It ain't over

The NY Times reports that in July the

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re were 2,400,000 job openings and 14,500,000 unemployed in this country. That's a 6-1 ratio. When this year started, the ratio was 4-1. In the 2001 recession, it was 2-1. Yes, unemployment lags the recovery, but these numbers say that we have a long way to go before the recovery is in full swing.

Bucking the Odds

What are the odds of our 'winning' in Afghanistan now that we have a new strategy - hearts and minds? Two academics from the University of North Texas don't think the odds are very good; at best, it's a 50-50 proposition. They stu

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died sixty-six similar conflicts in the last century, i.e. conflicts where a foreign power tries to help another country defeat rebels. Details of the study are available here.

While a shift to a hearts-and-minds strategy resulted in a 'win' two-thirds of the time in post-WWII conflicts, such a shift being made after eight years of conflict resulted in zero wins. Couple this with the fact that no foreign nation has succeeded long term in Afghanistan. So, what do you place your bets on?

Doom and Gloom at Chrysler

Now it looks as though Chrysler has problems getting parts' sup

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pliers to produce parts for its new vehicles. I guess the deal in the auto industry is for the major manufacturer, e.g., Chrysler, to guarantee that a certain number of cars will be built and, if not, the parts makers can charge more for the parts. Chrysler will not make such a guarantee. So, the parts companies are not buying into the production of parts for the new Chryslers (nee Fiat).

In addition, Chrysler still hasn't decided where they will build these new models. Finally, the Fiat platform on which the new models are based results in a smaller car than the offerings from Toyota and Honda.

ROI

Two examples of the quality and moral fiber of our leaders:

• The House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee routed $100,000,000 of our money in earmarks to firms that hired the lobbyist, PMA Group, many of whose members worked for the committee. It was a good investment by the companies. They only spent $1,000,000 in campaign contributions. Oh, if only you or I had a 100-1 return on our investments.
• Two weeks after resigning as senator, Mel Martinez joined the lobbying firm, DLA Piper. He is not alone. In the past two years, five members of Congress resigned and joined a lobbyist.

The Stars or Us?

Jeffrey Sachs has a fair number of critics but his recent article, "The Failing U.S. Government", in Scientific American does make some strong points. It is obvious that the government is not operating on all cylinders. Sachs' reasons for this failure are the privatization of regulation, lack of planning, lack of skilled managers and the inability to see problems and their resolution in a unified manner.

I see a more basic reason - the quality of our leaders and of us. It isn't necessarily only a lack of talent, but, more so, it is an unwillingness to consider issues from a national point of view. And, as with so much of life, the fault is not in our stars but in ourselves. We elect these people.

Something nice for a change

For the past four years the Christian Science Monitor has been running a series entitled "Making a Difference". It's about some people who are doing good work for the world and not seeking the limelight. They're just doing what they see as their job and a fair number of people benefit from their efforts. It's refreshing to read in today's world.

Change You Can Believe In??

My growing disillusion with Obama has been manifest over the past few months. Garry Wills also appears to be disillusioned, but he thinks Obama's failures are due to the rise of the imperial presidency. He does have a point.

Anyway, I thought his summary of Obama's decisions seconding Bush was a good one.

The truth of this was borne out in the early days of Barack Obama's presidency. At his confirmation hearing to be head of the CIA, Leon Panetta said that "extraordinary rendition"—the practice of sending prisoners to foreign countries—was a tool he meant to retain. Obama's nominee for solicitor general, Elena Kagan, told Congress that she agreed with John Yoo's claim that a terrorist captured anywhere should be subject to "battlefield law." On the first opportunity to abort trial proceedings by invoking "state secrets"—the policy based on the faulty Reynolds case—Obama's attorney gen- eral, Eric Holder, did so. Obama refused to release photographs of "enhanced interrogation." The CIA had earlier (illegally) destroyed ninety-two videotapes of such interrogations—and Obama refused to release documents describing the tapes.

The President said that past official crimes would not be investigated—certainly not for prosecution, and not even by an impartial "truth commission" just trying to establish a record. He said, on the contrary, that detainees might be tried in "military tribunals." When the British government, trying a terrorist suspect, decided to use some American documents shared with the British government, Obama's attorney general pressured it not to do so. Most important, perhaps, was the new president's desire to end the nation-building in Iraq while substituting a long-term nation-building effort in Afghanistan, run by a government corrupted by drug trafficking and not susceptible to our remolding.

