Stupidity or Ego?

Robert Lindeman, a pediatrician being sued for malpractice, was a blogger who, as Dr. Flea, wrote about his upcoming trial, his lawyer's strategy and the judicial process. When the plaintiff's lawyer asked if Lindeman was Dr. Flea, he admitted it. The next day he settled the suit.

Another outstanding performance by DHS

Recently, Andrew Speaker was stopped for less than two minutes at a customs entry point although a swipe of his passport revealed that he was someone who should be detained. Why is this important enough for me to waste time writing about it? Well, Andrew Speaker is the fellow who traveled from Europe to America and back although he was asked not to fly back on a commercial flight since he had a rare form of TB.

All border agents were supposedly notified about Mr. Speaker. The computer system flagged his record. Why didn't the customs agents do the right thing?

More on subprime lending

The Wall Street Journal has begun a series on debt, the first article of which is about subprime lending in an area of Detroit. In 2006 over a billion dollars went into subprime loans in 22 zip codes in that city; this represented more than half of all the home loans made that year in those areas.

What was new to me was that almost half of these subprime loans were made not to home buyers but to those who already owned a home - some for 20 years - and wanted to get some 'easy' cash. I've said for a while that not everyone should be a homeowner; it may be the American dream but not all dreams are realized. But when someone who has attained the dream and owns a home for many years succumbs to the blandishments of a mortgage broker or the need to impress his neighbors, that person is just plain stupid particularly when almost anybody could see that Detroit was not likely to be experiencing an economic rebirth soon.

While some claim that almost 2,000,000 were able to become homeowners because of subprime loans, the story is not over. Others estimate that before this is over, 2,400,000 will lose their home.

Use the other guy's strategy

China has turned away water from France and fish from Australia on safety grounds. You have to wonder whether China is trying to say that other nations are as guilty as China is of producing unsafe foods.

Prove it!

As strange as it may seem, there has been no really serious, logical examination of the effectiveness of various interrogation techniques. Yet, we have an ongoing need to interrogate people. It would be nice if there were some logical basis for particular interrogation techniques, a basis for concluding that Method A worked - we got good information that we can rely on - better than Method B.

The Intelligence Science Board has begun to address this issue. They published a book last December that looked at the scientific basis of various interrogation techniques. One conclusion is that today we are really not prepared to conduct effective investigations. In World War II we had interrogators who spoke the language of the prisoners and had considerable life experience and knowledge of the culture. Today, we rely largely on interpreters. Interrogators forty years ago focused on the psychology of the prisoners, rather than on trying to get answers via coercion.

One can draw a conclusion that you can get more information with sugar than with waterboarding.

Another good article from NYR

I've referred you to the New York Review of Books several times. Well, here's another reference. It's to a review by Jonathan Freedland, a columnist for the Guardian, of books by Dennis Ross, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Chalmers Johnson.

The books by Ross and Brzezinski espouse what are by now common themes - GW is a very poor president who has done much to weaken this country. Johnson is not a fan of George's either, but he does not blame our problems solely on George nor does he believe that our behavior in the 21st century is really that much different.

Johnson's book spends a fair amount of time on the 'empire' theme as he compares the U.S. to Rome. There are a couple of tidbits mentioned in the review that made me pause.

For example, do you know how many military bases we have overseas? The Pentagon says 737 in 132 countries (190 countries comprise the UN). But the official Pentagon report does not mention Kosovo, Qatar or Israel. Nor does it mention facilities in Britain that Johnson claims we run although they are nominally under the control of England. Also, many of these countries pay us an annual fee for our support; Japan paid $2.2 billion in 2002.

The Romans maintained 37 major garrisons around their world. England had 36. We have 38. Coincidence or some sort of law?

With regard to the GWOT and the claims to power of the president, Johnson quotes Benjamin Franklin, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

What do sophisticated and unsophisticated investors have in common?

It is measured on different scales, but greed is the common thread that links the sub-prime mortgagee and the partner in a private equity firm.

The guy who buys a house he cannot afford hopes that the housing market will be one that is perpetually rising or at least until he can find a greater fool to whom to sell his house. The private equity partner is more sophisticated but he hopes that the market will rise faster than his indebtedness.

Some of these homeowners will make money, as will some of these partners. But those making the money are typically the ones who are among the early participants in a particular market. The world is not structured so that all market participants will always make money.

The question is what happens when money is no longer being made. The homeowner loses his house, the mortgagor is stuck with bad paper, the economy suffers. The private equity partner will probably not lose his home, but the suffering to the economy will likely be much worse. Look at what happened when Long Term failed in the late ‘90s. An indication that the private equity people are now getting nervous is the IPOs being issued by some of the players. If the future looks so great, why should they share it with the public?

As the sub-prime market has shady players (e.g., companies that don’t check a buyer’s earnings) so has the private equity market. In this case, the shady players are likely to be the managers of the companies being acquired. How many of these managers are more concerned with the shareholders than their own pockets?

One indication of the end of a market is the amount of media hype as to how great the market is. Google 'private equity' and see how many responses turn up.

Burnout?

I haven't paid much attention to Cindy Sheehan. I thought she was mainly seeking attention. I may have been wrong. Read her resignation letter and answer the question for yourself. There is a lot in it with which I agree.

The Turkish Parliament Meets

Courtesy of the BBC

Words and Actions

Syracuse University has established the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) as a way to provide to the public "comprehensive information about federal staffing, spending, and the enforcement activities of the federal government". Its latest report is ostensibly about the enforcement of immigration laws by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). But, it is really about a problem that is endemic to our current administration - the misuse of words. In fact, the report is entitled "Immigration Enforcement: The Rhetoric, The Reality".

The rhetoric is the claim that the mission of Immigration and Customs Enforcement is to 'protect America and uphold public safety by targeting the people, money and materials that support terrorist and criminal activities'. Well, 814,073 people have been charged with immigration violations by DHS in the past three years. Twelve - that's right, 12 - have been charged with terrorism. 'National security' is a broader term than terrorism. How many have been charged with this? 114. In fact, almost 90% of the immigration-related charges made by DHS are for such critical issues as entering the U.S. without an inspection, overstaying a student visa or not having a valid visa.

