The Weak In Rock

If you want to know how the new President is doing in relation to his campaign promises then bookmark this site:http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/

So far, pretty good.  5 promises kept with 14 in the works, 1 compromise deal made and 1 stalled.  Many other have said it, but it seems like it’s worth saying it again - It’s nice to have a real President again.

That’s not to say I’m going to like everything Obama does - I, for one, think more tax cuts are stupid idea when reduced tax revenue is a given during a recession and the other things that I do want to see the Government do, like healthcare reform, are going to cost a lot of money -  but I do have more confidence that this Administration actually understands the nature of the job they’re there to do.

Technorati Tags: Obama

And no, I’m not talking about Santa.

Everyone has heard the cliche, those who do not learn from history are
doomed to repeat it. Mostly that old saw is nonsense. History
doesn’t repeat. Study it in even a cursory manner and you’ll see that
clearly. People, however, generally do make the same stupid mistakes
over and over again regardless of what historical period they live in.

Thus we have this
story from today of Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich who has been
arrested for blatantly shaking people down over various things,
including the appointment of President-Elect Barrack Obama’s successor
in the US Senate.

The historical lesson that I’m hoping the Democratic Party learns from
is that of the Republican Party of the Reconstruction period following
the US Civil War. Republicans held sway over practically the entire
US government for 9 years following the end of the Civil War. They
did so primarily because theirs was the party of victory in that war -
the party of loyalty to the Union. When a Republican ran against a
Democrat for an office all the Republican needed to do to discredit
his opponent was call the man a traitor, and it worked. It stopped
working in 1874 for a number of reasons. One of the big ones, and the
one that put the GOP at a significant political disadvantage for
decades afterward was rampant corruption.

One of the greatest military leaders in US History, Ulysses Grant,
became President in 1869 and has gone down in history as one of the
worst, if not the worst, chief executives this country has ever had.
That evaluation is mostly based on the hot and cold running corruption
in his Administration that he was never able to get control over. The
Grant Administration sold influence like no other in our history. It
is also based on the horrid mismanagement of the first economic
depression in US history. These two events led to the Democrats
(remember, these folks were literally traitors to the Union and
defeated combatants in a recent civil war) retaking Congress in 1874.

Part of the problem for President Grant was his unwillingness to
denounce the members of his Administration or party who were caught
with their hands in the cookie jar. By refusing to come out against
people who had clearly broken the law and the public trust he lost the
confidence of the public and was viewed as a political puppet by the
news media and portrayed as such often by his political opponents.
One of the weaknesses of the current Democratic Party is their history
of being lead like puppies by lobbyists and political donors. In 1994
the GOP knocked the Democrats out of their majority in the House by
successfully branding the Dems as crooks and liars. One of the
weaknesses of the GOP in the last two Congressional elections was
their own recent tendency to let the donors and the lobbyists call the
shots.

If Barrack Obama, and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership,
hope to maintain control over the government beyond the next
Congressional mid-term elections they will need to make sure that
Blagojevich and anyone else who conducts their affairs in a less than
scrupulous manner in the Party is not only rooted out but also
ridiculed and vilified. Otherwise the American people will most
likely choose another “change” in 2010.

Technorati Tags: Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, Barrack Obama, US Senate, Democratic Party, US Civil War, Republicans, GOP, Ulysses Grant

The Onion nails it again with a farewell article from George W. Bush.

This was my favorite bit:

“Everywhere I look brings back memories. The Blue Room is
where Laura and I put up our first White House Christmas tree. Down
the hall, in the East Room, is where I concocted my favorite signing
statement to circumvent the anti-torture guidelines of the Detainee
Treatment Act of 2005, and=97ooh!=97right across the way is where Cheney
and I decided to use the death of 3,000 Americans on 9/11 and the
nation’s subsequent fear of another attack as an excuse to carry out
our long-standing plan to invade Iraq. I should really get a picture
before I leave.”

Like I said, I’d be laughing more if it weren’t completely true.

So, what does it take to get me to crawl out of my blogging hidey-hole?  Oh, nothing much, just a near total collapse of the US credit & financial system.

Seriously folks, this is very, very bad.  And naturally, since it’s very, very bad, the Government needs to get involved in order to make it truly, horribly bad.  Here’s a very good summary (in layman’s terms) of what’s happening: http://theamericanscene.com/2008/09/19/welcome-to-history

Money quote:

3. Promulgated a temporary ban on naked shortselling for about 800 financial stocks (in related news, the new recommended medical practice when you discover that you have a fever is to smash the thermometer against the wall, since this makes the problem go away).

