Today's Effort

Message to Guards

2011-10-15T23:15:00.001-07:00

Members-

As you should know, several players have left our alliance in the last two days. While it has taken me some time and, sadly, great effort, I have gathered their collective group of complaints and reasons for departing. As you should also know, Trapperman is getting marrried tonight and has not been around for several days - as I'm certain you can understand. He won't be on for another 10 days while he is on honeymoon w/ Queso.

Since Dionysia left, I'm am the only remaining VH. It is my position that we honor our word and remain blue with GLADIUS and red with UNITED. Since we have been blue with GLAD, and conquered Carinthia together, GLAD has been true to its word, including passing two 14s to us and offering Trapper, myself and Dion a recurring shift in the capitol of Carinthia. That capitol, located at 700, 500, is now besieged by United. That war was started by United, which was blue with both GLADIUS and Guards prior to its porting in on the capitol, unannounced.

Many of the players who have departed complained of a distrust, if not outright hatred, of GLADIUS due to its past actions with regard to the ROM coalition and its war with us. I'm sure you have your own perception of GLAD.

My position to remain allies of GLAD is thus held against the prospect of future departures from the alliance. Since preserving the remaining strength of our membership is my first duty as VH, I think it best to poll the membership. To do so, I am requesting that each of you reply to htis message by alliance GROUP MAIL with one of ONLY two words.

YES (we stay BLUE with GLAD and RED with UNITED), or,

NO (which means we will then hold an election for a 2nd VH, who will control all alliance diplomacy until Trap returns).

The deadline for votes on the YES/NO question is 00:00 server time on Monday morning - approximately 25 hours from now. If you don't have the speakers to send a group mail, I have sent each of my FB friends a lesser speaker pack, which contains the two speakers needed to send a group mail. If you did not receive that gift, then please catch someone in AC and tell them to post your name and vote as a GROUP MAIL. If you don't know how to send a group mail, ask someone.

If there are not a total of 35 votes by the deadline, then we'll hold the polls open for additional time. If the required number of votes is met and the majority is a NO response, we'll hold an election for the 2nd VH immediately thereafter.

Finally, and I loathe to mention it, but please keep your group mail response limited to either YES or NO exclusively. If you feel the need to politic, please use AC or Skype for that purpose. Things are harried enough right now that none of us wants to sift through messages as long this one has, by necessity, become.

Now go do your part and vote.

In Immunity We Trust

2008-07-29T23:43:00.000-07:00

It takes so long to fashion a personally satisfying essay that I've trashed my last ten or so "efforts." While I've maintained a habit of tracking all sorts of outrageous behavior by the Bush administration, the Democratic (certainly not little "d") Congress and private market decision makers, the story never seems to change: the rich get richer and the poor poorer, while taxpayer money is used to socialize the risk of institutions that have (and will continue to) privatize their profit. See here, or the J.P. Morgan and the Fed-supported bailout of Bear Stearns, the Fed's ridiculous TAF facility used to prop up the remaining investment banks, and the more recent UST-supported "backstop" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

So, after months of this same old story, there was finally one act that was so disgraceful I simply had to get it down on virtual paper. A few weeks ago, you may have read about Congress passing a "modernization" of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In the most profligate act (so far) of this current Congress, the bill included a White House-supported provision that granted retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies that assisted the Bush administration in illegally (though not decreed by a court of law) wiretapping U.S. citizens within the United States. "It could not be clearer that this program broke the law, and this president broke the law," Senator Feingold said. He said the measure makes "some improvements" in the program, "but those changes are not nearly enough to justify supporting the bill." "I do not support a result that says the president of the United States, whoever he is, is above the law," said Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy. "This bill makes the federal courts the handmaiden to a cover-up."
You may have even heard numerous Obamatons (TM*) screeching that their messiah betrayed them by supporting the passage of that bill. But, as usual, that's not the whole story.

In fact, prior to the Senate's vote on the full FISA bill, Senator Christopher Dodd proposed an amendment to the bill that removed only the immunity provision. That amendment was voted down 32-66, with 2 senators not voting. Here's how your senator voted:

YEAs ---32
Akaka (D-HI); Baucus (D-MT); Biden (D-DE); Bingaman (D-NM); Boxer (D-CA); Brown (D-OH); Byrd (D-WV); Cantwell (D-WA); Cardin (D-MD); Casey (D-PA); Clinton (D-NY);
Dodd (D-CT); Dorgan (D-ND); Durbin (D-IL); Feingold (D-WI); Harkin (D-IA); Kerry (D-MA); Klobuchar (D-MN); Lautenberg (D-NJ); Leahy (D-VT); Levin (D-MI); Menendez (D-NJ);
Murray (D-WA); Obama (D-IL); Reed (D-RI); Reid (D-NV); Sanders (I-VT); Schumer (D-NY); Stabenow (D-MI); Tester (D-MT); Whitehouse (D-RI); Wyden (D-OR)

NAYs ---66
Alexander (R-TN); Allard (R-CO); Barrasso (R-WY); Bayh (D-IN); Bennett (R-UT); Bond (R-MO); Brownback (R-KS); Bunning (R-KY); Burr (R-NC); Carper (D-DE); Chambliss (R-GA); Coburn (R-OK); Cochran (R-MS); Coleman (R-MN); Collins (R-ME); Conrad (D-ND); Corker (R-TN); Cornyn (R-TX); Craig (R-ID); Crapo (R-ID); DeMint (R-SC); Dole (R-NC);
Domenici (R-NM); Ensign (R-NV); Enzi (R-WY); Feinstein (D-CA); Graham (R-SC); Grassley (R-IA); Gregg (R-NH); Hagel (R-NE); Hatch (R-UT); Hutchison (R-TX); Inhofe (R-OK); Inouye (D-HI); Isakson (R-GA); Johnson (D-SD); Kohl (D-WI); Kyl (R-AZ); Landrieu (D-LA); Lieberman (ID-CT); Lincoln (D-AR); Lugar (R-IN); Martinez (R-FL); McCaskill (D-MO);
McConnell (R-KY); Mikulski (D-MD); Murkowski (R-AK); Nelson (D-FL); Nelson (D-NE); Pryor (D-AR); Roberts (R-KS); Rockefeller (D-WV); Salazar (D-CO); Sessions (R-AL); Shelby (R-AL); Smith (R-OR); Snowe (R-ME); Specter (R-PA); Stevens (R-AK); Sununu (R-NH); Thune (R-SD); Vitter (R-LA); Voinovich (R-OH); Warner (R-VA); Webb (D-VA); Wicker (R-MS)

Not Voting - 2
Kennedy (D-MA)
McCain (R-AZ)

In case you missed the point, only 32 of 100 United States Senators voted in favor of allowing court proceedings to continue to determine whether the telcos acted illegally in acquiescing to the Bush administration's request to wiretap domestic communications without a warrant. There was never an argument that the telco's acts (as well as the Bush directive) were legal under the Fourth Amendment or FISA, because those acts clearly were not. As more details on the wiretapping are uncovered, we learn that telcos that refused to indulge the government's illegal demands BEFORE 9/11 were punished through the cancellation of their government contracts and/or the opportunity to bid on future contracts. Instead, the argument (what little there was) was whether the telcos should be granted immunity for breaking the law because the President requested it of them. This proposition was resoundingly answered in the affirmative, albeit by a "nay" vote. Thus, 66 United States Senators implicitly condoned the notion that private actors can violate your constitutional rights with impunity, but without consequence, if instructed to do so by the Executive branch. This votes represents a breathtaking abdication of duty by these Senators to defend the Constitution, and I'm simply flabbergasted that very few citizens have stopped to give it a second thought. Have we as citizens become so lazy and disconnected that we simply don't care about such violations? Has our government become so corrupt that it will allow such violations of its citizenry's basic rights in exchange for a "practical solution" propounded over countless campaign donation dinners?

Interestingly, of the few names I bolded above, there were some surprises. Evan Bayh and Jim Webb, both potential Obama VP candidates, voted with Bush, on baseless grounds. Claire McCaskill, a long-time member of Obama's national campaign team, toed the Bush line as well. Chuck Hagel and John Warner, while both Republicans, were, in my mind, honorable, law and order gentleman. Apparently that's not the case when it comes to telco immunity. And McCain as absent, give me a break, are you planning more vacation than Bush as President or just joining him in a nonchalant trampling of my civil liberties?

Following up on this most traitorous of acts, the Senate met last Saturday to push through housing reform legislation. While the waterfront has generally been covered on this legislation, there are a few exceptions. How about most private merchants being required to report details of each electronic transaction they process to the federal government? Surely you heard about that? Even better, imagine a simple amendment offered by Senator Demint that would prevent the employees of the government sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from making political contributions when the funds to pay their salaries may come from government bailout funds? Should such an amendment be allowed to be offered and debated? The answer according to Senator Harry Reid: apparently not.

I'm beginning to think that the next administration, which, along with the congress, I believe is likely to be Democrat-controlled, may be practically no different than the six years of Bush/Republican control from the 2000-2006 election cycles. Continued protection of deviant insiders and a continuing move away from the interests and rights of the average American seems to be the course shaping up for the resurgent Democrats. With homogeneous behavior such as this, why should parties matter any longer? Is the only current goal of our elected representatives simply to be re-elected? If so, why should we oblige when the results, from both sides of the aisle, appear to be equally detrimental to the interests of the country's citizens? Am I disgusted? Indeed.

Danica "Partick" Does it At Last

2008-04-22T22:52:00.000-07:00

Almost two years ago, I offered my considered opinion on the ESPN-engendered charade that was Danicamania. Well, Danicamania is back, because she's now a winner, first to cross under the checkered flag at the Indy Japan 300. Here's Partick as a winner, fiercely working her first money shot.

(AP Photo/Katsumi Kasahara)

While this may not be news to you, or for many perhaps, I have an odd affinity for Danica Partick stories. It's gotten to the point where I can't even spell her name correctly, as you may have noticed (most don't). Seem strange? Let me explain.

Every visit to this website is tracked, and it's done for free through a service called stat counter. The service lets me know who comes here, and how they got here (keywords, search engine, etc.). BFD, right? Well, it also serves as my window to the world wide web. And what have I learned by looking into that window?

Of all the admittedly brilliant essays I've composed, the most popular on the web is my Danica Partick post. Nevermind that my other essays skillfully characterized Bush as a modern-day Richard III, provided piercing insight on The Curse of Rocky Balboa and presciently unveiled our neighbors' phantom wealth. Instead, it was an isolated incident in which I published an unedited piece misspelling Patrick as "Partick" that has brought me my small share of Internet renown. You can imagine my horror. The web, however, smiled at my spelling mistake and has since kept that essay as a consistent first page reference on Google for every person on the planet innocently making the same "Partick" error. For those of us who champion proper spelling, we can be comforted by stat counter's recognition of my essay on amending the Constitution as my second-most read item. And, after much reflection, I've come to appreciate my "Partick" visitors. So, now that my steadiest readers, as well the at marginally dyslexic Partick typers, have come in big numbers, here's my take on her victory:

Certainly having suffered since the halcyon days of Danicamania, Dainca is now primed to be an even bigger star. In 2006, the date of my original post, Dania had over 3600 Google news mentions after finishing eighth the Indy 500, the IRL's top event in the United States. Her recent Indy Japan 300 victory has only garnered 2371 Google mentions for the past week, though the decidedly uncelebrated Sam King is ahead of the herd in suggesting that Danica's critics simply won't be satisfied with one victory every three years. Even Detroit now has Partick defenders. A seemingly female commentator took the brave step of dismissing the Anna Kournikova analogy only moments after Danica's victory, writing "Although it would have been nice for Patrick's first win to have come on home turf in America - and in prime time - there should be no more comparisons to tennis' Anna Kournikova, who built a reputation based on glamour but never won a title, despite coming tantalizingly close several times." Didn't hate on Anna explicitly, but clawed her implicitly-- how very feminine for Steve Herman.

Though I certainly don't aspire to argument with Sam, Freeps or the Stevie Herman, I'm afraid that the more likely truth is that Danica's victory was cleverly timed to correspond with the impending Indy 500. To recap, Partick didn't lead the race for any extended period of time-- the lap leader pitted for fuel with five laps to go, and Danica passed the new leader, Helio Castroneves (yes, the "Dancing with the Stars" guy), with only two laps to go, and only after Castroneves slowed down to conserve fuel and finish in a top position to preserve his spot atop the standings in the nascent IRL season.

After the race, a likely prodded Castroneves quipped "with five laps to go, I was saving fuel,... when Danica passed me, I realized she was the leader. She did a great job, passed me fair and square and that shows you how competitive our series is." Helio rehashed the same quote later, but a bit more "on-message", explaining "In recognition of Danica's talents, she did a good job. She passed me fair and square," Castroneves said. "I didn't have enough fuel to fight with her and I guess it's part of history. She was very competitive."

Patrick has improved her craft over the last few years, finishing seventh last year in the overall IRL standings for 2007. Still, the Indy Japan 300 was a bittersweet victory at best. Imagine a first PGA victory for a well-publicized upstart against Tiger Woods, where Woods, after watching his playing partner hit the green for a tournament-winning birdie attempt, lays up on the 18th to protect his lead for the future prospect of a season title. While the upstart still has to make the short putt, that putt does not make him a hero or provide any honor to his victory.

Viewing the Danica victory in the same context, it seems all too convenient coming in time for the Indy 500. But don't believe me, check ESPN or your local sports newscast on the morning of Memorial Day, and I'll bet you'll be barraged by news of Danica's victory in the Japan 300, as well as numerous glamour shots to induce some hillbillies to buy Axe body spray.

As the video below from The Racing Capital of the World indicates, Partick better keep her heel to the floor if she wants to survive in Indianapolis. Rumor has it that Jessica Vasquez will be out in time to compete in the 500, maybe in the McDonald's car. Told you that bitch was crazy.

Wonder who's she supporting in the upcoming primary? Her party affiliation is irrelevant, as Indiana has open primaries (well, sort of).

I may travel to Indianapolis for the festivities, financing the trip through sales of "Past is Prologue" t-shirts. Be sure to check back later for pictures. To save both of us time, I'll monitor the "Partick" counter and report back after Memorial Day. Until then, you can worry about our lesser problems.

Take Me Out to the Ballpark

2007-04-03T13:21:00.000-07:00

As April begins, the doldrums inspired by a Northwest winter begin to fade. The stage is being opened as baseball fields across North America are manicured with a standard of care rarely seen outside the walls of Augusta National. Hundreds of thousands of players, ranging from grizzled veteran specialist relievers to six-year old teeballers, will play organized baseball in the months to come. Tens of millions will witness the games, and each individual's experience will be different. Some spectators are avid fans, keeping score by hand while listening to the local radio broadcast on handsets so technologically anachronistic that you now have to go to a second-hand store to find one. Other visitors to the park may care less about the particulars, attending to cheer on their favorite player, their spouse or children. Still others will be there simply based on consequence-- being drug along by a Fever Pitch-like spouse or succumbing to the siren's song of dollar beer night. All of these characters and more are on display nearly every night at a baseball park near you.