Saving us from the terrorists is today's mantra of those who care more about their fiefdom than their countrymen.

It's a very big number

This past week Jim Lehrer ran a spot on estimated long range costs of the Iraq war. A couple of different economists gave their opinion, which ranged from $700 billion to $2 trillion. Opportunity costs, which are even more enormous, were not counted.

To get a second-by-second update of the cost, click here.

One way to make a buck

You wouldn't think that you could make much money smuggling snakes. But, I guess Yahia Rahim Tulba thought he could. He was detained when it was discovered that he had 700 snakes (all of whom were alive) in his carry-on bag.

Of course you knew this

From a study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research

The United States is the only advanced economy in the world that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation. European countries establish legal rights to at least 20 days of paid vacation per year, with legal requirement of 25 and even 30 or more days in some countries. Australia and New Zealand both require employers to grant at least 20 vacation days per year; Canada and Japan mandate at least 10 paid days off. The gap between paid time off in the United States and the rest of the world is even larger if we include legally mandated paid holidays, where the United States offers none, but most of the rest of the world's rich countries offer between five and 13 paid holidays per year.

In the absence of government standards, almost one in four Americans have no paid vacation and no paid holidays. According to government survey data, the average worker in the private sector in the United States receives only about nine days of paid vacation and about six paid holidays per year: less than the minimum legal standard set in the rest of world's rich economies excluding Japan (which guarantees only 10 paid vacation days and requires no paid holidays).

You have to pay your debts

Vinod Gupta, CEO of InfoUSA, a public company that sells mailing lists, has slept in the Lincoln Room at the White House, turned down the ambassadorship to Fiji and helped fund the 2000 White House New Year's Eve party. While he has slept in the White House, his company paid the largest portion of underwriting the party, not him.

Apparently in return for these favors, his company - not Gupta - hired former President Clinton as a consultant to provide advice on strategic growth and general business issues. Clinton may be a smart guy but is he worth $3,300,000, the amount of the consulting contract, to advise InfoUSA how to better market mailing lists?

Of course, a gentleman helps not only a man but his wife. Hillary and Bill have enjoyed $900,000 worth of first class travel on the InfoUSA plane. Gupta, being a smart businessman, has had his company assume these costs as well.

Some stockholders of InfoUSA have raised the question as to whether the repayment of Gupta's debt to the Clintons should be paid by the company.

I wonder how much money Harry Truman made after his presidency.

Who cares what the intelligence community says?

Apparently, the CIA and other intelligence agencies got some things right vis-a-vis this Iraq fiasco. Yesterday the Senate revealed details of a report issued by the agencies in January 2003 and circulated around the White House and the Pentagon. This report predicted violence between the Sunni and Shia. It also noted that attacking Iraq would help Al Qaeda and other Islamist organizations.

The report was not 100% perfect. It did make the assumption that there would be little disruption of the oil flow. However, most sensible people would have at least had second thoughts. True believers would not.

At the same time this report was circulating we were being told this nightmare would be a cakewalk.

If this were ancient Japan, Bush and company would fall on their swords. Maybe impeachment is the right thing to do now.

Will your kids have a better life than you?

This has been a recurring conversation of a group of us. Our feeling is that the answer to the question is 'no'. We answer 'no' not because we are wealthy. We answer 'no' because opportunities seem fewer for our kids. For example, take one piece of the American dream - buying a house. Our first house cost $16,500. I was making $12,000 or so, or three-fourth of the cost of the house. Now, houses in that area (Greater Boston) go for at least $200,000. How many of our kids are making $150,000 a year?

The Pew Charitable Trust has embarked on a study of just what is happening to the American dream as measured by economic mobility. Their introductory report suggests that mobility ain't what it used to be. Of course, income inequality has mushroomed; from 1979 to 2004, the after-tax income of the poor dropped 9%, that of the wealthy jumped 69% and the super-rich took in 176% more.

Things don't look that great when you compare the salaries of fathers and sons. Sons in Germany, Canada and the Scandinavian countries all earn substantially more than the fathers; that is not true here and in England.

Nor are they much better looking at the salaries of fathers and sons when they were both 30 years old. Sons average 12% less than their fathers' salaries at the same age.

This will be a very interesting study.

A candidate with serious ideas about energy?

That's what you'll hear from Bill Richardson in this speech. In addition to words to promote energy efficiency, he uses other, important words that have not been heard often in the past few years - lead by example, cooperation, sacrifice, together, regional, continental.

Richardson's not the most charismatic speaker. But he speaks sense, not arrogance. The more I learn about this guy, the more I feel he is by far the best candidate to lead us out of this morass.

Bill Moyers speaks to SMU graduating class

My young friends, you are not leaving here in ordinary times. The ancient Greeks had a word for a moment like this. They called it "kairos." Euripedes describes kairos as the moment when "the one who seizes the helm of fate, forces fortune." As I was coming here to Dallas today to ask what you are going to do to make the most of your life, I thought: Please God, let me be looking in the face of some young man or woman who is going to transcend the normal arc of life, who is going one day to break through, inspire us, challenge us, and call forth from us the greatness of spirit that in our best moments have fired the world's imagination. You know the spirit of which I speak. Memorable ideas sprang from it: "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"…"created equal"… "government of, by, and for the people"…"the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"…"I have a dream."

Those were transformational epochs in American politics, brought forth by the founding patriots who won our independence, by Lincoln and his Lieutenants who saved the Union, by Franklin Roosevelt who saved capitalism and democracy, and by Martin Luther King, martyred in the struggle for equal rights. These moments would have been lost if left to transactional politics - the traditional politics of "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours." But moral leadership transcended the realities at hand and changed the course of our history.

Never have we been more in need of transformational leadership.

America's a great promise but it's a broken promise.

