Politics: Drop's Two Cents

Finally, a Senator Thinks in a Madisonian Way

2010-03-05T20:31:00.000-08:00

Senator Michael F. Bennet of Colorado recently introduced legislation (and gave a floor speech) to reform the Senate. Among the things most latched onto by some is the way he wants to reform the fillibuster rule. I would actually make the point that the fillibuster rule, as well as lowering the cloture threshold to 60 from 67, has increased the partisan ship and made it too easy for the extremes of both parties to get things they want but to stick to the point let us move on.

The parts that should be highlighted for making annoyingly too much sense, are his Earmark and Lobbying reforms. They are:

Lobbying Reform

Put a lifetime ban on Members of Congress becoming lobbyists
Ban congressional staff from lobbying their former boss for 6 years
Ban former committee staff from lobbying their former boss or any member of the committee who was active during their time on staff for 6 years.
Ban lobbyists from joining congressional staff or committee staff for 6 years.
Create stricter rules for lobbyist registration.
Institute penalties for failing to register as a lobbyist

Earmark Reform

Ban earmarks to private, for-profit companies and institutions.
Make earmarks transparent
- Members of Congress must report all earmark requests they receive and all earmarks requests made
- Earmarks.gov should list all earmarks requests, sortable by member of Congress
Hold Members of Congress accountable on earmark requests
- All earmark requests above $1 million should go before the Appropriations Committee
Hold earmarks recipients accountable
- Each year, a certain percent of all earmarks will be audited to ensure that taxpayer money is being spent wisely. These reports should be made public on earmkarks.gov

On almost all of these he has the right idea but in some cases, he doesn't go far enough. For instance, no former staffer (either kind, committee or congressional) should be allowed to be a lobbyist to anyone, for anything. No lobbyist can ever work in any manner in Congress and their should be a lifetime ban for failing to register with Congress as a lobbyist.

On earmarks, their should simply be a ban on all earmark requests for non-state wide projects. One small town should not be getting millions of federal money. Turn non-state wide projects into a waiver program. If a town wants money from the federal government for a highway expansion or a new overcrossing, etc they can apply for a federal waiver in tax payments up to the dollar amount needed for said project. A couple examples of a state wide project would be a state wide highway or state wide energy infrastructure overhaul, etc.

His fillibuster changes and spending etc are just make up on a donkey but Sen. Bennett deserves credit for thinking in a constitutional manner rather than a political one.

Ezra Klien of the Washington Post apparently got a follow up interview with Sen. Bennett that can be read here.

Let's Be More Honest

2010-02-22T00:57:00.000-08:00

After reading this piece by a lady named Ann Althouse (via realclearpolitics.com) I browsed the comment section and came across this:

When are these yutzes going to understand that it's not government that is responsible for America's greatness, it's its people? People have come here to live out their dreams and fulfill their fullest potential and that is what has been responsible for America's greatness. Our country has been great because, unlike many other countries, government got out of the way and let people do their thing.
...
Why, oh why, are so many lefties infected with this ridiculous, and dare I say anti-American concept, that we work for the government and the only good possible in society comes through top-down government directives?

I've been hearing this more and more lately from the TV "news" channels to the blogosphere and it just strikes me as a completely illogical point to make. America tried as little government as they thought they could get away with and were so frustrated and so fed up with the stillness of a powerless government that they called a Constitutional Convention in order to overhaul, grow, and to use the rhetoric from back then as well as today "take over". The thing that the Founders understood best was that Government by its very nature is a self growing body. As new markets become available, new industries come into existence, as the population grows, so too does Government. What the Founders set out to do, after witnessing Europe and being extensive historians of the Roman Empire, was guarantee individual liberties without impeding the ability of successive Governments to form new branches of government or write new regulations for new industries or new laws for expanding legal issues.

The other counter point I'd make is that a Government can and should always be what the people make of it. The problem that conservatives, libertarians, liberals, progressives, moderates all have is that they all, at their core, have fundamental differences of opinions on the role of Government. This is why when one party is in power, you hear the other one use phrases like "ram down our throat" or "government is abandoning the poor and little people" or "government is taking over the country".

For better or worse, what all voters need to do, is recognize that the American voter voted for this Congress. The American people chose President Barack Obama. Maybe keeping that in mind we can stop talking about "when is D.C. going to listen to the American people?” It strikes me as about time the American people take a look in the mirror and ask themselves what as opposed to who they've been voting for all of these years and start accepting some of the blame for our hugely ineffective Federal Government.

P.S. ~ I know what the partisans are going to say so save it: "I didn't vote for Obama and these Democrats, this isn't my fault" or "I never voted for a Republican or President Bush, not my fault". Well, the country as a whole did.

Follow Up on my National Debt Post

2010-02-08T17:39:00.000-08:00

The current recession had nothing to do with not only the size of our government but it also had nothing to do with tax levels. Business and individual have not faced a tax increase since 1993. We've had two recessions since then. In fact, one of the biggest economic booms this country has ever witnessed happened after the tax increases of 1993 and in the middle of various tax credits -mainly aimed at people with children, Per Child Tax credit and IRA accounts- in 1997. (For a fact sheet of the U.S. tax system, I highly recommend this site of the U.S. Treasury Department.) Yes tax revenue goes up when you lower taxes but their is a point where this becomes counter productive and their is a simple truth which is this: lower taxes, leave taxes alone, or raise taxes tax revenue still goes up because of population and business, therefore job growth.

Now everytime this country has cut taxes the national debt and deficit spending has grown. Maybe the happy medium is the tax levels of the mid-late 90's or maybe it isn't. This country however needs to fundamentally decide whether it cares about tax rates or deficits and our debt. Clearly this country is never going to have a party willing to make the hard cuts in order eliminate our debt. The worst part is that when either party puts forth a plan to eventually end our dept, say for instance Rep-R Paul Pyan's Roadmap 2.0 plan recently introduced, and as Ezra Klien of the Washington Post even noted that it is a plan put forth that offers a solution relative to the problem. The problem with the plan of course is that it's doubtful it is a solution the vast majority of American voters are willing to accept. As much as they may decry government spending and our country's debt, they decry less services even more.

This New Yorker article by James Surowiecki highlights the contradictions in the current anti-government populism.

... The electorate, we hear, wants Barack Obama to be more of an economic populist but less of an ambitious reformer. He has to aggressively create jobs but also be less spendthrift. This advice may be contradictory, but then so are the economic opinions of the many angry voters who are animating what’s being called the new populism. Whereas the economic populism of the eighteen-nineties and the right-wing cultural populism of recent years represented reasonably coherent ideologies, this new populism has stitched together incompatible concerns and goals into one “I’m mad as hell” quilt. The people may have spoken. It’s just not clear that they’re making any sense.
...
Similarly, the failure of free markets during the financial crisis might have led people to think that the government should be more involved in the economy. Instead, the percentage of Americans who think government is trying to do too much is higher than it’s been since the late nineties. ...a survey of voters who supported Obama in 2008 but voted for Scott Brown in the recent Massachusetts Senate race found that forty-one per cent of those who opposed health-care reform weren’t sure whether reform went too far or not far enough.

The problem is that you fundamentally have two extremely different philosophies mixed in with pragmatists. On the one hand you have those that want nothing but defense program spending and a little of this or that. On the other you have those that want a single payer health care system, a social security that pays more, essentially everything done at the federal level. Meanwhile you have pragmatists that just want reasonable programs that are only as big as necassary and that don't run up deficit spending and our debt. They're less concerned with big or small government and more concerned with "is that a reasonable function of government that fixes a problem and is it worth the cost?". How a President and Congress is supposed to govern with this very volitile mix is impossible to say -except of course by ideologues. Which would you choose? Politically killing tax increases to curb the deficit and debt or massive cuts to very popular programs that have very loud constituents? Both will have political costs.

National Debt and Year to Year Deficit Spending

2010-02-07T03:32:00.000-08:00

Reading this Ezra Klien blog post where he makes this point:

... Well, they weren't very worried about the economy. But now they're terrified about the economy. And deficits -- which signify irresponsible money management to voters who think of things in terms of household finances rather than Keynesian counter-cyclical spending -- are evidence, to them, that the government isn't handling the economy correctly. The fact that deficits rise sharply during recessions simply confirms to voters that there's a connection. ...

Now I'll leave the Keynesian economic debate to others that care but isn't the larger point about citizens -and the political parties- worrying about year to year deficit spending and national debt only in times of crisis part of the massive problem with how this country -again, its voters and politicians- functions? Sure Republican's claim to be the party of fiscal conservatism even if the only time they've been responsible was the 90's under Newt Gingrich and the Clinton Administration; not to mention they just helped kill the bi-partisan deficit commission bill in the Senate. Sure Democrats support pay-go and even just passed it out of congress but do they think everyone missed the excessive exceptions? This WaPo article runs down a few key ones:

... For example, the rules allow Obama to extend tax breaks for the middle class enacted during the George W. Bush administration without covering the cost. ... The rules also permit lawmakers to protect taxpayers from the expansion of the alternative minimum tax for two years, lower the estate tax for two years and protect doctors who serve Medicare patients from a scheduled pay cut through 2014.

Now I'm not a high tax person and do feel taxes are too high as they are but this country must ask itself a few things:
1) Were the 90's really that bad of a time for people financially?
2) Do we care about lower taxes or national debt? People MUST start understanding that neither party is ever, ever going to cut spending to meet current tax rates and if one thing is clear, among all the "government away from my Medicare" signs etc, it's that people hate big government until a party starts trying to make cuts to government programs. Or maybe no one honestly saw the countless news reports or read the countless articles that mentioned the fact that we all saw two tax cuts while growing government by 40% at the same time?

Maybe growing government without raising taxes under Obama will work though? His administration is only going to tax those over $200,000 a year (individual). That'll certainly close the 40% growth rate plus the amount of growth under his administration.

The size of government had nothing to do with this recession. The size of government had nothing to do with the recession President Bush started his administration in the middle of. Economic bubbles burst with or without government all the time. Now this last recession certainly happened in large part due to wrongheaded government regulation combined with the lack of enforcement of regulation but the American people and their banks played an equal part in it. (Isn't it amazing that after all of this, still no one talks about the need for better societal education of mortgages, debt, and housing?)

This country needs to have a candid and honest discussion on what it feels most comfortable with. Either non-existent tax relative to the rest of the world (like America currently has for individuals but not business), somewhere in the middle (around the rates in the 90's), or high like Europe. Government isn't a free lunch. Defending the country, overseeing interstate commerce, international trade, health care, retirement, either this country wants these things and is willing to pay for them or it isn't. Continually offering more Government while asking for less money doesn't work.

High Speed Rail

2010-01-30T01:26:00.000-08:00

Although some high speed rail projects wont always make sense, this country does desperately need high speed rail. It needs high speed rail for both traveling and freight movement. My only critism of this high speed rail map is that it doesn't project far enough into the future nor does it have enough money invested into. The other thing I find peculiar is that the high speed rail going from San Diego to San Francisco that California voters voted approval of, to sell bonds in order to pay for it, is now going to be funded by federal money. As a California tax payer maybe this means less money my state ends up spending that it doesn't have but on the flip side, it's money my federal government spending money it doesn't have. Does this mean the bonds would now go to the longer term goal of having high speed rail from going through Sacramento, San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles. The map showing a train from LA to Las Vegas would be nice if it also had a train going from Las Vegas to Reno and Reno back to Sacramento and/or the Bay Area. In the end, essentially, the one thing I wish America would get off its hands and become more like Europe is in regards to high speed rail.

Localize Health Care

2010-01-26T05:29:00.000-08:00

The federal corporate tax rate is 35%. For all health care related companies, I would lower it to 20%. I would then assess a 7-10% tax that would go directly into funding local clincis for the poor for everything from emergency psych needs to someone without insurance that gets TB. (I'm not talking about planned parenthood here.) Now, all hospitals would have their money go directly to the local clinics within the city/county they operate in. Health supply companies, health insurance companies, etc would go into a state level pool.

This would lower costs by 5-8% and take away revenue from the federal government in order to affect where it is needed, in cities and towns where local governments can make the right decisions about what is needed for there local community.

The California state legislator recently (post-the much over analyzed Scott Brown election) passed out of a Senate committee a single-payer insurance bill. Now while I don't support a single-payer system, I was happy to see this because the best way forward in fixing health care is at the state level. Various regions have similar state health related issues, similar population majorites and minorities. Nationally though, it is drastically different. California for instance has far more Mexican's, Asians, and black people then Colorado which in itself, due to genetics, entails an entirely different host of health concerns -thereby an entirely different need of health supplies, medications, specialized doctor's, etc.

One prime example of local health care reform is that of San Francisco. Mayor Gavim Newsom focused on access -not insurance. He worked with labor, businesses, and city leaders. If you are a San Francisco resident and seek care in San Francisco, you will have access -including its university care hospitals. You do have to pay for it and it is income based but they found a way to have universal access that pays for the health care needs of its city.

The Senate

2010-01-26T03:41:00.000-08:00

The Senate has done its job. It has shown to be the restrictive body it was intended to be. It has angered the base of both parties the entire health care debate. Not progressive enough, way too progressive. Let the crumbs fall where they may.

As some reporters have pointed out, amidst all the decrying of the fillibuster and needing to get to 60 votes and this should be a simple majority rules, etc, etc, etc...we've all heard the malarky. As some have pointed out, it used to take 67 votes to over come a fillibuster. Under these rules countless landmark -for good and bad- legislation passed through Congress. Everything from Alexander Hamilton's legislation for a centralized bank to FDR's various attempts at recovery acts, civil rights legislation, and so on. The reason it was required to take 2/3 to over come a fillibuster was simply that, due to the understanding of history and the perils majority politics can sometimes take a country down, 2/3 of the more senior body would ensure that the majoirty couldn't over reach on major issues. The Senate needs to go back to the 2/3 rule and we'd start seeing more bi-partisan politics out of the Senate at the very least.

If we were talking about a bill in Congress that had 51% approval nationally, even say 48% nationally, then demanding every avenue be taken and demanding that the simple majority should be enough would at least make sense and understood. However, when you're demanding the removal the fillibuster rule, when you're decrying the need for 60 rather than 51 being enough, when you're doing all of this under the umbrella of a consistent sub-40/35% approval, you're nothing better than an ideologue stuck on your own moral belief of what is acceptable and what isn't.

When you allow a simple majority to rule, when you take away the voice of the minority, you are stripping the very fabric of democracy -of a represnetitive republic. Now I would already argue that America has become too much of a true democracy as it is, I don't believe one need look any further than todays politics. The only thing good that has changed in terms of voting is that it isn't solely white men anymore.

As an aside, ironic that the one part of Washington that always rushes everything and rams overflowing agenda filled bills is the body that failed to pass the Democrats golden child.

Health Ramblings: Revised

2010-01-01T22:18:00.000-08:00

Reading this article at the LA Times outlining the attacks on the personal mandate to buy health insurance leaves one asking: why are the Democrats solely focused on health insurance reform? Never mind that there isn't a single way in which it could be found constitutional, but on the most basic of levels insurance never has complete control on costs. No insurance company forces down costs on anything in this country. Not fire insurance, auto insurance, flood insurance, renters insurance, none of it. The only thing an insurance company does do is lesson the amount of out of pocket expense at the time of service to the customer. It is far more likely that the vast majority of people will pay more in insurance premiums than they will ever receive in coverage except in health insurance.