My love of baseball, like many other avid fans, stems from my childhood. I was lucky enough to grow up in a family and neighborhood that supported outdoor recreation, including baseball. I treasure memories of slapping a Wiffle ball over a chain link fence and, later, encountering for the first time the realm of competitive sports and, as often the youngest participant, the concepts of hierarchy and machismo. Equally rewarding were trips to Busch Stadium attending St. Louis Cardinals games, where I saw greats such as Ozzie Smith in the prime of his career and oddities like backup catcher Glen Brummer (4 career stolen bases) stealing home plate in the extra-innings of the second game of a midsummer doubleheader. I continued playing baseball, first at catcher, then right field and, on a very few occasions late in that period, as a pitcher. At age 15, other organized sports began to dominate my time and baseball's importance began to fade from my memory.

In the summer of 2002, I fell in love with baseball again, but this time as a spectator. During that time, I was working extremely long hours in a job and city that had closed in around me. All the concrete, collating and commuting created in me an unconscious yearning for things pastoral. I only found succor by happenstance-- a chance encounter with an old friend that had tickets for that evening's Mets game. I don't remember much of anything about the opponent or outcome, but everything about the sights, sounds and spirit of the ballpark that night. For the first time in years, I was back in the stands, amongst the fray Americana, this time at Shea Stadium. Adults cursing in the company of toddlers, $7 beers disappearing into the bellies of middle-aged men and women faster than the chances for democracy in Iraq, and women dressed in clothes that clearly indicated their concerns were aimed at an entirely different kind of box score-- all these sights and more captured my attention, freeing me from the shackles of my urba-corprafessional existence. In an odd way, I felt more a part of the New York City community that evening than I ever did, before or after the episode. This wildly diverse population gathered around the diamond with individual agendas but shared an experience of community and focus, if only for select moments: the National Anthem, the first pitch. I'm among a select few who will never forget the foul ball laced towards the home dugout, flying over our heads, and coming to its first resistance-- a hard, twined missile meeting flush the forehead of one truly unfortunate. Paying attention to nothing other than her cellphone, the poor girl never saw it coming. An admittedly larger fraction of fans collectively suffered the seemingly endless number of planes departing La Guardia, and surely the seventh inning stretch and sing meets that criteria as well. The girl hit by the ball? While seemingly recovered of her faculties upon receiving seat-side care, I doubt she'll see much of worth in this essay.

After that evening, I made the baseball park my refuge. Over time, I joined fantasy leagues, absorbed statistics and learned baseball strategy, technique and history. Having this knowledge enhances my current experiences at the park, and I now look back on my baseball youth (and to some extent general youth) with some disdain, for I failed at that time to contemplate the significance or complexities of the game I was playing. In those days it was close your eyes and swing as hard as you can; throw it as hard and fast as you can. Strategy was never learned, technique never sought and history inconsequential-- the perfect form of childrens' entertainment, but an endless source of regret for we thirty-year old arm-chair athletes.

So now I go to the park for the game, where informed observation gives me endless pleasure as each day I can witness the competition, with the joy of winning and quizzical gapes of disappointment on display for all to see, each and every night over the course of a long season. If you come out often enough, you'll see the both the best and the worst of our species. I've witnessed the excitement of a rookie pitcher throwing a brilliant no-hitter on the road, standing triumphantly before a cheering throng that fate will likely never embellish upon him again. I've also seen managers throw tirades that would stun even the most unruly of infants.

And it's not only managers that misbehave on the field-- baseball has a long history of players losing their wits and assaulting other players, sometimes even fans. In one famous incident, Ty Cobb allegedly (I wasn't there--here's the best source I found) climbed in the stands to reprimand a heckler, mercilessly beating the disabled man, who was equipped with only one hand, albeit of three fingers.

The legend continues that Cobb was suspended and, three days later, went to the park that day with his teammates. When Cobb was refused entry onto the field, his teammates protested, refusing to play. Team management was prepared, and fielded a contingent of semi-pro players hurriedly stitched together only hours before. Allen Travers was the only pitcher on the roster that day, tossing all eight frames, surrendered 14 earned runs on 26 hits en route to a 24-2 whitewashing. Travers never played another major league game and, after a life as an educator, died in 1968. Cobb watched the game from the stands, returning to the professional game days later. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936 by 98.23% of those voting.

That is baseball to me-- the shared experience occasionally sprinkled with heroic triumph and ghastly misdeed, every game at every level being played by the same rules and holding the same initial possibility of greatness. What more can one ask for from a summer's evening?

Finally, a word on the present state of Major League Baseball. While many bemoan the presence of performance-enhancing drugs in the sport and others immerse themselves in statistics and decry a perceived lack of parity in the leagues, I stridently ignore such balderdash, believing that baseball, as a shared experience, is reflective of society. People cheat and score is always being kept--if players are stupid enough (and owners greedy enough to allow players) to risk health and future compensation for additional strength in a game that demands precision, not brawn, then that's their fault, not the game's. The game is still pure, despite the protestations of biased writers and morons barking on sports talk radio. Outside of the pundits, a cottage industry of insidious stat-checkers has sprung up and all of the sudden half of the world believes it can predict the outcome of an entire baseball season months in advance of its actual conclusion. Certainly a club's money and its players' statistics matter to some extent, but each game starts with a clean slate, 0-0 with at least twenty-seven chances to score. The performances of each individual day in the context of an entire season are the meat of baseball, not an extended streak of excellence or a career of legendary long balls. Today's superstar may be tomorrow's journeyman minor leaguer. While I'm not often wont to support Joe Morgan, he did make his one excellent point of this season already, quipping on Opening Day, "you can use statistics to embellish the point, just don't let it be the point." Statistics alone can never predict a particular success or failure, and certainly can't capture the most important aspect of the game-- how will that player perform today?

So, this summer, I hope you may benefit from the contents of this essay as I have for seasons past. Take yourself out to the ballpark. Sneak in some peanuts and cracker jacks. Pay attention to the game if you want, but definitely pay attention for foul balls. Cheer for the players or get wasted and heckle the other team and umpires: the ballpark is your stage too. My bet is that you won't care if you ever come back. Play ball!

Solving the Iraq Crisis Through Legislative Action: The letter that started a revolution

2007-01-12T00:07:00.000-08:00

Since posting yesterday's essay, I've had a chance to reflect on some of my own thoughts and believe I may have found the ideal way for Congress to end the war in Iraq on terms we, as Americans, can all live with. To best understand my proposed solution, I think its best that you read yesterday's essay for background on the Constitutional powers of each branch at play here and the concept of supplemental budget requests. If you feel familiar with those concepts or have already read "yesterday's effort" on them, then please continue. I'm so convinced this solution will work that I sent it to numerous United States Senators. Absent pleasantries, the text below is the same that was sent to them, under the heading, "Solving the Iraq Crisis Through Legislative Action." Here goes:

Congress should respond to Bush's supplemental budget request with funding that lasts until a date certain. To make this solution politically feasible, the Democrats would have to publicly set a deadline (say Bush's benchmark from last night that control of all Iraqi provinces is ceded to Iraqis by November) and only provide funding for operations up to that date. Since the next meaningful supplemental budget request is due in mid-February, the Democrats could announce the November deadline and send such a bill to Bush with ample notice of the deadline. Only three possible scenarios could result:

If Bush doesn't sign it, he's looks like he does not believe in his own program and, in that light, does not deserve the money anyway. The next logical step from there is an announcement and appropriation that provides a significantly lesser amount of money with the expressed, yet unwritten purpose of the money being used for redeployment. If Bush does not sign this, then the war effort, in terms of funding, is at an impasse via legislative impudence-- a stalemate. A storied and ennobled Congress faces an empowered yet ignominious executive. In this zero sum battle, assuming a significant majority of public opinion remains as it does today (against an expansion of the war), then "public opinion" tilts the scale in favor of Congress. Public opinion has to mean something, doesn't it?

If Bush does approve the deadlined appropriation and things don't get better in Iraq by November (less casualties, economic development and some semblance of civil tranquility), then he's had every chance and we should redeploy our troops to perform a limited function: to protect American interests in Iraq (read: oil, just maybe). Before redeploying in such a fashion, Congress passes a new war powers resolution that funds this small, relatively inert peacekeeping force in Iraq, while clearly stating that any foreign intervention in Iraq's government or military institutions or any strike against its interests is an act of war against the United States. Thus, the Iraqis are not only motivated but required to broker an internal solution and any group or nation who thinks to meddle in or attack Iraq will do so with knowledge that such action will immediately qualify them for a rain of space age Nintendo weapons they will never forget. As an aside, a provision for determining the identity of the meddler/attacker should contain a preponderance of the evidence standard to avoid any WMD type fiasco. We fixed the intelligence problem, right?

Finally, if Bush signs the deadlined appropriation and, through the determination that only comes when one is working against a deadline, things do get better, then we all win and can close this sad chapter of American history. Thereafter, perhaps Americans could summon the wherewithal to solve significant domestic problems like initiating significant funding for the research and development of sustainable energy, resolving equitably the Social Security/Medicare funding crisis and addressing the immigration issue before the "us vs. them" rhetoric metastasizes and tensions boil over into social disorder.

Now, that's a plan we can all live with.
----------------------------------------

[Update: (1/30/06) Looks like our Congress has heard my words. Senator Feingold, a recipient of the above letter, opened the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing entitled “Exercising Congress’s Constitutional Power to End a War” with these words:

“Tomorrow, I will introduce legislation that will prohibit the use of funds to continue the deployment of U.S. forces in Iraq six months after enactment. By prohibiting funds after a specific deadline, Congress can force the President to bring our forces out of Iraq and out of harm’s way. This legislation will allow the President adequate time to redeploy our troops safely from Iraq, and it will make specific exceptions for a limited number of U.S. troops who must remain in Iraq to conduct targeted counter-terrorism and training missions and protect U.S. personnel. It will not hurt our troops in any way – they will continue receiving their equipment, training and salaries. It will simply prevent the President from continuing to deploy them to Iraq. By passing this bill, we can finally focus on repairing our military and countering the full range of threats that we face around the world.”

Later the same day, Senator Obama, who also received my letter, said today from the Senate floor that he will be introducing legislation entitled the "Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007," in which Congress would require a redeployment of U.S. combat forces to start by May of this year and be completed by March 2008. Moreover, The plan allows for a limited number of U.S. troops to remain as basic force protection, to engage in counter-terrorism, and to continue the training of Iraqi security forces. If the Iraqis are successful in meeting the thirteen benchmarks for progress laid out by the Bush Administration, this plan also allows for the temporary suspension of the redeployment, provided Congress agrees that the benchmarks have been met and that the suspension is in the national security interest of the United States."

So, given these "new" policies, it's clear that my letter set the Democratic (little "d" too) policy revolution into motion. Such is the power of words, which, in this case, only needed to be made available to our representatives who so treasure the input of citizens, and especially that of citizens not from their districts. A lesson from this bit of wisdom could not be more clearly enunciated than by Henry David Thoreau who cleverly formulated: "It takes two to speak the truth — one to speak and another to hear."

Bush's New Iraq Policy: Now is the Winter of Democratic Discontent

2007-01-10T22:36:00.000-08:00

Astute readers will quickly note the latter portion of this essay's title is a bastardization of the opening line in Shakespeare’s Richard III, the story of a megalomaniacal villain who consolidates state power through murderous devices but is ultimately defeated and deposed. The play is riddled with intrigue and many of its themes and lines are surprisingly relevant to the ongoing confrontation between the Democrats and commander-in-chief Bush.

After dispatching his Secretary of Defense and two commanding generals in Iraq, Bush has set forth a plan to "surge" more than 20,000 troops into Iraq in the coming months to shore up our nation's position in a conflict he describes as "the decisive ideological struggle of our time." While admitting in his speech that some prior mistakes had been made, Bush quickly switched tact to the "task ahead" in an apparent attempt to galvanize popular support for a last push in Iraq. Interestingly, he was undercut by one of own, albeit unidentified, aides, who stated that "[N]obody is under illusions that the public is going to be turned around on this ... what you hope to accomplish with a speech like this is to show the public that there is a genuine, deep and fundamental change and there's a good chance of success."

Democrats, buoyed by their recent success in the mid-term election, have massed their troops and are preparing an invasion of Bush's metaphorical policy isle. The Democrat's response to Bush's new policy sought to rebut it by stating "[E]scalation of the war in Iraq is not the change the American people called for in the last election... it is time to begin the orderly redeployment of our troops so that they can begin coming home soon." A keen reader will note the difference in the terms of the two opposing sides, surge vs. escalation. The former seems temporary and evokes the images of a runner expending one last great effort to cross the finish line, while the latter plainly portrays an increase in hostilities accompanied by increased death and destruction. Such is the power of words. Though such differences in terminology can be useful in assessing the true motives of a speaker, the reader will find it advantageous to ignore such distinctions currently and focus on the crux of the Iraq issue: the threat of terrorism.

In President Bush's phraseology, the threat of terrorism stems from "extremists who kill the innocent, and have declared their intention to destroy our way of life." It is his announced belief that a withdrawal of American troops from Iraq (a "failure" in his words) would precipitate the following: "Radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region, and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions. Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people."

In the author's estimation, the bolded text above is the true fear of the Bush administration, just as it has been of many a past administration. The nationalization of petroleum resources by regimes "unfriendly" with the United States serves to disrupt two very important goals of those who inhabit the halls of American political power: securing fossil fuels to insure the continuation of our hydrocarbon-dependent economy and, perhaps more importantly, providing Western-based corporations access to those resources such that they can exploit the production and sale of those resources and, in turn, stuff the pockets of their shareholders and, to a lesser degree, the politicians who guarantee their future access to those same or future resources with the occasional exercise of military force. For Bush, the Shakespearean parlance would replace "horse" with "oil, oil, my presidency for oil." For historical evidence, take a moment to learn the brutal history of the difference between oil nationalization and oil privatization in both Iraq and Iran. Before the reader sounds the anti-capitalist, conspiracy nut alarm, simply consider the following formulation: if the Darfur region of the Sudan sat on top of a valuable resource, would our President continue to ignore the plight of innocent victims of genocide?

Another fear that has been marched out incessantly over the last few years is that “fighting them over there keeps them from coming here.” Likewise, Bush asserts that if our troops were to leave Iraq, the “terrorists” would follow us here. The image is that the streets of America would be filled with terrorists detonating bombs and bringing down airplanes and the electricity grid. Well, if that is the case, then perhaps the policy and extraordinary amounts spent on the Department of Homeland Security need to be questioned. Ever since I’ve had to travel with my toiletries in a plastic bag, I feel safe that no terrorists could commandeer my aircraft or use a cellphone to call any of their friends. What about you?