It's not right that we are entering the fifth year of a war started on a suspicion. Whatever your party or politics, my young friends, America can't sustain a war begun under false pretenses because it is simply immoral to ask people to go on dying for the wrong reasons. We cannot win a war when our leaders don't have the will or courage to ask everyone to sacrifice, and place the burden on a few hundred thousand Americans from the working class led by a relative handful of professional officers. As is often said - America's not fighting the war; the American military is fighting the war, everyone else is at the mall. Our leaders are not even asking us to pay for it. They're borrowing the money and passing the IOU's to you and your kids.

America needs fixing. Our system of government is badly broken.

You are leaving here as our basic constitutional principles are under assault - the rule of law, an independent press, independent courts, the separation of church and state, and the social contract itself. I am sure you learned about the social contract here at SMU. It's right there in the Constitution - in the Preamble: "We, the People" - that radical, magnificent, democratic, inspired and exhilarating idea that we are in this together, one for all and all for one.

I believe this to be the heart of democracy. I know it to be a profoundly religious truth. Over in East Texas where I grew up, my father's greatest honor, as he saw it, was to serve as a deacon in the Central Baptist Church. In those days we Baptists were, in matters of faith, sovereign individualists: the priesthood of the believer, soul freedom, "Just you and me, Lord." But time and again, as my dad prayed the Lord's Prayer, I realized that it was never in the first person singular. It was always: "Give us this day our daily bread." We're all in this together; one person's hunger is another's duty.

Let me see if I can say it a different way. A moment ago, when the reunion class of 1957 stood up to be recognized, I was taken back half a century to my first year at the University of Texas. In my mind's eye I saw Gilbert McAlister - "Dr. Mac" - pacing back and forth in his introductory class to anthropology. He had spent his years as a graduate student among the Apache Indians on the plains of Texas. He said he learned from them the meaning of reciprocity. In the Apache tongue, he told us, the word for grandfather was the same as the word for grandson. Generations were linked together by mutual obligation. Through the years, he went on; we human beings have advanced more from collaboration than competition. For all the chest-thumping about rugged individuals and self-made men, it was the imperative and ethic of cooperation that forged America. Laissez-faire - "Leave me alone" - didn't work. We had to move from the philosophy of "Live and let live" to "Live and help live." You see, civilization is not a natural act. Civilization is a veneer of civility stretched across primal human appetites. Like democracy, civilization has to be willed, practiced, and constantly repaired, or society becomes a war of all against all.

Think it over: On one side of this city of Dallas people pay $69 for a margarita and on the other side of town the homeless scrounge for scraps in garbage cans. What would be the civilized response to such a disparity?

Think it over: In 1960 the gap in wealth between the top 20 percent of our country and the bottom 20 percent was 30 fold. Now it is 75 fold. Stock prices and productivity are up, and CEO salaries are soaring, but ordinary workers aren't sharing in the profits they helped generate. Their incomes aren't keeping up with costs. More Americans live in poverty - 37 million, including 12 million children. Twelve million children! Despite extraordinary wealth at the top, America's last among the highly developed countries in each of seven measures of inequality. Our GDP outperforms every country in the world except Luxembourg. But among industrialized nations we are at the bottom in functional literacy and dead last in combating poverty. Meanwhile, regular Americans are working longer and harder than workers in any other industrial nation, but it's harder and harder for them to figure out how to make ends meet…how to send the kids to college…and how to hold on securely in their old age. If we're all in this together, what's a civilized response to these disparities?

America's a broken promise. America needs fixing.

So I look out on your graduating class and pray some one or more of you will take it on. I know something about the DNA in this institution - the history that created this unique university. Although most of you are not Methodists, you can be proud of the Methodist in SMU. At the time of the American Revolution only a few hundred people identified with Methodism. By the Civil War it was the largest church in the country with one in three church members calling Methodism their faith community. No institution has done more to shape America's moral imagination. If America is going to be fixed, I believe someone with this DNA will be needed to do it. It's possible. So as you leave today, take with you Rilke's counsel "to assume our existence as broadly as we can, in any way we can. Everything, even the unheard of, must be possible in this life. The only courage demanded of us is courage for the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter."

Some of the elders among you will remember that Martin Luther King made a powerful speech here at SMU in 1966. It's been said - this part of the story may be apocryphal - that when he was asked why he chose SMU instead of one of the all-black colleges, Dr. King replied: "Because if John Wesley were around he'd be standing right here with me." Martin Luther King said at SMU: "…The challenge in the days ahead is to work passionately and unrelentingly…to make justice a reality for all people." One of your own graduates - the Reverend Michael Waters - got it right a few years ago when he was a student here: "Martin Luther King became the symbol not only of the civil rights movement but of America itself: A symbol of a land of freedom where people of all races, creeds, and nationalities could live together as a Beloved Community."

Not as an empire. Or a superpower. Not a place where the strong take what they can and the weak what they must. But a Beloved Community. It's the core of civilization, the crux of democracy, and a profound religious truth.

But don't go searching for the Beloved Community on a map. It's not a place. It exists in the hearts and minds - our hearts and minds - or not at all.

I pray I am looking into the face of someone who will lead us toward it.

Good luck to each and every one of you.

Olbermann sums it up

This is a transcript of Keith Olbermann's Special Comments of last night.

This is, in fact, a comment about… betrayal.

Few men or women elected in our history-whether executive or legislative, state or national-have been sent into office with a mandate more obvious, nor instructions more clear: Get us out of Iraq.

Yet after six months of preparation and execution-half a year gathering the strands of public support; translating into action, the collective will of the nearly 70 percent of Americans who reject this War of Lies, the Democrats have managed only this:

• The Democratic leadership has surrendered to a president-if not the worst president, then easily the most selfish, in our history-who happily blackmails his own people, and uses his own military personnel as hostages to his asinine demand, that the Democrats "give the troops their money";

• The Democratic leadership has agreed to finance the deaths of Americans in a war that has only reduced the security of Americans;

• The Democratic leadership has given Mr. Bush all that he wanted, with the only caveat being, not merely meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government, but optional meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government.