Even in areas outside national security, the Obama administration quickly came to resemble Bush's. Gay military personnel, including those with valuable Arabic-language skills, were being dismissed at the same rate as before. Even more egregiously, the Obama administration continued the defiance of the Constitution's "full faith and credit" clause, which requires states to recognize laws passed by other states, when it defended the Defense of Marriage Act, which lets states refuse to recognize gay marriages legally obtained in another state. Many objected when Dick Cheney would not name energy executives who came to the White House in 2002, though Hillary Clinton, as First Lady, had been forced to reveal which health advisers had visited her. Yet the Obama team, in June 2009, refused to release logs of those who come to the White House. (It later reversed itself, but only in response to a lawsuit.)

The Personal Touch

It really counts in Washington. The FDA scientists said more than once that a knee patch built by a company called ReGen Biologics was not safe. But, since ReGen is based in New Jersey and donated to the campaign war chests of NJ members of Congress, the FDA was convinced by the scientific arguments of the legislators that the device was safe. Today, the FDA is not sure they did the right thing and will re-evaluate.

Precedent is king

Bush ruled that he could indefinitely hold detainees without pressing charges. Obama agrees.

Change you can believe in??

Screwed by BofA?

James Kwak thinks we were. Kwak has a relatively complex article about Bank of America's recent deal with us whereby the bank paid $425,000,000

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to allow them to get out of their agreement whereby we guaranteed them against losses on bad investments by them. Kwak argues that we should have gotten a lot more, like almost $5 billion instead of less than a tenth of that. Many of the commenters advance the conspiracy viewpoint on the issue: it's the big boys vs. us.

A sidelight: the final bailout agreement was never signed by both parties

A Figment of Washington's Imagination?

That's a definition of the Afghan security forces - army and police - by Ann Jones, who seems to know something about Afghanistan. Her article has nothing good to say about the Afghan army or police. Our training them seems counter-intuitive when the "them" probably includes members of the Taliban. We're training them to fight just like us with the equipment we use. Yet, the Taliban seem to be doing quite well without that equipment.

One of Jones' basic conclusions is that the army does not exist. Sure, we've trained people, but they have not been very visible when battles occur. Another conclusion is that the police are ineffectual. We refuse to accept reality. We still really don't understand Afghan culture and seem unable to accept the fact that in the fourth poorest nation on earth people might "join" the army or police because they want to eat.

A side point: We have begun replacing Kalashnikov rifles with M-16s, despite the fact that the Kalashnikov is a better weapon in the environment of Afghanistan.

Temptation

I can accept that people in positions of power have a lot of opportunities presented to them by those who require the powerful to act on their behalf. Hard as it is to write these words, I do believe that some of our leaders do resist such temptations.

The latest one who seems to have succumbed to temptation is Congressman Michael Ross. I had never heard of him although he was first elected to Congress in 2000. He has become m

The question that ProPublica raises is whether special interests have gotten to Mr. Ross. Two years ago Mr. Ross and his wife, a pharmacist, sold a building to the fifteenth largest drug chain in the country. The building housed the couple's pharmacy. The sale price of $420,000 seems out of line, as the building has been valued between $198,000 and $269,000. The Rosses also sold the pharmacy business for at least $500,000 and maybe as much as $1,000,000. And Ms Ross signed a non-compete agreement in exchange for somewhere between $100,000 and $250,000.

In addition, in the past two years Mr. Ross has collected almost $350,000 from health-related industries. His connections with these industries goes further. The National Community Pharmacists Association publicly thanked Ross for an amendment to the health care reform bill that would create greater transparency in the operations of pharmacy benefit managers, who act as clearinghouses for insurance company reimbursements for pharmaceuticals. The National Association of Chain Drug Stores thanked him for introducing legislation authorizing payments to pharmacists to train patients in how to manage their medications.

Has Mr. Ross fallen to temptation?

The Graveyard

From Mike Keefe of the Denver Post

Good bank, Bad bank

There has been a lot of talk about putting a bank's toxic assets into one entity, a bad bank, and leaving a good bank with viable assets. If you have the bad bank owning the good bank, you have a situation where one of the entities. the good bank, has a solid base of capital.

Barclay's has adopted a variant of the good bank, bad bank approach; they use a variant of the structured investment vehicle (SIV) approach where they are on the hook if a loan sours but their books - at least those they show to the public - do not show the liability.

