Obama's "Frightening" Nominations

First, a recap of recent market gains in fear futures... 71

Reflecting, not on the passing government, but on ourselves and our own part in the dismal events of the Bush years, we arrive at some unavoidable conclusions. As citizens we had become so softened by years of prosperous security before his terms that we were vulnerable to manipulation by most of his shallow, fabricated new fears.

We were officially frightened by Osama bin Laden after 911, and his imaginary accomplice, Sadam Hussein shortly after that. We were not frightened by Indian and Pakistani H-bomb tests. Perhaps that fright was reserved for later, that is, for some inevitable future moment when it could be exploited with greater results.

We were frightened by North Korea’s H-bomb test. It enjoyed the serendipity of being at just the right moment, maybe a moment when our fear was subsiding to levels no longer blindly supporting some scheme made politically possible only by our manipulation.

We responded well to Iran’s understandable ambition to arm itself. At any time that fear faltered, we increased our not so subtle threats, making some fiery response a virtual certainty, a reaffirmed asset for domestic consumption here and, of course, a good investment of hate.

We weren’t particularly frightened by Katrina, a deadly but largely unusable source of fear due to its lack of a “bomb-able” adversary. The Russians presented a reliable threat, but they apparently frightened our government in return. They were somewhat less usable, perhaps because they could actually “bite back.”

The point? We, unaccustomed to being threatened after such a long hegemony -- real or imagined, were gradually groomed to be frightened on demand. The neo-cons accurately and successfully managed to convince us that leadership required a threat. In the more rational examination of such leadership, that is, when it was examined without the convenient hysteria of the latest calamity, its appearance might become dangerously lack luster.

The "new frighteners."

Now, these weary “old frighteners” are on their way out of town. Troubling "new frighteners” have arrived with the ambition of taking over the franchise. These "new frighteners” are not neo-cons at all. This new batch is from the other end of the spectrum. We seem to be entering into a period of being frightened by the left.

What are the threats being employed? After all, the left has demonstrated an irritable kind of allergic avoidance to the use of foreign machinations to frighten us. The newest, post election tool is, instead, an interesting innuendo indicting the “progressive purity” of Obama's nominations for places of power in the new government.

There was the momentary mention of the “testing” of the new President, but that was no more than a sickening remnant of the old scheme of threats, one based on the same tired ideology of being hopelessly terrified by foreign adversaries, that is, a tiresome repeat of the one used before. These more contemporary “frighteners” are intent on revealing threats to us about cabinet appointments and the possibilities that our accomplishments in the last election would be undercut with a result of reverting the government back to the numbing failure of its predecessor. They seem to have developed an appetite for questioning the new President’s character even after supporting him only a few weeks or months ago.

The threat they endeavor to manufacture now is one of deception and conspiracy. They imply that the changes we sought have not turned out to be changes at all. These folks would like to take up the mantle of being the "new threateners" with their endless assertion that we, as voters, have been deceived. Again.

Clearly, they consider any fear and fright of this sort that they can incite in us to be a valuable asset to prop up their languishing authority as critics and pundits. They believe that these unexamined doubts they might cause will become very useful foundations for later tirades and tantrums which might have, otherwise, been too obviously shallow to provide the impact they crave. Their future dream is to say, credibly, of course, “I told you so.” “I was the one who cried out the early warning, so believe me now!”

If you’re waiting for the next form of being scared, you may be disappointed. You may have to learn a new trick. The world as previously presented as one of endless, hopeless, despair is going to become one of challenges and opportunities. Instead of groveling and trying to simply survive, we will be required to stand up with our eyes forward. Rather than cowering in a sterile ideological wasteland, lamenting on how things should have been, we will now be required to begin all our thoughts with where things are and where we intend to go.

Domestically, Senatorial bigots and military throwbacks have invested heavily in sponsoring our hatred and fear of each other. Their practiced incompetence was the real conspiracy as they trotted out fabricated alternatives with every choice equally depressing and unpalatable. Their old paradigm of no choices other than dominating or surviving the world is becoming the new, brighter question of successfully living in it.

These aging knee jerkers are now exposed much like the new thought-limiting left. Neither group has earned the right to express their foolish purity. Neither group has ever been willing to pay the honest wage of embracing leadership. The wage? To follow, of course. To trust a little. To think of the country beyond one’s immediate personal ambitions.