• The Democratic leadership has, in sum, claimed a compromise with the Administration, in which the only things truly compromised, are the trust of the voters, the ethics of the Democrats, and the lives of our brave, and doomed, friends, and family, in Iraq.

You, the men and women elected with the simplest of directions-Stop The War-have traded your strength, your bargaining position, and the uniform support of those who elected you… for a handful of magic beans.

You may trot out every political cliché from the soft-soap, inside-the-beltway dictionary of boilerplate sound bites, about how this is the "beginning of the end" of Mr. Bush's "carte blanche" in Iraq, about how this is a "first step." Well, Senator Reid, the only end at its beginning… is our collective hope that you and your colleagues would do what is right, what is essential, what you were each elected and re-elected to do.

Because this "first step"… is a step right off a cliff.

And this President!

How shameful it would be to watch an adult hold his breath, and threaten to continue to do so, until he turned blue.

But how horrifying it is to watch a President hold his breath and threaten to continue to do so, until innocent and patriotic Americans in harm's way, are bled white.

You lead this country, sir?

You claim to defend it?

And yet when faced with the prospect of someone calling you on your stubbornness–your stubbornness which has cost 3,431 Americans their lives and thousands more their limbs–you, Mr. Bush, imply that if the Democrats don't give you the money and give it to you entirely on your terms, the troops in Iraq will be stranded, or forced to serve longer, or have to throw bullets at the enemy with their bare hands.

How transcendentally, how historically, pathetic.

Any other president from any other moment in the panorama of our history would have, at the outset of this tawdry game of political chicken, declared that no matter what the other political side did, he would insure personally-first, last and always-that the troops would not suffer.

A President, Mr. Bush, uses the carte blanche he has already, not to manipulate an overlap of arriving and departing brigades into a ‘second surge,' but to say in unequivocal terms that if it takes every last dime of the monies already allocated, if it takes reneging on government contracts with Halliburton, he will make sure the troops are safe-even if the only safety to be found, is in getting them the hell out of there.

Well, any true President would have done that, sir.

You instead, used our troops as political pawns, then blamed the Democrats when you did so.

Not that these Democrats, who had this country's support and sympathy up until 48 hours ago, have not since earned all the blame they can carry home.

"We seem to be very near the bleak choice between war and shame," Winston Churchill wrote to Lord Moyne in the days after the British signed the Munich accords with Germany in 1938. "My feeling is that we shall choose shame, and then have war thrown in, a little later…"

That's what this is for the Democrats, isn't it?

Their "Neville Chamberlain moment" before the Second World War. All that's missing is the landing at the airport, with the blinkered leader waving a piece of paper which he naively thought would guarantee "peace in our time," but which his opponent would ignore with deceit.

The Democrats have merely streamlined the process.

Their piece of paper already says Mr. Bush can ignore it, with impugnity.

And where are the Democratic presidential hopefuls this evening? See they not, that to which the Senate and House leadership has blinded itself?

Judging these candidates based on how they voted on the original Iraq authorization, or waiting for apologies for those votes, is ancient history now.

The Democratic nomination is likely to be decided… tomorrow.

The talk of practical politics, the buying into of the President's dishonest construction "fund-the-troops-or-they-will-be-in-jeopardy," the promise of tougher action in September, is falling not on deaf ears, but rather falling on Americans who already told you what to do, and now perceive your ears as closed to practical politics.

Those who seek the Democratic nomination need to-for their own political futures and, with a thousand times more solemnity and importance, for the individual futures of our troops-denounce this betrayal, vote against it, and, if need be, unseat Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi if they continue down this path of guilty, fatal acquiescence to the tragically misguided will of a monomaniacal president.

For, ultimately, at this hour, the entire government has failed us.

• Mr. Reid, Mr. Hoyer, and the other Democrats… have failed us. They negotiated away that which they did not own, but had only been entrusted by us to protect: our collective will as the citizens of this country, that this brazen War of Lies be ended as rapidly and safely as possible.

• Mr. Bush and his government… have failed us. They have behaved venomously and without dignity-of course. That is all at which Mr. Bush is gifted.

We are the ones providing any element of surprise or shock here.

With the exception of Senator Dodd and Senator Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidates have (so far at least) failed us.

They must now speak, and make plain how they view what has been given away to Mr. Bush, and what is yet to be given away tomorrow, and in the thousand tomorrows to come.

Because for the next fourteen months, the Democratic nominating process–indeed the whole of our political discourse until further notice–has, with the stroke of a cursed pen, become about one thing, and one thing alone. The electorate figured this out, six months ago.

The President and the Republicans have not-doubtless will not.

The Democrats will figure it out, during the Memorial Day recess, when they go home and many of those who elected them will politely suggest they stay there-and permanently.

Because, on the subject of Iraq the people have been ahead of the media….

Ahead of the government…

Ahead of the politicians…

For the last year, or two years, or maybe three.

Our politics… is now about the answer to one briefly-worded question.

Mr. Bush has failed.

Mr. Warner has failed.

Mr. Reid has failed.

So. Who among us will stop this war-this War of Lies? To he or she, fall the figurative keys to the nation.

To all the others-presidents and majority leaders and candidates and rank-and-file Congressmen and Senators of either party-there is only blame… for this shameful, and bi-partisan, betrayal.

Mining the developing world

China continues to work the developing world - especially Africa - so that it will look to it for leadership. Nigeria is one of China's favorites. Recently, China designed, built, launched and financed a communications satellite for Nigeria. China is also working to develop satellites for Venezuela, Iran, Mongolia, Pakistan, Peru and Thailand.

Gaming the system

The bombing of the Cole really frightened the Navy as it should have. It felt that it needed a system to prevent terrorist ships from getting too close to our ships. Rings of floating, rubberized barriers would do the trick, it thought. For some reason the Navy felt that the fastest way to get these barriers built was to hire a small company with no experience in the field. "Small" was important as the government reserves some contracts for small businesses.