What they've done is sell $12.3 billion of toxic assets to a "new" non-bank, Protium Finance. But it so happens that Protium is being financed with a $12.6 billion loan by Barclay's and largely staffed by "former' Barclay managers. Interestingly, repayment of the loan with a relatively low rate of interest is all Barclay's will get as, if things go well, the returns on Protium's dealings will be disbursed as follows: (1) fund management fees; (2) a guaranteed 7% return to investors; (3) repayment of the Barclays loan; and (4) residual cash flows to the investors. If things do not go well, Barclay and its shareholders get stuck with the loan.

The War on Drugs

Portugal decided to get out of the war in 2001 and decriminalized drug use and possession. Here are some of the results of that move, courtesy of Mark Perry:

1. There is little evidence of drug tourism: 95% of those cited for drug misdemeanours since 2001 have been Portuguese.

2. The level of drug trafficking, measured by numbers convicted, has declined.

3. The incidence of other drug-related sexually transmitted diseases has decreased dramatically.

4. Deaths from drug overdoses have also decreased dramatically.

5. The number of addicts registered in drug-substitution programs has risen from 6,000 in 1999 to over 24,000 in 2008, reflecting a big rise in treatment (but not in drug use).

6. Between 2001 and 2007 the number of Portuguese who say they have taken heroin at least once in their lives increased from just 1% to 1.1%.

7. Portugal has one of Europe’s lowest lifetime usage rates for cannabis.

8. Heroin and other drug abuse has decreased among vulnerable younger age-groups.

9. The share of heroin users who inject the drug has also fallen, from 45% before decriminalisation to 17%.

10. Drug addicts now account for only 20% of Portugal’s HIV cases, down from 56% before.

How much are we spending every day on this war? How many wars can we fight?

George wants to know

George Wilson, a reporter of the old school, has some questions he'd like to ask our leaders about Afghanistan.

Defense Secretary Gates:

• Would you agree that today’s rela­tively small Army would be stretched to the breaking point by sending thousands more soldiers to Afghanistan on top of the 68,000 due to be on the ground there by year’s end?
• How many troopers within that 68,000 will be on their sec­ond and third tours to the region? How many of them are being held beyond the time they signed up for under stop-loss author­ity? How many of them are National Guardsmen and from what states? Where is a governor to go for backup if his state is hit by a terrorist attack, his police and firemen are overwhelmed and there is no Guard to call up because it is deployed overseas?
• What is your personal opinion of how many U.S. troops should be deployed to Afghanistan? How long should they stay there? What is your definition of victory or success in Afghani­stan?
• You have talked about the need to send more anti-bomb spe­cialists to reduce casualties from improvised explosive devices. It takes 11 months of intense training at Florida’s Eglin Air Force Base to train a soldier, sailor, marine or airman in the intricacies of finding, disarming and destroying an IED. These explosive ordnance disposal specialists are already in short supply. Where are you going to get additional ones for Afghanistan?

Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

• What is your personal opinion, not the administration’s party line, of how many U.S. troops would be required to pacify Af­ghanistan and protect civil affairs workers who would be in re­mote villages digging wells, building schools, providing health care? How many non-U.S. NATO protec­tors can you count on getting and where are they willing to serve in Afghanistan? How long would pacifying and protect­ing forces have to stay in Afghanistan? How would you meet emergencies else­where in the world with so many troop­ers tied down in Afghanistan? What is your definition of suc­cess in Afghanistan?

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, new field commander in Afghani­stan.

• What is your personal opinion on how many U.S. troops would be required to beat back the Taliban and al-Qaida and pacify Afghanistan? How long would the American force have to stay in Afghanistan? How many civil affairs workers would you need to improve life in Afghan villages? Where are they going to come from and in what number? How many armed Afghan sol­diers and police would you need to protect the villagers and the people digging wells, building schools and running health clin­ics? Do you trust the Afghan protectors or would you salt their units with U.S. soldiers and Marines to train the Afghans and keep them from getting out of line? Do you have the authority to pursue the Taliban and/or al-Qaida into Pakistan? Would the Pakistani government allow you to wipe out their base camps in Pakistan? If not, how can you hope to win?