If someone has Kaiser insurance from age 20 to age 40, then changes insurance for some reason to say, Blue Cross, Kaiser still has all of those premiums the customer paid them. Blue Cross has none of that money. Now only 4 years into the Blue Cross coverage the patient needs a by-pass surgery. In 4 years did the customer pay that kind of money in premiums? Of course not but in 24 the person most likely would have. This is why there must be a way to create portability in the health insurance industry and that doesn't mean personalized health care accounts as some talk about ad nausea. Pre-tax flexible health care spending accounts already exist and although that should be a standardized government provided "account" where the money rolls over year to year unlike the current private run accounts, that isn't the same as somehow having health insurance portability.

Let’s say you have someone that gets cancer. In order to fight to stay alive, the health bills run up over $100,000. Now with a very good insurance plan, said person could probably pay only $10,000 of her own money post-insurance premium payments. Now unless this person is 60 and been paying the insurance company premiums since they were in their 20's or so, it is highly, highly unlikely that the person has paid the insurance company $90,000 in insurance premiums. So where does the insurance company come up with the difference between what the customer has paid and what they have to pay for all of the treatment? From the massive pull of every customer premiums. If you look closely enough, you may see the inherent socialism in such a way of doing business.

Hospitals, in large part due to government (federal and state) health plans, have had to shift more and more away from itemized bills and instead take the average daily cost of a patient being in house, add that amount to the daily bed/room charge, and get rid of the itemizing. A patient that maybe stays a night or two, never ends up on an IV or SCD, maybe needs only a dressing or two is now paying the same daily rate as the patient next to them getting IV fluids, on O2, and maybe even on a food pump plus going through tons of supplies. Welcome to universal coverage via Hospitals.

Both of these examples, among countless others, are why attacks of socialism and the need for universal coverage don't hold up. It is also why the attacks on health insurance companies, no matter how immoral it is to deny someone due to a preexisting condition, are comical.

Insurance Mirage's
People claim two things as key to health care reform as the best way to push down costs. They claim 1) A non-profit government program is essential and 2) It must be a national program so that it can have strong bargaining power. Fundamentally wrong is the first point while the second points is the greatest argument for why in theory state barriers, as Republican’s claim, should be stripped but let’s follow the path as to why in practice, under current law, it doesn't work but describe a way in which it could:

1) All over the country there are non-profit insurance companies and sometimes they're the cheapest and sometimes they're the most expensive and sometimes they're right in the middle. See Kaiser as one example.

2) Health insurance companies can already compete in any state in the country. Kaiser, formerly based in California only, has recently set up shop in North Carolina. They decided it was worth going through the state level red tape to do so. (They're struggling in NC while doing quite well in CA. Analysts aren't entirely sure why.)

3) It shows a fundamental lack of knowledge as to how health insurance works in this country, let alone the differences from one state to the next, to claim that a citizen in New York should be able to purchase an insurance policy from a company based in Oklahoma. The reason this works for car insurance is because State Farm, Gieco, All-State, and Progressive all have local operations in every state that operate under different state regulations. Their already are health insurance companies operating in multiple states but it doesn't make their bargaining power any stronger in Oregon simply because they have customers in Florida. The biggest reason for this is that each state tends to have very different state regulations, different hospital networks, Doctor Groups, nurses unions, etc. As the saying goes, "all politics is local" and as Alan Katz pointed out, so to, is health care.

4) How it could is if you held a state convention where all of the states agreed on an absolute minimum allowing for each state to strengthen, but not weaken the minimum legal requirement level of coverage. Another huge sticking point that would help would be to standardize approval processes for Doctors accepting health insurance so that no one has to be denied a specific Doctor just because he doesn't take the insurance the patient has. In other words, the administration headaches each insurance company gives Doctor Offices shouldn't vary as widely as they do from one company to the next.

If politicians really wanted to make a difference in the field of health care they'd fix things locally -at the county level ideally. Think of how many times you've heard an argument for what is wrong in the health care system (or any other aspect of society) and thought "that doesn't sound right to me, I don't have that problem" or "my city doesn't have that problem". If we nationalize the solutions to regional or local issues, unintended consequences will be rampant for only one universal truth exists in the American health care system: Every region has varying health issues that get dealt with in various ways.

Take the idea of taxing sugar drinks (soda, etc) as a way to fight obesity. What happens if you live in a small town with less than 5% of the population overweight yet now 100% of the town is paying more for soda?

Constitutional Solutions to Political Problems

2009-11-15T22:12:00.000-08:00

One of the endlessly disappointing things in todays politics is the over reliance on political answers to political problems. Arguably the most underappreciated brilliance of the men who wrote the U.S. Constitution is their drive for constitutional answers to political issues of the day. (Note too, the absence of worrying about societal issues -excluding the sharp divide over slavery of course).

Today the United States is stuck with two parties that continually try to offer political solutions to structural ineffiences of todays various levels of government. I'd like to propose a few contitutional solutions to todays political problems:

1) The Executive branch can only nominate Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of Treasury. The Senate would nominate all other Secretary's and the Attorney General for a term of 10 years requiring 70(75?) votes with no term limit. At any point after four years in office the Attorney General or a Secretary appointed by the Senate can face a vote of no confidence requiring 66 votes. The House of Representatives can submit a request to the Senate by a vote of 300 to ask for a no confidence investigation.

2) No Federal budget can contain non-Federal spending. All money in a Federal budget must be spent on a Federal agency or on Federal services.

3) All budgets not pertaining to State, Defense, and Treasury shall be three year budgets and not contain any earmarks. State Senate's are to be given a 9 month time frame with which to submit spending requests preceeding a 6 month review process before the 3 year budget is submitted to Congress for approval.

Now obviously every department would still be politicized because that is the very nature of every government agency that has ever existed. However these changes would go a long way to lessoning the political back and forth these departments consistently deal with. One could argue that two years is lost with every change of an administration, even when the same party wins.

These changes would also force a more long term strategic aspect upon the departments so that the country doesn't go from a massive push on some short term agenda based objective only to face an attitude of lame duckness from Congress simply because the sitting president may not win re-election; meanwhile the department head has just hit her or his stride after finally figuring out the inner department politics and how the department functions -the various laws and regulations the department operates under.

The reason for Federal budgets to strictly contain Federal level spending is based on the belief that the reason for a federal tax is to fund a national interest, not a local one. City's have their own taxes for local priorities and State's have their own taxes for state level interests. The argument that an earmark helps make sure money goes back to where it is taken from is respected but doesn't follow the logic of having a Federal tax in the first place.

Regarding change number 3 and what determination in the review process should be used is if the spending request is in the national interest. Does it advance national security? Does it address the national dependency on fossil fuel's? Does it help national travel? Does it advance international trade?

One could even make a case that a national level department of education or health and human services or housing and urban development, etc in and of themselves don't even make sense considering their has never been a case of one size fits all in any nation, let alone a nation the size of the U.S. In fact one could also argue that if you shifted that revenue (taxes) to the state and city level you'd see a marked improvement across the entire country as they're far better equiped to know what there local communities need.

Health Insurance Reform and Why It’s Misguided

2009-10-30T12:04:00.001-07:00

The argument over the role of government aside, the current health care reform being discussed by those writing it is bad policy. In regards to the recent Congressional Budget Office report saying that the House bill would save $108 Billion over 10 years to the Federal Government, it does not address the added costs to individuals.

There are two objectives in health care reform: 1) Lower premiums so everyone can afford health insurance and 2) Curb the costs (debt) incurred to both the Federal and State Governments. It is impossible to succeed in the latter while trying to achieve the former by adding responsibility on the back of Government. There is not, nor has there ever been, in the U.S., a government health plan that succeeds in both. Focusing on premiums as the best way to lower health care costs is also misguided, they merely reflect the cost of services.

The reason that one must understand the difference between a CBO analysis saying that a bill will save the Federal Budget money verse saving the health care industry money is simple. The way in which the health care reform is being paid for is through more taxes specifically aimed at nearly every level of the health care industry. For example: In order to make a cat scan cost less there will now be higher taxes paid for by the company that makes the cat scan which means the Hospital will be paying more to buy said cat scan while the Hospital will also now be paying higher prices for all similar equipment which cuts into not merely the profit margin but more importantly the operating costs. In the end the cat scan now costs more money to the insurance company that is now paying higher reimbursement rates and rather than just increase the co-pay the individual would pay "at the door" for the cat scan, now all of the insurance companies customers are paying higher premiums in order to meet the new reimbursement levels. There will even now be caps on out of pocket costs for the individuals meanwhile the insurance company still has to just keep paying and paying. Well if they can't expect the customer to now pay their fair share of the medical costs because of a cap, they again have to raise premiums to cover the difference.

Now most that understand what was just broken down into rather simplistic terms would say "that's crazy; that isn't sustainable". It isn't. At least not without sky rocketing costs. How does one fix this problem as more and more people find private insurance less and less affordable? Not to worry, the government has a public option for you that will allow negotiation rights over reimbursement rates which means they can force the health care industry to not charge so much to them therefore the public option can afford to keep its premiums low. (To those that believe the public option will eventually, as claimed, become self sustainable by setting premium rates high enough to fully fund it while still being competitive, just think about that new cap law.) On the other hand, in exact opposite to such claims being made by public option proponents, the CBO reports that despite being a national plan, only 6 million or so will be on the plan and the majority of them will be those that are sickest in the country and currently can't find an affordable insurance policy due to pre-existing conditions. So here again, by focusing on the cost of insurance the real cost of health care goes ignored.

The cuts to Medicare are large enough to lower the amount Medicare –which already reimburses well under private insurance rates-, reimburses hospitals and Doctor's for. Now anyone with the smallest semblance of knowledge of how health insurance works in this country already understands that because Medicare reimbursements are so far behind health inflation costs, those with private insurance get charged more to make up the difference. In extreme essence: Hospital's take a loss on Medicare patients while making a profit on private insurance.

Attacking Health Insurers

Many today enjoy attacking the health insurance companies. This is and will always be politically helpful but also entirely nothing more than a smoke screen. Insurance companies, essentially, are the messenger and everyone knows the old saying. Insurance companies (of all kinds) merely reimburse for goods and services. The reality of the situation is that health insurance costs are merely a magnifying glass of the costs of medical care. The premiums they must charge in order to meet the required reimbursement rates are directly dictated by the costs of medical supplies, equipment, operating costs of medical facilities and medical transportation companies as well as the cost of becoming a doctor or nurse (or other health care professionals) because the higher the cost of the education necessary the higher the needed salaries.

Many attack not only the profits of health insurance companies (on average all of 2.2%) but there overhead costs. The administration costs include: disease management, marketing, customer service, technology investments, taxes, regulatory compliance costs and, yes, profits, among other expenses. Now all of those things sound exactly like almost every form of business that operates in the world. Needless to say, no one is clamoring for a government run computer company. Addressing the non-claim costs as a whole as opposed to merely the profit aspect of them (or a broad "overhead" talking point) would have a much bigger effect on health insurance costs.

Afghanistan

2009-10-17T02:25:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

There isn't, as a general rule, a problem with President Obama taking time to decide the best course of action in Afghanistan. The problem is he left the country, our allies, and most importantly Afghanistan with the distinct impression that he already decided on one -a full blown counter-insurgency lead by General McChrystal with 17,000 extra combat troops complimented with 4,000 troops to train and equip the Afghan military as part of the Combined Security Transition Command—Afghanistan, and the impression he had the resolve to commit more troops if needed.

For those who have read the CNAS report "Triage" (.pdf) (Highly recommended), a good sense of the course of action that the US and NATO allies would be taking was already understood. In extreme essence: solidify (stabilize and strengthen what you have through more training), take (remove insurgents), hold (build up, stabilize, and strengthen), and build out (repeat steps 2 & 3).

Now while Sen. Lieberman is right to point out that we’ve only now “begun the first serious national debate about Afghanistan: whether we should be there and what we should be doing there. In that regard, it’s entirely appropriate that the president is deliberating.” it also side steps the fact that Candidate and President Obama already showed no desire to have a discussion over the importance of continuing on in Afghanistan and what he's allowing now, curiously in a public fashion, is which is the best course of action in staying in Afghanistan.
Secretary of Defense Gates may have already shown his hand in how he feels about Gen. McChrystal's request for 40,000 more troops. As covered here, Mr. Gates has already told Congress in his Senate Armed Services Committee Q&A that he'd "be highly skeptical of any additional troops above the 21,000."

"Afghan people must believe this is there war and we are there to help them…if they think we are there for our own purposes, then we will go the same way as every other foreign army that has been in Afghan, period," said Gates at one point.

This is why Vice President Biden's argument to maintain or even lesson the U.S footprint in Afghanistan is counterproductive to the necessary goal of keeping public opinion on the U.S./NATO side as opposed to supporting the Taliban. Not only that, but one of the key arguments being made by Vice President Biden among others, Sen. Carl Levin for one, that a stronger and more able Afghan Army as well as national Police Force is what is needed and would prefer that over more U.S. troops. Is it not understood that with more troops the quicker both institutions can be trained?

One thing that has to stop is our training of the Afghan Army to be a lesser version of our military but instead a better version of itself. As explained in this Bruce Rolston post (h/t to this Judah Grunstien post):

Because the Afghan army holds no ground by itself, because our troops are interspersed with theirs, we always need to know where they are. Which means we always need to be with them. Which means their forces have to operate to the same levels of force protection as ours, to protect those mentors or partnered troops. Which means all those kinds of tactics that good irregular troops can do, and which in other contexts Afghans can excel at, is not on the table.

No one honest enough about Afghanistan would even try to deny that no amount of NATO or U.S. troops can make up for the rampant corruption in the Afghan government or the massive fraud in the most recent election. Nor would any student of history deny that "...combat operations conducted in a political vacuum are worthless. Tactical successes mean nothing unless the Karzai government is sustainable, which is very doubtful."

As for the Afghans, they back winners. Taliban leaders and Afghan warlords watch CNN. They know how frail western commitment has become, how sour public opinion is. To have any chance of success, Nato troops need to fight and accept losses for years. It is unlikely that the patience of their own nations will match that of their enemies on the battlefield. Only a dramatic improvement in the quality of Kabul governance might change this equation.

Hence why having such a public debate, with unacceptably excessive anonymous leaks out of the White House, while refreshing from an American leadership sense is counterproductive to our stated goal in Afghanistan. This write up of two seperate interviews with Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy illustrates why:

Strategy meetings and conversations on the war were a facade, Bundy said. "The principal players do not engage in anything you can really call an exchange of views. . . . That was prevented by him, and the process he used was really for show and not for choice." ..... "I am absolutely positive that most leaders wish to avoid confrontation among their senior people, particularly in front of them," McNamara said. "And that's a serious weakness. I think every leader should force his senior people to confront major issues in front of him." ..... Throughout their interviews, McNamara and Bundy grappled with the extent to which senior officials should go public with their views about an ongoing war. "There are limitations on what the secretary can say publicly," McNamara said, adding that if a top official comes forward with bad news, "you don't just tell your own people, you tell the enemy. . . . You don't want the enemy being told . . . that the senior officials believe the U.S. is losing." ..... When asked if the public had a right to know, McNamara replied: "It isn't that I doubt the public had a right to know, as much as it is that I have serious doubts of how frank the senior officers, military and diplomatic, can be in a government in war. Because it exposes to the enemy views that can strengthen them."