I guess the Navy felt that they could avoid the time of going through normal procurement channels by using the small business program. Why they hired a company with no experience building the system is the question. It seems as though they did so more to route business to some of their friends rather than produce a quality system quickly. The results were what you would expect - $100,000,000 down the drain and a system that did not work.

It's Wednesday. Time for a new strategy.

Today's Washington Post reports that a new plan for Iraq is in the works. It has elements of the 'oil spot' strategy that Andrew Krepinevich proposed almost two years ago. It begins by trying to provide true security while building an effective and roughly honest government. All this raises a couple of questions:

• Is the surge strategy about to be shelved?
• Is this the final strategy we'll try?
• Why has it taken almost two years and who knows how many deaths and injuries to adopt a proven counter-insurgency strategy?

The end of a busy day

Another cost of the 'surge'

You and especially our leaders should read this story in today's NY Times. The accompanying video is particularly powerful.

Setting another record

Sometime this week the price of gasoline will top $3.223 per gallon. This was the inflation-adjusted record set in 1981. On Monday the average gallon price was $3.218. Of course, on Martha's Vineyard these prices are considered bargains.

Some Insight

The Pew Research Center has conducted a survey of Muslim Americans. Those interviewed seem to be fairly happy and typical of most Americans. However, the younger Muslims seem more willing to condone suicide bombings than older Muslims.

The survey compared American Muslims to those living in England, France, Germany and Spain. There was a fairly large difference in the economic status of those interviewed. In this country only 2% were considered low income; in the other countries this number varied between 18 and 23%.

How much influence does your economic status have on your views? I think a fair amount. Perhaps, that's why American Muslims seem more moderate.

A big one

We're building our biggest embassy in our most troubled ally's country - Iraq. As you'd expect, if it's the biggest, it's probably the most expensive. You'd be right; it will cost almost $600,000,000. What you may not know is that it is one of the few construction projects that is on schedule and within budget.

What the average Iraqi thinks of this monolith is unknown. I doubt that he would believe we'd be leaving soon. Of course, it does make an attractive target for the insurgents. There have already been a number of attacks.

I wonder whose budget is funding this.

Three Views of China

1. Quality control is not their forte
Last month the FDA detained 107 food imports and 1,000 shipments of dietary supplements from China because they were dangerous to people’s health.

Market control is becoming a forte
For example, China has 80% of the market for ascorbic acid, a preservative used in many foods. Only one company in America still makes it.

2. They like private equity
They are investing $3 billion in Blackstone Group as a first step in trying to improve the return on their $1.2 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves, most of which is now invested in U.S. government bonds.

3. They may be the first totalitarian country to be an economic power around the world.They’ve been able to grow their economy at a very impressive pace, satisfy a growing middle class and yet run the show absolutely.

What about the surge?

I heard that 4,000 troops were searching for the three missing soldiers in Iraq. Yes, it's laudable that these efforts are being made. But is it practical? How many soldiers have been wounded or killed during this search? Is this a wise use of limited resources?

Sometimes you have to acknowledge a loss and move on. This is one of those times.

Explaining it to Rudy

I haven't watched any of the debates by the presidential candidates but apparently Ron Paul caused Rudy Giuliani to go ballistic when Paul raised the possibility that maybe the Muslims thought they had a valid reason for 9/11. Here is a response to Giuliani by Roland S. Martin,
CNN contributor. Emphases are mine.

(CNN) -- Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was declared the winner of Tuesday's Republican presidential debate in South Carolina, largely for his smack down of Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who suggested that America's foreign policy contributed to the destruction on September 11, 2001.

Paul, who is more of a libertarian than a Republican, was trying to offer some perspective on the pitfalls of an interventionist policy by the American government in the affairs of the Middle East and other countries.

"Have you ever read about the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there. We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years," he said.

That set Giuliani off.

"That's really an extraordinary statement," said Giuliani. "As someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq; I don't think I've ever heard that before and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11."

As the crowd applauded wildly, Giuliani demanded that Paul retract his statements.

Paul tried to explain the process known as "blowback" -- which is the result of someone else's action coming back to afflict you -- but the audience drowned him out as the other candidates tried to pounce on him.

After watching all the network pundits laud Giuliani, it struck me that they must be the most clueless folks in the world.

First, Giuliani must be an idiot to not have heard Paul's rationale before. That issue has been raised countless times in the last six years by any number of experts.

Second, when we finish with our emotional response, it would behoove us to actually think about what Paul said and make the effort to understand his rationale.

Granted, Americans were severely damaged by the hijacking of U.S. planes, and it has resulted in a worldwide fight against terror. Was it proper for the United States to respond to the attack? Of course! But should we, as a matter of policy, and moral decency, learn to think and comprehend that our actions in one part of the world could very well come back to hurt us, or, as Paul would say, blow back in our face? Absolutely. His real problem wasn't his analysis, but how it came out of his mouth.

What has been overlooked is that Paul based his position on the effects of the 1953 ouster by the CIA of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh.

An excellent account of this story is revealed in Stephen Kinzer's alarming and revealing book, "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq," where he writes that Iran was establishing a government close to a democracy. But Mossadegh wasn't happy that the profit from the country's primary resource -- oil -- was not staying in the country.

Instead, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now known British Petroleum, or BP) was getting 93 percent of the profits. Mossadegh didn't like that, and wanted a 50-50 split. Kinzer writes that that didn't sit too well with the British government, but it didn't want to use force to protect its interests. But their biggest friend, the United States, didn't mind, and sought to undermine Mossadegh's tenure as president. After all kinds of measures that disrupted the nation, a coup was financed and led by President Dwight Eisenhower's CIA, and the Shah of Iran was installed as the leader. We trained his goon squads, thus angering generations of Iranians for meddling in that nation's affairs.

As Paul noted, what happened in 1953 had a direct relationship to the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in 1979. We viewed that as terrorists who dared attack America. They saw it as ending years of oppression at the hands of the ruthless U.S.-backed Shah regime.

As Americans, we believe in forgiving and forgetting, and are terrible at understanding how history affects us today. We are arrogant in not recognizing that when we benefit, someone else may suffer. That will lead to resentment and anger, and if suppressed, will boil over one day.