Secretary of State Clinton:

• Do U.S. ground forces have the right to pursue the Taliban and al-Qaida into Pakistan? To wipe out their base camps? If the Taliban and/or al-Qaida moved their bases into Saudi Arabia, what could we do about it? Is that a possibility? Do you think Afghan villagers feel a loyalty to their central government or to warlords who can protect them? Many of your employees said “Hell no, we won’t go” when asked to go into the Iraqi countryside. What will you do if they refuse to go into Afghanistan?

After trying to win hearts and minds in South Vietnamese villages, the Marines wrote this in one of their many learned reports: “One overriding fact continually presented itself about the success or failure of civic action in rural construction pro­grams: No success was possible without adequate security. The peasant in the rural areas, who must live with the VC (Vietcong) both night and day, is reluctant to overtly support any program that does not provide adequate security for himself and his fam­ily against VC terrorist tactics.”

• Madam Secretary, if you agree that Afghan villagers do not trust their central government or its forces, where is that kind of security going to come from? Do you agree that the follow­ing statement by one of your predecessors, Colin Powell, about the Vietnam of yesterday applies to the Afghanistan of today? “When we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support. … In Vietnam we had entered into a half-hearted, half-war with much of the nation opposed or indifferent while a small fraction carried the burden.”

It would be nice to hear the answers.

Don't cheat on your spouse

If you do in Aceh province in Indonesia, you'll be stoned to death. The provincial parliament approved this law unanimously along with a law that prescribes 100 lashes and 1,000 grams of gold or up to 100 months in prison for homosexual or lesbian activities. Allah must be served.

Sometimes knowledge can be profitable

This is especially the case when it comes to knowledge about financial matters. While the SEC has rules that try to limit the advantages of insider trading, there are no such rules that apply to Congress. And, with a lot of attention being devoted to financial matters in today's world, Congressmen, their aides and sycophants do pick up a lot of information that could help one trade smarter. For example, a study by a Georgia State professor concluded that some senators did 12% better than the market when trading. Congressmen were not as knowledgeable; they only bettered the market by 6%. For the past three years there has been an attempt to make our leaders subject to regulations similar to those that apply to corporate insiders; this has met with failure thus far.

We have the same problem with employees of the SEC. It has guidelines to prevent 'insider' trading, but no mechanism to monitor the situation. In the words of the SEC Inspector General, “The SEC had essentially no compliance system in place to ensure that its own employees, with tremendous amounts of non-public information at their disposal, did not engage in insider trading themselves. The existing disclosure requirements and compliance system were based on the honor system, and there was no way to determine if an employee failed to report a securities transaction as required.”

Choking?

Defense News raises the question as to whether Obama will follow through on his VFW speech last month when he promised an end to "the special interests and their exotic projects that are years behind schedule and billions over budget." They don't think so.

The article is a list of chicanery effected by the Congress with regards to defense appropriations. Here are a couple of mind-blowers. Yes, they cut money for the F-22 for our air force, but they approved spending money to modify the plane for foreign sales. They keep adding to the supply of C-17s although the Air Force says it has enough. The most sinful aspect of the whole affair is how they intend to pay for many of these toys - by raiding the Pentagon's Operation and Maintenance account, which is how the Pentagon pays for little things such as training, spare parts, weapon maintenance and all the other things needed most to support troops at war.

Okay, one can justly decry the incompetence and greed of the Congress, but the really disheartening aspect of the whole thing is that it sounds that Obama and company will go along with the bandits.

Change you can believe in??

Both are war criminals

The UN has accused both Israel and the Palestinians of committing war crimes in the recent Gaza war. Israel is accused of using 'disproportionate force', Palestine of launching rocket attacks against Israel. Neither Hamas nor Israel thinks much of the report. Nonetheless, the UN report recommended that the Security Council require Israel, and the Gaza authorities, to report in six months about its own investigations into the alleged crimes. If they did not come up to scratch, then the International Criminal Court should become involved.

Will the report have any effect?

Afghanistan on Friday, Pakistan on Saturday, Somalia on Sunday

We must wipe out terrorists, no matter where they are. Our Special Forces killed an "al Qaida operative" in Somalia via blasts from a helicopter. To ensure the helicopter squadron's safety the navy had a ship monitoring the situation.

Change you can believe in??

Volcker and Stiglitz Agree

Too big to fail equates to too big to be managed. Both Volcker and Stiglitz argue for a limitation on the size of banks. Stiglitz points out that in the past year big banks have become bigger and goes on to assert that the problems are worse today than in 2007. He recognizes the political clout the banks have but hopes that the upcoming G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh will fortify the guts of the administration.