From this Abu Muqawama post, this quote of Amb. Richard Holbrooke in this George Packer profile of him reemphasizes the point:

[Y]ou want open airing of views and opinions and suggestions upward, but once the policy's decided you want rigorous, disciplined implementation of it. And very often in the government the exact opposite happens. People sit in a room, they don't air their real differences, a false and sloppy consensus papers over those underlying differences, and they go back to their offices and continue to work at cross purposes, even actively undermining each other.

Two key issues in Gen. McChrystal's report, both of which would need to be addressed whether President Obama accepts the recommendation or goes with something more along the lines of Vice President Biden, are apparently already under reconstruction. Vice Admiral Robert Harward, a former Navy Seal, will be revamping U.S. detention polices while Lt. Gen. William Caldwell will now oversee the training mission in Afghanistan. Both have been long standing issues hampering our movement forward.

With respect to U.S. detention policy, currently moderate and extremist detainees are allowed to mingle freely. U.S. officials are just now finishing the construction of a new detention facility at the sprawling Bagram Air Base, near Kabul, which will have separate holding areas for moderate and extremist detainees. Adm. Harward and his deputy, Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, will work to implement practices first honed in Iraq that try to rehabilitate detainees by teaching them moderate Islam, literacy and vocational skills.

Consistent in criticisms and frustrations with the past eight and a half years has been the lack of cohesion between U.S. and NATO training of Afghan forces. That too is now addressed:

In his classified assessment, Gen. McChrystal called for more than doubling the size of the Afghan army and national police force, which he described as key components of any effort to beat back the Taliban and gradually stabilize Afghanistan.

At the same time, Gen. McChrystal was harshly critical of Western efforts to train Afghan security forces, which he said had been slowed by a lack of coordination between parallel U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization training programs.

Gen. Caldwell will be sent to Kabul as a "dual-hatted" commander charged with overseeing both the U.S. training command and a newly established entity called the NATO Training Mission -- Afghanistan.

Gen. Caldwell, a West Point classmate of Gen. McChrystal, runs the Command and General Staff College, a finishing school for elite officers, and a network of Army training programs across the U.S. Last fall, he wrote a new Army field manual that focused heavily on how to train foreign militaries and security forces.

If I hear one more time...

2009-07-14T10:43:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

...that President Obama is taking on too much I'm going to go nuts. Why in the world does the executive branch have so many branch's in it if not to handle more than one thing at a time? Why in the world does the legislative branch have committee's and sub-committee's if not to handle more than one thing at a time?

Let's take health care reform. Somehow not doing anything makes sense because of the current economy and the economy is all that President Obama should be focused on. We hear this from countless analysts, pundits, news anchors, etc. Now yes, neither party's leadership is talking about doing nothing even if a lot of Republican's, elected officials (not the leaders or more senior members) and media pundits alike, have made the case it can't be done now.

Both parties have agreed on anywhere from 75-90% of how best to lower costs -ways that have been talked about for decades. Health care reform isn't starting from ground zero, countless health reform bills have been written over the years and we've already seen potential reform bills given to the CBO. Now it may not happen as quickly as President Obama has asked for but the fact is, based on how far the reform debate and various bills have come, this isn't out of the realm of possibility nor somehow counter productive to the growth of the economy.

Now time will tell which version of health care reform will pass and how good or bad it'll be for the country but when health care represents 1/6 of the U.S. economy, focusing on health care is focusing on the economy.

Drew Altman, Ph.D., President and CEO of Kaiser Family Foundation added a key perspective on his blog:

But the number itself could use some perspective. Expressed as a ten-year cost, one trillion dollars is a big, perhaps scary number. But we are also talking about reforming one sixth of our economy, and over the next ten years it would represent about half of one percent of projected GDP, under three percent of projected health spending, and about two and one-half percent of total federal spending. That is still a lot, and some may legitimately value other national priorities more highly, including deficit reduction, but in return we would reform health care, cover the bulk of the uninsured (projected by CBO to reach 54 million by 2019 and by others to go higher), and give Americans peace of mind about their health insurance.

Global Warming Controversy?

2009-07-03T01:41:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Some punditry, as usual, are up in arms that an economist and physicist (notice not an environmentalist) in the EPA had his challenge of global warming (a misleading phrase in and of itself) suppressed. Currently temperatures are tracking downward but when you look at the historic temperatures it has climbed ever since 1880 with periods of time experiencing down years while always moving on an upward trajectory.

Now, Al Gore and some politicians do like to go too far in their grandstanding but at what point do the biggest big business, "drill baby, drill" supporters acknowledge that even Shell, BP, and Chevron have global warming sections on their sites and are doing everything they can to help fix it?

It'd be nice though if those that argue it isn't man made (which it isn't entirely man made) and/or that even if it is, it's too late, would accept that almost every country in the world, two different political administrations, and almost all international science agencies as well as all international energy companies are talking about trying to fix global warming -or at least slow down its pace. They could also Google and read countless science reports (you'll have to sift through the article links to get to the actual reports) that explain it and present all the facts.

Washington Post Editors Get it Wrong on Iraq -Again

2009-07-02T01:22:00.000-07:00

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

First of all, thank you to all of our troops serving in Iraq (as well as elsewhere abroad) especially those whom I know personally. Congratulations on reaching a milestone that hopefully leads down a path that all can be proud of -Iraqi's and American's alike.

This editorial in the Washington Post on Iraq incredulously claims that President Obama is "neglecting" Iraq. Mentioning meddling by Iran, al-Qaeda coming in through the border on Syria, and the various issues with the Kurd's, they make this bewildering claim:

Both Mr. Obama and Mr. al-Maliki tend to play down these concerns -- but then, both have political motives to do so. Mr. Obama wants to stick to the withdrawal timetable that he outlined several months ago and that was an early foundation of his presidential campaign. Mr. al-Maliki wants to appear, ahead of upcoming parliamentary elections, as a strong leader and champion of Iraqi nationalism. Both are consequently inclined to minimize the continuing problems of terrorism and political discord and to take risks in pressing forward with the U.S. drawdown.

Now yes, both are sticking to the SOFA agreement made between Mr. al-Maliki and former President Bush but they're doing so because it has reached the point where Iraqi's and only Iraqi's can determine their destiny from here on -not because of some wish that things weren't as bad as they are. No one is downplaying anything. If U.S. troops were to stay simply because violence is taking place or it'll get worse as U.S. troops pull out, America would never leave. U.S. troops make up 130,000, Iraqi troops and security forces are 700,000+. At some point the 700,000+ need to be as capable as 130,000. Obviously Iraq not having an air force and only just now taking delivery of its first patrol ship means that it won't literally be as capable as the U.S. Military but in terms of on the street security, it can only get where it needs to be through experience. Most troops on the ground and many Commanders do feel it is a little premature but acknowledge that all of the problems that are to arise would no matter when U.S. troops started drawing down. The feeling that it is a little premature is due to confidence in the training of Iraqi forces, not in what will happen during the drawdown or a belief that the Iraqi people won’t work things out themselves one way or the other.

The editors do make the exhausted claim that the U.S. must help Iraq settle the Kirkuk issue, which U.S. administration's have tried to do since political reconciliation started in Iraq. Kirkuk though is a severe challenge on the constitutional front. Although the U.S. must help where it can in resolving the issue, the U.N. is running frontman on the issue with its Assistance Mission for Iraq having initiated rounds of talks to save the north from a potential cross-border war, the struggle over the future status of the northern city of Kirkuk has entered its decisive phase. Failure could lead to the ultimate disintegration of Iraq but as noted in an Economist article, by a Western diplomat: "The trouble is, doing nothing in Kirkuk is almost as bad as doing something," The inter-Iraqi feud over Kirkuk is exacerbated by external actors with the Turkish government seeing itself as a protector of Iraq's Turkoman population.

Although for now they remain committed to a non-violent solution, Iraq's political factions have maneuvered into a no-win stalemate on Kirkuk from which they seem unable to extricate themselves. Consequently, they ought to be provided with an alternative means to save face by a neutral third party. Toward that end, UNAMI's proposal proves the most viable option put forward in years. ... Over the coming weeks, while carefully maintaining the appearance of an honest broker, Washington should try to back UNAMI's suggestions with balanced incentives and carefully applied pressure.

The Iraq Army and U.S. troops have been fighting (and will "indefinitely") to eliminate militants in Kirkuk since the start of June of this year. U.S. troops can only continue to provide security while American engagement has taken political reconciliation only as far as a non-Iraqi, non-Sunni/Shiite, non-Kurd government can. This article has an interesting quote:

Yet even Kurdish politicians, who welcomed the Americans as liberators more than any other Iraqi group, mostly agree it is time for them to leave urban areas.
"Those divides between communities would be there even if the Americans stayed," said Mahmoud Othman, senior lawmaker from the main Kurdish alliance in parliament.
"It's between Iraqis. If they can't get together and solve their problems, what can the Americans do?"

Mushriq 'Abbas filed a report for al-Hatay on Kurdistan (via IraqSlogger but no link to the report, info taken from this article) reporting that in Kurdistan, the two mainstream Kurdish parties, KDP and PUK, are most likely not going to hold onto the 90% of seats they won in the 2005 elections. The Kurdish leader is being challenged by an ex-friend and comrade in Nusherwan Mustapha, who seceded from the party and is now waging a campaign under the slogans of "reform" and "change" (Obama and McCain's campaigns ruined those terms for this blogger).

It isn't only up to the U.S. to help Iraq reconcile its internal differences and reintegrate with rest of the Middle East. Saudi Arabia for one, as well as other Sunni dominated Middle East countries need to come off the fences.

At a recent forum on U.S.-Saudi relations in Washington, D.C., current and former Saudi officials decried the previous U.S. administration's Middle East policies. Yet in shunning the Shiite-dominated government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a regime they deem inimical to their interests, the Saudis -- along with other Sunni Arab regimes -- appear to have internalized the core foreign policy impulse of the Bush administration.

This myopic approach has had the perverse effect of amplifying Iran's already outsized influence in Iraq and throughout the region. It has also fueled Iraqi suspicions about the intentions of its Sunni Arab neighbors, hindering the reintegration of Iraq into the Arab world.
...it (U.S.) has increased pressure on Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries to begin normalizing relations with Iraq. On his recent trip to the region, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates reiterated his appeal to Riyadh and Cairo to appoint ambassadors to Baghdad.
Iraq's recent posting of an ambassador to Riyadh, its first since 1991, offers an opportunity for reciprocal steps by the Saudis and a way to move beyond the Saudi-Iraqi tensions on display at the latest Arab summit in Doha. But so far, Washington's appeals have met with little success, jeopardizing its broader diplomatic efforts to establish regional stability. (Emphasis' added)

The Obama Administration is already re-establishing diplomatic ties with Syria with the most immediate goal most likely an agreement to crack down better along the Syria/Iraq border even after Iraq and America already asked Syria to prevent al-Qa'ida and Baathist insurgent groups from launching a wave of attacks.
Regarding future U.S./Iraq relations from this point on:

Delaying withdrawals because of recent bombings would have given insurgents veto power over U.S. actions. More perilously, it would have conceded a key strategic goal of the ongoing insurgency by undercutting the legitimacy of the Iraqi government as sovereign over Iraqi territory. It would also have undermined U.S. credibility in the region at a time when the Obama administration is seeking buy-in and support for its ambitious regional agenda from partners in the Arab world.
Unfortunately, the improved security and accompanying degree of normalcy that has returned to many areas of the country has allowed complacency and overconfidence to set in among Iraqi political actors, frustrating significant political progress. ... U.S. influence over the nature and pace of the Iraqi political process has considerably diminished and will wane even more as forces draw down. But it is not insignificant.
In light of current political realities in Iraq, the U.S. role going forward must necessarily be less obtrusive, predicated on diplomatic means, and focused on bolstering United Nations-led efforts at brokering political compromise. ...
...The upcoming January 2010 national parliamentary elections, which will continue to polarize politics and ratchet up rhetorical differences, will only complicate the task. A series of political breakthroughs in the midst of what will be a hard-fought contest for political supremacy is hard to imagine. In fact, the current political dynamics are likely to skew political rivalries and complicate future negotiations.

Or as Judah Grunstien put it in his blog:

The questions regarding Iraq's future remain both political and unanswered. If political identity congeals around some functioning incarnation of a state, democratic or otherwise, there will be stability. If, on the other hand, political identity congeals around the incoherent violence that continues even now, then the sporadic attacks will take shape as a coherent movement, signaling a return to ethno-sectarian war.
(A different post)The resemblance to what we're likely to leave behind in Iraq is obvious, and reflects the fact that when you militarize the political alchemy of nation-building (i.e., COIN), you end up with a nation heavily weighted towards the security -- as opposed to the civil -- sector.

Don't know what else the U.S. can do besides continue to provide security to allow advancement and maneuverability through such political issues. Plus, if the U.S. keeps rushing back in with troops, all you're doing is maintaining a status quo by keeping the Iraq nation "heavily weighted towards the security" that has to be allowed to end someday.

Iran: The Syria Lens w/Saudi Arabia (and Lebanon)

2009-06-28T06:40:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Nothing can excuse or defend the actions being taken by the Islamic Republic of Iran's current regime and it's clear that those who are demanding a "stronger stance" against the current violence are really demanding US troops be put on the ground in Iran and to force regime change -something no country in the entire world, currently, has the political desire or the troops to do considering NATO is over extended as is the US military. Not to mention that none of the opposition leaders have asked for outside assistance.

That being said, the timing of President Obama reinstating a U.S. Ambassador to Syria shows that he's already hedging his bet that this uprising won’t succeed, or at the very least that if it does, it'll be a long term situation. It is also part of his sustained push to improve relations, mend fences, with the Arab world but the timing is important to notice here. Although President Obama and Sec. of State Hillary Clinton sent two high level diplomats to Syria in March to try and change Syrian/American relations through "preliminary conversations", those conversations didn't just happen to come to fruition in the midst of the ongoing violence.

With former Sen. George Mitchell and current Special Envoy for the Obama administration's efforts for Middle East peace with Israel having visited Syria (seen as a key player in this administration in any future peace involving Israel) and Lebanon it appears that President Obama may have already determined that to hamper Iran's growing influence in the region, as well as the world, the U.S. must cut off its outside terrorist networks in Hezbollah and Hamas, starting with Hezbollah by taking advantage of Hezbollah's unexpected losses in the Lebanese elections to a U.S. backed majority which some have said were a broader regional affair. The Obama administration seems to be hoping that's the reality despite some observers making a strong case that the Lebanon elections were the most corrupt ever with the hundreds of millions of dollars that was spent in the elections by Saudi Arabia alone (both links via this article on WPR, sub. req.). With one adviser to the Saudi government saying “We’re supporting candidates running against Hezbollah, and we’re going to make Iran feel the pressure” it explains why the Saudi Arabian media is now taking an anti-Iranian government slant with Lebanon media following suit; meanwhile Syrian media is supporting the outcome in Iran as is. This assessment of Saudi Arabian feelings is very apt:

I think a Gulf Arab conclusion is that the problems, the threats they face from Iran, aren’t about the Shah, they’re not about Ayatollah Khomenei, and they’re not about Mohammad Khatami or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They’re about the traditional imperial ambition emanating from Tehran.

The view of many in the Gulf is that the United States may play a more prominent role in the Gulf or a less prominent role in the Gulf, but whatever happens, the Iranians will still be there.