Does that provide a moral justification for what the terrorists did on September 11?

Of course not. But we should at least attempt to understand why.

Think about it. Do we have the moral justification to explain the killings of more than 100,000 Iraqis as a result of this war? Can we defend the efforts to overthrow other governments whose actions we perceived would jeopardize American business interests?

The debate format didn't give Paul the time to explain all of this. But I'm confident this is what he was saying. And yes, we need to understand history and how it plays a vital role in determining matters today.

At some point we have to accept the reality that playing big brother to the world -- and yes, sometimes acting as a bully by wrongly asserting our military might -- means that Americans alive at the time may not feel the effects of our foreign policy, but their innocent children will.

Even the Bible says that the children will pay for the sins of their fathers.

Is it toothpaste now?

There are reports that anti-freeze was found in toothpaste in Panama. Authorities there are suspicious that the product originated in China. If that is the case, it's another black mark against Chinese products. Get enough of them and the Chinese economy will certainly be affected.

We know best

'We' being three people in Cellule Africaine, a mini-CIA within the French government. The organization has looked out for French interests in Africa since the days of DeGaulle. Here's some of the ways they've done so:

• In 1979 France removed the emperor of Central African Republic and put in its own person.
• In 1986 they sent planes and men to stop the Libyan invasion of Chad.
• In 1994 they sent 2,500 troops to Rwanda to 'protect' people during the civil war. Some say French troops supported the massacres.
• In 2002 troops were sent to put down a rebellion in Ivory Coast.
• In 2007 troops were sent to put down an incipient rebellion in Central African Republic.
• About half of the French forces are stationed in Africa.
  

The group reports only to the president of France. There is talk that the group may be disbanded by Sarkozy

Still the same after all these years

My first job was as Controller of a chicken breeder. The thing that has stayed with me after all these years is the fact that it was very difficult to tell the male from the female chicks. However, since females sold for more than males, finding out which was which was vital to the success of the company. The people who did the 'sexing' were Japanese. In fact, at that time all sexers were Japanese. Forty and more years on that still appears to be the case as indicated by this clip from 'Dirty Jobs' on the Discovery Channel.

glumbert.com - The Mysterious Art of Chick Sexing

Research or Promotion

That's the question for the head of the hurricane center of the National Weather Center. The powers that be at NOAA, the overseers of the National Weather Center, cut $700,000 from hurricane research but approved $4,000,000 to publicize their 200th anniversary.

The director of the hurricane center says that the satellite which enables forecasters to measure wind speed and direction is old and failing; it should be replaced, but there are no plans for doing so.

Another Sign...

that we are no longer alone in leading the financial world. It used to be that if our economy sneezed, the world economy caught a cold. In the first quarter we grew at 1.3%, which is pretty poor. The rest of the developed world did much better. And, of course, China and India did a lot better. The emerging markets' share of capital spending has almost doubled in the past ten years; it's now approaching 40%.

Of course, what happens if we catch cold is still unknown, but it's unlikely that it will not have a major impact on the global economy. We're still just too big a factor.

He was Governor of Massachusetts...

and he made a lot of money in business. But, would you want Mitt Romney as your president particularly after his comments in last night's debate?

Here are my thoughts on Mitt's job as governor. I find it hard to believe that he is still in the running.

Hey, you never know when you may run out of a vital part

That seems to be one of the Air Force's operating principles. According to a GAO study, the Air Force has about $17 billion in spare parts that are not needed. What could we do with that much money?

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

This has been the title of the past few reports issued by the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation that is focused on promoting better health care. This series of reports compares the health systems in Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and the U.S. The latest report is based on "information from primary care physicians about their practices and views of their countries' health systems".

Like the previous reports, we don't fare very well. In fact, we rank last. The authors attribute a large part of our poor showing to the unavailability of universal health care. A somewhat more subtle reason is our chauvinism which leads to an unwillingness to adopt systems and policies that work well in other countries.

As many contractors as soldiers?

Almost! There are an estimated 130,000 foreign contractors we are supporting in Iraq. With that number of people, many of whom are armed, trouble is certain to arise. In at least one case, that trouble is murder. An employee of Blackwater, which receives $800,000,000 a year from us, may soon be tried for killing an Iraqi security guard.

Amputee Month

Over the past few weeks the NY Times has featured amputees in human interest articles.

On Sunday the Style section highlighted a dancer.











Today the Sports section featured a runner.












Is the paper on a campaign to publicize amputees? Or, is an amputee now an editor?

234 in 11 days

That's 234 bodies dumped around Baghdad in the first 11 days of May; there were 137 in the first 11 days of April. So, the start of the surge has seen almost a doubling in the number of murders. In Diyala 61 U.S. soldiers have been killed this year so far; in all of 2006 there were 20 killed. The insurgents who have left Baghdad have apparently moved to other Iraqi provinces, Diyala being one of them.

When will the surge have a positive effect?

What's wrong with setting goals?

Apparently, our leaders have a problem in doing so, no matter what the subject. Today it's global warming. We don't want to set a goal of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 or a goal of keeping the temperature increase below 2 degrees this century.

And, of course, with our fear of words we also object to the following:

A clause saying "climate change is speeding up and will seriously damage our common natural environment and severely weaken (the) global economy... resolute action is urgently needed in order to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions" is struck out.

So are a statement that "we are deeply concerned about the latest findings confirmed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)", and a commitment to send a "clear message" on international efforts to combat global warming at the next round of UN climate talks in December.

Today's stupid act

What were these teachers thinking? Is there really a need for training kids how to act in an unlikely, horrible, frightening situation? Or, was this really a prank? Would the staff have 'played' the same prank on their own children?

Lies, Theft, Corruption?

Any one or a combination of them could be the problem why between 5-15% of the daily production of oil in Iraq is not accounted for. There are few, if any, wells where the flow is metered, so it may be that Iraq misstated pre-war production. That's a possibility, but I suspect that the latter two - theft and corruption - are more likely causes of the discrepancy.