The remainder of Bush's illusions that he claims would result from an American withdrawal/redeployment are equally asinine. The claim that "extremists would be emboldened and would gain new members" seems to reflect the current state of events with and swelling numbers in “extremists,” likely perpetuated by what they believe to be his unjustified aggression in foreign lands and continued support of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Otherwise, you must believe that "radical Islamists" are spontaneously regenerating or multiplying through accelerated meiosis. If they are not, then either we're not really killing them, or as Bush would probably prefer, we're not killing them fast enough.

As far as Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology is concerned, that appears to be happening regardless of our presence in Iraq. Moreover, Iran has never claimed to have any goal other than developing nuclear technology for civilian purposes, albeit while they sit within range of Israeli nuclear missiles provided by the United States. Though no evidence has been presented that Iran seeks a nuclear capability for military purposes or that a compromise could not be reached to bring United Nations' or IAEA supervision to Iranian nuclear engineering, our President still found opportunity to implicitly threaten Iran in his speech.

To wit, Bush stated "We'll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq." His logic is that one force (the U.S) is justified in attacking anyone (Iran or Syria) who supplies arms or support to a force that is a declared enemy (the "terrorists/insurgents" in Iraq). If this logic is justified, then Hezbollah had every right to attack the United States this summer as the United States rushed bombs to Israel to be dropped on the portions of Lebanon inhabited by Muslims. However, when the United States supplies the weapons its "defending freedom and democracy" and when Iran or Syria does it, that's "terrorism." The power of words indeed.

Another glaring example of the power of words is Bush's use of the phrase the "decisive ideological struggle of our times" to trump up the kind of us vs. them support his entire presidency has been based upon, in one form or the other. I simply cannot believe that someone hates me for my freedom and liberty. Instead, I imagine if a radical Muslim hates me as an American at all, it’s because of our culture's perverse worship of both the mundane and the materialistic. An interesting analogy can be drawn from a recent story originating in Florida. A small island community named Briny Breezes lies nestled between the Atlantic Ocean and the Intercoastal waterway in Palm Beach County, Florida. Since the 1920, families had rented lots in the winter to park their trailer on and enjoy some time in the Florida sun. In the 1960s, the community banded together to set up a cooperative community with shareholders, bylaws and the like. The lots were passed on through families and rare sales for the next forty years. The common man owned a small slice of paradise. Recently, a large developer came along and offered the community over $500 million to sell the entire island-- a boon that offered residents between $700K and $1M for their individual lots. Not surprisingly, over 80% of the residents voted in favor of the sale, which was celebrated in the local press and on Fox News as residents "cashing in." All they had to do was sell the most valuable asset many of them will ever possess. Sure it would have been worth twice as much in ten or twenty years, but our culture revels in and demands instant gratification. In contrast, the people of the Middle East are refusing the industrial powers offers to buy their land, even at a price far exceeding that any Briny Breezes resident could likely imagine. Saudi Arabia got into the game early and had rulers both shrewd and wise enough to allow only minimal Western influence over their oil industry while retaining the lion's share of the profits and piling that money into preserving its culture. That in essence is the difference in ideologies, a set of cultures in Iran and Iraq that are refusing to sell outright their assets to a Western culture that has proved for the last fifty years that if they can't buy it or control it through a coup, they'll bomb it.

The legal umbrella governing the metaphorical "war on terror" and Bush's new plan to intensify his war in Iraq is the Constitutional power of the President, as commander-in-chief, to wage war. As any seventh-grade civics student (should) know, Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution grants Congress the power to declare war, while Article Two, Section Two, Clause Eight provides that the President "shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States." The inherent tension between these two provisions was intended by the Founders as a way of splitting the war power between the legislative and judicial branches. By design, the legislative branch started and funded the wars while the President developed and executed the strategy. There is much ado about this tension between the executive and Congress and the reader can learn more here if so inclined. In any event, the power to wage war, at least temporarily, was bent in favor of the executive by the War Powers Act of 1973, which granted the executive the right to deploy forces without Congressional approval for at least sixty days, a period that could be extended indefinitely (or so it appears) by a joint resolution of Congress.

On September 18, 2001, Congress passed such a resolution, empowering President Bush to wage war "against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons." A close reading of the resolution, with a nod to the theory that there exists an unlimited network of Al-Qaeda terrorists, empowers the President to legally wage war against Al-Qaeda wherever it may be found. This was the legal basis for the recent military strike in Somalia. As many Democrats have argued since the war on terror has turned sour, this resolution gives the President power to wage an unending war until Al-Qaeda as long as such action prevents any "act of international terrorism against the United States" by Al-Qaeda. How the killing of some guy in a hut in Somalia, tens of thousands of miles away prevented an "international act of terrorism against the United States" is certainly a matter for intelligent, but not politically-correct, discussion.

A second resolution under the War Powers Act of 1973 was passed to allow the President to attack Iraq, as apparently the Al-Qaeda-Iraq connection was only sufficient to pass public, not legal, scrutiny. This second resolution, passed October 10, 2002, authorizes the President to use the armed forces to "defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and... enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq." However, unlike the first resolution, the President must show that "acting pursuant to this joint resolution is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations." That's why Bush always says we're fighting a war against terrorists in Iraq, not killing Iraqi citizens to exploit their resources.

Interestingly though, neither of these resolutions gives the President the power to attack Syria or Iran. Of course, he could use the initial sixty day period to launch strikes, but, in order for that effort to continue, the Democratic-controlled Congress would have to pass a new resolution to authorize Bush to continue waging war against Iran or Syria. Not even Sean Hannity or Michelle Malkin would have the unmitigated gall to suggest that Syria or Iran was involved in 9/11 (though, perhaps, I underestimate them). However, given the consequences of a military strike against Iran or Syria, it is unlikely that Congress would deny such a resolution amidst armed conflict with any nation. Thus, if Bush chooses to attack these countries on whatever basis, contrived or not, it is unlikely Congress would stop him.

As regular readers may remember, I presciently noted in early November that should Democrats gain control of Congress, their most effective technique to curtail Bush's war on terror would be to exercise another of the legislative branch's enumerated powers, namely the power to collect taxes and appropriate those monies for the defense of the country. The metaphorical "war on terror," however ridiculous its aims, must be funded by the Congress. To date, Bush has used the supplemental budgetary process to fund this "war." Before his rise to the Presidency, supplemental budget requests were used sparingly for initial funding of wars or disaster aid. Supplemental budget request do not have to abide by a myriad of rules applicable to normal budget requests, including a deficit threshold requirement. However, Congress still has the power to deny such requests or fashion their grant of monies in a way that can prevent those monies from being spent on particular purposes. Such budget control was exercised by Congress in the 1970s to fence in Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, which, some would argue, helped to end the Vietnam War.

However, as numerous pundits were quick to presume, an exercise of such restraint by Democrats today would be political suicide, leaving our soldiers without the funds they need to operate in Iraq. I disagree. If, for example, the Democrats were to take Bush to task on his pledge that control of all Iraqi provinces are to be handed over to Iraq in November 2007, they could make a very public announcement immediately that they will only grant funding for the war effort until that date. Despite conservative protestations, nobody believes that Congress would defund the war at the expense of the safety of American soldiers or that it wishes to engage in the day-to-day management of the war effort. But it is time to demand results-- to fish or cut bait. By setting a clear funding deadline, yet in a timeframe long enough to allow true progress, real results might be achieved. If results were achieved and our casualty rate dropped significantly while Iraqi government and military institutions matured, perhaps funding could be extended. If Bush fails however, Congress could appropriately curtail or terminate funding for the war, but would necessarily have to provide a stern warning to Iraq's neighbors that any intervention on their part to disrupt the nascent Iraqi democracy would be met with military force. Needless to say, if the November deadline approached and Bush signaled the expansion of his war instead of submitting to public scrutiny, then impeachment would not only be justified, but absolutely necessary. By setting forth this structure, Congress can insure that Bush's nation-building in Iraq is forced to meet discernible benchmarks and that the failure to meet those benchmarks ends what to date has been a failed, open-ended mission.

While heads will spin in the near future debating whether Bush's new policy will be effective or not, you, as a reader that has come this far, can be comfortable knowing that if his policy fails, there are ways to stop this war and still protect America and her interests abroad. However, if Congress fails to exercise the will such powers provide, then Bush's plan and America's immediate future may suffer the same fate as that of Richard III, who before his fall in the final battle at Bosworth Field tells his troops of his strategy, "If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell."

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Hold Your Horses: The Karl E. Mundt Guide for Retaining A South Dakota Senate Seat

2006-12-14T04:35:00.000-08:00

The conservative echo chamber is atwitter today with the news that Democratic Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota suffered a stroke yesterday and is currently on the operating table undergoing brain surgery at George Washington University hospital. As Fox news continues to repeat every three minutes, the AP reports that Johnson is in critical condition. Demagogues like Michelle Malkin and the blowhards at redstate.com are pausing for a single sentence of feigned empathy for the Senator's plight before (metaphorically, at this point) dancing over his lifeless corpse and the consequent prospect of a Republican-controlled Senate. While the polls are still open, early indications are that Tony Blankley leads in the category for the most creative expression of feigned empathy through his usage of the word "ghoulish" to describe his apparent distaste for any analysis of a post-Johnson world... and then three seconds later launching into an extensive exposition on the potential upside for Republicans. By the way, it doesn't make a difference that he's getting paid to do it... the adjective reprehensible applies as equally to Blankley as it did to the Nazis on trial at Nuremberg. As of 6:39 AM PST, the award for beating this story to death goes to the Fox News Channel who, by my admittedly unscientific count, has mentioned the word "Johnson" 477 times in the last hour, "critical condition" 256 times, variations of "Republican control of the Senate" 135 times and "vacate his seat" 64 times, all while providing a live camera on the front door of the hospital for the last 38 minutes. Reprehensible.

If Johnson were to pass away, be unable to vote or resign his post, then the Republican governor of South Dakota, Mike Rounds, would appoint a replacement to serve out the remainder of Johnson's term, which expires in 2008. Given Rounds' political affiliation and the Republican dominated South Dakota state legislature, it is conceivable that Rounds would defy the will of the electorate and appoint a Republican to fill the Democrat's vacated seat.

However, if Johnson does survive surgery, it is solely his decision to keep or vacate his seat. If he were disabled to the point that he could not be present in the Senate (and thus could not vote--as only a Senator, not staff or other proxy, can cast a vote), control of the Senate would remain in the hands of the Democrats/Independents by a one vote margin (50 to 49). If however, Johnson were to vacate his seat or pass away and a Republican were appointed in his stead, control of the Senate would pass to the Republicans, with VP Dick Cheney, acting as President pro tempore of the Senate, casting the tiebreaking vote in any 50 to 50 tie. Under this structure, Republicans would appoint the chairmen of Senate committees and control the chamber's legislative agenda.

Thus, if Johnson survives (in an albeit debilitated state), the ultimate question is whether he would vacate his seat. Fortunately, there is precedent here. As I learned yesterday from Tim Russert, the austere fountain of political knowledge who acts as the perfect foil to hacks like Malkin, South Dakota has had experience with these circumstances before. In 1969, Republican Karl Mundt, the senior Senator from South Dakota, suffered a significant stroke. Mundt did not recover well after the stroke, yet he refused to vacate his office unless his wife were named as his replacement. When the Republican governor Nils Boe refused to accede to Mundt's request, Mundt decided he would not vacate his seat and held in until 1972, when he chose not to run for reelection. During these three years, Mundt did not cast a single vote. At the time of Mundt's service in absentia, the Senate had a Democratic majority of 58 seats in the 91st Congress and 54 seats in the 92 Congress. As noted above, the current margin of majority is a single seat that was won in a watershed election that saw the Democrats take control of both houses of Congress.

Thus, if Johnson survives, Democrats would do well to remember the precedent set by the selfish Karl Mundt. To the extent that he is unable to attend sessions of Congress, there will undoubtedly be calls from the "compassionate" conservatives that Johnson should be replaced. You can hear it already from Malkin and Bill O'Reilly: "how come this guy just can't step down... doesn't he care about the people of his state having effective representation?... the nerve of these Democrats..." When you inevitably hear this drivel, just remember two words: Karl Mundt.

Oh, by the way, 2939 Americans soldiers now killed in Iraq, while a regional religious war brews in the Middle East. But first, we go to back that live shot at the hospital where Johnson remains in critical condition...

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Seeing is Believing: Republicans to Lose Control of Congress

2006-11-04T22:56:00.000-08:00

I recently read a passage from Twain (Mark, that is) in which he described with awe his view of the snow-capped Rocky Mountains from the window of an overland stagecoach on a hot and sticky day in July 1861. He reflected on the axiom "seeing is believing," and conveyed the import of that phrase and captured its precision through a lamentation that for many people "thinking is believing" and that those who believe without seeing are often shocked to find that once they have seen, they found out that, until their moment of sight, they never truly believed what they thought. For Twain, it was his childhood belief that snow could persist at high altitudes in the warmest months of summer. While he ardently believed that notion as a child, he never came to truly believe it and appreciate it until that moment when he had seen it himself "on the ground, in person." I found Twain's analysis profound and unquestionably applicable to my perceptions and judgments with regard to events occurring in our own time.

Take, for example, the Senate race in Pennsylvania, in which Republican incumbent Rick Santorum is on the ropes and, if you believe polls, likely to be defeated. Santorum is renown for his unflinching support of the pro-life agenda. However, Santorum is, by gender, a man and, thus, has not and never will "see" from the perspective of a woman what he believes in regard to abortion. I can't honestly believe that if Rick Santorum were a fifteen year-old girl that was violently raped and impregnated, he would still fundamentally oppose abortion. If he were a woman, how would he feel if abortions (and, in this sense, choices) were entirely unavailable to him?

Perhaps someone should pose my query to Santorum at one of his upcoming rallies. However, recent precedent suggests that such a messenger will be assaulted, like this poor sap at a George Allen event:

It's always darkest before dawn, I suppose. Admittedly, this guy is an unlubricated dildo for the Webb campaign (albeit unofficially), but he's out there in the mix, reveling in the joie de vivre. My sense is that the spirit of activism he portrays is percolating in this country. You can see it the middle class family fuming over the wasteful spending of their tax dollars while trying to cover the payments on an interest-only mortgage that seemed like such a good idea two years ago. If it weren't for the weak housing market and apparently limitless interest rates unsecured lenders are allowed to collect, perhaps this family could send one of their children to a community college. I've seen this anger, and I believe it to be genuine and metastasizing. It exists in every person who has been downsized, outsourced or simply left out and shut out. Families who have lost loved ones in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Sudan and countless other countries are increasingly asking why and, more importantly, demanding to know the conditions that will dictate when the bloodletting can stop. These people all share a common trait-- they have all seen what they believe, and I have seen them; lots of them.