They could also be worried about the numerous sleeper cells in Saudi Arabia that haven't been dealt with. In the same sleeper cell article, this jumped out:

Arab countries will have no independent role in the anticipated confrontation between the West and Iran. Arab countries will only contribute what the West designates for them. The West needs a united and stable Arab front; therefore, the United States will work hard to solve all the issues impeding a united Middle Eastern front against Iran. Jadallah claims the attempt to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict is evident in Israel’s conciliatory gestures toward Syria. An Israeli-Syrian peace deal would end the strategic Syrian-Iranian alliance, although Hezbollah would remain the biggest threat to Israel if war breaks out with Iran.

The cells, as well as the situation in Iran, explain Saudi Arabia contemplating buying more aircraft and satellite-guided bombs from the U.S. and Britain. The satellite-guided bombs could also be a signal that if it comes down to it, it won't be Israel taking out the Iranian nuclear facilities.

It seems in the Obama administrations' goals to connect (sub. to WPR req.) all of the Middle East problems by including the Near East and South Asia together in order to establish Middle East peace rather than focus on just Israel-Palestine or just Afghanistan-Pakistan, they're viewing flipping Syria into an ally and strengthening Saudi Arabia's influence in the region (plus other measures like putting pressure on India-Pakistan to thaw relations) as central to that -on top of taking advantage of the Lebanon election results. If this strategic view works it would go a long way to marginalizing Hezbollah -as long as reestablishing ties with Venezuela leads to help with cracking down on Hezbollah cells in South America.

Hopefully the ambassadors won’t merely be friends but instead real diplomats with legitimate political credentials. It is smart to consider the isolation inflation of Syria's importance but I'm not sure what other cards are available at the moment with this article (via Syria Comment) noting:

The United States is moving quickly to normalize relations with Syria, and there’s talk of working with the Saudis to draw elements of the radical Palestinian group Hamas away from its Iranian patrons, toward a coalition government that would be prepared to negotiate with Israel.
…It has, of course, long been a dream of some Israelis and allies of Israel that they could “flip” Syria away from its sturdy, 30-year alliance with Iran. “Peeling them away” is a less crude and possibly more nuanced version of the same idea.

Maybe all along the Obama administration viewed weakening Iran from the outside while talking directly with it as a winning strategy and they aren't going to allow the current situation to change that course.

The C.I.A.

2009-05-09T05:42:00.000-07:00

Fundamentally, it just isn't good policy to have counter intelligence discussion on a national level or, and probably most importantly, internationally. It doesn't make any sense for your average Jane or Joe to have a say in what the CIA does to keep this country safe. That isn't said to condone water boarding or other methods of interrogation that was used post-9/11 but rather, what does the everyday American know about the intelligence community?

We elect our government officials to determine what policies are best to keep this country safe. National security simply isn't health care or education or energy. It isn't something that directly affects the quality of everyday life. Yes, when something as unbelievably tragic as 9/11 or any other terrorist plot is pulled off it effects all of those who lose a family member and/or are injured and it certainly effects everyone's feeling of safety. That said, it is solely the failure of the intelligence community (or success of the terrorist, however one wishes to look at it) that brings what they do into the everyday life.

Health care, (lack of) an energy policy, and a sub-par education system not only effects but determines the future of a country. They are things people should have a say in because they personally feel it when oil prices are high or when health insurance is lost or the school you're sending your kid(s) to isn't good. Public debate of these things creates awareness and puts pressure on politicians as well as the private sector to fix the problems.

It is comical to watch talking pundits on TV or in the print or internet media, people who have never worked in the intelligence community at any level, argue that either A) The Bush administration's policies made us safer or B) They made us less safe. That isn't anything any of them would know. Now occasionally the public is fortunate enough to have people who have worked in the intelligence community give their opinions but even then, there is much disagreement.

The truth is that no one will ever know, not even those who did the interrogations, whether we would've eventually gotten the information we got without resorting to such tactics. The policy argument -separate from the legal arguments being made- is simply an argument around theory. Once history has been written it cannot be re-written. Facts never change (even if the spin does).

"In all things, one must consider the end." ~John Adams

Republican Messaging

2009-05-08T07:46:00.000-07:00

Anytime a political party decides to take to the ground and talk with regular everyday American's, that's a good thing. Shifting values or core beliefs, in terms of a political party's stance for political expediency is never a good thing. The party doesn't need to moderate (except its tone) so much as just finally talk substantively about what plans they have for the United States. If they shift on gay marriage for instance, they're just the Democrat party and this country already has one of those -it also ignores the large part of this country that doesn't support gay-marriage; those people deserve a political party that represents their beliefs. That isn't to say the Republican leadership shouldn't be more accepting of those Republican's that do support gay marriage, like the Representative in either Oklahoma or Kentucky (name escapes me) who's campaign slogan was "God, Guns, and Gay's".

Those in the middle and/or on the fence of the Republican Party (as in lean right but turned off by some things) aren't going to go to a party that talks like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. That isn't to say they aren't substantive in their opinions or beliefs but they just aren't elected officials that come up with plans or write legislation -that is to say they don't add substance to the policy debate. (Neither does Olbermann or Maddow.) They do their job in terms of asking the tough questions of the Obama administration and expressing a substantial amount of American's views that don't support the Democrat agenda but they spend 80% of their time attacking and maybe 20% presenting actual conservative policy.

As we've covered on this blog, there has been a Republican budget offered and they did put forward a different stimulus package. Instead of hammering away, although they did talk about both here and there, they didn't keep the debate on the difference in policy. It isn't enough anymore to simply say "instead of all of this growth of government, we need to be shrinking government". Today voters want more substance, they want to know: Okay, what is Policy R going to do for me that Policy D isn't?

Health Care
It is pretty obvious that the United States understands the Republican Party is against any form of socialized medicine but when have they put forth a policy that expands health coverage and lowers costs? More specifically, when has their version of health care reform been the topic of discussion when a Republican is doing a TV interview or writing an Op-Ed? Representative Eric Cantor dodged around a very direct question regarding how would the Republican Party fix health care in America by Mike Barnacle on Morning Joe the other day. Rather than tip-toe, have a policy idea ready and be very clear in how the Republican Party would fix health care.

Energy
Much to the dismay of the base of the Democrat party, the majority of American's support the Republican policy stance of "all of the above". Where is the actual legislation debate? Where is the legislation coming from? Why when a Republican energy bill that includes "all of the above" introduced, why isn't that a talking point every Republican when they go on TV being asked to put forth?

Education
This is a little harder because President Obama is fairly center on education. He supports teaching standards and charter schools, two absolute bedrocks of Republican education policy. Any political junkie knows where both parties stand on any issue but does the everyday American actually know the difference between Republican and Democrat education policy? If we go by rhetoric/talking points that make the news cycle, even on FOX News, all you hear is private schools, charter schools which almost no one knows what they actually are other than a form of privatized schools, and teacher standards. That isn't enough.

Messaging
In the end, what it comes down to is that Republican's are spending too much time attacking rather than comparing and contrasting. Everyone at this point knows the core beliefs of the Republican Party, maybe it'd help to have everyone know what their plans/policies are and have it explained to them why they're better. In the end, the voters will decide.

"In all things, one must consider the end." ~John Adams

National Parties

2009-05-08T04:41:00.000-07:00

A lot of times when pundits and writers, everyone really, talk about either the Democrat or Republican party they talk as if they're a national body only. The truth is that both parties are made up of elected representatives of a given district or half a state (Senators). When either party attacks an elected official in its own party for not towing the party line, they're far more often attacking that official for voting in a way that best represents the voters that put her/him there.

Part of the problem is also this rule of politics that says you must run to the base in a primary but the middle in a general. This is how parties are able to run an elected official out of office when they grow unhappy with his/her vote or multiple votes on various things.

Take Sen. Lieberman whom the Democrats tried taking out in a primary run off because the base of the party would obviously choose someone less (or not at all) supportive of the war in Iraq. Now if Sen. Lieberman hadn't chosen to technically leave the party so he could run as an Independent, the voters of his state would've had to choose between someone more liberal and in line with the base of the Democratic party or someone more conservative, a Republican candidate. Clearly the voters of his state wanted him. They wouldn't have re-elected him otherwise. If the Democrats had succeeded, the voters would've been less pleased with one of their Senators but one of the two parties would've been happier because they would've been able to better close ranks.

Let us look at the debate over the Republican's under attack for voting for the Recovery Act. They were elected to represent there voters. They voted in a way that they felt best represented said voters. The Republican leadership in Washington is already moving to run them off in a primary, as seen with Sen. Specter. (For the record, why anyone has any respect left for him is beyond this writer.) The reason Sen. Specter was losing horribly in a Republican primary challenge is simple: He isn't a base Republican. The proof that he will have voted in the interests of his voters will be if he wins re-election as a Democrat. Now, if the Democrats challenge him in a primary, unless he is able to raise his own money and do what Lieberman did, Sen. Specter's career is over. He doesn't fit either side’s base. (In truth, behind closed doors, if the Democrats didn't know they'd look like immense hypocrites, they'd love to challenge him in a primary.)

If Sen. Snowe wasn't someone that voted with the Republican party at least 2/3+ of the time, it'd make sense for Republican's to want her out (why would anyone be with a party if they're only voting the party line 50% of the time anyway?) but Republican's (and Democrats) should solely be concerned with this: Is our party member representing her/his voters? Maybe from time to time on a big issue, Sen. Snowe or Sen. Specter wasn't voting party line, but look at Sen. McCain who outraged the Republican base on immigration reform (and looks to be willing to do it again). Sometimes party members do what they feel is right and/or what they feel represents the will of their voters.

We could also look at the base of the Democratic parties' attacks on the Blue Dog Democrats or fiscal conservative Democrats lead by Sen. Bayh of Indiana. The base doesn't care what the price tag is (or at least isn't talking like they do). They simply attack because they somehow believe that spending less on the same agenda President Obama has put forward is somehow blocking President Obama's agenda. They attack those Democrats that have legitimate concerns over the much talked about Cap-and-Trade program this administration wants to implement. These elected officials have voters and they have unions and business representatives to answer to. They'd like to keep their job. They can't afford to tow the party line if it costs them there seat in Washington -just as important it could just as well cost the Democratic Party the seat there by lessoning the overall power Democrats have in Washington.

Health care is another prime example. Base Democrats either want Sweden or Canada style health care or at the very least, some form of Government run health insurance. The problem is that about 95% of Republican's are against any Government health care that isn't already in existence (and even some that is). Well, let’s break it down this way: The general election was essentially 52/48. So right away you have between 40-45% against any form of government run health care. We'll say anywhere from 25-30% want a single payer socialized health system. The other 25-30% just wants health care fixed with about half or more of that 25-30% not wanting it fixed through more taxes -which is how a new government health insurance plan would be funded. When you look at it that way and you figure that some Democrat officials come from states that Sen. McCain won and/or fairly conservative parts of the country, it is bad politics to expect them to go against their voters’ wishes simply because the national party platform says so or because the base wants it.

We could also get away from believing that the Democrat party is simply Chris Mathews, Keith Olbermann, and Rachel Maddow. If the Democrat party was those three, Rep. Pelosi would've been the presidential nominee. Just as much as we could get away from believing the Republican Party is Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Anne Coulter. If the Republican Party was those three, how did Sen. McCain win the Republican primary? They ripped him to shreds, swearing he wasn't a real Republican. The truth is both parties make sure they have pundits in the media that represent the base, rarely do see pundits that represent the middle of either party.

"In all things, one must consider the end." ~John Adams

Sen. Specter

2009-05-04T07:31:00.000-07:00

First of all, his reasons for switching are disingenuous. Second, he originally started his political career as a Democrat. Third and most important, the sole job of a Senator is to represent his voters, not one particular party. If the voters want a Republican, moderate or otherwise, they'll elect a Republican. If they want a Democrat, moderate or otherwise, they'll elect a Democrat. The simple point is that as long as the Senator is representing his/her voters, then he/she is the right person for the job.

Take some of the attacks that Republican's are just being obstructionists. No. They're representing their voters by voting on things in a way that keeps them getting elected. It keeps them elected to vote against Democrat policies because there voters are against Democrat policies.

Take Sen. Lieberman and Sen. McCain as perfect examples. The Washington elite of their respective parties have ripped them up and down but there voters have continued to re-elect them, even after Sen. Lieberman was forced out by his party in a primary run off. If you listen to the punditry on TV and in print media, internet media as well, you'd swear they weren't a real Democrat/Republican but they've obviously voted in a way that represents there voters which is all that either party should be concerned with.

Joe Scarborough made the point this morning that if Republican's want to make a comeback, they have to find Republican's that fit what the voters of the given district want represented. It should be added that they can't continue to be obsessively concerned with whether or not someone who wants to be part of the Republican (or Democrat) party fits every single pillar of the Washington elite’s platform and votes with the party line every single time. Both parties should be solely focused on having candidates that represent the voters, not simply candidates that will vote party line on everything.

To that extent, it says everything about the Republican leadership that they were going to challenge Sen. Specter in a primary and wanted him gone. It shows they're less concerned with having a Republican that accurately represents his voters and instead wants a Republican that will simply toe the party line.

"In all things, one must consider the end." ~John Adams

Big Tent?

2009-05-04T04:50:00.000-07:00

We keep hearing that the Republican Party was once a big tent party and currently is not. The flip side to this point being made is that the Democrat party is. Really? There is logic in this point of view? Let us test this theory but first, let us do so without taking race, gender, and/or sexual orientation as qualifications for either party.

1) The general election was split essentially 52%/48%.
2) The base of the Democratic Party wanted/wants Sen. Lieberman completely removed from even its congressional caucus meetings simply for his stance on the Iraq war and for backing Sen. McCain.
3) The base of the Republican Party wanted Sen. Specter (among a few others -especially those saying the Reagan era is done) gone simply because he voted for the Recovery Act and he's too 'moderate'. (Have to remember Mr. Limbaugh's claim that there can be no moderate Republican's...)

Democrat
Exactly how many pro-life Democrats are there? Pro-NRA Democrats anyone? Supportive of the death penalty? Anti-Union Democrats anywhere? How about free trade Democrats? Against affirmative action? Anti-tax Democrats? Hmmm, seeing a trend here...

Republican
Anti-free trade Republicans? Pro-choice Republicans? Anti-NRA Republicans? Pro-Union Republicans? Okay with tax increases if they make sense Republicans? For affirmative action? Hmm, same trend...
Now obviously on one or two things, both parties have an extreme minority that don't follow the party line on every issue but those that don't aren't allowed in a position of power within the party and/or get ridiculed by those with the loudest voices in the media.

Maybe we can find things the two parties agree on?
Both enjoy spending. Both agree entitlement reform is desperately needed and beyond due. Oh wait, they don't agree on how best to reform entitlements so that's a wash. How about renewable energy? If an energy bill hits the floor without drilling and/or nuclear power Republican's block it and vice versa if an energy bill includes that. Kind of crazy that if Republican's really are for renewable energy (considering their mantra "all the above") they can't at least be content that even an energy bill without oil/nuclear finally creates some form of nation energy policy and that does help all United States citizens. Equally crazy is not allowing more oil but more specifically nuclear power if the Democrats are getting everything they want in renewable energy.

This could really go on for days but what is clear, one would hope, is that even when the two parties agree, they actually don't -hence why we've accomplished nothing significant in countless years now on the most important issues other than foreign policy of course. The other thing that should be clear, neither party has a big tent unless one defines a big tent party solely by diversity of people. The parties just have their platforms and someone either fits under it or they don't.