Change you can believe in??

It keeps coming back to Vietnam

Conn Hallinan and Tom Engelhardt have two devastating articles relating our Afghanistan efforts to our Vietnam efforts.

Hallinan addresses four delusions:

• The Taliban effort is really a local battle. They are not trying tonconquer America, they just want us out.


• Counterinsurgency did not work in Vietnam. Why will it work in Afghanistan?


• The surge did not work in Iraq. Why will it work in Afghanistan?


• NATO is really not behind us.

Engelhardt's article is filled with numbers as it should be since it is titled "Afghanistan by the Numbers". Essentially what the numbers say is that we could be doing a lot more for this country by spending the Afghanistan war chest here, rather than there. You really should read the article. Englehardt's conclusion:

Here's a conundrum to be considered and filed away under the rubric "impossible to measure" as you leave the world of Afghan War metrics: The U.S. continues to struggle to train Afghan police and soldiers who will actually turn out and fight with discipline (see above). In the meantime, as a recent Washington Post piece by Karen DeYoung indicated, the Taliban regularly turn out fighters who are reportedly using ever more sophisticated and tenacious fire-and-maneuver techniques against the overwhelming firepower of U.S. and NATO forces. ("To many of the Americans, it appeared as if the insurgents had attended something akin to the U.S. Army's Ranger school, which teaches soldiers how to fight in small groups in austere environments.")

Both groups are, of course, Afghans. It might be worth considering why "their" Afghans are the fierce fighters of history books and legend and ours, despite billions of dollars and massive training efforts, are not. This puzzling situation had its parallel in Vietnam decades ago when American military advisors regularly claimed they would give up a division of U.S.-trained South Vietnamese forces for a single battalion of "VC."

Here's something to carry away with you: Life is invariably hard when you set up your massive embassies, your regional command centers, your election advisors, your private security guards, your military trainers and advisors, your diplomats and civilian enablers and then try to come up with a formula for motivating the locals to do your bidding

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• Could Afghanistan Become Obama's Vietnam? (huffingtonpost.com)

Who's protecting the embassy in Kabul?

As with our other embassies in the 21st century, the answer to the question - assuming you simply want to know the name, rather than whether the embassy is really being protected - is a private security provider, ArmorGroup, a subsidiary of Wackenhut. It does not appear as though the company is doing a very good job.

First of all, the company has a hard time staffing their embassy force. Turnover is quite high (close to 100% for the American staff) so that the embassy has been understaffed; excessive turnover also severely impacts the building of the relationships that are necessary to the successful functioning of any organization.

Another requirement of a successful organization is the ability to communicate. Two-thirds of the guards are Gurkhas whose English is very poor. Then, there are the weekly 'parties' which feature hazing and other abuse of the staff.

The State Department, to whom ArmorGroup reports, has tried to remedy the situation but has not been very successful. What happened to the days when Marines guarded our embassies?

The Robbers Among Us

For sixteen years the Institute for Policy Studies has published an annual report on executive compensation. This year’s report focuses on TARP recipients. Some of their findings:

We paid the bosses well. The people leading the twenty banks to whom we gave the most money did very well. Over the past three years (2006 -2008) they averaged $32,000,000 each in compensation.

They cut their staff. These same twenty TARP recipients have laid off more than 160,000 people since the start of 2008. At the same time, the CEOs of these companies pulled down and average of $13,800,000.

And, of course, the gap between the compensation of the CEO and the average worker has gone from 30 – 40 times in the late 20^th century to 319 times today. role of shareholders.

Steroids are ubiquitous

William Astore, a retired Lieutenant Colonel, has some interesting things to say about our militarism.

A Seven-Step Recovery Program

As a society, we've become so addicted to militarism that we don't even notice the way it surrounds us or the spasms of societal 'roid rage that go with it. The fact is, we need a detox program. At the risk of incurring some of that 'roid rage myself, let me suggest a seven-step program that could help return us to the saner days of Gary Cooper:

1. Baseball players on steroids swing for the fences. So does a steroidal country. When you have an immense military establishment, your answer to trouble is likely to be overwhelming force, including sending troops into harm's way. To rein in our steroidal version of militarism, we should stop bulking up our military ranks, as is now happening, and shrink them instead. Our military needs not more muscle supplements (or the budgetary version of the same), but far fewer.