I have also seen those who continue to believe only what they think-- for some its the belief that illegal immigrants and same-sex marriages are unquestionably the last of the seven seals to be broken; others can't stop preaching (hypocritically, no less) that what's really lacking in this country is Christian faith and morality; a few believe that the recent adjustment to the payroll numbers from the last three months (including a 200+% increase in the September number) had nothing to do with providing the Republicans with a talking point on the employment aspect of the economy or that the timing of Saddam's death sentence was anything other than a contrivance; and, in a wave of Rove's wand, almost everyone who owns a television believed on Tuesday and Wednesday that John Kerry truly sought to insult the intelligence of American troops. Most who ponder the question agree that hearing, like thinking, is a lesser breed than sight in the measurement of belief.

My impression is that people of this mindset and the politicians they support-- those who believe what they think, without the benefit, or is some senses the will, to see-- will do poorly in the upcoming elections. That means you Jim Talent and the other Republican lemmings who have clung to the Bush coattails without even a hint of independent inquiry or investigation. The will of the people has turned-- and it now points squarely to disclosure, accountability in spending and equality and humanity in social services and education. It's impossible to believe that No Child has Been Left Behind when you've seen your local schools closing, annual district bond measures and DOE-mandated programs exploited by Bush loyalists for personal gain (here's a rebuttal of that assertion). In this relatively small segment of domestic policy, many have seen the results of Republican governance and they believe the time has come for a change. With heads snuggly in asses, Republicans will be sent packing on Tuesday. I don't just think it, I've seen it (as a Diebold technician, of course).

Now that it's begun to rain in Oregon, I'll soon be settling back in with the pen at greater frequency. I've already spun a rough draft on the myriad of reasons why America should not partition Iraq, and have the beginnings of an essay on why the Borat phenomenon is bound to end up in Branson, Missouri; already home to the comic stylings of one lovable Eastern European buffoon, Yakov Smirnov. "I love this country!"

I'm waiting on the Iraq piece because, like the Iraq Study Group, headed by uber patriots James Baker III and Lee Hamilton, I don't want to sway the elections with my super-secret plan to save the United States from seemingly certain political defeat in Iraq. The military aspect of this war was over long, long ago. What those troops are still doing there, as opposed to a UN force, is not clear. My eyes have told me, as I noted many months ago, that the troops are there to guarantee the security of the ol' fossil fuel, now pumping at a rate which exceeds the pre-Gulf War II level.

One thing the military is certainly not there for anymore: reconstruction. That well is now tapped out-- witness construction giant Bechtel "cutting and running" from Iraq (albeit to the bank with truckloads of our tax dollars). If companies like Bechtel and KBR are walking away from Iraq, it's either got to be the growing evidence of fraud or Iraq is truly engulfed in a civil war, but, more likely, a combination of those two. It certainly isn't the astronomical profit margins that are driving the contractors away.

I'm hoping that the Baker-Hamilton report finally defines "victory," because it's my impression that there is currently no discernible definition of that term offered by either major political party with respect to Iraq. Regardless of the report's conclusions, I'm worried because Baker and Hamilton have admitted that, due to certain dangers, they did not actually talk to any Iraqi civilians, only Iraqi government officials of the highest posts, not those "on the ground and in person." The list of sources for their upcoming report, while vast, fails to denote a single meeting with any Iraqis other than those who have continued in their failure to govern the country. Baker and Hamilton's greatest failure will be a result of failing to see what they believe, instead relying solely on believing what they and a handful of detached officials think.

Suffice it to say, this isn't the first time I've been happy that I am not an Iraqi. But, upon reflection, I realize that I am a human being and that no innocent person should suffer unnecessarily. So, while we continue to hear from VP Cheney that Iraq is not a quagmire and that, regardless of the outcome of the elections, Bush and his team will continue go "full steam ahead" doing "what they believe is the right thing," I can only wonder whether Democrats, having gained control of the House and/or Senate, will have the political spine to aggressively curtail the tax dollars Bush is allowed to spend on his military adventures. I'll believe that when I see it.

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The War on Terror: A Progress Report on the First Five Years

2006-09-06T21:43:00.000-07:00

As the fifth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, we've recently learned from President Bush and his party that we are "safer, but not safe" and that "because we are fighting the terrorists over there (Iraq?), we don't have to fight them here." In Iraq, our armed forces "will stand down when the Iraqis stand up." What do all of these phrases have in common? An expression of incompletion, couched in terms to make the administration's failures seem defensible as ongoing solutions.

I use the word "failures" because that is what I believe has and continues to occur. On the evening of September 20, 2001, President Bush addressed a joint session of Congress and the nation, setting forth a path for America in this new age. A common refrain in the speech is that Americans "will come together" to solve the problems and that in fighting for our principles "our first responsibility is to live by them." I remember that fantastic, touching speech (full text here). The state of the union was indeed strong. However, since that day, the union has become increasingly weaker as the Bush administration has wasted trillions of dollars waging ill-conceived and, in one case, unjustified, wars while creating a bumbling behemoth of a bureaucracy in the Department of Homeland Security that failed miserably in its only true test since 9/11, Hurricane Katrina. The surge in international support following 9/11 has been squandered by Bush's war of aggression in Iraq, our subsequent occupation of Iraq, the seizure of its resources and the civil war it has incited there.

As 9/11/06 approaches, debate now rages on whether America is safer today than on 9/11/01. On the domestic front, the Department of Homeland Security has spent over $100 billion since 2003, with an FY 06 budget of $40 billion. While billions of these dollars have been spent to "organize" our national security plan, only a few perfunctory actions have actually been undertaken to secure our country. While DHS Director Michael Chertoff is busy blaming (the Republican-controlled) Congress for the inaction on security measures, his Department of Homeland Security, apparently in the spirit of the Coalition Provisional Authority, recklessly doles out billions of dollars, allowing state governments and contractors to fleece the American taxpayer under the banner of homeland security.

And it's not just our money that's been stolen, but our civil liberties as well. The Terrorist Surveillance Program is a gross violation of FISA act that, along with the IV Amendment to our Constitution, prevents surveillance of individuals resident in the United States without a warrant. The public furor over this program, ignited by the New York Times disclosure of it, provoked circus-like hearings conducted by the Republican Senate. In the most comic, albeit disgusting, moment, Alberto Gonzalez, Attorney General of the United States, was not required to swear to his testimony before this kangaroo court. When Democrats challenged that notion, Chairman Specter was finally forced to take a vote on whether to require Gonzalez to be sworn. Only a few of the Republican committee members were present, so Specter and other senators claimed to have voting proxies for those members, thus assuring the defeat of the motion. When Wisconsin Senator Feingold requested to see the proxies, Specter cancelled the vote and commenced the hearing without Gonzalez being sworn. To date, the Terrorist Surveillance Program continues despite portions of it being adjudged unconstitutional by a federal district court in Michigan, and has expanded into telecommunications companies disclosing information on your phone records, e-mail and internet searches to the National Security Agency.

These actions by the Bush administration amount to gross failures of the plan set forth in Bush's September 20, 2001, speech. If we had known five years ago that the Bush war on terror would be so ineptly run and the extent to which it would damage, perhaps irreparably, the social, political and legal fabric of this country, would we have allowed it happen? Of course not, and it appears the citizens of this country are beginning to understand the consequences. Yet the Bush administration, having squandered both international and domestic support for our actions abroad, drones on, defying laws, wildly spending our country into further debt while continuing to spout half-truths in an effort to bolster the meritless claim that their grand plan for our security is succeeding. The Bush administration's prosecution of the war on terror hasn't been a principled fight to bring the light of freedom to the world. Quite to the contrary, it's evolved into an undefined and seemingly endless war of aggression against oil-bearing nations and an assault on the liberty of the world's people through illegal searches and torture. Five years after 9/11, the credibility of the Bush administration has vanished, with the truth of their assertions lying only in their widespread and unending repetition.

What's most troubling though, and I've tried to define in the title of this post, is that despite the incompetence, negligence and malfeasance of the Bush administration, the war on terror will go on for at least the duration of the Bush presidency. Even if Democrats are able to wrest control of Congress, there is no indication that a President who has brazenly sought to expand executive power will voluntarily surrender his new powers to Congress. By evoking images of 9/11 and the fear it has instilled in the American public, the Bush administration has ensured that any future effort by Congress to limit funding for the war on terror or Department of Homeland Security would be met with calls of "weakness, appeasement and surrender." The average American, after five years of intense conditioning, would knee-jerk in the same way. But it's exactly that kind of thinking that will ensure that the war on terror lives on long beyond its usefulness.

Allowing the war on terror to continue with no discernible end in sight paints a dark future for our country. What is the logical end of the war on terror as currently structured? There is no leader of the forces of terror. Killing bin Laden might be a symbolic accomplishment, but nothing more. Can anyone seriously believe that the American occupation of Iran or Syria would produce a "democracy" any more likely to succeed than our currently floundering efforts in Iraq? If not, then what conceivable reason would we have to attack them? Current U.S. intelligence estimates assert that Iran will not have the capacity to build a nuclear weapon for at least ten years. Moreover, the Iranian President has been knocking on Bush's door for the last five months, seeking a dialogue on the nuclear issue to avert a crisis. If the U.S. relies on what to this point have been baseless assertions by Bush that Iran and Syria support Hezbollah to wage war on the countries, neither the world nor the American public should follow without extensive and verifiable documentation of that connection and a justification of the rationale that Hezbollah threatens the United States.

As long as America, whether under Bush or not, continues to engage in unjustified wars for resources and heedlessly supports Israel to the exclusion of the democratically elected Islamic elements in Palestine and Lebanon, there will always be villains to be manufactured and crusades to be completed. By continuing to misrepresent to the world that America is still under attack five years after 9/11, the Bush administration wastes our money, erodes the nation's standing and authority internationally, while needlessly endangering the country's civilians and soldiers alike.

Intertainment requires patience

2006-08-12T12:56:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of our President, I've decided to take a vacation from substantive blogging. So now, for something completely different. Thanks to www.break.com for the videos.

In reality, this is a mix of two videos. The full video of the screaming German kid, with translated subtitles for context, is below. His parents must have a tranquilizer gun in every room of the house. And you thought only American children were overweight, impatient pygmies? Listen to this child wheeze...

Finally, tip of the hat to Steven Colbert who, in reacting to a dig from Bill O'Reilly and Geraldo, called the two of them, "itty-bitty Nixons, without the relevance or a hint or vision." Bravo.

Is an Israeli teardrop worth more than a drop of Lebanese blood?

2006-07-27T03:54:00.000-07:00

Among other things, I've spent the last few weeks researching the roots of the Israel's current war of aggression against Lebanon. I even drafted an essay on the history of Lebanon for the modern-day alarmist, which you can read here. As for the current state of Lebanon's politics, that can be quickly summarized in two points: first Lebanon's Constitution requires a Christian (Maronite) President, a Sunni Muslim Prime Minister and a Shi'a Muslim Speaker of the Parliament, and second, read this piece on how the Christian enclaves of Beirut are unscathed, untargeted and, quite uninterested by Israel's constant bombardment of their fellow Muslim citizens.

In drafting this essay, I initially set out to lay down a comprehensive history of the Middle East from World War I to the present day. You see, there really was no Middle East until England and France carved up the region pursuant to the Sykes-Picot Agreement, despite their later pledge of "the complete and total liberation" of Arab peoples in the Anglo-French Declaration. Moreover, I was going to detail the backroom deal in which England secretly ceded a portion of their Mandate of Palestine for the establishment of a Jewish state through the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which was later consummated in the scandalous 1947 UN Partition of Palestine. Richard Cohen recently was lambasted for, in my opinion, an insightful, honest article describing that scandal. I was also going to explain to you how corporate avarice has, and continues to, destabilize the Middle East as oil was first privatized, then nationalized, and is now being privatized again. (As a sidenote, if you have a second, read about St. John Philby, who was a key to the privatization process and, in my opinion, one of contemporary history's most incredible, yet largely unknown figures.) I was even going to tell you how Britain, after establishing dominance over Iraq and its oil in the 1920s, fought an Iraqi insurgency by outsourcing the fighting to Indian soldiers. Ultimately, however, I've decided to skip all that and publish only a solitary quote -- believing it to illuminate the single most important aspect of Israel's invasion. However, in editing for publication, my rage percolated and I just had to do a few paragraphs on Bush. But first, the quote.

Yesterday, Prime Minister (Sunni) Fouad Siniora of Lebanon queried, rhetorically, the American body politic: "Is the value of human life less in Lebanon than that of citizens elsewhere? Are we children of a lesser God? Is an Israeli teardrop worth more than a drop of Lebanese blood?" As of today, non-combatant (civilian) casualties stemming from Israel's response to the kidnapping of 3 of its soldiers number between 300 and 600 Lebanese and at least 150 Palestinians. 19 Israeli civilians have been killed.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration, which speaks on the international stage for you, me and every other American, has turned a deaf ear to this suffering, all the while tirelessly marketing undocumented allegations that Hezbollah, the Islamic revolutionary political faction in Lebanon, is currently being supported by Syria, Iran and, now, laughably, Al-Qaeda-- the ultimate hobgoblin in the Bush arsenal.

As to the allegation that Iran is currently funding and controlling Hezbollah, whether through its alleged surrogate Syria or otherwise, I challenge any reader to find documentation of this connection. I've found nothing in two weeks of searching. I did come to understand, through this excellent piece by Daniel Byman on the history of the relationship between Hezbollah, Syria and Iran, that Iran supported a nascent Hezbollah in the 1980s, as the group sought an Islamic revolution in Lebanon similar to that in Iran in 1979. However, Byman concedes that "Hezbollah is increasingly growing out of its role as a proxy and becoming more of a partner with both Tehran and Damascus." Moreover, he never once makes the assertion that Iran or Syria had any role in directing or approving the recent kidnapping of the two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah.

The last bit, the alleged Al-Qaeda connection, came out earlier today. It's being reported that Ayman al-Zawahiri, the alleged second in command to bin Laden, released a videotaped statement which included this gem: "The war with Israel does not depend on ceasefires. It is a Jihad for the sake of God and will last until (our) religion prevails ... from Spain to Iraq."

If you'll remember, Zawahiri is supposed to be bin Laden's attending doctor, living with him and the rest of those nefarious Al-Qaeda thugs while plotting evildoer-like things from some cave in the enigmatic "mountainous Afghan-Pakistani border region." I saw this interview on my favorite daily news program, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, and was absolutely shocked. Not because of anything he was saying, as I'm more likely to believe this guy that Zawahiri is merely a pawn from CIA central casting, but rather at what I saw. Take a look for yourself at the picture below and ask yourself-- does anything seem out of place?

