called Sarah Palin a fruitcake. I am sorry I wrote that. It was an insult to fruitcake. I believe Sarah Palin’s ambition to become president of the United States will never materialize. Doyle McManus’ opinion piece in today’s Los Angeles Times seems to agree with me. Her defense of her words and actions means that Barack Obama may have a worthwhile G.O.P. candidate running against him in 2012.

As much as I consider Barack Obama a poor choice for president, he is beyond a doubt superior to Sarah Palin.

I had never heard the words “blood libel” until she used them. I had to search for the meaning. I know of the accusations that Jews killed Christian children and used their blood in cooking and that such stories still exist in 2011. What that nonsense has to do with accusations that Palin’s words and actions incite people to murderous actions escapes me. Is she relating herself to the Jews who were murdered by their Christian neighbors during the Middle Ages?

As to watching the video, you can find it elsewhere on the net. I won’t waste the space here. I hope that the news media simply stops reporting on Sarah Palin. They are to blame for her rise in public awareness.

For those who may be interested here is a history of ‘blood libel’ I have scanned the following from the Los Angeles Times.

In saying her critics “manufactured a blood libel,” Sarah Palin deployed a phrase linked to the false accusations made for centuries against Jews, often to malign them as child-killers who coveted the blood of Christian children.

Blood libel has been a central fable of anti-Semitism in which Jews have been accused of using the blood of gentile children for medicinal purposes or to mix in with matzo, the unleavened bread traditionally eaten at Passover.

The spreading of the blood libel dates to the Middle Ages – and perhaps earlier – and those allegations have led to massacres of Jewish communities for just as long.

The term blood libel carries particular power in the Jewish community, though it has taken on other shades of meaning. Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said Wednesday that “while the term blood libel has become part of the events of the English parlance to refer to someone being falsely accused, we wish that Palin had used another phrase, instead of one so fraught with pain in Jewish history.”

One of the first recorded tragedies attributed to blood libel occurred in the 12th century, when a boy named William in Norwich, England, was found dead with stab wounds. Local Jews were accused of killing the child in a ritual fashion and, according to several histories on religion, most of the Jewish population there was subsequently wiped out.

Such charges continued for centuries, with Jews often assigned blame in the unsolved killings of children. Many of the dead children were considered martyrs; several were elevated to sainthood by the Roman Catholic or Orthodox churches.

Allegations of blood libel spread during the Holocaust and persist today.

-RICK ROJAS

Senator Alan Simpson Calls Seniors ‘Greediest Generation’…

This person is PISSED!!!! Wish I were the one that sent this to the beloved Senator!!!! There isn’t a word that is false and I am believing that many Americans are beginning to think along these same lines……

This article was just posted by the Associated Press today. Baby boomers near 65 with retirements in jeopardy.

From a man in Montana….who – like the rest of us – has just about had enough!

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Hey Alan,

Let’s get a few things straight!

1. As a career politician, you have been on the public dole for FIFTY YEARS.

2. I have been paying Social Security taxes for 48 YEARS (since I was 15 years old. I am now 63).

3. My Social Security payments, and those of millions of other Americans, were safely tucked away in an interest bearing account for decades until you political pukes decided to raid the account and give OUR money to a bunch of zero ambition losers in return for votes, thus bankrupting the system and turning Social Security into a Ponzi scheme that would have made Bernie Madoff proud.

4. Recently, just like Lucy & Charlie Brown, you and your ilk pulled the proverbial football away from millions of American seniors nearing retirement and moved the goalposts for full retirement from age 65 to age 67. NOW, you and your shill commission is proposing to move the goalposts YET AGAIN!

5. I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying into Medicare from Day One, and now you morons propose to change the rules of the game. Why? Because you idiots mismanaged other parts of the economy to such an extent that you need to steal money from Medicare to pay the bills.

6. I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying income taxes our entire lives, and now you propose to increase our taxes yet again. Why? Because you incompetent bastards spent our money so profligately that you just kept on spending even after you ran out of money. Now, you come to the American taxpayers and say you need more to pay of YOUR debt!

To add insult to injury, you label us “greedy” for calling bullshit on your incompetence. Well, Captain Bullshit, I have a few questions for YOU!

1. How much money have you earned from the American taxpayers during your pathetic 50-year political career?

2. At what age did you retire from your pathetic political career, and how much are you receiving in annual retirement benefits from the American taxpayers?

3. How much do you pay for YOUR government provided health insurance?

4. What cuts in YOUR retirement and health care benefits are you proposing in your disgusting deficit reduction proposal, or, as usual, have you exempted yourself and your political cronies?

It is you, Captain Bullshit, and your political co-conspirators who are greedy. It is you and they who have bankrupted America and stolen the American dream from millions of loyal, patriotic taxpayers. And for what? Votes. That’s right, sir. You and yours have bankrupted America for the sole purpose of advancing your pathetic political careers. You know it, we know it, and you know that we know it.

And you can take that to the bank, you miserable son of a bitch.

We Need a Director of National Intelligence (DNI)

What’s going on here?

James Clapper’s televised mishap masks a deeper problem: a national intelligence office that often seems out of the loop. Tara McKelvey wrote a column on this issue in the Daily Beast.

The idea of creating this office grew out of the 9/11 Commission report. If this office was functioning before 9/11/2001 perhaps the WTC would still be standing. The office was created by President George W. Bush. The idea was to have an office that could “connect the dots” and prevent another 9/11. The office has not worked well. Perhaps the reason is that other intelligence operations have not cooperated. Do all other security agencies report to the DNI? Is there a chain of command? Who is the boss?

James Clapper was caught in an on screen interview with Diane Sawyer of ABC not knowing that a terrorist plot had been discovered in the U.K. Mr. Clapper went silent. It was an embarrassing moment for everyone.

There is clearly something wrong with the job of DNI when it has been a revolving door.

John Dimitri Negroponte was the first director of national intelligence, (In office
April 21, 2005 to February 13, 2007). He resigned the position and returned to the State Dept. His successor was John Michael McConnell. Mr. McConnell held the position from February 20, 2007 to January 20, 2009. It is not clear from public information the cause of his departure.

Dennis Blair was next in the office. He was there from January 29, 2009 to May 28, 2010. He resigned. Next came David Gompert who was designated the Acting Director from May 28, 2010 to August 5, 2010 when the current director, James Clapper, took his place. Mr. Clapper is the fourth person to hold this position since April 21, 2005.

Like any organization, clear lines of responsibility are necessary. Will straightening out this situation occur after another terrorist attack?

Promote the General Welfare

Key Words that are in the preamble to the United States Constitution. I have put them in bold type.

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Perhaps some of our Representatives and Senators haven’t read the constitution or maybe they have forgotten the words. For now we have a population of 308 million people and 43 million of them need food stamps to survive. That is 14% of our population. The USDA and the U.S. Census is the source of this information.

While those people must resort to the use of food stamps Businessweek magazine, in their final issue of this year, graphically defined the unemployed, partially employed, and those who have given up searching for a job at 17% of the work force.

Thus in an act of goodwill the G.O.P. has agreed to extend unemployment benefit programs for millions of Americans along with an extension of low taxes to millionaires and billionaires.

The benefit to America’s unemployed by the recent Obama tax deal, I predict, will be nothing. The wealthy and big corporations will keep earning profits thanks to their investments and products made elsewhere. Incentives to increase American employment are too few to impact the current official 9.8% unemployment rate.

In two years the president will be faced with the choice of extending the lower taxes for the rich during a re-election campaign. There is no likely way those taxes will be increased.

Both Congress and the president have abdicated their responsibility to promote the general welfare.