2. It's time to stop deferring to our generals, and even to their commander-in-chief. They're ours, after all; we're not theirs. When President Obama says Afghanistan is not a war of choice but of necessity, we shouldn't hesitate to point out that the emperor has no clothes. Yet when it comes to tough questioning of the president's generals, Congress now seems eternally supine. Senators and representatives are invariably too busy falling all over themselves praising our troops and their commanders, too worried that "tough" questioning will appear unpatriotic to the folks back home, or too connected to military contractors in their districts, or some combination of the three.

Here's something we should all keep in mind: generals have no monopoly on military insight. What they have a monopoly on is a no-lose situation. If things go well, they get credit; if they go badly, we do. Retired five-star general Omar Bradley was typical when he visited Vietnam in 1967 and declared: "I am convinced that this is a war at the right place, at the right time and with the right enemy -- the Communists." North Vietnam's only hope for victory, he insisted, was "to hang on in the expectation that the American public, inadequately informed about the true situation and sickened by the loss in lives and money, will force the United States to give up and pull out."

There we have it: A classic statement of the belief that when our military loses a war, it's always the fault of "we the people." Paradoxically, such insidious myths gain credibility not because we the people are too forceful in our criticism of the military, but because we are too deferential.

3. It's time to redefine what "support our troops" really means. We console ourselves with the belief that all our troops are volunteers, who freely signed on for repeated tours of duty in forever wars. But are our troops truly volunteers? Didn't we recruit them using multi-million dollar ad campaigns and lures of every sort? Are we not, in effect, running a poverty and recession draft? Isolated in middle- or upper-class comfort, detached from our wars and their burdens, have we not, in a sense, recruited a "foreign legion" to do our bidding?

If you're looking for a clear sign of a militarized society -- which few Americans are -- a good place to start is with troop veneration. The cult of the soldier often covers up a variety of sins. It helps, among other things, hide the true costs of, and often the futility of, the wars being fought. At an extreme, as the war began to turn dramatically against Nazi Germany in 1943, Germans who attempted to protest Hitler's failed strategy and the catastrophic costs of his war were accused of (and usually executed for) betraying the troops at the front.

The United States is not a totalitarian state, so surely we can hazard criticisms of our wars and even occasionally of the behavior of some of our troops, without facing charges of stabbing our troops in the back and aiding the enemy. Or can we?

4. Let's see the military for what it is: a blunt instrument of force. It's neither surgical nor precise nor predictable. What Shakespeare wrote 400 years ago remains true: when wars start, havoc is unleashed, and the dogs of war run wild -- in our case, not just the professional but the "mercenary" dogs of war, those private contractors to the Pentagon that thrive on the rich spoils of modern warfare in distant lands. It's time to recognize that we rely ever more massively to prosecute our wars on companies that profit ever more handsomely the longer they last.

5. Let's not blindly venerate the serving soldier, while forgetting our veterans when they doff their spiffy uniforms for the last time. It's easy to celebrate our clean-cut men and women in uniform when they're thousands of miles from home, far tougher to lend a hand to scruffier, embittered veterans suffering from the physical and emotional trauma of the battle zones to which they were consigned, usually for multiple tours of duty.

6. I like air shows, but how about -- as a first tiny step toward demilitarizing civilian life -- banning all flyovers of sporting events by modern combat aircraft? War is not a sport, and it shouldn't be a thrill.

7. I love our flag. I keep my father's casket flag in a special display case next to the very desk on which I'm writing this piece. It reminds me of his decades of service as a soldier and firefighter. But I don't need humongous stadium flags or, for that matter, tiny flag lapel pins to prove my patriotism -- and neither should you. In fact, doesn't the endless post-9/11 public proliferation of flags in every size imaginable suggest a certain fanaticism bordering on desperation? If we saw such displays in other countries, our descriptions wouldn't be kindly.

Of course, none of this is likely to be easy as long as this country garrisons the planet and fights open-ended wars on its global frontiers. The largest step, the eighth one, would be to begin seriously downsizing that mission. In the meantime, we shouldn't need reminding that this country was originally founded as a civilian society, not a militarized one. Indeed, the revolt of the 13 colonies against the King of England was sparked, in part, by the perceived tyranny of forced quartering of British troops in colonial homes, the heavy hand of an "occupation" army, and taxation that we were told went for our own defense, whether we wanted to be defended or not.