These "new frighteners” from the left would like for us to faint before the “hodge podge” of conflicting influences in the new government. They would prefer that we were, well, more hopelessly stoic given the rather raw abilities of these nominations by Obama. These "new frighteners” would prefer that we be pessimists about whether or not he can lead with all these conflicting influences. “Who will be in charge?” they wonder.

I predict that none of us will wonder about this for long.

We have elected a leader with, I suspect, a lethal, pragmatic competence coupled with more idealism that most of us think we can afford right now. Of course we are a bit uncomfortable with what we’ve done, but we can certainly claim that we were at our bravest and our best when we did it, inebriated with new hope.

By the way, that hope isn’t all in him. The important part of that hope is in us.

Leadership, after the wasteland we’ve endured, may seem to be measured by astounding solutions to intractable problems. It isn’t. It’s much more like paint, permanently changing the hue of everything it touches.

Get used to it.

No more being directed by fear. The leader we’ve found won’t amount to much without Americans to follow him.

For a very unusual point of view, sample this link:
http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/lust-in-paradise/200811/obamas-ancient-leadership-style

Dancing with the "T" Word: Treason?

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The "Art" of "Knowing" about Iraq

Can We Penetrate the Nature of the Iraqi Government?
Can We Do It Even Under A Media Blackout?

It’s high time to start with our version of the W.W.II German disclaimers, only we will need to smooth out some ruffled feathers with our national behavior in Iraq rather than declaring a lack of knowledge about “death camps.” Of course, we can only know what we have been told about the invasions and the subsequent occupation. How could we be held responsible for events about which we were never informed?

Frankly, if we place all that we have been told in one column on the right, then add a column on the left noting our inescapable other conclusions about the same topics, we would be facing a “loose brick” in our wall of presumptive innocence. Although the administration, with the help of its trained monkeys on AM radio, has carefully crafted a position for us about the whole affair, a position which provides a wonderful foundation for our “complete innocence,” those among us who can still claim to “know nothing more” is a dwindling population.

Our “innocence” has grown a little frayed, a little “road weary.” We can no longer wear our white wedding dress quite so effortlessly. The nagging alternative to this blissful blind faith grows into a more and more inevitable observation every time we add one of our famous “but’s” to the argument. “Well, they said this and this and this, BUT, what about that and that and that?” The innocent image the administration has offered to us tasted pretty good at first, but the bitter contradictions just seemed to keep on coming after those first few delicious, vengeful bites.

So, we admit it. We can no longer assume that we have ever known what was actually happening in Iraq.

As for self-deprecation, during the formal invasion I proposed loudly that we would never be able to just steal the oil. Such a blatant crime would collect too much international baggage even for someone as implacable as Dick Cheney. Instead, I suggested, American “looters” would nibble away slowly, imperceptibly, at the Iraqi fortune with truly awful oil field service contracts, bad distribution agreements and the like, all benefitting respectable corporations such as Brown and Root and Halliburton.

I was wrong. After spending five continuous years reporting on Iraq, from Iraq, NBC’s Chief Foreign Correspondent, Richard Engel, estimates that around 500.000 barrels of Iraqi oil are pilfered every day. At $125 per barrel, that amounts to roughly $62,500,000 worth daily or about $24 billion per year.

Jumping right beyond this unaccounted-for-oil, let’s return to the question of what we know about what’s happening in Iraq. What do we know about our partners in democracy, the people running the Iraqi Government? Again, we have the “official” version of who these folks are. The administration would like to depict them as amateur but enthusiastic “founding fathers,” making possible all the wonderful things that Iraq will become if we just “stay the course.” Veritable copies of Thomas Jefferson or, perhaps, Ben Franklin, honest, hardworking nation builders eminently deserving of our respect and support.

Never mind the five year long argument about reconciling the country, never mind the idea that millions of Iraqi’s are possibly less than pleased with monthly death rates of 1,000, 2,000 or worse, depending on the moment. These same stalwart democrats continue to give their all to this mission of theirs, year after year without any progress, lucky breaks or inspired results.

Don’t be too critical. The model of democracy offered up as an example for them to follow was none other than a United States government reeling from every sort of corruption, lack of oversight and ridiculous ideology. What did we expect?

As for the missing oil, pause for a moment and consider the material reality of stealing half a million barrels of oil every day. Sure, these clever Iraqis have developed some very sophisticated tricks. Under filling and over reporting oil tanker loads in Basra. Undetected diversion lines from the main oil pipelines (undetected?). Outright criminal corruption done in the broad glare of the Iraqi daylight.