The production of electricity keeps falling. Last year the grid produced 4300 megawatts, this year it's 3800.

Job Interview

Name the country

The government earns $100,000,000 a day but inflation is at 18% and unemployment exceeds 30%.

The country wants to be 'self-sufficient' to reduce its dependence on foreign commerce, which is used by the Jewish-Crusaders to keep the country weak and dependent.

Major strikes have been a common occurrence since the Fall. In one strike the capital was basically shut down for several days.

Workers' rights have no place here because the state can keep 'the community of the faithful' free of class struggle

Imports are restricted to such a degree that many factories do not have spare parts. Oil equipment is in such a state of disrepair that the country, a major oil producer, has to import oil.

Did you guess 'Iran'?

I hope you can access this article by Amir Taheri (who does not sound like a nut case) in a recent Wall Street Journal.

Will the system grind to a halt?

That's the prediction of the Urban Land Institute with regards to our transportation infrastructure. We are just too dependent on the automobile. There are 750 cars per 1,000 Americans, 500 per Englishman and much fewer around the world. And we don't like trains. We have 300 kilometers of high-speed rail; Japan has 2,000 and is building more. We are building exactly zero.

But it isn't just our transportation infrastructure. A few months ago I reported on problems with our water infrastructure.

Another attempt at controlling information

The Bush administration must really love '1984'. Now comes word of the Pentagon trying to restrict testimony to Congress to only those military and civilian personnel appointed by Bush. Further, should non-Bush appointees be allowed to testify, the proceedings cannot be recorded.

What are these guys afraid of? The truth?

Who wants a timetable for Iraq?

According to AlterNet, the majority of the Iraqi parliament do. They claim that more than half of the legislators have signed a petition to get the question before the parliament. Whether they will be successful is uncertain.

The article goes on to claim that the battle for Iraq is between nationalists (who want a strong central government) and separatists (who do not want a strong central government). In the writers' opinion the U.S. is on the side of the separatists and have rebuffed overtures from the nationalist side. Clearly, the major media have not posed the same conflict.

Who will be proven correct?

Heads I win. Tails I win.

Not a bad deal. John Wilder, CEO of TXU, was able to play the game well. He picked up $300,000,000 according to his employment contract, which vested his stock options because the company was being sold. Guess who is CEO of the sold company? John Wilder.

Gary Loveman, CEO of Harrah's, pulled off the same type of deal. He cashed in his options (worth about $90,000,000) because the company was sold, but was able to continue as CEO of the new company.

These are golden parachutes that continue to pay even though you do not have to jump. Great deal if you can get it.

Mickey Mouse, one country's version

Maybe we should be grateful that Mickey, an American creation, is so well-known around the world that he can be used to spread propaganda among the young people of Palestine. And, then again, I saw Walt turning in his grave.

It's a marketing world...

even in the world of college graduations. It seems that tickets to the graduation ceremonies of colleges, including those that are not household names, have become hot items. Tickets to the graduation at the College of Charleston are being peddled on E-bay at $195 each, while tickets for the MIT graduation are going for as little as $50.

It's amazing how much things have changed in a relatively short time. My last child graduated from Middlebury in 2000. There was no market for tickets to the graduation. Just this past week, I met a grandmother who was in tears because the post office had lost the tickets to her granddaughter's graduation. Are graduation ceremonies becoming entertainment venues now?

Will it last?

There is certainly more than simple hope behind the union of the Sinn Fein and their Ulster opposites. Can these groups run a joint government after hundreds of years of conflict and hate? McGuiness and Paisley both appear to be willing to give it more than the old college try. Let's hope that they succeed, at least in stopping the killing permanently.

What does it mean for us?

The biggest stellar explosion ever.

Still not fixed

National Geographic asserts that the levees in New Orleans that were supposedly fixed by the Corps of Engineers still have problems.

Another cost of the war

"When the troops get deployed, the equipment goes with them. So here in Kansas about 50 percent of our trucks are gone. We need trucks. We are missing Humvees, we're missing all kinds of equipment that could help us respond in this kind of emergency," said Governor Sebelius of Kansas.

His lips should be cut off for indecency

Ahmadinijad is in hot water according to some people. He kissed the gloved hand of his former school teacher. How could he be so brazen?

More recruiting problems

Since we moved to an all-volunteer army, almost a quarter of Army recruits have been black. This is no longer the case. In fact, the recruitment rate of black soldiers has dropped by almost half. Is this a function of the war? Or, is there a deeper cause.

Further Thoughts on Town Meeting

Readers of this blog may recall my ruminations on the amount of appropriations approved at West Tisbury's Town Meeting. I was struck by the attendees' willingness to spend money, considering that many of the attendees had young families. How could these young people decide to spend a couple of million dollars more on renovating Town Hall as opposed to building a new one? Why do they accept that 43% of our tax dollars go to funding the elementary school?

Well, it may be that many of those who voted to spend this money do not really know what they pay in property taxes. Most of them have mortgages; the tax payment is usually part of their monthly payment to the bank. H&R Block does well on the Island. Many of the voters don't prepare their tax return and. hence, have no idea that their tax bill has increased over 60% in six years.

It's a weird way of managing your finances. But, hey, it's their way.

$456 billion and growing

That's the cost of the Iraq war thus far. Here are some suggestions on what else we could have spent that money on.

90% for offense

In most situations where one is in a fight, you consider your offense and your defense. When you become more mature, you consider ways to prevent fights. Is there a reason why our country cannot act as mature adult?

The security budget of the United States should be made up of these three parts - offense (the military), defense (Homeland Security) and prevention (diplomacy). We currently spend 90% of our security budget on offense. a lot of it on exotic weapons systems for which,"GAO's reviews of weapons over three decades have found consistent cost increases, schedule delays, and performance shortfalls." Yet, we continue to propose these budget-breaking systems with little regard to the need for defense and prevention.