"In all things, one must consider the end." ~John Adams

Maybe some consistency...and just some thoughts.

2009-05-02T01:13:00.000-07:00

Okay to have a good relationship with China but not South America...

Pro-choice but no death penalty...

Can nation build Afghanistan but not Iraq...

Isolate North Korea and Iran completely but talk with Russia and China....

Protect Georgia from the big bad Russia because Russia is working with two countries that want to be allies with Russia, one of which (South Ossetia) Georgia chose to isolate and turn a blind eye to...

Can Republican's and/or Democrat's decide which Iran they object to? Do they object to the country that helps the U.S. when it is in their interest or the Iran that enjoys undermining everything it can and just in general enjoys being a terrorist goverment? How about we acknowledge they do both and go from there?

Has either side come to grips that President Obama's foreign policy is simply President Bush Jr.'s second term just with added out reach to South America and Iran? (CIA policy not part of this question)

Can the media acknowledge the tea parties weren't simply right wing extremists (saw plenty of anti-free trade signs, etc...) and can FOX News acknowledge there was PLENTY of extreme and contemptible things done and said at the tea parties? Speaking of which, can the right wing part of the media stop comparing President Obama to Hitler?

And if Hitler was a socialist, how did that turn Nazi skin-heads in the U.S. into right-wing extremeists? More importantly, can't we just call them racist bigots and not try to align them one way or the other politically?

Can people in the left wing media stop blaming pro-gun owners for shootings all over this country? Clearly our gun laws aren't as effective as they need to be but the amount of guns sold in the U.S. compared to the amount of school shootings, etc, the margin isn't even close.

Have we gotten past acting as if the Republican party is over? President Obama and his team aren't President Jefferson and James Madison and the Republican's, although very close to the original Federalist party in terms of policy, aren't the Federalists of the 1800's.

Will Sean Hannity ever come to grips with being wrong about Reagon? Mr. Hannity talks about getting back to the Reagon fiscal conservative roots. I'd like to see Mr. Hannity point to a year when President Reagon didn't deficit spend and grow our national debt. In fact, Reagon set a new record for national debt each of his first five years as President. One has to wonder how badly it gets under those that somehow believe Republican's are fiscal conservatives when they know the facts show President Carter and President Clinton as actual fiscal conservatives by comparison. Suppose lucky for them President Obama isn't following there lead. In case someone would like to see the numbers: here they are.

"In all things, one must consider the end." ~John Adams

Let Us Be Clear

2009-05-02T00:45:00.000-07:00

Is anyone else sick of hearing that our current economic state is due to over de-regulation? A couple of important regulations were changed, not altogether done away with that helped create our current situation. This was not, however, caused by the end of the Glass-Steagall Act, the strengthening of and then subsequent weakening of the Community Reinvestment Act, nor was it started by Fannie and Freddie (they opened the flood gates after changing its policies in 2004). Run away government spending didn't cause this economy either. A combination of bad government policy and incompetent executives did.

At the heart of what lead us down this road was the lack of political will to turn a deaf ear to the financial industry on the subject of credit default swaps. Of course the reason no political will existed to actually regulate credit default swaps (something that had never been regulated because they were created in '98) for what they are, insurance policies, is simply Wall Street effectively took over all financial aspects of our government. We had nothing but Wall Street insiders over seeing economic policy in both the Clinton and Bush administrations. We currently have nothing but Wall Street insiders over seeing our economic recovery as well (Bernacke and the FED notwithstanding). Has anyone heard President Obama or Sec. of Treas. Geithner talk about regulating credit default swaps? Neither has so much as sneezed at the topic.

At the start of our current economy, we had less than 10% of homeowners in trouble -specifically in terms of being in danger of foreclosure or already having lost their home. Today we have over 10% but less than 15% of home owners either in foreclosure or about to be or paying more than their home is worth.

Common sense would tell you that 10% of anything couldn't possibly bring down everything. Ah, but here is where common sense wasn't so common: The insurance that was taken out on these irresponsible groups of mortgages was done in such a way that if one group of mortgages had a few go into default, you had multiple companies getting paid out for the same mortgage. Not only that, many would get paid a 30% profit above the amount that the mortgage defaulted for. See how 10% brings down the other 90%?

All of this was and is of course legal. None of this is regulated and of course none of it is in danger of being regulated. Who knows, maybe the Wall Street insiders running President Obama's economic policy will actually come to realize that part of helping Wall Street remain a free market and successful entity is regulating it from making horrible decisions and not implicitly trusting them. They've certainly talked like they understand this but until actual plans are released, we won’t know.

One of two things, when it comes to mortgages, need to happen: Either we regulate that no investment money can be used to create the funding of mortgages, that they go back to being strictly funded by deposits there by forcing banks to focus on the long term stability and profit of the loan rather than the profit at time of equity OR investment money can be allowed to fund mortgages but they cannot be allowed to be split up into tiny little pieces, end up on four different companies balance sheets, and have a 30% above value pay out if it defaults. Either way, you're forcing the financial industry to treat mortgages like they should've always been treated and that is, as a long term investment that makes a sustained profit over time.

Hedge Funds
There is talk of regulating hedge funds. Hedge funds of course were always left alone because if one failed, it didn't hurt everyday American's like those who have failed in the past year did. The reason they hurt everyday American's this time was because people got the brilliant idea to put people's retirement money/401(k)'s into them. What makes more sense than regulation of hedge funds themselves is regulating what cannot be added to hedge funds. If wealthy traders wish to take risks and get huge returns (or huge losses) on their investments, let them. Just, let us not let them do that with people's retirements'.

What Should Concern Us
It seems to be the primary logic of our congress, our President and his administration, as well as TV pundits that we should better regulate the business practices that created and then busted the housing bubble. The problem with this of course is that it wasn't lack of regulation of bad policy, it was bad policy itself. You can't better regulate the SEC's decision to allow banks to carry 30:1 Debt: Capital ratios. Individuals that run debt up to 30% above their income, for the most part, end up in bankruptcy. What made the SEC think banks would be different?

You can't better regulate stated income mortgages -allowing that in any fashion should be done away with. You can't better regulate sub-prime mortgages -the truth is people with sub-600 credit ratings should not own a home. People don't start out with bad credit ratings, they create them.

It takes time but if one truly wants to own a home, it shouldn't be too much to ask someone to work for it. Every bank and/or credit union in this country has free services to help people clean up their credit rating in order to help put people on a path to home ownership. Frankly, there isn't anything wrong with renting either. If someone makes enough to have a family but not enough to own their own home, that shouldn't be seen as a bad thing.

"In all things, one must consider the end." ~John Adams

Some Adams Family Quotes

2009-03-31T02:57:00.000-07:00

From the book John Adams by David McCullough, the one turned into an HBO mini-series:

Writing to John Adams on his way to the Continental Congress...

"You cannot be, I know, nor do I wish to see you, an inactive spectator....We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them." ~Abigail Adams

Writing to Benjamin Rush's son Richard (AG at the time) on America's place in the world in 1815...

"We must learn to know ourselves, to esteem ourselves, to respect ourselves." ~John Adams

Reading in Rousseau that...

"There is no doubt that people are in the long run what the government make out of them...," Adams wrote "The government ought to be what the people make it."

Reading the French Revolution by Mary Wollstonecraft, John Adams responds to her claim that government must be simple

"The clock would be simple if you destroyed all the wheels...but it would not tell the time of day."

Writing in corresondence with Mordecai Noah, a noted New York editor, after Mr. Noah sent him a discourse delivered at the consecraton of a synagogue in New York...

"You have not extended your ideas of the right of private judgement and the liberty of conscience both in religion and philosophy farther than I do. I have had occasion to be acquainted with several gentlemen of your nation and to transact business with some of them, whom I found to be men of as liberal minds, as much as honor, probity, generosity, and good breeding as any I have known in any seat of religion or philosophy.
I wish your nation to be admitted to all the privileges of citizens in every country in the world. This country has done much, I wish it may do more, and annul every narrow idea in religion, government, and commerce." ~John Adams

Writing to John Adams after he was appointed, at the age of eighty-five, to the Massachusetts state convention to revise its constitution that Adams had helped write 40 years earlier Thomas Jefferson "rejoiced" that Adams was to take part in such an effort in the "advance of liberalism."

In John Adams last letter to Thomas Jefferson, talking about the rough treatment his son John Quincy Adams was receiving from an uncivil Congress...

"Our American chivalry is the worst in all the world. It has no laws, no bounds, no definitions; it seems to be a caprice."

General Motors

2009-03-30T22:29:00.000-07:00

How is it okay or even legal to have the President of the United States ask for the resignation of a CEO of a company? This should scare the hell out of everyone. This isn't about whether or not the CEO deserved to lose his job, he clearly did. The stock holders of GM should've demanded his head -and many other top executives heads- long ago. They ran his company into $80 billion in losses in the four years leading up to our current economy. What is too much to swallow is the practice of our executive branch dictating who is allowed to be a CEO. It was fine when our government forced new management of Fannie & Freddie, they're government entities. (Nevermind that our government facilitated the de-regulation that allowed them to open the flood gates of this mess -no, F&F didn't start this crisis; they made it that much worse.) With AIG and CitiGroup, at least we had taken an ownership level of stock (80% and 40% respectively) that forcing new management -again supporting that obvious new management was needed- held water. However, when we simply sacrifice a lamb at the behest of our executive branch because they've decided GM isn't viable moving forward, that is too much government power and intervention. (Let alone the new CEO was hand picked by the one we just forced into resignation and has also been with the company for 25 years).

We had two options with GM: Either allow them to file for bankruptcy and restructure or loan them money until they turn things around. GM had already struck a deal with the UAW and starting in 2010 were going to be in line with Toyota's labor costs -going from about $60,000/yr down to somewhere between $50-52,000/yr. The simple fact though is that even prior to that, the cost of making a roughly $30,000 car is around $2,500 in labor costs. Clearly, that isn't a sizeable chunk of the cost of manufacturing a car. Clearly, the price of materials and the legacy costs of retiree's are the far bigger issue.

Somehow the UAW and our auto companies couldn't figure out the simple concept that trying to pay four generations of workers while paying the current generation wouldn't spell financial problems. It seems to me that in the long term in order to help there viability that they need to shift from employer paid pensions and instead to 401(k)'s or some other form of retirement fund where the company can put money into it (as in a matching contribution plus two or so percent) but isn't the one actually making the payments once it is being collected. Obviously putting money into a 401(k) as a reliable retirement plan doesn't sound all to intelligent given our current economy but our current economy isn't the norm.

Current workers aren't the ones needing their wages cut, its the retiree's that already collect SSN plus their full pensions that need to be shifted off the books somehow. Some retired workers have already had their pensions completely taken away and now only get $200/month to be spent toward healthcare. (Disclaimer, a relative is one of these people).

Something people need to understand with GM is that the government has been dictating the type of cars they need to make since President Bush's (not faulting him specifically) first term -some would argue much longer than that but it wasn't as severe until the start of this century. Our government swore bio-fuels would be the future, we'd subsidize corn and gas stations would jump on board and bio-fuels would be everywhere. What does GM do? They pour billions into research and development of cars that can run on not just bio-fuels but instead flex-fuel cars; meanings cars that can run on both standard gas and bio-fuel. That in turn wastes more billions of dollars in overhauling the manufacturing plants to create these new engines and gas sensor technology's.

It became clear to GM shortly after these new engines hit the market that it simply wasn't viable. The gas stations weren't showing any movement toward carrying bio-fuel and no other car company showed interest in it. It was looking like a gimick. Moving on from flex-fuel cars GM starts pouring billions of dollars into research and development of hybrid's. Today, they still can't make there own car batteries and are buying them from Asia. (The much hyped Chevy Volt not withstanding.) Despite this, GM now makes more hybrid cars than any other car company in the world. This is what we call two major restructurings. On a side note, they've also spent countless billions in creating and expanding there On-Star road service.

Clearly GM has some underlying systemic problems, one of them being there finance division getting involved in loans outside of car loans; i.e. home loans.

GM just can't seem to run a profit. The argument is they make way too many models and have too many off-brands. Heading into 2000ish they did so because they honestly made a profit on selling, for example, a GMC pickup that was exactly the same as a Chevy Silverado, just the name was different. They also have a well deserved reputation of making lower quality cars compared to Hondas and Toyotas, Mazdas to some extent; although in recent years we've even seen the gap in quality close.

One thing that doesn't add up and their hasn't been any reporting on this is: If GM doesn't take a loss on every car sold and there prices are very much in line with foreign car companies, how are they losing so much money and the other car companies aren't? (Pre this current economy). Some where within the company, GM is wasting money. Either they're over supplying relative to the demand for there cars -which is entirely possible given how full GM car lots always are verse how many are actually seen on the road- or they're spending far more on research and devlopment than the foreign car companies. It could also be too much overhauling of their product lines in too short a time. The foreign car companies slowly but steadily progressed into Hybrid's. GM tried going from the 90's to flex-fuel to hybrid's overnight. Could also be all three.

No matter what one thinks of GM and our governments handling of there problems, a President demanding the resignation of its CEO is too much like Russia or China. It is simply too much.

Republican's Can't Be Serious...

2009-03-06T00:39:00.000-08:00

You know, originally it seemed like the only thing to do was ignore Rush Limbaugh and this obsession of rear end kissing from elected Republican officials. Now we've reached essentially an entire week of media coverage of it on all three cable networks and endless articles. The two questions I keep coming back to are: What else would anyone expect Rush to say? Why can't Republicans have a substantive debate over the policies being put forth by President Obama? It isn't that their haven't been any Republican's offering different idea's or trying to be substantive, it's that the ones who have aren't getting themselves on TV and aren't quieting the people who are more than happy to talk about Mr. Limbaugh.

Mr. Limbaugh has been a respected conservative voice for 15 years but he's never wanted to be a Republican -meaning he's never wanted to be an elected official. He may have influence over voters minds and probably too much influence with Congressional Republicans but he in no way brings Republican's closer to being the majority party if for no other reason than independent’s and moderates don't like him. The base, when having to choose between President Obama and a Republican candidate, is still going to vote for the Republican.

The other key point is that even with a good amount of American's upset and unhappy with all of this spending; allowing Mr. Limbaugh to be the topic doesn't give the US public an alternative. So while this Op-Ed by Paul Ryan, Ranking Republican of the House Budget Committee and this alternative broad, although a bit lacking in details, plan on The Heritage Foundation go unnoticed, at least Republican's are talking up Mr. Limbaugh.

President Obama’s 19-month Drawdown Plan from Iraq

2009-02-28T21:29:00.001-08:00

So instead of a 16-month plan, President Obama has announced a 19-month with an emphasis on pulling as few troops out as possible until after the next round of Iraq elections due at the end of this year. As noted numerous times on this blog (mainly here, here, here, and here) both sides apparently weren't listening to now President Obama's plan for troop withdrawal from Iraq. His top aides said throughout the entire campaign that they felt 50-80,000 troops sounded "about right" for staying in Iraq to perform necessary training and needed support roles as well as counter-insurgency. As this article noted during the campaign, President Obama has always maintained that he would not allow Iraq to fail and mainly because he's never disagreed with our government's determined long-term interests in the region. You see, for the most part, President Obama has never disagreed with what our interests in the Middle-East are; he's only disagreed with the means in which we achieve them. Take Iran as a perfect example. He's never disagreed that Iran should not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon; he's only debated as to how the United States should go about stopping them.