In case you missed it look again... and then slap yourself silly for not noticing that this guy, who we are told is running for his life in the nether-regions of Afghanistan, is in a television studio, complete with large scale prints of spooky images and multiple, dynamic lighting sources. Either Al-Qaeda's built a really nice studio and franchised a Kinko's nearby (which should make them pretty easy to find), or something is fishy here.

As of tonight, CBS is the only news source that even mentions the "professional television studio." However, CBS chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan completely missed the clue, instead remarking that, "It's a slicker look for al Qaeda's number two, who delivered his latest video message from what appears to be a professional television studio, complete with background props." [Update: This morning the New York Daily News, which masquerades as a newspaper but shares more in common with The National Enquirer, attempts to clarify the mystery by noting that "Zawahiri appeared in a white turban in front of photos of the World Trade Center towers burning, slain Al Qaeda military chief Mohammed Atef and a bearded 9/11 cell leader Mohamed Atta. Atta's photo was downloaded from a Zacarias Moussaoui trial exhibits Web site, while the phony backdrop was intended to look like Zawahiri was in a huge TV studio." That's it... no explanation why Zawahiri would "intend" to look like he was in a TV studio, or how he's getting the equipment necessary for such a production. But I guess that's just journalism today... a whole lot of "what," just no "why."]

Despite the distractions created by the allegations of foreign involvement and the potential of the Israeli aggression to incite a regional war, the mind of every concerned citizen of the world should focus on answering Prime Minister Siniora's question: "Is an Israeli teardrop worth more than a drop of Lebanese blood?"

The Republican Philosophy for the Economy: Entering the Alamo?

2006-07-11T13:57:00.000-07:00

On June 18, I wrote on the woeful state of the American consumer. Updating that post, I offer the recent numbers from the Federal Reserve indicating that the negative trends cited in my post continue. To wit, consumer credit increased for the seventh consecutive month, a rise of $4.4 billion in May (a 2.4% increase) to a total of $2.17 trillion, spurred by a 9.9 percent gain in non-revolving credit (mostly credit cards) that amounted to an increase of $6.7 billion for the month. Meanwhile, Americans continue to eschew disposable savings, with the personal savings rate furthering its march into negative territory with a -1.7% reading. Simply put, this means that Americans are spending (actually borrowing) 1.7% more than they are earning. Here's a 2006 chart from the St. Louis Federal Reserve illustrating the personal savings rate over the last ten years-- notice any trend?

Since my first post, I've had some pretty smart people tell me that the personal savings rate calculation is misleading in that it does not include money squirreled away in retirement savings (401(k), IRAs, etc.) My retort is that those monies are not liquid-- you cannot access those dollars without penalty in most cases and, even if Americans did, I cannot find much positive in people sapping their retirement savings to pay their credit card bills and mortgages. As to mortgages, homeowners are now using a record percentage (11.4%) of disposable personal income to pay their mortgage obligations.

Ultimately, my point in setting forth these figures is to reflect on the effects stemming from a continuing negative personal savings rate and inevitable washing out of the credit pool, in sequence, leading to a decline in every material economic indicator other than the unemployment and tax rates. To the extent that you believe such a scenario is a bit too nihilistic, you're probably right-- the American consumer, as a class, will survive; albeit paying higher monthly interest charges and, perhaps, draining their savings. Whatever the next point in the cycle though, I would challenge anyone to exhibit an American economic model in which debt-laden consumers continue to spend and borrow in an environment where domestic interest rates are increasing and the world community is tortured by widening political and religious conflict.

Given these delicate economic conditions, it seems odd Republicans are laying the foundation for their mid-term election platform that includes a plank extolling their stewardship of the American economy. While corporations continue to report double-digit returns, the Republican government's greatest economic achievement is celebrating a deficit of $300 billion as a supply-side lesson in practice. Fortunately, not many are fooled. There is, however, at least one idiot arguing that the "White House can now very credibly assert that the deficit will indeed have been halved by the time Bush leaves office." Halved from what? The total deficit equals $1.4 trillion (with actual Congressional deficit spending of $2.2 trillion during the Bush administration) and "cutting that in half" can only be done by producing a surplus of $700 billion. However, as the Washington Post notes, even the administration's recent "midsession review" predicts that "spending will outstrip revenue in every year through 2011 -- the end of the administration's budget window. The administration notes that tax revenue this year is projected to be 18.3 percent of the nation's economic output, just above the 40-year average of 18.2 percent. It is projected to be under that -- averaging 17.9 percent -- from 2007 through 2011." If Republican-controlled Congressional spending continues (and likely increases) in this fashion and the domestic economy suffers from the aforementioned maladies of the American consumer, then "staying the course" with current domestic economic policy is indeed taking the American people into the Alamo: destined for defeat.

As the sun rises on tomorrow's America, we are virtually guaranteed to have a growing deficit, likely to have rising interest rates and metaphysically certain to have a decrease in the aggregate purchasing power of the American consumer. Pile on the ever-increasing rise in the price of crude oil, catalyzed by global turmoil (Gaza, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan-- to name a few) and the continuing outsourcing/offshoring of domestic jobs, and it is difficult to imagine a great American economic renaissance anytime in the near future. After the last five years, it seems difficult to imagine a globalized economy prospering in these difficult conditions at any point in the near future, and that does not augur well for the American economy or its globalized supply chains. Maybe alternative energy production is the answer.

If you have a slice of the good life now, I'd recommend that you put part of it in the freezer. It may not taste as good ten years from now, but it'll be better than waiting in line for a slice, or having no slice at all.

Your comments are both welcome and encouraged.

Laundry: Andy Rooney style

2006-07-01T20:59:00.000-07:00

I was recently told, second-hand, that "all smart people watch 60 minutes." Fortunately, I have been watching the show and, in particular, the Andy Rooney segments. I have a great admiration for the sophisticated simplicity of his perspectively honest missives and curmudgeon's disposition. What follows is my best effort of describing a simple task I undertook today, channeling the Socratic Andy Rooney...

You see, I do all my laundry in a single, marathon session--a fashion that has suited me since I became responsible for my own laundry (thanks for those 18 years Mom). Seems more efficient to me to operate in this fashion, though I've noticed a difference in viewpoint with some, which surveys will tell us are primarily those of the opposite gender. The same survey reveals that men are four times more likely than women to find "spending time with their laundry partner the best part of doing laundry." However, "women can take solace in the fact that men are 3 times more likely to report that they stare at their laundry as it cycles."

Do you realize how much water your washer uses for a single load of laundry? In the United Sates, over 12 million gallons of water a day is used for laundry--that's nearly 4.4 billion gallons a year. And how does the washer work? Does it really clean my clothes? Would scrubbing my clothes get them any cleaner? What deficit in cleanliness am I willing to trade for modern convenience? What about the different brands of laundry detergent--is one better than the other? Turns outs that yes, some detergents are better at getting out certain types of stains. And dryer sheets/fabric softeners-- what are they made of? Whatever it is, they sure are handy.

Finally, I have a lesson to share with you. If you are doing your laundry in a marathon session like me, be sure to include the clothes you're wearing in the last load. There's nothing more disappointing than putting away all the laundry, only to realize that the clothes you're wearing are dirty.

Syntaxman: Please save ESPN's Jeff Brantley

2006-06-30T01:07:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of the "Superman: The Movie I Probably Won't See," I offer a plea to Jor-L to birth a Syntaxman to save Baseball Tonight's Jeff Brantley, who emphatically remarked this evening with regard to the woes of the middle relief corps of the Cincinnati Reds:

"doesn't matter how well you starter does or how many runs you score, if you can't keep a team like Kansas City who can't score at all from scoring, in the middle of the ballgame, you got a problem."

Thanks Jeff... would have never guessed.

Iraq: Cut and Run or Stay and Bleed?

2006-06-28T07:08:00.000-07:00

As you've likely heard, the issue du jour is whether to withdraw the troops from Iraq. Politicians eyeing the White House in '08 have each staked out a strategic peninsula, careful to look tough but not fence themselves in to any substantive policy that is either too radical or too conservative. Frankly, I wish the debate could move past the "cut and run" sloganeering and the vague pledges of Republicans to "stand down when the Iraqis can stand up." In my mind, and I'm sure in some of yours, the truth is that American troops will be in Iraq long after "W" is gone.

You see, we've only just begun in Iraq. Despite the laughable protestations of Republican hawks and Bush apologists that the invasion of Iraq was not about oil, we all know that it at least played a role in the decision to invade. That's the only aspect of the invasion I think was arguably justifiable. The oil that fuels the American economy is under Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and, in smaller amounts, other countries in the Middle East. Iraq happened to be the easiest target, both politically and militarily. The US maintains a cozy economic relationship with Saudi Arabia, but domestic political pressures there forced the royals to boot the American military out of the country. Iran, while certainly scoring high on a political axis, scored very low on the military axis because it is a giant, rugged country with a military that has not suffered under draconian sanctions for the last decade. Iraq scored high on the military axis and, given a little selective use of intelligence information and some fear mongering, became a "slam dunk" on the political axis.

Once we had conquered the Iraqi military and gained control over the country's oil fields, Haliburton set about building a sprawling, high-technology fortress that will act as the American embassy in Iraq. American contracts have also been let to build large, seemingly permanent military air bases in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Is it conceivable that we would pay for all of this improvement to infrastructure, built to American specification, and then abandon it a few years later? It simply would not make sense-- even to the freewheeling spenders in the Bush administration.

Moreover, both Iraq and Afghanistan act as extraordinarily important strategic location for combating (figuratively, for now) the growing influence of both India and China. By having substantial air and ground resources stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has implicit leverage in the regional politics of Southern Eurasia, with nations like Syria, Iran and what, if anything, might be left of Palestine bending under the yoke of American influence and threat of direct military intervention.

Also, recent history teaches us that American troops shouldn't leave Iraq or Afghanistan. It wasn't long ago that we funded both Saddam (against Iran) and the Afghan Mujihadeen in their battle against the Soviet invaders. In each of those instances, the forces we armed were subsequently used against us. Despite the nearly continuous stream of mistakes, disappointments and outright stupidity that emanates from the Bush White House, I firmly believe that they would not be dumb enough to rebuild infrastructure and rearm local security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and then leave those resource-rich nations with no military to protect the newly acquired American interests.

These are the facts as I see them. As alluded to in the opening paragraph, I wish that these facts could be acknowledged and for the debate to mature from sound bites to policymaking. The policy question is simple: does the United States need control of the oil in these regions to maintain its place as a world superpower? In the short term, that answer is clearly yes. In the long term, however, oil is a non-renewable resource and one day, sooner or later, it will run out. Every country will be faced with an uncertain future and the potentially catastrophic consequences of an industrialized world economy that suddenly runs out of fuel.

If the United States wishes to maintain its influence over world affairs, it must address this eventual crisis with a thoughtful and long-ranging solution. Getting in front of the parade on a new source of energy (whether solar, hydrogen, wind or nuclear), putting substantial resources behind that solution and acting as the lead manufacturer of the fuel, byproducts and services is the only way the United States can maintain its standing as a first-world country in an oil-deprived world.

So, should we withdraw the troops? Absolutely; but just not now. For now, we must stay and bleed, both personally with our troops and financially with our wallets. The only palatable cut and run scenario is to withdraw after adopting a bipartisan energy policy that promotes the vast and rapid development of new sources of energy. Ergo, if you really want to support the troops then support the American creation and production of alternative energy sources and, please, support it now.

The American Consumer: A Real Weapon of Mass Destruction

2006-06-18T18:08:00.000-07:00

Whilst the debate gets underway on whether you support the troops, the mission, or both the troops and the mission, I'm hoping that someone will address an immediate threat to our future: the sorry state and perilous path of the American consumer.

Articles citing disturbing short-term trends in the economy are aplenty and many speculate on an impending recession spurred by declining asset prices, yet there is very little commentary from politicians or the daily media on how the economy will be affected by the current (and worsening) state of the debt-laden American consumer. As explained below, a continuing deterioration in the short-term health of the American consumer will dramatically affect the economy. In the long-term, a significant decrease in the borrowing and spending by American consumers may either induce or further accelerate a recession or perhaps depression.

To begin with, we must first understand the significance of the American consumer to the American economy. Approximately two-thirds of all economic activity in the United States is undertaken by the individual consumer-- you, me and the three hundred million other Americans. As a unit, we are the single fiercest economic force this plant has ever seen. However, as discussed below, our purchasing power has been waning and our debts have been mounting. Still, the American consumer forges on, emboldened by the incessant siren's song streaming from every imaginable commercial concern.

"The More You Buy, the More You Save!"

I heard that bit of American commercial wisdom in a radio advertisement. Probably wouldn't have worked quite as well on television-- can you imagine the facial contortions necessary to turn that phrase? The more I buy, the more I save? Does that also mean the less I buy, the less I save? What if I don't buy anything? I don't save anything?

What's plainly clear to me is that if I don't buy anything, I save what I already possess. However simple it seems to comprehend, the logic of that formulation seems to be lost on many Americans. How warped our little minds must be to equate saving with consuming. However, Americans as a whole are doing exactly that: spending more than we are saving (if we are saving at all). It's been widely reported that in June 2005 the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued a report indicating the personal savings rate (roughly the percentage of total dollars spent over total dollars earned) of Americans had become negative. This was the first time that the indicator had reached negative territory since the Great Depression, and it has remained negative for the last eleven months, dropping to its lowest level of -1.6% in April 2006, the most recent report released. The report for May will be released on June 30. Check back for an update. [Update: May personal savings rate: -1.7%]

While the declining personal savings rate is surely a cause for concern, the indicator will inevitably be corrected through the washing out of the credit pool. Those with the means will begin saving more as interest rates increase and the once-meteoric rise in asset prices continues to taper off. However, there will also be a significant number of defaults, foreclosures and bankruptcies. Consumers who are "leveraged 'till doomsday" will begin seeking those remedies in greater numbers as the Federal Reserve continues to raise the base interest rate to 5.25% and perhaps beyond. Oddly enough, total consumer credit in this country, estimated by the Federal Reserve to have currently reached a record $2.17 trillion, rose by 5.9% in April! [Update: The Fed said May's 2.4% increase in consumer credit followed a huge 5.2% rise in April. The slowdown occurred because of weakness in auto loans, which offset the jump in credit card borrowing. Borrowing on credit cards and other categories of revolving debt shot up at an annual rate of 9.9% in May, the biggest surge in this category since a 13.5% increase in October 2004.]