If Americans are going to continue to hold so-called tea parties, shouldn't some of them be directed against the militarization of our country and an enormous tax burden fed in part by our wasteful, trillion-dollar wars?

Modest as it may seem, my seven-step recovery program won't be easy for many of us to follow. After all, let's face it, we've come to enjoy our peculiar brand of muscular patriotism and the macho militarism that goes with it. In fact, we revel in it. Outwardly, the result is quite an impressive show. We look confident and ripped and strong. But it's increasingly clear that our outward swagger conceals an inner desperation. If we're so strong, one might ask, why do we need so much steroidal piety, so many in-your-face patriotic props, and so much parade-ground conformity?

Forget Rambo and action-picture G.I. Joes: Give me the steady hand, the undemonstrative strength, and the quiet humility of Alvin York, Audie Murphy -- and Gary Cooper.

Will the CFPA become reality?

Elizabeth Warren has been pushing for the establishment of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) since 2007. As chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel which has been looking into the causes of the Great Recession, she has seen the damage that has been caused by our financial system. In her latest article she argues for both banks and non-banks being subject to the purview of the CFPA. She makes a strong case.

Getting Better?

If you follow the stock market, look at the earnings of major banks, marvel at the hubris of the financial industry, you might think that the recession is over. Well, we know that it was not over in 2008 according to the Census Bureau's latest report of living standards in this country. Median household income had the steepest year-over-year drop in the past forty years. The income, when adjusted for inflation, was equal to that of 1997, i.e., all gains made in the ensuing decade vanished in 2008. Do you think that the numbers will be any better for 2009?

So, why not their own airline?

The treatment of pets in this country has become so anthropomorphic that it should be no surprise that there is now a pet airline. Pet Airways will fly your best pal all over the country and, best of all, the stewardess will check your pet every fifteen minutes. And it's fairly cheap: $150 to $400 one way.

Wait until Wednesday

Today the Coast Guard had a training exercise on the Potomac. CNN apparently got wind of it but did not realize it was a training exercise. The resulting media furor shut down Reagan Airport for twenty minutes and got the FBI into action.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Imagine what will happen when Canada simulates an attack on an Afghan village next week.

J'accuse

"Joe" Wilson seems to be a man who believes that shouting is the way to make one's point. Last night was not his first occasion to do so when the media is around. Several years ago on CSPAN he accused a fellow Congressman of hating America. But he apparently does not shout at the health care establishment, having secured almost $250,000 from this group over the years.

Sometimes shouting can backfire. the opponent of Addison Graves Wilson (how does he get the name "Joe' from that?) raised $405,000 in the past twenty-four hours.

He said, She said

How many civilians were killed in the Gaza war? If you work for the Israli army, you say 295. If you work for the radical Israeli group, B'Tselem, you say 773. The argument for B'Tselem is based on theit listing the dead, the Army does not.

Who do you believe?

Doing the Lord's Business

Where does separation of church and state begin and end? Did the football coach at a Kentucky high school cross the line when he invited members of his team to attend an outing which included a motivational speaker, a steak dinner and maybe a religious service? It's questionable as to whether the students knew of the religious service, but almost half of them decided to be baptized in the coach's church.

The school superintendent, who just happened to belong to the coach's church and attended the outing, could see nothing wrong with the kids being transported on a school bus. Clearly, she did not believe in separation of church and state.

O, Canada

Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Martin is a military attache at the Canadian embassy in Washington. There must have been many changes in the way Canada manages its embassies, as Lt. Col. Martin has apparently been given the green light to show Americans

Image by MATEUS_27:24&25 via Flickr

how much Canada is doing in the battle in Afghanistan.

His way of achieving this is to build a small Afghan village on the grounds of the embassy and have the Taliban - rather actors playing as the Taliban - attack it. As part of the attack they will create fake - but loud - IED explosions in downtown DC twice a day on September 23 and 24. One Afghan civilian will be damaged by the IED and helped by a Canadian medic. “If this works the way I want it to, more Americans will know what Canada is doing in Afghanistan,” says Lieutenant-Colonel Martin. "It should provide the full flavour of hyper-realistic training. Absolutely, you are going to hear it out on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

Does anybody besides Lt. Col. Martin think that there is a chance of the explosions causing panic? I find it amazing that he has been given the authority to stage an event that is very likely to embarrass Canada.