As this blog points out, President Obama's plan is contingent on Iraqi politicians and citizens not resorting back to violence, not on US politicians wishes to no longer be there because it was the wrong war (in their eyes). In other words, the decision on the disposition of the U.S. military is actually in the hands of Iraq's various political actors and not the U.S. Should the Iraqis return to violence, the U.S., according to Obama, will be compelled to stay.

Also noted on this site was that candidate Obama continued to say he would make sure any plan from withdrawal would be contingent on talking with his Commander's on the ground and his top General's. If you listened closely enough, you knew he'd be asking Sec. of Def. Gates to stay on and therefore any plan involving Iraq wouldn't be quite what he campaigned on (as no campaign promise is ever fully realized as stated during a campaign) but instead something similar.

Now according to this NY Times article, it seems he now has more Republican support than Democrat support. Also being missed by most of the media as well as the right and left-wing attacks is this tidbit:

The Obama team told two dozen lawmakers from both parties that at least 90,000 of the 142,000 troops in Iraq would be withdrawn by August 2010 — 19 months after the president's inauguration, or three months longer than the time frame he had outlined as a candidate.

So despite President Obama talking about 35-50,000 troops remaining in Iraq after 19 months, in reality, at some point between August 2010 and the end of 2011, a maximum of 52,000 troops will need to be drawn down due to our SOFA agreement signed by former President Bush and Prime Minister al-Maliki. Of course both countries agree this could change should conditions worsen.

Now you'll notice that of the Congressional Democrats who think 50,000 is too high a number, none of them are on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Plus, maybe they haven't heard about the rising tensions in Northern Iraq that has a resurgent Iraqi army beginning to contest control of areas which Kurds captured when Saddam Hussein fell in 2003. This article put it succinctly: "General Pelosi seeks to run Iraq from her tactical headquarters on Capitol Hill. President Obama, meanwhile, is making the transition from campaigning to governing." Senator Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island) who actually went to Iraq with then presidential candidate Obama supports the plan saying:

"It seems logical to me you would need a force of around that level," he said in an interview. "The critical issue here is the missions that these troops are going to perform."

Another issue I've been pondering for a while now is starting to come to the lime light and that is declining oil prices and what they may or may not be doing to Iraq. I came across this blog post that touches on it but had a startling figure as to why President Obama's plan may be far more manageable then most feared originally.

Those, in turn, have been swollen by pay raises for the civil service, but also, significantly, by the upsizing of the security forces (from 250,000 two years ago to 609,000 today).

Now that is a 359,000 upswing in security forces while we're talking about going from roughly 142,000 troops down to 35-50,000 (down by 92-107,000). Maybe that's a reason why Sen. McCain, after talking with President Obama, Sec. of Def. Gates, and Admiral Mullen said he "supports the plan to leave 50,000 troops in Iraq as briefed by Admiral Mullen and Secretary Gates at the White House this afternoon."

Back to the falling oil prices which are essentially Iraq's sole source of income, this could be worse than people are willing to talk about. Iraq still has no agriculture or industry to speak of. Our way of stabilizing Iraq has been to continually hire more and more people into the government -whether military or civil government. With no tax revenue to speak of from goods and services, that speaks to not having a private sector with capital. With almost every country deficit spending to stimulate the world economy that creates less money to loan Iraq in order to keep it growing. Now we do finally have Germany and France back in Iraq looking to secure contracts for various industries but again, right now that'll take government money from Iraq because the private sector hasn't been built.

In a fairly balanced pro/con article labeling President Obama's plan "feasible but with risks", some important points get made:

Claridge said militant groups like the Mehdi Army of vociferously anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, would lose steam, since they have defined themselves as opponents of an occupation that is now ending.

In northern Iraq's troubled Nineveh province, al Qaeda and other Sunni Arab insurgent groups still frequently kill, kidnap and bomb, while rising tensions between the central government and the largely autonomous Kurdish region over disputed land and oil will require U.S. diplomatic muscle, analysts say.

Kurds are deeply anxious about the American withdrawal.

"The disputed areas need a third party. With politicians' mentalities, it's hard to see how to resolve this," said Jaffar Mustafa, minister for Kurdistan's Peshmerga fighters.

But Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at the University of London, said U.S. influence on Iraqi politicians is often overstated.

He said a U.N. initiative on disputed territories is likely to do more to resolve that conflict than U.S. mediation.

Over at Asia Times online, there's a good article pointing out that some General's are at odds.

A field commander in Iraq, who spoke with IPS on the understanding that he would not be identified, asserted flatly that there is no greater risk associated with Obama's 16-month withdrawal plan than with the 23-month plan, contrary to Petraeus and Odierno.

Major General Michael Oates, US commander for the eight southern provinces of Iraq, denied in remarks to reporters February 12 that the security gains in that region were fragile, contrary to the premise that Odierno had publicly asserted. Oates cited the dramatic reduction in activities by Shi'ite militia fighters and the holding of the January 31 elections without any major attacks.

A second US officer now serving in Iraq, who also asked not to be identified, expressed doubt that a 16-month withdrawal is logistically feasible, based on his experience in a specific area south of Baghdad. But he agreed that it is time to complete the turnover of responsibility to the Iraqi Army and rapidly withdraw US combat troops.

United States Central Command (CENTCOM) chief General David Petraeus and Multinational Force Iraq (MNF-I) Commander General Ray Odierno have said they fully support President Obama's 19-month plan. I would bet it's because his original plan was 16-months but now it's 19 and he's continually sworn it'll be conditions based. When President Obama is smart enough to keep Sec. of Def. Gates on, have Ret. Gen. James L. Jones, Jr. as your National Security Advisor, and also naming Chris Hill as the new US Ambassador to Iraq, it's safe to trust that he won't be tolerating a failed Iraq.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton goes to China

2009-02-27T20:08:00.000-08:00

We knew going in that Sec. of State Hillary Clinton was going to essentially ignore human rights issues and the like and instead focus on economic and financial needs between the two countries but according to this Op-Ed from the Boston Globe she missed a huge opportunity making the case that "...China's policies on human rights and its treatment of grassroots political movements could have a greater impact on the United States and international relations than economic or climatic issues." I suppose the Op-Ed writer also happened to miss this part of Mrs. Clinton's trip:

After discussing human rights with her Chinese interlocutors, she met at the American embassy with women activists who work for non-governmental organizations that deal with such human rights issues as poverty, health care and gender equality. She also went to church on Sunday before heading for the airport in an attempt to demonstrate her interest in religious freedom.

How does one make this case with any seriousness when our entire financial sector is over without Chinese money? China, as of Nov. 2008, held 22.10% of our national debt. Although this:

Demands for political change in China will continue. The Obama administration should give more attention to human rights issues in China and support those who advocate peaceful political reforms.

is right, there are times when things other than worrying about social issues of other countries are far more imperative; specifically when China is already easing off buying our debt. More often than not, pragmatism is the best way to go, as explained by Frank Ching on The China Post.

Sec. of State Clinton probably had to sooth over hurt feelings due to Sec.of Treasury Geithner's claim that China manipulates there currency. As this article notes clearly, China is too big a player and must be utilized.

Mrs. Clinton herself gave the right response to criticism she should've focused on social issues.

"We pretty much know what they are going to say" on human rights issues such as greater freedoms for Tibet..."We have to continue to press them. But our pressing on those issues can't interfere" with dialogue on other crucial topics.

We need China to work with us regarding North Korea, Iran, and the on going pirate issue that China recently dispatched ships to help deal with. These are all matters that require cooperation between Washington and Beijing if they are to be properly managed. Cooperation doesn't happen if all you're doing is poking someone in the eye.

It is rather ironic that some are okay with grandstanding and isolating a country over human rights issues (China) but deplores grandstanding and isolating over a nuclear weapons program (North Korea).

Part 1 of Title XII of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

2009-02-08T21:46:00.001-08:00

Under Title XII - Transportation and Housing and Urban Development, and related agencies: Department of Transportation Office of the Secretary Supplemental Discretionary Grants for a National Surface Transportation System:

…additional amount of capital investments in surface transportation infrastructure, $5,500,000,000, to remain available until Sept 30, 2011: Provided…Sec Transportation (In this case Ray LaHood) shall distribute funds…as discretionary grants to be awarded to State and local governments on a competitive basis for projects that will have a significant impact on the Nation, a metropolitan area, or a region: …projects eligible…shall include, but not limited to, highway or bridge projects eligible under title 23, United States Code, including interstate rehabilitation, improvements…rural collector road system, the reconstruction of overpasses and interchanges, bridge replacements, seismic retrofit projects for bridges, and road realignments; public transportation projects eligible under chapter 53 of title 49, United States Code, including investments in projects participating in the New Starts or Small Starts programs…expedite the completion…entry into revenue service; passenger and freight rail transportation projects; and port infrastructure investments, including…connect ports to other modes of transportation and improve the efficiency of freight movement: …of the amount made available under this paragraph, the Sec. may use an amount not to exceed $200,000,000 for the purpose of paying the subsidy costs of projects eligible for federal credit assistance under chapter 6 of title 23, United States Code, if Sec finds…use of the funds…advance the purposes of this paragraph: …in distributing funds provided under this heading, the Sec. shall take such measures…ensure an equitable geographic distribution of funds…appropriate balance in addressing the needs of urban and rural communities: …grant funded under this heading shall not [be] less than $20,000,000 and not greater than $500,000,000: ...Federal share of the costs…made under this heading…up to 100 percent: …Sec. shall give priority to projects that require an additional share of Federal funds in order to complete an overall financing package, and to projects that are expected to be completed within 3 years of enactment of this Act: …Sec. shall publish criteria…base competition for any grants awarded…not later than 75 days after enactment…Sec shall require applications…submitted not later than 180 days after…and announce all projects selected to be funded from such funds not later than 1 year after enactment…Sec shall require all additional apps…submitted not later than 1 year after enactment…announce not later than 180 days following such 1-year period all additional projects selected to be funded with funds withdrawn from States and grantees and transferred from “Supplemental Grants for Highway Investments” and “Supplemental Grants for Public Transit Investment”: …projects conducted using funds…comply w/requirements of subchapter IV of chapter 31 of title 40, US Code: …may retain up to $5,000,000 of the funds provided…may transfer portions of those funds to the Administrators of the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Transit Administration, the Federal Railroad Administration and the Maritime Administration, to fund the award and oversight of grants made under this heading.

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

2009-02-08T20:24:00.000-08:00

The full text of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, as of Feb. 8, 2009. All 778 pages.

Stimulus Ramblings

2009-02-08T19:31:00.001-08:00

Tax cuts aren't stimulative. That isn't to say they don't help and that our tax levels are fine, they simply need lowering, but we must stop this ridiculous end around that lowering taxes is the best or only real way to stimulate an economy. Spending stimulates. Spending in the large picture with tax cuts for the majority of citizens that need the money to spend on services and merchandise helps stimulate or at the very least level off downturns because that helps increase or maintain revenue for companies. Tax cuts for companies helps grow jobs but not nearly as much as increased revenue. Tax cuts for big corporations also takes years to take hold because your major employer companies have spending plans based on projections years ahead. You don't give a man needing viagra a workout program and tell him he'll eventually get "going" again when he needs the magic blue pill for a date that night or two nights from now.

This isn't roughly $780 Million in pork either. The latest report on the newest compromise is saying that $350 Billion of the stimulative bill is tax cuts. So in spending, we're talking roughly $430 Billion. We should all be upset that only $30 Billion is going to highway infrastructure and there are plenty of infrastructure projects that could use the $355 million being spent on HIV/AIDS and other STD prevention. That sort of thing should be part of the fiscal budget if it is considered that important (which I feel it is, especially considering how much money we spend on aid to Africa for the very same thing). Or the 20 and 25 million dollars respectively, that I can't find a comprehensive reason why we're spending on the removal of small to medium sized fish and to rehabilitate off-roading trails. While we're at it, no, the stimulus bill doesn't have money in it to payoff ACORN.

Reading over Lou Dobbs transcripts, I came across this:

FERRE: House Minority Leader John Boehner, for example, has attacked a provision that helps states expand family planning services, other spending receiving scrutiny, $50 million for the national endowment for the arts to help arts groups and $140 million for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for climate data modeling, $6 billion to construct, renovate and improve energy efficiency at federal buildings, and $200 million to renovate the National Mall. Most of the money is geared towards government agencies who in turn will use it to create jobs, but taxpayer groups say the bill lacks specifics to ensure that lasting jobs are created.

Now why is $6 Billion in improving energy efficiency of federal buildings wrong? These jobs would of course not be long-term but they would be stimulutive with the idea being that as these jobs finish, not only are you saving energy which in turns saves money, you're hoping that the financial system has finally responded to the defibilator panels that have been on it for months now and is on its way up. Although this would be public money, the jobs would be in the private sector as they'd be contracted out and not a long-term budget risk. You'd in fact save money from the federal budget of operating said buildings. However, don't tell me you can't put the $190 million being marked for Arts and Climate Data modeling in the regular fiscal budget or another spending bill -even then I'd like a respectable reason why we should spend tax payer money on such things. The $200 million on the National Mall can be looked at both ways but unlike the Arts/Climate Data at least you can see the argument that it'd create construction jobs that would be contracted out to private companies.