And Paul Krugman, who has, by the way, been trying to tell us this particular sky was going to fall for, oh, four or five years now, has chimed in to explain exactly why this massive bailout plan is a bad deal all around:

Here’s the thing: historically, financial system rescues have involved seizing the troubled institutions and guaranteeing their debts; only after that did the government try to repackage and sell their assets. The feds took over S&Ls first, protecting their depositors, then transferred their bad assets to the RTC. The Swedes took over troubled banks, again protecting their depositors, before transferring their assets to their equivalent institutions.

The Treasury plan, by contrast, looks like an attempt to restore confidence in the financial system — that is, convince creditors of troubled institutions that everything’s OK — simply by buying assets off these institutions. This will only work if the prices Treasury pays are much higher than current market prices; that, in turn, can only be true either if this is mainly a liquidity problem — which seems doubtful — or if Treasury is going to be paying a huge premium, in effect throwing taxpayers’ money at the financial world.

And there’s no quid pro quo here — nothing that gives taxpayers a stake in the upside, nothing that ensures that the money is used to stabilize the system rather than reward the undeserving.

Of course no one should really be surprised that the Bush Administration would have no intention of in any way punishing the cretins who caused this problem.  The line I’ve heard over and over since this bailout plan was leaked on Friday is that this plan is a perfect example of Bush era economics - privatize the profits when things are going well and socialize the consequences when things are going badly.

Somehow I don’t think Milton Friedman would be too happy about this.

Ok, all right, I know.  This crisis has the potential, if the Government did nothing, to be devastating for the average schlubs of America (and actually most of the world, since financial markets are so entwined with one another).  But and however, the solutions so far offered by the Bush Administration are near completely letting the architects of this mess off the hook.  The S&L crisis of the late 80’s was bad for taxpayers, but ultimately the actions of the Government in that situation were the prudent and sensible ones, and the individuals responsible were punished (a certain sibling of the current President included - Neil Bush has been barred for participating in any banking activities since).  If the current plan of the Government to handle this crisis is the sum total of what we can expect to be done then the perpetrators of this mess will continue in their jobs, no doubt patting themselves on the backs for getting the taxpayers to absorb a good portion of their losses.

Technorati Tags: US credit & financial system, Paul Krugman, bailout plan, Milton Friedman, The S&L crisis, Neil Bush

Good lord.  So much for my plan to write more this year.

So, what, you may ask, has awakened me from my blogging slumber?  Oh, nothing much.  Just a RAND Corporation report that repeats crap I’ve been saying since late 2001.  The report is the result of a research analysis into how terrorist groups have ceased to be historically between 1968 and the present.   Seems that terrorist organizations are slightly more likely to cease operations because they achieve victory than due to military force exerted against them.

I’ll let you mull that one over for a moment.

Done?

Yup, we’re more likely, statistically speaking, to lose the so-called war on terror than we are to win it.   Of course that’s not really the main point of the study.  The realy money-shot is that terrorist organizations are actually most often put on the shelf of history because of either a negotiated political settlement or policing and intelligence work.  Military efforts to combat terrorism only succeed about 7% of the time.

The British, by the way, figured this out right out the gate (granted, they’ve been dealing with guerilla wars and terrorists since, oh, about 1776, so they ought to have learned a little about it by now).  The US government still hasn’t got even a shadow of a clue on this subject.  That’s why I’m making a small effort to bring this report to your attention, gentle readers.  Anyone who supports a continuation of the so-called war on terror needs to be denied your vote this fall.  And I’m not just talking about McCain and Obama.  There are House and Senate seats up for grabs in November, and we need to put the boot in to anyone who thinks we’re spending our money and time wisely with this alleged war.

My favorite quote from the summary of the RAND report:

Key to this strategy is replacing the war-on-terrorism orientation with the kind of counterterrorism approach that is employed by most governments facing significant terrorist threats today. Calling the efforts a war on terrorism raises public expectations — both in the United States and elsewhere — that there is a battlefield solution. It also tends to legitimize the terrorists’ view that they are conducting a jihad (holy war) against the United States and elevates them to the status of holy warriors. Terrorists should be perceived as criminals, not holy warriors.

Emphasis mine.

Read the report and summary here.

Technorati Tags: RAND Corporation, terrorism