It's also estimated that American households on average carried $9,312 in credit card debt in 2004, the latest year for which statistics are available. Many of the rates for credit cards are keyed the rising base rate, and as the base right rises, so to will the APR on credit cards and adjustable rate mortgages (where default rates are rising dramatically). Given the recent "advances" in personal bankruptcy law, those Americans who do seek bankruptcy protection to prevent foreclosure will effectively be shut out of the financial system for at least the length of their repayment plan and likely longer. Debt slaves don't make good consumers.

Perhaps Bush and his "braintrust" could get something right and convince us that paying our credit card bills helps fight terrorism. However, given the deficit Bush has run up with the public's credit card, it's unlikely that even his whizbang team of spinners could put a shine on that pile. To the extent that consumers do begin to pull back their spending or consumer credit defaults, the Democrats would be wise to shift the debate to the sagging economy. While Democrats do not have a particularly shining economic record historically, they have never spent money as recklessly and partisan as the current administration, both domestically and internationally. As Bush and his cronies are so fond of saying, "9/11 changed everything." Apparently that includes Republicans, who appear to now support big government and a gross lack of fiscal discipline, including a national debt of $8.3 trillion.

Unfortunately, some "fool" is still arguing that old chestnut that deficits don't matter-- that's not the issue. The issue is that the deficit is growing unnecessarily in a time when the overall economy is stumbling and its main engine, the consumer, is drowning in an ocean of personal debt. In this environment, it is deplorable that the Bush administration is spending untold billions in its pseudowars and squandering billions more domestically with poor oversight while the Republican Congress approves outright pork projects.

Ultimately, for the personal savings rate to increase, the amount of money in the economic cycle must decrease. A decrease in the amount of capital circulating in the economy means a slowdown in economic activity and a concomitant decrease in production. If that slowdown in production lasts long enough, then you've seen a recession, and if it lasts longer, a depression. Commentators are just getting started on whether there will be a recession, though it is now clear that the likelihood of such an economic decline is no longer considered remote.

At a minimum, the writing is on the wall for at least a temporary pullback in consumer spending, which hopefully shows up in the personal savings rate report for May. The longer the indicator remains negative, the deeper the hole becomes and the longer the recession or depression will endure while consumers struggle under mountains of debt. A prolonged depression would also affect the increasingly global economy and may allow emerging powerhouses like China and India to capture further gains in global market share. The potential implosion of the American consumer is a real threat, and if that implosion occurs during a downturn in the business cycle, the economic effects would be similar to the detonation of a real weapon of mass destruction at Wall and Broad streets. Such an implosion would significantly depress or even eliminate growth in the American economy for the next several years.

The Curse of Rocky Balboa

2006-06-11T01:06:00.000-07:00

We've all heard of curses in the sports world. There used to be one that haunted the Boston Red Sox, but that curse was broken in 2004. Not to be outdone, the Cubs have their own curse, as do the St. Louis Cardinals (later broken in October 2006), anyone or anything touched by basketball legend Elgin Baylor and the entire city of Philadelphia, apparently suffering under an umbrella curse that affects all of their sports teams. Well, I'm proud to coin the newest addition to the landscape: the curse of Rocky Balboa.

You see, Rocky Balboa is the quintessential Part-American success story, a linguistically challenged, down-on-his-luck Italo-Philadelphian boxer, portrayed effortlessly by the linguistically challenged Sylvester Stallone. The first movie, Rocky, actually won two Academy Awards (Best Picture and Best Director) in 1976 and netted Sly a nomination for Best Actor. Following that success, there have been several iterations of the Rocky franchise which, along with the first film, have grossed in excess of $500 million in aggregate. The plot line for the subsequent movies did not stray much from the original: Rocky takes extraordinarily dramatic punishment and, in some cases, a loss, before triumphantly stomping a mud hole in each successively larger opponent. With that beating complete, the villains who opposed Rocky have only begun to suffer-- for they have now been infected with the curse of Rocky Balboa.

The first victim of the curse was Carl Weathers, who played heavyweight champion Apollo Creed. Creed wins a heart-wrenching battle in Rocky I, but later returns for multiple beatings in Rocky II and Rocky IV. If that wasn't enough for Carl Weathers, he later lost an arm in an unforgettable scene in the 1987 hit Predator.

Beginning with the third Rocky movie, new villains had to be introduced to provide some false hope that Rocky would finally get the beating that he deserved. In Rocky III, Hulk Hogan makes an appearance as a heel, but the real hay makers landed on the inimitable mug of Mr. T. Not that either Hogan or Mr. T needed much help in failing, but the curse has pushed Hogan back to the disdainful world of television wrestling and displaced Mr. T from once-budding star bodyguard to pitchman for collect phone call commercials.

Rocky IV's villain, Dolph Lundgren as the Cold War villain Ivan Drago, also stumbled following his stint as Stallone's appointed punching bag. His next role was as He-Man in the Masters of the Universe, and then he was The Punisher. Need I say more? Okay, he was also engaged to Grace Jones, who left an indelible mark on the silver screen with her work in Conan the Destroyer.

All was well and good at this point, as the villains were only taking a symbolic beating as victims of the Rocky Balboa curse. What happened next was, well, simply breathtaking. The curse of Rocky Balboa first manifested itself physically in the form of Tommy "The Duke" Morrison. Morrison, an undefeated professional boxer, took on the role of villain in Rocky V. Less than a year after that film was released, Morrison took a monumentally viscous beating at the hands of "Merciless" Ray Mercer. Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, you can now share in the joy of witnessing that savage beating by pressing play in the frame below:

Following that pummeling, Morrison's career never regained its upward trajectory as he toiled against good fighters (including Lennox Lewis and a sideshow event with George Foreman) for inferior purses and largely unrecognized titles. He later tested positive for HIV and spent a little time in the pokey on drug and weapons charges.

[Update: As of October 31, 2006, Tommy Morrision is now applying for a boxing license in Nevada to begin a comeback. Morrison's attorney now claims the Duke never had AIDS/HIV, alleging that "his prefight blood test for his 1996 bout... resulted [in] a false-positive or was rigged by a rival promoter out to get him." Morrison was quoted as saying, "A lot of people doubt that I have anything left. But one thing they're forgetting is that I haven't been fighting for 10 years. I've been resting. I'll go down in history. It's going to happen. Then I'll become a legend." That's right Tommy, after you go down in history you become a legend. But to become a legend, you can't just fight bums. Instead, you'll have the tall task (pun intended) of defeating behemoths like current IBF heavyweight champion, the 6'6" Dr. Wladimir Klitschko and current WBA heavyweight champion, the 7'+, 330 pound Nikolai Valuev. Morrison was last listed at 6'2", 224 lbs.]

So, given the history of the curse of Rocky Balboa, it should come as no surprise that the villain for Rocky VI (titled Rocky Balboa), Antonio "The Magic Man" Tarver, has recently fallen victim to the curse of Rocky Balboa. This evening he took a convincing beating (and lost me $20) at the hands of Bernard "The Executioner" Hopkins. The fight was never close and one should expect that Tarver will probably hang the gloves up soon. It clearly isn't going to get any better for him-- just ask Tommy Morrison.

In addition to the Rocky Balboa curse, Tarver likely suffers from the bad karma generated by the name of his character, Mason "The Line" Dixon (really, no shit), in the upcoming Rocky Balboa. There had to have been gross negligence at multiple levels of the production and corporate regime to permit a black character to be named after a surveying reference most renowned for its role in the Missouri Compromise slave debate and resulting Civil War. That's just plain stupid and Tarver, along with everyone else involved in Rocky Balboa, should be cursed for that kind of boorish idiocy. As a public service, we ought to get Ray Mercer a few rounds with Stallone and those Sony Pictures executives.

Comments welcome. Curses not.

Jason Grimsley: Seeing the Forest Surrounding the Tree

2006-06-08T22:38:00.000-07:00

By now, you have likely heard at least one utterance of the name Jason Grimsley. He's the middle relief pitcher from the Arizona Diamondbacks that was recently served with a second search warrant seeking evidence of narcotics possession and money laundering at his Scottsdale home.

According to the affidavit filed with this most recent search warrant, agents from the IRS and FBI intercepted a shipment of Human Growth Hormone that was addressed to arrive at Grimsley's home via the USPS. On the 19th of April, one day after that package was allowed to arrive at Grimsley's home, IRS agents executed an "anticipatory search warrant" at Grimsley's home, confronted Grimsley with an accusation of guilt and persuaded him that, instead of having his home searched, Grimsley would be transported to a secondary location where he would be, in the words of the agent's later affidavit "extensively debriefed."

At his debriefing, Grimsley apparently spilled the beans on his own torrid affair with all sorts of bizarre chemicals, including things called Deca-Durabolin and Clenbuterol. Grimsley also reportedly divulged the names of numerous other players, though Grimsley's lawyer, Edward Novak, denies that. ESPN (my least favorite news outlet) reported that Novak also believes that some unidentified federalis wanted Grimsley to wear a wire and seek statements incriminating Barry Bonds in the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Keith Olbermann has implicated Albert Pujols thru a gentlemen he refers to as, and this is allegedly sourced, Albert's "soul brother." Jesus Christ in a birch bark canoe.

Instead of getting caught up in the whirlwind of speculation, I prefer to focus on some rather interesting, and apparently unreported, facts in the Jason Grimsley story. I'm not muckraking this trick and I won't judge whether he'll pay in any afterlife for his alleged betrayals, but I will focus on Grimsley's behavior and the extraordinary ride he has had from confession to impending incarceration.

Grimsley was first confronted by IRS agents on April 19th, 2006. He continued to pitch for the Diamondbacks for the next fifty some-odd days, including dealing four innings of scoreless relief the day after the "debriefing." Amidst the stress of having, figuratively, his nuts in the IRS vice, Grimsley managed to log 20 innings, posting a 1-1 record and lowering his ERA from 10.57 to 4.88. Not bad under pressure. There's been no report as to when Grimsley eventually decided to tell the Feds to stick it. I'm betting it was right before what will now be known as his final game, May 31 at Shea Stadium, where he took the loss after allowing one run in the home half of the 13th.

Second, Grimsley allegedly sought and was granted a release from the Diamondbacks after the Feds served the second warrant on his house yesterday. ESPN has reported that the Diamondbacks are paying Grimsley the remainder of his salary as a condition of his release. I can't decide how to feel about that-- do you scorn the MLBPA contract clause requiring guaranteed money or the Diamondbacks for not fighting the clause in the case of a likely-to-be convicted substance abuser? My guess would be that every contract (except maybe that of Barry Bonds) has an explicit provision that denies compensation for a player released upon the discovery of illegal substances. Perhaps the Diamondbacks didn't want to be seen as bad guys. In any event, Grimsley got paid for cheating.
[UPDATE: Apparently Ken Kendrick, managing general partner of the Diamondbacks read my post here and has now decided that Grimsley will not be paid the remainder of his salary, noting that "it's a moral issue." Being the "morally superior" jerkoff that he is, Kendrick finished his remarks by blaming Grimsley for the team's recent slump, stating that "our team hasn't played the same since the day this thing happened. You can see it out there."]

[UPDATE #2: Grimsley's agent Joe Bick has stated that he will fight the Diamondbacks decision, though he'll have to wait for Ken Kendrick to come down off the cross before he can climb up there. Also, think of the tough decision that has to made at the MLBPA: do you file a grievance on behalf of an admitted cheater? Damned if they do, damned if they don't.]

The IRS affidavit also states that Grimsley cited widespread amphetamine use among players that was supported by the their teams. The affidavit alleges that Grimsley quipped that "until last year, Major League clubhouses had coffee pots labeled 'leaded' and 'unleaded' for the players, indicating coffee with amphetamines and without." (page 15 of 23 of affidavit). I have not seen any other news source report these lines of the affidavit. If this claim is true, the controversy has only begun.

Finally, in an unrelated issue, this is the most revolting image I've seen in a long time. Nothing obscene or graphic, just unadulterated humanity that should be viewed only with utmost caution-- it could knot your stomach.

Comments welcome.

Amending the Constitution: Procedure, Unresolved Questions and Fun Facts

2006-06-07T16:51:00.000-07:00

With the recent media blitz surrounding the Federal Marriage Amendment (a/k/a the same-sex marriage ban), I went back to the books to refresh my memory on the process for amending the Constitution. My hope is that this post helps educate you not only to the ratification process, but also to assuage any fears you may have of an imminent Constitutional crisis.

Procedure

As set forth in Article V, the Constitution may be amended in one of two ways: either a resolution proposing an amendment to the States is passed by 2/3 of each House of Congress and then approved by 3/4 of the States' legislatures or Conventions, or, 2/3 of the States mandate that Congress call a national Convention for the purpose of proposing amendments and any such amendments so proposed must receive the approbation of at least 3/4 of the States' legislatures or Conventions. Each Amendment to the Constitution has originated through a joint resolution in Congress. With the exception of the Twenty-First Amendment (ratified thru approval of Conventions in the States), each Amendment has been ratified thru approval by 3/4 of the States' legislatures. Ratification of any amendment proposed today requires approval by 38 of the 50 States.

Unanswered Questions

Interestingly, Article V does not set forth any guidelines with respect to the composition of or voting requirements for a national Convention to propose amendments to the Constitution. There is much controversy as to how such a convention would operate, how its delegates would be chosen, the necessary vote required to propose a particular amendment, and many other lingering questions.

In addition, the customary practice in Congress has been to interpret the Constitution's 2/3 requirement for sending amendments to the States as 2/3 of those members present (assuming that a quorum exists at the time that the vote is cast) and not necessarily a two-thirds vote of the entire membership elected and serving in the two houses of Congress.

Article V also does not set forth the ratio required for the approval of amendments presented to the States by either Congress or a Convention. It does not seem consistent that the ratio required for ratification in each State should be simple majority when the ratification process at all other stages requires a supermajority. This is especially true when one considers that under a simple majority approval model, it is mathematically possible that only 37.6% of the people in the country could amend the Constitution. That is, if 50.1% of the people in 3/4 of the States approved an amendment, then the Amendment would be ratified and control 100% of the people.

Fun Facts

The last Amendment to the Constitution, the Twenty-Seventh Amendment, was ratified in 1992. The Amendment, which prohibits the alteration of the salary of members of Congress until after an intervening election of House members has occurred, was proposed to the States by the First Congress in 1789. The Supreme Court held in Coleman v. Miller that unless Congress specifies atime limit within which the state legislatures (or conventions held in the states) must act upon the proposed amendment, then the amendment remains pending business before the state legislatures (or conventions) until such time as the requisite number of States either ratifies or defeats the proposed amendment. Due to this odd quirk, there are still four amendments pending before the States-- Article One of the original Bill of Rights (proposed in 1789), the Titles of Nobility Amendment (proposed in 1810), the Corwin Amendment (proposed in 1861) and the Child Labor Amendment (proposed in 1924).