Yet, we are led to think that the noble Iraqi government leaders, in their daily struggle in Baghdad to form a new democratic nation, somehow remain aloof from such a dirty business. They learned from their American sponsors that a position in government is akin to a natural resource, a birth into a privileged nobility or a generous trust fund, suddenly discovered.

Now, years later, we have managed to create a class of politicians cast in the exact mold of the Republican Party that has run our own country, full of subterfuge, excuses, convenient confusion and graft, not to mention outrageous hubris. We taught our Mexican neighbors how to hold crooked elections. We taught our Iraqi partners how to perfect corruption.

Thank you, President Bush. Perhaps you and the Secretary of State can retire to a refurbished Chevron oil tanker, the Condalezza Rice, docked at some friendly port in the Persian Gulf once you have finally finished with us.

An H-Bomb Love Sonnet: Part I

How to Quit Worrying and Love the Bomb
Part One: H-Bombs as a Antidote to Incompetence - Cleansing Nuclear Fire? 23

Those of us who experienced the perpetual terror of the Cold War can probably remember thoughts about just how incredibly awful all those h-bombs made the world. Who could imagine that the day might come when we looked fondly upon these mega-death arsenals as our last bastion of national defense?

We face many types of crises. Thanks largely to the immense and cynical greed of those in our government, it seems that every avenue of our culture is challenged, seriously corrupted or in an outright failure state. But, leaving all that aside, let us focus on the rather concrete problems we now face in our national security.

Given the system of our choice of government, we are inescapably compelled to place our trust in the Commander-In-Chief. The velocity of events in the world clearly require that viable decisions be made far more quickly than what would be possible if they required the methodical education of the citizens. Only the most direly Polly Anna would dare believe that no threats exist.

However, the consistent descent in the quality of these leadership decisions has, without any particular influence of ideology or partisanship, led us to a critical lack of trust. You can still dance with the words if you wish, but right now our government has taken both your sons and your treasure (and your son’s treasure, and probably his son’s treasure) into a exquisitely sleazy political gambit, and it has become a horrific disaster. Our government and, especially, its executive branch has lied to us.

Just as we remember the terror of the Cold War, we also remember the shameless, unending lies of the Viet Nam War. The body counts. The indescribable yet inevitably concrete evil of the enemy. The daily “turning points” toward a final, yet continually mysterious success. By the end of this mortal national toothache, twenty years or so later, no one believed the President no matter who he might have been.

Mr. Rove designed the political features of this nightmare. The military requirements suggested by the Generals would mean nothing. The size of our invading army would be determined by political expediency. No one in the nation would be asked to pay for anything. The entire affair would be financed by money borrowed from Chinese savings accounts. (There ceased to be any here, long ago.) The public relations for this train wreck would be managed by scaring the hell out of everyone who might possibly oppose it. Poison gas. Nuclear bombs. Terrorists. When that fell apart, he added a bit of Bush-style Texas religion. The enemy was “evil” or “criminal.” Our military goal became liberation instead of defense.

The generous commentator might describe it as “unfortunate.”

Still, whether we believed all these terrifying innuendoes or not, we citizens were still not too concerned with our national safety here. (“Fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.”) Without ever actually saying it in so many words, we were all lulled into a comfortable conclusion that, even if we lost in Iraq and suffered all of his manufactured threats as actual fact, we would remain safe and secure. You know. Stop by the grocery on the way home from the office.

No matter how obviously bad everything was going “over there,” life here would continue to be about the same.

So, it must be time to direct our thoughts back to our H-bombs.

There exists the unsettling possibility that an actual threat to our “home” security might arise while we still enjoy the genius of this Commander-In-Chief. Is there, now, anything he could tell us that would, once again, garner our trust in a way sufficient to defend ourselves? We could probably still respond in a self-preservation manner, but only after enough blood had been spilled to inject some credibility back into his rather hollow character.

Even then, as we licked the wounds of our next horrible injury and sat in our homes terrified, someone like Mr. Rove would continue to work at manipulating the scene to a partisan advantage. The media would be managed with even more frenzy. The mushroom clouds and the poison gas would be trotted out as reasons justifying even more cheap grabs for power. Worst of all, some of us would believe it all. “You go to war with the President you have, not the President you need.”

Well, world, count on this. No matter how incompetent our greed crazed President may be, there is someone left (after he fired all those disagreeable Generals) who will still push the button on all those old nukes. Regardless of how much damage this government can inflict on our military, our State Department, our reputation, our economy or our national spirit as it pursues its childish ambitions, this old and constant weapon can still be unleashed.