Grumpy Old Man

More and more often I wonder whether it is now me who has assumed the role of 'grumpy old man', the guy who even ten years ago I would dismiss as someone who could not or would not accept change, even change for the better. The eight years of the the GW Bush administration were truly hellish for this country. I am starting to have strong doubts as to whether we will ever leave the current hell. More and more it looks like we are simply moving up a level rather than escaping from the inferno.

Are we really making the world a better place by trying to defeat Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and who knows where else? Of course, one can define Al Qaeda however one wishes. They are the enemy, the ones who will, once more, attack New York unless our government protects us. Please don't remember that more Americans have been killed in our struggle against Al Qaeda than were killed on 9/11. And whose counting the wounded or the Iraqi and Afghanistan civilians?

That concept of 'the enemy' is permeating our country. This healthcare brouhaha is cast and is playing out as a battle between good and evil rather than as an attempt to solve a national problem. Judging from the talking heads in the media, it is more important whether Democrats or Republicans win than we figure out a better way of managing this country. I'm becoming more and more convinced that selecting our 'leaders' by lottery would not result in a lower quality of leadership. How can any rational person really believe that Sarah Palin is qualified to be president of this country? My state, Massachusetts, is an example of the lobotomized people who claim to lead us. What has Kerry done for the state, the country, the world in his terms of office? Does Stephen Lynch know that Ottawa is the capital of Canada? Other than Jim McGovern, what have the members of our congressional delegation had to say about our wars? Has Barney Frank been part of the cure for our economic ills?

We are still in a parlous economic state. Yet, have any steps been taken to redefine that state? What our leaders are trying to do is return to the financial world as it existed before the great recession. The same world where foolish risks were covered over via computerized models and bullshit. I'm sure that Geithner would approve of the latest panacea: securitizing discounted life insurance policies.

I can't believe that things were worse in the 20th century.

What is education?

Athletics has assumed a major role in education in this country. Most football coaches earn more than the president of their college. Many parents spend thousands of dollars in the belief that their child is athletically gifted. Reality says that a very small percentage of poiple are gifted enough to earn a living playing sports professionally. Yet, we are still willing to have our kids spend a lot of their youth playing sports with the aim of becoming a professional athlete. And, this willingness is probably no greater than in Texas. Texas is willing to allow student athletes to count as many as four courses in subjects as exotic as weight lifting or watching game films to count towards the credits needed to graduate.

Athletics is not alone in the view of those running the education system in Texas. Attending classes in marching band or ROTC (in high school?) also qualify as the type of courses one needs to graduate from a Texas high school.

Boycott Israel?

There appears to be a movement to do just that. Neve Gordon, an Israeli academic, has joined the movement because in his view

"It is indeed not a simple matter for me as an Israeli citizen to call on foreign governments, regional authorities, international social movements, faith-based organizations, unions and citizens to suspend cooperation with Israel. But today, as I watch my two boys playing in the yard, I am convinced that it is the only way that Israel can be saved from itself.

I say this because Israel has reached a historic crossroads, and times of crisis call for dramatic measures. I say this as a Jew who has chosen to raise his children in Israel, who has been a member of the Israeli peace camp for almost 30 years and who is deeply anxious about the country's future.

The most accurate way to describe Israel today is as an apartheid state. For more than 42 years, Israel has controlled the land between the Jordan Valley and the Mediterranean Sea. Within this region about 6 million Jews and close to 5 million Palestinians reside. Out of this population, 3.5 million Palestinians and almost half a million Jews live in the areas Israel occupied in 1967, and yet while these two groups live in the same area, they are subjected to totally different legal systems. The Palestinians are stateless and lack many of the most basic human rights. By sharp contrast, all Jews -- whether they live in the occupied territories or in Israel -- are citizens of the state of Israel.

The question that keeps me up at night, both as a parent and as a citizen, is how to ensure that my two children as well as the children of my Palestinian neighbors do not grow up in an apartheid regime."

The movement of which he speaks is the 10-point Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign which was started in Spain last year.

Who controls the Iraqi Army? The State or the Parties?

The former mayor of Tel Afar, which was the site of the first major counterinsurgency campaign, says it's the parties. He goes on to name the parties that 'own' various divisions and warns that unless the situation changes the chances of civil war are great. Deeper and deeper we sink.