Read more of Today's Effort by clicking here.

What you know, or what you're told?

2006-06-01T23:44:00.000-07:00

I couldn't resist posting this piece I found at slate.com Of course, all presidents have spun the truth, but I believe Bush simply takes it to a new level-- lying, either without knowledge or remorse (and, perhaps, both). Truth is clearly at a premium in Washington and unvarnished information is seen less frequently than an atheist politician. The collection and dissemination of both public and private information is dominated by fewer and fewer interests each day, making the open and deliberative society sought by Bill Moyers an impossibility.

If you need more evidence that we now live in an age where access to primary source information is dwindling, witness the Bush administration's overzealous use of the "state secrets" doctrine and gross extension of the national security classification scheme that has led to the classification of twice as many government documents in 2005 as in 2001. The numbers used in that comparison do not include the documents classified by the Vice President's office, which has refused since 2002 to report the number of documents it has classified. It also does not include the number of documents seized from the National Archives and "ununclassified." It seems that any information you now receive is either diluted or inflated, but never pure. And that's only the information that's not classified.

Take, for example, a recent FOIA request to the FBI for any documents pertaining to connections between Al-Qaeda and certain charitable organizations. The FBI's response: we don't have any documents relevant to that query. A similar FOIA request to the CIA seeking documents relevant to the relationship between Bin Laden and Mullah Omar (head of the deposed Taliban) was denied on the basis that "it is the CIA policy neither to confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of any CIA records." Essentially, then, the CIA's policy is not only to flatly deny FOIA requests without justification, but to simply pretend that they do not have any records whatsoever.

Your thoughts, as always, are welcome. Use the comment link at the end of this (and every) post.

When Presidents Fib
Little lies matter, too.
By John Dickerson
Posted Wednesday, May 31, 2006, at 6:41 PM ET

John Snow leaving the Treasury Department was an open secret for many months. There seemed no end to the list of names floated as possible replacements. First it was going to be Chief of Staff Andy Card, then Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, then Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, and then former Commerce Secretary Don Evans. The manager at my Starbucks may have gotten feelers. When the president was asked at his press conference last week whether he had any indication Snow intended to leave, I thought he might say, "Is he still in my Cabinet?"

We now know that would have been a reasonable answer. Four days earlier, Hank Paulson had agreed to replace Snow. Bush also could have simply said yes, because as Snow later put it, Bush knew for some time that he was thinking of doing so. Instead, the president answered in a way that was not, to use a White House term, reality-based. "Has he given you any indication he intends to leave his job any time soon?" Bush was asked. The president responded: "No, he has not talked to me about resignation. I think he's doing a fine job."
The New York Times called this answer "artful." That's not the word I'd use. Artful should be reserved for things that hide the truth but don't deceive. A hat is artful. A toupee is a lie. Bush's answer was toupee-like. Even if it was technically true that Bush had not talked to Snow about "resignation," the president knew his confected statement was deceptive. I'm reluctant to call it a lie, but the president abused our trust.

We allow presidents a measure of obfuscation because in public they must give nuanced answers in some sensitive areas like national security. On personnel matters like this one, the public's right to know is not done grave harm when a president is less than candid. Bush is also protected by a less-honorable Washington tradition: the departure fiction where even if someone has been fired, he is described as having gone at his own behest, often to spend more time with his family.

Such wiggle-room prerogatives allow the president to duck many questions, as he has in the past. When the press has tried to ask about his flexibility on a particular piece of legislation, he has refused to speculate about what compromise he might accept, saying, "I won't negotiate with myself." When reporters try to get him to make news, he regularly refuses to "play that Washington" game. Richard Keil of Bloomberg was certainly trying to get Bush to play a round of that game by asking him to talk about Snow's intentions. But when asked in March about staff changes and calls from outside his administration for a shakeup, the president was careful to give nothing away without fibbing. "I'm not going to announce it right now," he said. "Look, they've got some ideas that I like and some I don't like. Put it that way."

These are unhelpful answers but they're not deceitful. There are times when administration officials have told me the back story behind a non-answer and it all makes sense. In this case, though, the president jumped over the menu of bland dodges available to him and picked the least truthful statement short of "Secretary Snow is staying." When asked about this answer yesterday, press spokesman Tony Snow explained that the president didn't misspeak. He was worried about spooking financial markets and wanted Paulson's background checks to go through before he announced the change. The president was also likely being sensitive about John Snow, who has been a dead man walking for so many months. Bush wanted to give him a proper send-off.

But those motivations don't explain why the president avoided the gentle euphemism and instead reached out to mislead. Snow ultimately fell back on the Clinton defense. "It was very carefully worded," he said of the president's answer. That's not encouraging. When a person hears a question, dissects it, and fashions an answer on the spot that deceives, it suggests a lot of practice and comfort with fibbing. This is a problem area for Bush: Fifty-six percent of the country does not find him trustworthy, according to recent polls.

In Washington, we often say politicians are "misleading." That's the kind of thinking President Bush usually resists. He often talks about his Midland, Texas, heritage when he wants to convey his moral compass. There, a man's word is sealed with his handshake. In Midland, they would have called what Bush said about John Snow a lie.

John Dickerson is Slate's chief political correspondent. He can be reached at
slatepolitics@gmail.com

The Tale of Danica Patrick and Other Dubious Legends Produced by ESPN

2006-05-29T18:45:00.000-07:00

I hate you ESPN, and its not just because of the aging, douchebag hipsters that host the increasingly vacuous Sportscenter and the absolutely painstaking commentaries of shills like Stephen A. Smith and Joe Morgan (with his lifetime .271 batting average). No, what I'm really angry about is your evolution from a simple, objective sports network into a marketing firm for unproven, often mediocre athletes. Case in point, Danica Patrick.

For those of you who haven't been hornswoggled into Danicamania and its associated drivel, Danica Patrick is a twenty-four year old female driver in something called the IRL. The IRL is, from what I can tell by perusing their website, essentially NASCAR without the chewing tobacco and Lynard Skynard music. As to auto racing, I share the feelings of George Carlin, who once quipped that auto racing was "a bunch of redneck jerkoffs driving five hundred miles in a circle... children can do that." But I digress, because very little of what you hear or see of Danica Patrick is related to her actual skills piloting a four-wheeled rocket. Rather, Danicamania is touted as a vehicle for breaking barriers, promoting fashionable consumption and, most importanly to Patrick and her handlers, selling merchandise.

She's the one with the long hair.

Patrick has been racing for over a year in the IRL, but has never won a race. Regardless of her lack of success, every Sportscenter segment that has covered an IRL race in the last year begins with Danica strking a pose, highlights of the crashes and then some European fellow crossing the finish line and bathing in a bottle of champagne. Cut to aging douche hipster telling us that Patrick finished eighth, or tenth, or wherever. Perhaps in light of this practice of constant exposure, Patrick was given the 2005 IRL Rookie of the Year (though I couldn't find any voting results) and has been featured on the covers of Sports Illustrated, TV Guide and ESPN: The Waste of Paper. That brings us to Memorial Day 2006.

During the Memorial Day weekend, Patrick raced in the apparent World Series of the IRL, the Indianapolis 500. ESPN spent the days before the race following the format laid out above. Danica had time to do some 150 interviews with media concerns. ESPN and other mindless "news" outlets trumpted Patrick's finish. Second? Fouth? No, not even close. Eighth. But you probably already knew that. She's the Gaylord Fokker of the auto racing industry.

Despite Patrick's lackluster finish, she and her marketing machine managed to score over 3,600 separate mentions in news sources covered by Google as of today. The three drivers who finished immediately in front of Partick at fifth, sixth and seventh (Tony Kannan, Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti) combined for a total of less than ten substantive mentions in news sources as of today. WTF?

In addition to the inordinate amount media coverage Patrick receives, there's another way to tell that Patrick, outside of her race car, is simply a marketing gimmick. If someone has the audacity to write a newspaper article casting the critics of Patrick as sexist, and another castigating Richard Petty (a successful driver) for simply stating his fact-based opinion on Patrick's lack of success, then you know the hype machine is running overtime. Even a seemingly level-headed debate of the virtues of her driving skill is mired in accusations of sexism and the now-universal (and, in my opinion, fitting) Anna Kornikova analogy. It's not sexism or Richard Petty who should be on trial, but rather the needless hype of second-rate athletes with first-class marekting potential.

As long as Patrick continues to finish in the exhaust fumes of other drivers, she simply does not qualify as a sports icon, let alone merit the 3,600 stories extolling her eight place finish. But ESPN and other mindless promoters have and will continue to hype her-- at least until a younger, more attractive female driver comes along to supplant her and, perhaps, garner a few years of unwarranted fame. I hate you ESPN.

[UPDATE 4/25/08: Danica wins the Indy Japan 300. Read my reaction.]

The Shortsighted Nature of Corporate Avarice

2006-05-21T16:20:00.000-07:00

In the past few days, as I've received reader feedback on my posting on Bush's immigration speech, a common retort I've received is that I shouldn't mind if my portfolio benefits from a corporation's exploitation of its workers, whether illegal immigrants or not. So, I asked myself, when, if ever, does social responsibility trump a corporation's lawful right to profit? This question has been debated from the time of Adam Smith, who once remarked, “[I]t is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” In other words, corporate actors have a vested interest in acting responsibly, as acting irresponsibly or wastefully will, in theory, destroy their enterprise. While I haven't discovered a way to provide this source online, an excellent documentary addressing this question is fairly reviewed here.

As I ponder this question and search for my own evidence, my thoughts first turn to the Kansas City Royals, a shining example of corporate irresponsibility. With their most recent loss today, the Royals are a major-league worst 10-31. After today's loss, KC pitcher Scott Elarton quipped, "[W]e're just terrible. There are no two ways about it. We're pretty much bad in every facet of the game." Despite the fact that the team is terrible and, quite frankly, has been the worst team in baseball for several years, Forbes magazine recently reported that the team cleared a twenty million dollar profit in 2005. The team vigorously disputes the Forbes report, but (perhaps conveniently) cannot issue any empirical evidence of its finances pursuant to the rules of Major League Baseball. Sources indicate that the Royals, with a thirty-six million dollar payroll and inconsequential external expenses for uniforms, miinor leaguers, etc., will receive in excess of fifty-five million in MLB revenue sharing money this year. Thus, all the Royals need to do to be profitable is simply to exist. It doesn't matter if the Royals ever draw a single fan. Good for the business, bad for its customers. Given the woeful state of the Royals franchise from the perspective of its fans, it should come as no surprise to learn that the owner of the Royals, David Glass, is the former President and CEO of Wal-Mart, a corporation that has received broad criticism for failing to act responsibly.

Apparently, Glass is taking what he learned at Wal-Mart and transplanting it to the sports entertainment industry. It doesn't take much effort to find examples of Wal-Mart, bolstered by tax incentives granted by shortsighted local governments, cruising in to town to usurp the markets once dominated by locally-owned and operated businesses. After a brief war of attrition, local merchants close up shop, layoff their employees and contribute to the recently saturated commercial real estate market. After that, Wal-Mart can, in many senses, operate in a market similar to that of the Kansas City Royals. By simply existing as the only retailer in town, guaranteed to profit, Wal-Mart, like the Royals, has no incentive to "field a winning team," but can, instead, exhaust its welcome package of tax breaks and either timely relocate to another market or leverage its monopoly position to extract an extension of those incentives. To the extent you believe Wal-Mart would not engage in such behavior, you really need to see Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices.

A consequence of the destruction of the locally-owned business is a significant decline of reinvestment of local retail profits. The revenue once generated by locally owned businesses is now driven exclusively to Wal-Mart, to be transferred to the institutional investors that own Wal-Mart stocks and bonds, or used by the corporate offices to conquer new markets or create new "efficiencies" to extract even more profit margin from its suppliers. Good for Wal-Mart, bad for the exploited municipalities, low-paid Wal-Mart employees and pinched suppliers. In essence, the profit is taken away from the local economy with little to no local reinvestment. The tax that can be collected by local government on Wal-Mart's local sales is often earmarked for public safety, educating our ever-growing adolescent population, supporting the indigent and rebuilding or expanding the infrastructure required by the beheamoth big-box retailer. Moreover, because Wal-Mart fails to provide benefits to many of its workers, these needs are socialized to the local government and, ultimately, taxpayers. All of these expenses, in the aggregate, always exceed the sales tax revenue. It's the modern business model slam-dunk, socialize the risk and "externalities," while privatizing the profit. At the end of the day, towns that are overrun by national retail chains will get the raw end of the deal.

Of course, it's not only Wal-Mart and other retail giants that fail to reinvest locally, but, rather, a multitude of industries and service companies from your local office of a national insurance company to the local subsidiary of your power supplier. As stated above, these companies are also often enjoying tax relief (whether local, state or federal) and other incentives not available to small, locally owned businesses. Unfortunately, local governments face a Catch-22, choosing between destroying the local economy through granting these tax subsidies in order to lure these businesses to town or suffering through the high unemployment that results from population growth coupled with the flight of manufacturing companies reducing their costs by
relocating to countries with cheap, willing labor. This system, if continued, will ultimately destroy local economies and, eventually, the national consumer economy. Bad for everyone except multinational corporations that can continue to seek out low cost labor, while piling up profits for those few individuals and institutions that can afford to benefit from substanital ownership in the equity or bonds of multi-national corporations.

Another glaring example of corporate irresponsibility is pollution. Again, with corporation's acting on a pure profit motive, it's no wonder why they choose to pollute. It's simply cheaper than not polluting. Investing in pollution control is much more expensive than simply bribing regulators and "contributing" to the right people on the House and Senate committees that control energy legislation and regulation. Again, there's precedent for this practice. Remember the Pinto? Prior to the first model coming off the line, Ford Motor Company has been proven to have had extensive knowledge that the fuel system on its Pinto Model would explode in many garden-variety rear-end collisions. Rather than spend the extraordinary sum redesigning the automobile and retooling its assembly line, Ford made an internal "cost-benefit analysis" that indicated that settling wrongful death lawsuits would be cheaper than investing in alterations to its manufacturing process. After eight years and hundreds of deaths, Ford made those adjustments. However, it confessed no guilt, instead settling with the NTSB for an undisclosed sum while admitting no wrongdoing, thus avoiding any nasty civil lawsuits based on admitted criminal behavior.

Returning to my initial prompt, when, if ever, does corporate responsibility trump a corporation's lawful right to profit? The answer, it seems to me, is when the pursuit and capture of profit causes more harm than good. Corporations and their evil step-daughters, the private equity funds, do promote economic growth on a pure profit basis. This growth and the concomitant profits, however, are increasingly going into the hands of fewer and fewer people. We'd all like to believe that the people who receive this disproportionate amount of wealth are all philanthropists and statesmen. That notion is simply too often incorrect. In many instances, personal wealth has become a selfish man's pursuit. In even the best case scenario (the Gates Foundation's effort to eradicate malaria, for example), vast sums of money are appropriated to fewer and fewer causes with little to no domestic, small-scale focus.