Lawrence Korb and Miriam Pemberton have once more produced a Unified Security Budget that challenges the conventional Pentagon budget process and asks Congress to look at all three components of our security - offense, defense and prevention.

Maybe some year this will happen.

1 out of 21

This month's Foreign Policy features '21 Solutions to Save the World'. The one that stood out for me was by Mikko Hypponen, of a Finnish company, F-Secure Corp.

She addresses the issue of computer security, particularly 'phishing' by frauds claiming to be your bank. Her solution is simple: Create a new domain, BANK, which would be restricted to real banks. The fee for using this domain would be high for an individual ($50,000 - $150,000) but cheap for a bank and the process of receiving a spot in this domain would be much more rigorous than the five minutes it now takes to get a web site name for the com or net or org domains.

It's simple, yet elegant. Will ICANN implement it?

If you think our legislators are criminals....

Then, you have to go to India to see really criminal legislators. Of the 5000+ candidates for office in the state of Uttar Pradesh, 720 have been charged in criminal cases. That's almost 15%. But it isn't only candidates who face criminal charges in Uttar Pradesh. More than half of the 403 members of the current legislature also face criminal charges. We'd have to have more than 200 Congressmen facing criminal charges to compete with the venality of the Uttar Pradesh legislature.

Most of these criminals run in order to make money through the granting of construction contracts; they spend most of their time dealing with construction. As a result, child malnutrition levels in India are worse than in Sub-Saharan Africa; 46% of Indian children under 3 are underweight. In Uttar Pradesh, polio has come back; only Nigeria has more cases of polio than does Uttar Pradesh.

The problem of electing those who have either been convicted or are accused of crimes seems to be a factor of the caste system. "He may be a criminal, but he is our criminal," seems to be the mantra.

This is becoming boring

Over the past eighteen months I've written five articles about advances in chip-making by IBM. This is the sixth. Now IBM has produced a chip that is 35% faster and uses 15% less energy. They are really moving!

True love?

Basanta Roy has the cleanest grave on earth.

Government follows the Corporate World

Many companies pay their CEO and other executives exorbitantly with little regard for performance. The federal government is following suit, not in the amount of pay but in a total disregard for the executive's performance. The Veterans Administration just paid $3.8 million to its senior executives. Admittedly, that's less than what many corporate CEOs get. But the money the VA is paying out comes from us. Three-fourths of the senior VA executives got a bonus for last year. Some got a bonus of as much as 20% of their salary. Has the VA performed that well over the last year?

Reconstruction is not moving ahead in Iraq

There must have been some sort of collaboration between the insurgents and an Iraqi firm hired to build a girl's school. The building, which has not yet been completed, was filled with explosives.

Lost: One Body

The state medical examiner's office cannot find a body that they autopsied last week. It's just the latest debacle at the office. A few months ago they had to stack unclaimed bodies in a refrigerated truck. Recently, the plumbing system clogged up and basic supplies such as body bags and toe tags were unavailable.

There's a turf war going on between the Medical Examiner and his boss. The boss claims there's plenty of money to get the job done. The Medical Examiner says he has not received the money in his budget, which has increased 38% in two years.

Update:
The body was found in a grave. Apparently, the wrong body was buried as the body one of the paupers was found at the State Medical Office.

Shoeshine Boy

One story told about Joseph Kennedy, the family patriarch, was how he made his decision to get out of the stock market before the crash. The fellow shining his shoes told Kennedy about the success he had had in the market and then predicted how the market would behave over the next week. Kennedy concluded the guy was right, but, he reasoned, if a lowly shoeshine boy could predict the market, there was a fundamental flaw in the market itself. Hence, it was time to get out. Are we reaching the same time as the use of leverage becomes a tool of Joe Investor?

Part of the problem can be traced to the hedge funds, which seem to be springing up all over the place. They’re borrowing a heck of a lot of money, and there is very little oversight by the government or the investment community nor is there a lot of collateral as exotic transactions are being used which allow them to borrow with very little down. Things have reached a state where the NY Fed, SEC and European regulators have started meeting to take a measure of the risk.

We’re talking big numbers here. Hedge funds borrowed $1.46 trillion last year; five years ago they borrowed $177 billion. Margin debt of individual investors set a new record, $293.2 billion, in March. Five years ago, margin debt was $134.58 billion.

Even such conservative organizations as the Pennsylvania State Employees Retirement System are part of the crowd. Are they the shoeshine boy of 2007?

The beer battery

from Foster's

NIH

Not Invented Here is a motto used often by those who don't trust others or who believe they can create the perfect gizmo. It's a motto that some of our government agencies use. For example, the Coast Guard has been working on a ship tracking system for five years although a system was readily available before the work began. It may not have been the best, but it worked.

Homeland Security seems to have finally accepted the fact that the Interpol system of tracking stolen passports does have merit. It does not do everything DHS would like but it's good enough so that a variety of governments - France, Barbados, New York City - have used it since 2004. How many have gotten into the U.S. with stolen passports in the interim?

Something nice for a change

I had never heard of them but the Goldwater Scholarships are, perhaps, the most prestigious awards in science, math and engineering at the college level. You may have never heard of Mass Bay Community College but two students of the college were awarded Goldwater Scholarships this year. This year Mass Bay is the only college in a state that includes Harvard and MIT to have two winners. This is not a fluke as over the past eleven years Mass Bay has produced fourteen winners, more than all the other community colleges in the country combined.

The icing on the cake is that one of the winners is learning disabled, the other a single mother.

Are we more evil?

Or our police forces better? Why do we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world? The latest edition (7) of the World Prison Population List shows that 737 of every 100,000 Americans are in jail. Russia is next with 611. Then, it drops off; Iran is 7th with 214 of every 100,000. One in every 32 Americans is today in jail, on probation or on parole. Are we that evil? Or, do we refuse to accept the frailty of man? Why should Spain have 145 of every 100,000 Spaniards in jail? Are we almost six times worse than Spain?

How much are we spending on housing our 2,000,000 prisoners? How much are we spending on the war on drugs? How much are we spending on helping those who need our help?