Yes, we have lost a ground war to some trailer park east of Cairo. Gloat all you wish about that, you enemies of ours, but remember that somewhere within us, we have a continuing impulse to survive the errors we have made in our fear and greed. Listen up, all of you who would attack us. Granted, the cowards in charge would probably have no stomach for it, but still go ahead and cultivate your worst fears. There still exists an American finger for that American button!

Has this Cold War weapon become our last bastion? The only one beyond the debilitating touch of these grotesque leaders? Do we really want to spend our years in this period of imperial decline hiding behind our Minutemen?

It's ugly, but it seems like that is exactly what we asked for. Twice.

An H-Bomb Love Sonnet: Part II

How to Quit Worrying and Love the Bomb
Part Two: H-Bombs as a Response to a Rotten Economy - A Bargain at Twice the Price! 24

It is no secret that the engine which makes it possible for a great state to fight wars, legitimate or not, is always its inherent wealth. With enough money we can create a military might suitable for any imaginable capability. The last Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill was for $108 Billion. What if we couldn’t borrow the cash to make such an appropriation?

If that were to be the case, we would have to determine just how essential such a war actually was to our national interests. Perhaps we could sell Alaska back to those recently prosperous Russians for enough money to continue our fight for another year! Is Iraq that essential to our national interests?

What is happening to our economy might very well turn out to be no more than a semiserious recession. On the other hand, there is a suspicious odor about this particular “collapse,” “correction” or “adjustment.” It might easily turn out to be a bit more severe than our memories of generally painless “stagflation,” “inflation” or “recessions” in the past.

No problem. We can rest assured that our Chinese bankers will be happy to reconfigure our debt payments, restructure our interest or, at least, give us a break until things improve a little. Those Chinese are famous for that sort of compassionate lending laxity. Maybe they would like to buy Alaska! A great idea, especially if they can be convinced to pay for it with something other than our dollars.

The financial burden of a great military, especially one with an appetite for irrelevant and expensive assets, is, simply enough, that it costs a lot of money. Unhappily, we have been “hollowing” out all the equity of our economy and turning it over to our billionaires in a brave act of unbridled capitalism (best termed national socialism). We have to suspect that these stalwart American billionaires might be a little reluctant when it comes to financing our extravagant and illogical military should an actual threat to national security arise.

Here we should consider a comparison to the Roman model during the times of that empire. The division of wealth was almost total. The rich, noble families held immense assets (Africa, Spain, Gaul) as a standing form of incentive to assure their loyalty to Caesar. Unlike today when such fortunes must be shielded from the public eye by apologies and deceptions, those Roman folks considered them to be strategic assets!

The compensation was very great for these noble families. They could and did finance their own armies and successfully pursued all sorts of expeditions to enlarge the empire. Of course, the looting involved in such military victories also enhanced their wealth, and to some extent, the wealth of the common Roman. Looking over all the territory, slaves and plunder, they would inevitably say “See, everybody wins!”

Our situation is a little different. First, we can rest assured that no matter how grave the insult to our physical country, these billionaires will continue to do just swell. Their view of our current economy is that profits will be handled capitalistically (15% capital gains tax) and losses will be handled socialistically (Bear Sterns bailout).

However, we must, here, recall that our expensive military is paid for by taxes on “earned income” while the wealth of the billionaires is generated by “unearned income.” Not only is the source stream of these separate types of tax revenues different, the destination of the tax money collected may as well also be considered separate.

As a consequence of this, we might experience a fiscal necessity to start lowering the expense, and hence the military capacity, of our armed forces. This is not to say that we would cease the purchase of all sorts of expensive, irrelevant equipment right away (a precipitous withdrawal). That sort of picky shopping might reduce some of our billionaires to the drudgery of the “earned income” category.

What such a change in policy would suggest is that we would have a continuously smaller and less potent military. Fewer tax dollars means fewer soldiers (but probably not fewer wars).

Here we come, once more, to the H-bombs. Oh yes, we wasted five trillion on stars wars, but we finally paid for those old ICBMs from the 1960’s! We now own them, free and clear! They are like roads and bridges and dams. Of course, the billionaires enjoy the nebulous advantage of the security they provide along with the rest of us “earned income” types, but they don’t own them.

Are the ICBMs really the right weapon to fight “The Global War on Terrorism?” Well, probably not, but they are a weapon we can afford, especially since they are already paid for, and Lord knows, we have plenty of them. And, “You have to go to war with the weapons you have, not the weapons you want.”

Get it?