I truly believe that an economic system that prohibits monopoly and discourages the pure profit motive produces a more open, clean, egalitarian and stable society. If the above examples of Wal-Mart and the Kansas City Royals suggest anything, it's that avarice, whether individual in Mr. Glass's case or a coalition of Wal-Mart shareholder-executives, will ultimately destroy the object of their exploitation. Fortunately, the Royals operate in a system in which twenty-nine other teams have power over their operations. Those teams will ultimately have to fix the system that allows the Royals to profit solely on money paid by those other teams. However, corporate beheamoths like Wal-Mart face no such peers.

Absent monopolies or significant barriers to entry, markets will act efficiently. However, when the market is as vast as the American political landscape, and is staffed by officials that are beholden to corporate contributors, there is little efficiency or collective good. Corporate avarice goes unpunished and, consequently, unchecked when the only force operating to admonish it is itself propped up by it. While those who exploit in avarice will benefit in the short term, they, and everyone they exploit, will suffer over time.

Your comments are welcomed.

It's a bird, it's a plane... well, maybe we'll never know

2006-05-16T20:40:00.000-07:00

As numerous media outlets reported Monday, two videos of the explosion at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, have been released to Judicial Watch pursuant to a FOIA request.

As an aside, I've been following http://www.flight77.info/, a website documenting a FOIA request for these same videos, along with some colorful, often humorous commentary, since its inception in March 2005. Oddly, the government's response to the flight77.info FOIA request indicates that there are at least eighty-five videotapes in the possession of the FBI that recorded the events at or near the Pentagon on September 11. Those tapes should be forthcoming, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Back to Judicial Watch who, according to their president Tom Fitton, sought the videos, "to complete the public record with respect to the terrorist attacks of September 11.'' Fitton went on to say that, "[w]e hope that this video will put to rest the conspiracy theories involving American Airlines Flight 77.''

Before you view the videos, you should know that an extraordinary number of news outlets, both print and television, have asserted that these videos put to rest any remaining notion that the events of 9/11 are any different than as reported in the 9/11 Commission report. Now watch the two videos (1 and 2) and ask yourself, was that a bird, a plane or a quick blurb that you just can't make out no matter how many times you try to pause the videos.

I believe that the videos prove nothing, unless the absence of evidence is truly evidence of absence. Anyone who definitively states that there is an image of an American Airlines 757 on either of these videos is either delusional or lying. How is it then that it can be widely reported that the videos "dispel conspiracy" theories? That's disgustingly irresponsible, shabby journalism. Moreover, how do these two grainy videotapes "complete the public record with repsect to the September 11," as Mr. Fitton asserts? Quite to the contrary, there are numerous unanswered questions relating to not only the explosion at the Pentagon, but the inexplicable collapses of WTC 1, WTC 2 and, most notably, WTC 7.

As for the Pentagon attack, numerous questions remain unanswered and, most importantly, univestigated. For example, you would expect that bodies (or at least some tissue) would be recovered from any plane wreckage. The DOD/NTSB team was able to conduct autopsies on some tissue "recovered" at the site of the explosion and were able to match the tissue samples to fifty-eight of the people on the Flight 77 passenger list. However, the full passenger list has never been released to the public and, interestingly, the version that was released immediately after September 11 did not contain the names of any of the terrorists. The fact that there were five samples of tissue that did not match the DNA samples provided by the family members of each of the 183 victims that were either on Flight 77 or in the Pentagon has been billed as conclusive evidence that those five samples are all that is left of the alleged flight 77 hijackers.

Coincidentally, or perhaps consequently, the released passenger lists for American 11, the flight that allegedly struck WTC 1, are a monumental clusterfuck. Click here for a thoroughly sourced discussion of the AA 11 passenger lists.

In addition to the questionable reasoning involving the conclusion of the Pentagon DNA tests, there remains the question of how an admittedly inexperienced pilot, alleged to be Hani Hanjour, was able to conduct such extraordinary maneuvers in a commercial jet, descending 7,000 feet in under two minutes while maintaining a perfect 270 degree banking turn over the Pentagon. Full, objective details on Flight 77, including flight path and radar data can be found here. Flight of fancy indeed.

There's so much more out there about 9/11. It's not my goal to here to put forth one theory in front of any others, but, rather, merely to alert you to the fact that while news outlets report that the "the case is closed," it should not be closed until a truly independent investigation, with access to all information, classified and not, is completed. Unfortunately, most of the evidence has gone the way of the WTC steel, never to be seen again. Sure makes it difficult to figure out how a dissipating pool of kerosene jet fuel can bring down a 110 story steel skyscraper perfectly upon itself. Excellent discussion of the physics (or lack thereof) of the WTC collapses is here.

If you wish to learn more, I offer several links below that are the result of my own relentless search through the morass of 9/11 websites. While I won't assert what theory or theories I believe may have some veracity, I will tell you that I firmly believe that the 9/11 Commission Report is not the end-all, tell-all on 9/11. That feeling comes not only from my review of the collection of independent evidence, but also the clear indication from the Bush administration that it does not hesitate to lie and obfuscate as a means to justify its ends. WMD, anyone?

An excellent overview of all 9/11 theories, from the moderate to the mundane is here.

The most complete 9/11 timeline ever created is here.

Primary sources, the best source of truth, recorded from actual witnesses to the events of 9/11 can be found here.

The mysterious story of WTC 7 is here (site is dead, but data saved by the ultra-cool Wayback Machine).

The underreported story of mistaken identity of the alleged hijackers is here and here.

Indulge your wildest conspiracy theories here.

Finally, a good blog that follows 9/11 developments can be found here.

Comments welcome.

Rah Rah Sis Boom Bah

2006-05-16T02:36:00.000-07:00

In case you missed it, our fearless leader was on TV tonight talking tough on immigration. Text of this horseshit can be found here.

I only read the text, as I just couldn't pull away from Heaven's Gate on my DVR. Regardless of my failure, I wanted to share one comment to Bush's speech, in which he told the tearful tale of Guadalupe Denogean, a Mexican immigrant who, after joining the United States Marine Corps in 1978, finally became a citizen in 2003.

After reading this bit, I stopped to wonder aloud how someone who was admittedly not an American citizen can serve in the country's army for twenty-five plus years. How did Guadalupe Denogean get into the U.S. Army in the first place in 1978? Apparently, the military has only had a "dodge bullets for citizenship" program for immigrant soldiers since the late 1990s.

To make matters doubly confounding was Bush speaking disparagingly of people using "forged documents" to enter the country and obtain employment. Did Denogean use forged documents to enter the military? If not, how exactly was he able to enlist? If he did use forged documents, does that diminish his honorable service? If not, then why is it okay to "cheat" your way into getting wounded in an unjustified war and not to "cheat" your way into obtaining a job? Denogean, now on the other side of the fence (pun intended), says he does not favor amnesty for undocumented immigrants and stated that, "This is the land of opportunity. You can make it what you want... But to do it right, you have to be legal."

Denogean becoming "citizenized." April 11, 2003 (really).

Could it be that this three-year old "rah rah" story is just a feeble minded attempt to link the immigration issue to one of the many issues Bush is taking a beating on in the polls?

Iraq quagmire? Don't worry, we'll have a guest soldier program.

National Security? You bet we're going to address that with the immigration bill. It might have been Mexicans on 9/11... Mexican Al-Qaeda, of course. With WMDs.

Economic problems got you down? Sure, we'll just have a guest worker program , but that doesn't mean employers will have to give 'em minimum wage or government-subsidized health care. Oh, and by the way, corporate exploiters of immigrant labor, you're absolved of any blame because, even though you assiduously checked all those W-2 documents before hiring your labor for a nickel an hour, it's clear that the immigrants are master document forgers. You're clearly not to blame... at all.

In fact, the program has been designed such that you won't have to pay benefits or SSI or FICA taxes for any guest workers. Instead, checks should be made out to your Republican representative(s) just in time for the primaries. You see, it's a win-win. Go team.

Mother's Day on the way

2006-05-12T23:40:00.000-07:00

I spotted this article this evening. Please take a minute to read it. An insightful, meaningful message on Mother's Day. Reprinted from: http://www.blueoregon.com/

My Final Mother's Day
T.A. Barnhart
Mother's Day is Sunday, and I'm not looking forward to it.
Last July 3rd, my mom went to her local Albertson's in Winter Haven, Florida, to finish making a special dinner for her husband, Bob. She and Bob married during my senior year of high school in Billings, Montana; November 1974. Since then, they had not missed a single holiday together until Bob's leg problems landed him in the hospital for the Fourth of July 2005. My mom had health problems of her own, in spades, mostly the lung cancer that was unavoidable after 55 years of smoking. But Mom had her ways that couldn't be denied, and making Bob a special post-holiday welcome-home dinner for the 5th was something she was going to do. Tired or not, her activity level reduced by the inability of her lungs to process even the oxygen-enriched air she was breathing through plastic tubes, she was going to do what she always did: something for someone else.
Her last words, to the woman at the checkout at Albertsons, were "I don't feel well." And then she fell, and that was pretty much that. Not a very dignified way to go, but for anyone who knew my mom at all, it was the equivalent of Bing Crosby going down on the golf course. Mom, for whatever faults she had as a mother, loved to do for others. She had her quirks in this, but at her memorial, the common theme was "El Rene just loved to help other people."
Her death came as a shock, a heart attack that resulted from years of strain on her heart and lungs. I was expecting a slower, more ugly death from cancer; this was better in that regard. But there was no time to prepare, no chance to repair bridges or say goodbye or ask questions about long-lost relatives whose stories I would so love to know. I didn't think ahead to a day like last July 4th, when my mom would be gone forever. Who does? We don't like to think of death, so we generally avoid thoughts of it. I wish I had done so just once, just once gotten on the phone and said a few things. She knew I loved her, and I knew she loved me, and whatever separated us, well, I hope it didn't matter to her.
Don't screw up this Mother's Day. If your mom is still around, make the most of this Sunday. Call her or visit; send a card, flowers, wine, warm socks. If you are angry with her or hurt by how she raised you or bitter or just distant, get over it. It's not worth it. To be honest, my parents didn't do a great job. They loved me, but they left so many gaps. Their marriage went south when I was 10 or 11, and from that point on, I was left on my own, emotionally. I don't blame them because I know the people they were, the stuff they had to deal with in their own lives. My dad and I have a good relationship now, for which I am eternally grateful. My mom lived a good and happy life down in Florida with Bob, and I am glad she did. I'm sorry I didn't get down there to visit; I wish my kids had known her more than just a couple of visits up here when they were little. And I will always regret that I didn't get to say goodbye, that my final Mother's Day slipped past me in secret. Sunday will be a day to remember and to mourn, again; I hope it's also a day some of you will fix things with your mom. Your time is short, and it's always shorter than you think.
May 12, 2006 T.A. Barnhart

A letter from Iran...

2006-05-09T13:15:00.000-07:00

It's not surprising to me that the Bush administration would dismiss the recent letter from Iranian Presdient Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Given the administration's outright refusal to accept opposing points of view or perspectives that do not square up with its own agenda, we should expect nothing less than efforts to attack the messenger, but not acknowledge the arguments posited in the message. Moreover, Ahmadinejad claims in the letter that it reflects the "words and opinions of the Iranian nation." If the administration can (and clearly does) ignore 65%+ of the "words and opinions" of the American nation, why should it pay any attention to the people and leaders of Iran? When Bush stated today that "diplomacy is the first option," we should be very worried. Diplomacy was also stated to be the "first option" in Iraq, when, as we know now, diplomacy was never really an option at all.

We rarely hear about Iran's rights to peaceful nuclear development guaranteed any signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The NPT expressly provides signatories with the inalienable right to develop nuclear fuels for peaceful purposes, including Iran's stated desire to acquire and exploit nuclear technology for power generation. Instead, the Bush rhetoric focuses on it preconceived notion that Iran seeks to develop a nuclear bomb to threaten "our allies in the region," and, in some wildly irresponsible circles, "Amercian soil." No one seems to remeber that when this debate started, there was a non-partisan announcement that Iran, even if it worked around the clock to develop a bomb, was AT LEAST ten years away from any viable, deliverable nuclear weapon system. That timeline does not even compensate for the decades it would take for Iran to develop missle technology to carry a nuclear payload over an inter-continental distance. Thus, the nuclear threat from Iran to the United States seems to be a threat similar to oh, let's say, Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction in 2003.

Please don't jump to the argument that "it's better to do something now then to wait and see." While that would be common sense, the problem is not with the timeline, but the administration's putative solution. Now is the chance to get in front of the parade and demand a peaceful inspections process similar to that imposed on India in the recent India-U.S. nuclear pact. If it can work in India, a nation on hair-trigger alert that has every motivation to develop, test and proliferate in a nuclear race with Pakistan, it can work in Iran. Perhaps by showing a bit of respect (gasp) to the rights of other soverigns in the Middle East, the U.S. can begin what is sure to a long, yet lasting, route to peace in the region. Given the recent implosion of the Palestian Authority and the full-scale civil war that may result from it, there appears to be no better time to cut the imperialist cowboy shit and collaborate with Iran on a meaningful, productive solution.

Not only does a diplomatic solution make political sense (in both the domestic and international arenas), it makes fiscal sense. At this point, over $300 billion has been directly spent/transferred to the military industrial complex for the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Speculation is that an additional $200-400 billion will be spent before the books are closed. Thus, with direct costs of approximately $500-800 billion, along with indirect costs (healthcare for injured veterans, propaganda and potential settlements for the rampant abuse of Iraqi prisoners and civilians) that are clearly substanital, these "wars" (though there seems to be no opponent) will ultimately cost at least one trillion dollars. At a time of a burgeoning federal deficit and an increasingly dismal outlook for the American dollar, we simply cannot afford another unnecessary, and currently unjustifiable, war.

So Bush, read the letter from Ahmadinejad. Write back with your opinion. Schedule some talks, and attend yourself. Spend time to listen to the concerns of the Iranians and respond in kind with your concerns. Come to a peacful solution and then turn to your attention to Iraq and Afghanistan. Stop meddling with the Iraqi polical process and pull back the troops to guard the oil wells and pipelines that were our only true goal in the invasion. Restore oil production and complete the promised domestic reconstruction without spending additional dollars. Then look to Afghanistan and try to figure out a way to eliminate or moderate poppy production without destroying the entire state economy (good luck with that one.) Finally, come clean on why the world's greatest military force can't or won't capture Osama bin Laden.

But, whatever you do, stop being a douche and "keeping your cards close to your chest." Simply read and answer the letter.