My Personal Take

2009-02-08T13:18:00.001-08:00

So after watching all 2hrs and 45min. of the Senate Armed Services Committee Q&A with Secretary of Defense Gates I come away knowing that every single one of them was thrilled with President Obama's decision to keep him on and they're all extremely excited that one of his main focuses will be on getting involved in and fixing the procurement side of the military. I was impressed to see that almost all of them were there to actually get facts not just worry about their own district or to just reconfirm talking points.
The only two that stood out to me as focusing on their district more than the big picture were Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) and Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colorado). Now Sen. McCaskill who did then go on to ask about substance abuse –well actually substance abuse came up because of the local base in her district to be fair- that has become an increasing problem for the military and offering her full support in his fight to fix procurement issues, at one point saying (paraphrasing here) "that'll be a tough knife fight but I'd like to join you in that alley with my own knife". Sen. Mark Udall offered to also join him "in the knife fight" but essentially asked three questions about the local base in his district.
The one that grated me the most was Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina). He was there for yes or no answers to his talking points. I don't know that I've ever heard Sen. Graham talk without using a TP. He is the epitome of a walking talking point. All I can see when I look at him the past few months is bullets as in the kind you have when making an outline in Microsoft Word or to show key points in a Power Point presentation.
Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia) was comical. Sec. Gates was asked by Sen. Levin (D-Michigan) right off the bat if there was anything that could be added into the new stimulus bill in order to help the military. Sec. Gates said that he had already been asked by President Obama and had already submitted everything the military felt was needed and doable based on the criteria he was given and that he didn't feel anything had been left off that he thought shouldn't have been. So what does Sen. Chambliss do? He wastes three to four questions on wanting to get more stimulus money for the military and is he sure there aren't more projects they could add because there is no better way to stimulate the economy then military spending. Now, for one, with our manufacturing capacity about half of what it was since the last three major wars (WW I, WW II, Vietnam) and the fact that the economy may have been moving during those times while our national debt went further and further down the toilet but more to the point, Gates already said President Obama had promised the money for everything Sec. Gates had asked for. Why waste the time?
Now for the content of what Sec. Gates had to say…
I find it ironic that as Republican's grand stand over oil drilling, our military is going straight to getting off oil (as much as they can) on their own with the US Air Force having a bold goal of 2011 and 2016 respectively, to be on synthetic and alternative blend fuel. While Republican's scream it's the Kremlin all over again and Russia is back to being a big bully, Gates doesn't even blink or care. He was cracking jokes consistently when talking about Russia and made it quite clear we shouldn't be worried about them in any fashion. I wasn't aware our Navy felt so small and that we wanted nuclear capable air craft carriers -had heard of nuclear submarines forever though. I had heard about us building a second nuclear naval base, this time in Florida, so that we can have two on the east coast -Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Florida) made sure to thank Mr.Gates for it and did want a nuclear air craft carrier in Florida disagreeing with Sen. Jim Webb's (D-Virginia) contention that we don't need it and haven't had one, specifcally off of Florida, since 1961.
It isn't surprising that Sec. Gates is still having to push back and fight for institutionalizing counter terrorism as so many Generals refuse to admit and give in to the fact a big massive invasion of one country verse another just isn't the only thing our military needs to train for. His way of winning this of course has been to move all of the top Generals who had been on the ground in Iraq (the ones who had a clue and did a good job, Gen. Petraeus for example) and got them into the top positions so that it couldn't be ignored. I was very happy to hear that despite Sen. McCain's objections to the Veteran's (GI) bill pushed by Sen. Webb (D-Virginia), the military loves it. The National Solidarity Program is a fantastic program and I do hope everyone looks into it.
Not surprising that Mr. Gates roasted former Sec. of Def. Rumsfeld for the handling of private contractors (not that he mentioned Mr. Rumsfeld by name of course). Sec. of Def. Rumsfeld was so incompetent one hardly knew whether to cry or laugh. Mr. Gates doesn't seemed worried in the least by President Obama and how he is going about figuring out the best way to draw down troops in Iraq which tells me that, as expected, President Obama is listening to the commanders on the ground just like he said he would. That and he long ago gave up his call for 100% of US Troops to be out of Iraq within 16-months, even if 90% of the media still reports his plan as if it's still that way.
So those obsessed with wanting more troops in Afghanistan, know there is a limit to just how many more would be productive and useful. In Iraq we forced a new government and are re-building a nation. In Afghanistan we have to build a nation from scratch as it has never had a functioning infrastructure, energy/energy grid, education, etc. So NOW we get to the point where we're forcing an Afghanistan face on this war? Mr. Gates answers amazed me in just how badly we ignored Afghanistan. Well all knew that former President Bush and Sec. of Def. Rumsfeld hadn't focused on Afghanistan, comparative to Iraq, in any fashion but the kind of things we're behind in and playing catch up on…it's as if we've just been sitting over there going from fire fight to fire fight. I don't mean to diminish what our troops have done but rather what the leadership has failed to achieve in seven years. I for one hope Sec. Gates will be able to be kept on for at least the next four years. If NATO and the UN all agree Afghanistan is important and necessary, why in the world hold a big enough grudge against President Bush by holding back new capabilities and/or more troops just to wait and give them to our new president? How childish. So we need a civil military ready as of years ago. We need an Afghan face to hide us. We need more help with everything but combat troops –more so than combat troops.

Gates Q&A Afghanistan

2009-02-08T04:23:00.001-08:00

Nationwide civil military plan hasn't happened yet.
Can't count on Afghan government to control drug corruption in upcoming elections.
Rhetoric of Afghan pres. not helping anything -hurting things in fact.
RC South…all nations participating…committed to building civil military cell with civil reps from all countries…better coordinating of civilian organizations.
Corruption very high and extremely pervasive…but doesn't know that it has reached the highest levels of government.
Ideally joint civil military and military in order to fix Afghanistan.
Having immense problem with coordinating with all 40 allies, the UN, the EU, Nato, 100's NGO's…trying to figure out how to make Afghan come out right…coordinate with military operations….trying to figure out through constant reviews best way to do this….best person to do this is UN senior special rep…finally after long delays special rep has gotten finance and human resources to do this.
Dramatically increased ISR platforms.

40% of air missions called in by allies because not enough troops there.

Afghan equivalent to task force Oden…immensely helped locating IED's…and people planting them. Began last month. Focus on ring road.
Civilian casualties are doing us ENORMOUS harm…must do better…when we attack we play right into their hands…his worry is that Afghans come to see US as part of problem, not solution…then it is all lost…find better or have afghan's in lead.
Difficulty has been more with…trade off…less actually the brigade combat team and the marine regiments then it has been the enablers…the rotary lift capability, ISR, engineer's, etc…working very hard on what can afford to move from Iraq or re-mission instead of going to Iraq….this has been biggest challenge about strengthening forces in Afghan….philosophically/struggling, we have different standard of medi-vac in afghan then in Iraq….1hr in Iraq, 2hr in Afghan…how best to get Afghan down to 1hr…forces thicker in RC South and RC East where most troops are.
Without effective economic development…inter-agency effort…military action only buys time….impression is that Dept of State will be made part of the FY09 supplemental…maybe all Dept's will be involved in Afghan…Agriculture, State, Infrastructure, etc.
NATO...More caveat free forces…provide more civilian support for training/civil society….helping to defray the cost of expanding Afghan army…3-4 billion first yr or 2…steady state around 2 1/2 billion…total Afghan income was 800 million last yr…..very, very careful of the nature of the goals we set for Afghanistan….Believes primary goal is to prevent Afghan from being used as base for terrorist to attack from…everything else flows from that objective…4/5th poorest country…we set a goal of setting some sort of central Asian Valhalla we will lose…no one has time/patience/money to do so anyway….we can help Afghans, good farmers, need a lot of technical help, has some minerals….an economy there that can be developed…keep specific and limited goals.

Two tiered alliance with NATO in Afghanistan? One Senator not okay with this idea, Gates for it.

Some indications that some allies have been sitting on new capabilities in order to give them to the new president when he asks for more help in Afghanistan.
Biden-Luger legislation would be very beneficial to our relationship with Pakistan…amount of money is important but just as important is that it's a multi-year commitment…one of the problems with Pakistan is that more than once we have turned our backs on them so they don't have confidence they can count on us over the long-term.
200,000 contractors in Iraq...Commander in Afghan is in process of setting up oversight of contractors like MNFI that was set-up in Iraq last year…take lessons learned out of Iraq and not make same mistakes in Afghan…rotating troops into equipment already there…a lot of what contractors are using belongs to US Gov…if we draw down in 16-18 months or whenever, we'd have to bring back the equipment that belongs to us…have to decide what are we going to bring back of equipment that contractors are using…all will require high level of supervision...think quickly and with agility in DoD to get it right.
Will now apologize instantly for civilian casualties, then investigate, then make amends…instead of saying there was 14 not 16 just say we're sorry there was even 1. (FINALLY they're getting how insulting and pathetic our press releases were looking!)
Not for nothing that Afghanistan is known as the place of death for empires…Highly skeptical of any more troops then has been asked for by top Gen. in Afghan…secret to success is Afghan army and police with improved border control…ABOVE all, above all, there MUST be an Afghan face on this war…Afghan people must believe this is there war and we are there to help them…if they think we are there for our own purposes, then we will go the same way as every other foreign army that has been in Afghan, period. Focusing on how do we get Afghan to be in front of every operation so villagers see it is there army that we're helping…not us kicking down there door, it's an Afghan kicking down door to find bad guy…Afghan aspect must be at absolute forefront of any strategy going forward for any of us to be successful over long term and that's one of the reasons I'd be deeply skeptical of additional forces beyond what Gen. McKiernan has already asked for.

Gates Q&A Iraq

2009-02-08T04:12:00.001-08:00

Study on use of civilian contractors…use of contractors grew "willy nilly" in Iraq after 2003…all of a sudden we had a very large # of people over there…inadequate capacity to monitor them…elements of training had been contracted out...parts can be done properly and less expensively with private contractors but again it had grown without any supervision or coherent strategy on how we were going to do it and without conscious decisions about what we will allow contractors to do and what we won't…didn't think holistically or coherently about use of contractors particularly when it comes to combat environments or combat training…those are area's need to focus on first.

Draw down plan by Gen. Ray Odeirno….doesn't for see needing to add troops/go back in…sites in Iraq where not only our military forces would be consolidated but also our contractors would be focused as well so we can provide them protection…expects plan to be satisfactory to transfer 15,000 prisoners from Camp Booka(sp).

President Obama will hear directly from senior commanders -ground commanders.
Hear from all ground commanders directly to inform his opinion.

Gates Q&A Misc.

2009-02-08T04:11:00.001-08:00

Secretary of Defense Gates sat down with the Senate Armed Services Committee for a Q&A session on Thursday, Januarary 27, 2009. I won't bother to post the questions as they should be able to be figured out by the answers from Mr. Gates. I essentially just took notes and cut out words here and there but here is what I considered miscellaneous information (DoD is Department of Defense):

Making submissions for military infrastructure that could be part of stimulus plan…things that could begin already or have begun but could be accelerated…was asked to do so by Obama
Gates wants to get involved in procurement and management side.

Longest war with a 100% volunteer army since Revolutionary War.

China's military modernization…balance of power in Asia/Pacific region has changed…19.47% increase in military budget...need to proceed with relocation of troops from Guam, South Korea, Okinawa?, with those -with forward deployment of George Washington to Japan
Programs underway to counter China's technological advances that have potential to put carrier's at risk…in place to handle any foreseeable conflict with China.

Veterans bill that passed hit sweet spot…economy helping in recruitment…enhanced education benefits have contributed to increase…transfer of education has helped with retention (put in practice this fall).

Military one of biggest purchasers of oil/fuel…US Air Force 5.6 billion in aviation fuel…affected readiness…Air Force Sec. Donnelly signed policy establish goal -entire air force fleet use synthetic fuel blend by 2011…require 50% of air forces domestic aviation department be alternative blend fuel by 2016.
Department (as in DoD) wide implementation? Yes -consolidate oversight within DoD on energy related issues…have many toward energy conservation and efficiency but no one place to go for information and help…wants to make that happen with broader goals/guidelines...Gates found a company to buy fuel that comes back from middle-east that can re-refine the fuel to sell on the open market.

Navy wants to build up fleet to 313…at 282 which is half of what it used to be…LCS program is integral part of fleet…LCS big part of getting back to 313 ship navy…LCS type ships very needed for possible conflicts around the world…when looking at Persian Gulf, other places –has capability we need.
Majority of substance abuse is started from pain killers or mental medication…responsibility and priority then is to help cure, not end career -get them back to work. Look at making changes to notify commander policy.
Gates concerned about level subversive activity Iranians are carrying in number of places in Latin America…opening a lot of offices and fronts (southern and middle America) behind which they interfere…more concerned with Iranian meddling in the region then Russians…if not for the Georgia conflict Gates would've invited Russians to a port in Miami because they would've had a better time in than in Caracas…best reaction was the US being nonchalant…at 40$ oil Russian navy doesn't bother Gates very much…Gates essentially: "I don't care about the Russian's"
Joint missile-defense with Russia against Iran…Sec. of State Clinton shares this goal…Gates had distinct impression when presenting range of opportunities for cooperation and transparency to then Pres. Putin w/Sec of State Rice…not in writing but yes when Gates met with Putin with Foreign Minister Lavraph(sp?) and counterpart of ours…also informally from some of their military -sharing radar capability, joint data center in Moscow...
Every leader in NATO wants a European/NATO missile defense…NATO would welcome joint works with Russia.

Was dramatic reduction in procurement staff in DoD following end of Cold War…in DoD overall procurement department fell from about 500-600,000 to half that…part of problem is plain numbers…DCMA plans to hire 2,300 more people next couple of months…Army adding 1,000 civilians, 400 military in procurement…Air Force or Navy (Gates couldn't remember which) adding 1,000…services and OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) are beginning to address this problem. 43% of procurement staff for the US Air Force is empty.
Must institutionalize thinking counter terrorism…proper people in right place so that Army is forced to institutionalize…can get around 1-2 people, can't stop 4-5 top Generals…institutionalize better support for the war fighter in terms of better development, procurement/acquisition process that we use for the longer term kinds of equipment…why did I have to go outside the regular Pentagon bureaucracy in order to build emrad's?(sp?) and get additional ISR -must figure out a way where that happens in the institution and where there are institutional supporters of getting that kind of thing done in a prompt and timely way…the problem is two different mentalities: 1) Typical culture in defense -99% exquisite solutions over 5-10 years 2) 75% solution in 6-8 months…must figure out how to "walk and chew gum at the same time".

Over 20 years or so we've made it very hard for private sector people who truly understand procurement and acquisitions to come into a public job when it isn't for a permanent career but instead only a couple years or so…wasn't helped by Obama's executive order which is why he left it open for waivers/exceptions…worse when trying to lure/get senior level people…not a problem when recruiting out of a university when person decides to make career at DoD…rate of pay isn't an issue.
Joint electronic medical records between DoD and VA…Gates wants to make significant progress on creating one.

National Solidarity Program…gives a few tens' of thousands of money directly to local villages where no money is skimmed off the top by the central government…three villages pulled together to build a school…promised Sen. Carl Levin no Taliban would ever touch it because they'd protect it with their lives.

How Did We Get Here? Part Two

2008-12-21T12:34:00.000-08:00

This was a trick question of sorts. To be sure, it isn't debatable that both parties must at some point stop being ideologues and start compromising to put the good of our country first but our political system became extremely partisan by the end of President George Washington's first term. Most of the key -i.e. most written about- founders loathed the partisan politicks but many, indeed almost all of them ended up contributing to it.

When you go back and read the news articles that have lasted from the infancy of this country, one can see that in fact our media was more partisan and politically aligned than they are today (especially with ever increasing news/information/opinion sites cropping up all over the internet). Everyone knew which newspaper was Federalist and which one was Republican. The scathing opinion pieces and politically damning fact finding by newspapers of the time were incessant and far more unforgiving then today.

The point made that it would be nice to have more elected officials understand the hopes and fears of our Founders was actually because our political parties are still having some of the same arguments. It isn't to rehash political arguments from the 1790's but rather to stop having them. Over 200 years and we're having many of the same arguments about the role of government. Worse yet, many of the things most of our Founders feared would happen have happened yet we're still standing and did become the Super Power some of them hoped we'd one day become. We even changed the political landscape of the world as they had hoped. That process has taken longer and often been done in ways that most likely wouldn't have been approved of but one can only wonder if the end result would've mattered more.

John Rutledge (1739-1800)

2008-12-19T11:41:00.000-08:00

Born into a large family of Irish immigrants, Rutledge received his early education from his physician father. He was sent to London's prestigious Middle Temple for his legal training and was admitted to English practice in 1760. He returned soon afterward to his native Charleston, married, and began a successful legal career. He made his fortune, however, from hisplantations and slaves. By 1761 Rutledge had won a seat in the provincial assembly and remained in this legislative body until independence was declared. There he earned a reputation as one of the greatest orators of his day. As tensions increased between the colonies and Great Britian, Rutledge defended American rights but worked for a peaceful resolution of differences. In 1774 he was a delegate to the Continental Congress, and there, too, he pursued a moderate course. Once independence was declared, however, he played an active role in helping to reorganize his state government and in writing South Carolina's state constitution. Although a patriot, Rutledge was a political conservative, resigning his position in the state legislature when democratic revisions of the state constitution were passed. His views did not prevent his election to the governorship in 1779. When Charleston was taken by the British in 1780, Rutledge suffered severe financial losses. His extensive property holdings were confiscated, and Rutledge was forced to flee to North Carolina. He never recovered his fortune. Rutledge served in the Constinental Congress from 1782 to 1783 and then returned to state offices. At the Philadelphia convention, he was a moderate nationalist, speaking frequently on issues and serving on several important committees. His deepest concern at the convention was the protection of southern interests. President Washington appointed Rutledge as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, but he left that bench in 1791 to become chief justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court. Washington again called upon him to serve on the U.S. Court in 1795, this time to replace John Jay as chief justice. His appointment was not confirmed by the Federalist-dominated Senate, however, due in part to his vocal opposition to the Jay Treaty of 1794 and in part to signs of mental illness brought on by the death of his wife. The rejection led Rutledge to retire from public life.

A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution by Carol Berkin

Rutledge was largely responsible for denying the Supreme Court the right to give advisory opinions. Being a judge himself, he strongly believed that a judge’s sole purpose was to resolve legal conflicts; he held that a judge should only hand down an opinion when ruling on an actual case.

Rutledge also argued that if either house of the legislature was to have the sole authority to introduce appropriation bills, it should be the Senate. He noted that the Senate, by nature of its lengthier terms of office, would tend to be more leisurely in its actions. Because of this, Rutledge felt that the Senate would be better able to clearly think about what the consequences of a bill would be. And since the bills could not become law without the consent of the House of Representatives, he concluded that there would be no danger of the Senate ruling the country.

When the proposal was made that only landowners should have the right to vote, Rutledge opposed it perhaps more strongly than any other motion in the entire convention. He stated that making a rule like this would divide the people into "haves" and "have nots". It would create an undying resentment against the landowners and could do nothing but cause discord. Benjamin Franklin agreed with Rutledge, saying that such a law would suppress the ambitions of the common people. Franklin also observed that if only people who actually owned land could vote, the sons of a substantial farmer, not having land in their own names, would be denied the right to vote.

J. Rutledge Wikipedia

Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816)

2008-12-19T11:06:00.000-08:00

Born to wealth and privilege on his family's impressive Morrisania estate in New York, Morris was educated first by private tutors and then by the faculty of King's College (later Columbia University). As a young man, Morris lost his leg in a freak carriage accident, but this did not appear to diminish his very active engagement with women. He trained as a lawyer but entered politics as the movement for independence gained ground. A social conservative, he nevertheless joined the patriots' camp and served in New York's Revolutionary provincial congress. Despite his wodden leg, Morris served in the militia as well. Acknowledged as a brilliant stylist, he was appointed to the committee that drafted New York's first constitution. In the late 1770's, Morris served in the Continental Congress, where he was one of the youngest and most intellectually impressive of the delegates. When Governor George Clinton's party defeated him in his bid for reelection to Congress, Morris moved to Philadelphia and opened a legal practice. By 1781 he was once again involved in public service, working as an assistant to the superintendent of finance for the United States during the Revolution. Gouverneur Morris was one of the leading figures at the Philadelphia convention, speaking more often than any other delegate, his analytical powers leavened by his keen satiric sense. His nationalism was strengthened by his experiences working with Robert Morris and his conviction that a strong central government and a sound fiscal policy were essential to the survival of the country. It was Morris who produced the final draft of the Constitution. After the convention he returned to private life, took possesion of the family estate at Morrisania, and settled once again in New York. A man of broad-ranging intellectual and cultural interests, Morris spent many of the years after the Philadelphia convention abroad. He was in France as that nation's revolution began, and in 1792 President Washington asked him to take over the duties of minister to that nation from Thomas Jefferson. An ardent Federalist until his death, Morris once again retired from politics when the Jefferson party began to dominate the national political scene. In his last years, he became a vocal critic of the Democratic-Republicans and of the War of 1812.

A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution by Carol Berkin

During the convention, he was a friend and ally of George Washington and others who favored a stronger central government. Morris was elected to serve on a committee of five (chaired by William Samuel Johnson) that would draft the final language of the proposed Constitution. Catherine Drinker Bowen, in Miracle at Philadelphia, called Morris the committee's "amanuensis," meaning that it was his pen that was responsible for most of the draft.

"An aristocrat to the core," Morris believed that "there never was, nor ever will be a civilized Society without an Aristocracy". He also thought that common people were incapable of self-government and feared that the poor would sell their votes to rich people, and consequently thought that voting should be restricted to property owners. Morris also opposed admitting new Western states on an equal basis with the existing Eastern states, fearing that the interior wilderness could not furnish "enlightened" statesmen. At the Convention he gave more speeches than any other delegate, totaling 173.

He went to Europe on business in 1789 and served as Minister Plenipotentiary to France from 1792-1794. His diaries written during that time have become an invaluable chronicle of the French Revolution, capturing much of the turbulence and violence of that era. He returned to the United States in 1798 and was elected in 1800 as a Federalist to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of James Watson, serving from April 3, 1800, to March 3, 1803. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1802. After leaving the Senate, he served as chairman of the Erie Canal Commission, 1810-1813.

G. Morris Wikipedia

Comical.

2008-12-04T11:03:00.000-08:00

These Senators are serious with this line of questioning of the auto makers? Could they at least cut out the attacking? CNN is doing brilliant coverage of this today (12/4). Here are some facts that shouldn't be ignored:

The Big Three have shredded over 150,000+ jobs.
Only 10% of there cost of operation is spent on labor. 10%! So let us stop blaming the unions. This is unconscionable that everyone is blaming the unions. Is there one alive that could even give a scenario of how this country grows a middle class, the highest standard of living middle class in the world without the unions? To be sure, a lot of unions became as bad as the organizations they cried foul about but today’s middle class, with its benefit packages of health care and 401k plans even in non-union jobs have unions to thank for that. It was the fear of a union coming into a business that made them have as close to union type employee practices as possible.
With Chrysler, they've been struggling for 10 years or more now. They've failed to turn tons of highly critically acclaimed cars this decade into actual car sales.
GM, we the people need to start admitting that our government screwed them badly. Our government told them that ethanol/bio-fuel would be in the market and rampant by now. So what did GM do? They put billions into research and development of flex-fuel cars. Now this served them very, very well when selling cars in Brazil but without bio-fuels being all over the country, it's a feature that doesn't help sell a car.
Ford has cash and they don't need the money. Ford was the clever company that overhauled its product line early in this decade and their Focus is very popular -for a US built car. They were also the first of the Big Three to build a Hybrid SUV –even if they had to buy the battery from Japan. Ford sold Jaguar, Land Rover, and Hertz. They’ve sold off part of their share in Mazda.

The Big Three haven’t been making cars that people actually want? Really? Then why are there so many SUV’s and trucks on the road? Why are Mustangs all over the place? 300M’s & Sebring’s? Does GM not finally make more Hybrids’ than anyone? Why have the Big Three also been winning awards again lately?

The last time we gave an auto company a loan we made our money back plus interest. It isn’t like this is free money. Also, to those demanding that our government should not give the Big Three the loans they’re asking for, can you honestly look 2.5+ Million people in the eyes and say “sorry, but because of bad executives and managers you no longer have a job.”? “I know your entire town or city depends on the manufacturing plant for its entire economy but too bad, your company kept choosing bad executives and even though you finally have good executives that have gotten the message, we’re still denying you your way of life, your way of supporting your family, your income.” Consider whether you could do that or not for a while.

Nope. Revoked.

2008-12-04T00:47:00.000-08:00

Stop with this rival drivel. Hillary, okay, sort of, kind of, scarcely. They attacked each other over a bunch of zilch. They were 95% the same candidate and not only did the entire country know it, so did they. Just saw a piece calling Gov. Richardson a “formal rival”. Hope you just laughed as heartily as I did. Sec. of Def. Gates was a rival? Really? Since when? Can someone come up with a critical word spoken by President-Elect Obama about Sec. Gates? Good luck finding one. It was obvious even before the O’Reilly interview when Mr. Obama called Gates a “serious member of this administration” that he was going to be keeping Mr. Gates on. Team of rivals, ha.

A team of non-yes men? Yes. Now that he stuck to. That is one thing he said he didn’t want in his administration was a bunch of yes men and from the day he chose his Chief of Staff you knew that was true. Mrs. Clinton as Sec. of State? Mrs. Clinton a yes-woman…ha.

How Did We Get Here?

2008-12-03T22:46:00.000-08:00

How did we get here? How does a country founded on such amazing and just principles become so filled with finger pointing, with no one taking responsibility for their actions –their party’s mistakes? How is it Republican’s actually deem liberals and Democrats as the ones to blame for everything wrong in this country? How can the Democrats and liberals actually fault our entire government’s incompetence solely on Republicans and conservatives? Is either party serious when they –are they honestly expecting us to take them seriously?

They’ve continued the status quo of no energy policy, of a crumbling infrastructure –our grid is almost 100 years old! Yes! It is the Federal government’s responsibility to pay for the country’s electrical grid and contribute to new energy development. That’s why it is called the country’s grid and a national energy policy. Neither party actually cares about education. Can anyone even point an educated Senator or Representative out? What is it at now? About 10-15% of elected officials, upon researching and following their actions and what they have to say give the impression of being well educated and appear to grasp the issue? Maybe 10-15% is too kind but we’ll allow the benefit of the doubt. Do any of our government officials even have an education –one worthy of the position(s) they hold? Republicans want to privatize (even though none of the Founders believed in privatized education unless it was a university) and the Democrats just want to throw money at it without caring about demanding actual results –even if their party’s’ nominee is for actual accountability; at least that’s his rhetoric. Wait, isn’t that all we’ve done? Elected the man with the oratory we’ve liked best? When do we stop electing people as mere cheap grace? When does this country stop acting like they’ve made up for all of its past mistakes with one vote? When do we start looking inward to us? Inward to how we could allow this to be our elected representative government?
Stop. Let me fall back. Are you, the Republican, the Democrat, reading this and understanding your party’s are incompetent? Are you the Independent understanding you’re not doing enough by simply not being a registered Democrat or Republican? Do you understand how badly both parties need to change? Is it too much to ask for one of the party’s to admit that this economic mess doesn’t happen without both of them looking out solely for their interests? Have we reached the point where we can admit this mess is part stupid regulation, part over de-regulation? Hold on. Let us ignore the political blame and touch on the heart and truth of the matter. Rather did we get to the point yet where we can shred the politics out of this mess and remember that devoid of the lenders being responsible and honorable, it would’ve been irrelevant what de-regulation or dumb regulation took place?
Can we as a country declare we elected this government? We elected every president we now carp. We voted for these Senators, we chose these House of Representatives’.
Does anyone think this happens if our education system was up to par? Can anyone sincerely think our current direction isn’t a direct result of our lackadaisical mind-set toward our responsibility of keeping our choices accountable to us? Can we admit that today’s younger generation(s) are far more up on current events than previous generations yet never take the time to truly learn the history of not only this country but others? How about our country’s interactions with other ones? Can we admit not all of our Middle-Eastern problems were formed by President Bush? Can today’s Bush haters ever admit that President Clinton didn’t have a good foreign policy either? For that matter, can they ever admit that we have nation built long before our current attempts at nation building?

Lobbying started as a good thing. It did. Some Senators and Representatives would be completely lost on certain issues without a lobbyist to explain what a piece of legislation would actually do. The problem is we keep electing these people even after they’ve proven they know nothing without talking to a lobbyist first.

Why is it idealistic to want a government official who has read and understands the fears and hopes that our Founders had? Not just the main six or so that are always written about and spoken of but the other ones. The ones that truly got things started like Patrick Henry & Samuel Adams. What about the man who actually wrote our Constitution, Gouverneur Morris? How about the man trusted to head the Committee of Details that hammered out the majority of the early compromises in order to save the Constitutional Convention from disbanding, John Rutledge? At this point we’d be lucky to have a governing body that even knew the history of the main six that are held to a god like stature. On a side note, was it maybe a bad thing that our second and third president weren’t actually a part of the writing of our constitution -that they weren't at the Constitutional Convention? They both thought highly of the group of men but neither was actually there to have first hand knowledge of the daily debates and arguments. Simply a pondering.

There is simply no way either party at this point can claim to be traditionalists –in regards to government function. That's a good thing in many ways and horrible in others. So few of the Founders actually believed that one generation should ever presume to know what is or would be best for the generation after them. If they had, the ability to add amendments would’ve never been written into the Constitution. That was a huge leap of faith on there part. Muse this over: we wouldn’t have a Bill of Rights without the ability to add amendments. Consider that for a minute. Stop. I said reflect on that for a minute.

Some Afghanistan Ponderings

2008-11-18T23:42:00.000-08:00

What will victory in Afghanistan look like? Will it look like the Afghanistan that has been true since what seems like the beginning of time or will it look like an Afghanistan with less opium production and less corruption but far from being "clean" or corrupt? What is our end game?

Al-Qaeda is no longer in Afghanistan (in terms of bases) and they'll never care what country they reside in -the country they reside in has never mattered. They've resided in Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt, and Afghanistan plus Pakistan over the years.

What is a realistic end game in a country that almost every one claims has a population that is less than 20% educated? A country that couldn't be pacified with 350,000 Russian troops? Is it ever possible to win in the rural areas of Afghanistan? Do we set up a split situation of controlling and running the urban and more populated cities while ignoring the rural areas and farms?

When the British and our Sec. of Def. plus our top General are saying that a military victory isn't to be had in Afghanistan and we have to talk to the Taliban do people understand that their is a difference between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda? That AQ and the Taliban have had a very fractious relationship over the years with one part of the Taliban not always agreeing with or working with another part of the Taliban? Do people understand that the Taliban is serious when they say that they won’t talk until we’re gone? If that reality sets in, how does the Obama administration and General Petreus deal with that? Would the United States accept pulling out of Afghanistan and essentially not winning but not losing on the condition that they’re given Osama Bin Laden? Then what happens when it becomes apparent that Al-Qaeda will go on with or without Osama Bid Laden? That he neither started AQ nor came up with the beliefs they fight for. That the Taliban see’s Bin Laden as an irrelevant person other than he is helping them fight foreigners on there soil?

How will President-Elect Obama and General Petreus deploy US troops in Afghanistan with Europe almost at the breaking point for how many they can send -especially with EU recently sending in naval operations to combat piracy in Somalia? The ISAF has 50,000 troops in Afghanistan, European countries being over half of them.

Since the beginning of 2007, the E.U. has had 15 'battlegroups', each with at least 1,500 soldiers, dealing with local crises around the globe. France not only has troops in Afghanistan but also Chad, Kosovo, Congo and Lebanon. According to a high level NATO diplomat the European governments “…have real resource problems.” Pretty easy to imagine given this current economic mess the world is in.

Will Mr. Obama and Mr. Petreus be willing to have all US troops in the front lines, almost solely handling the southern part of Afghanistan if it means that the ISAF will increase the numbers they have working on infrastructure, fighting government corruption, and border security? Will they do this knowing that any form of victory to come in Afghanistan can only be had by fixing all three of these things?

A Couple of Articles Worth Your Time

2008-11-18T00:00:00.000-08:00

Two interesting opinions on/questions worth pondering about President-Elect Obama's foreign policy. In the first article "Nikolas Gvosdev, former editor of the National Interest, considers the kinds of "80 percent solutions" the Obama administration might be forced to consider, and whether it will be willing to make them." as described by the World Politics Review (WPR) Editors.

In the second "Thomas P.M. Barnett examines the rule sets the Obama administration inherits from its predecessor, and how it might redefine them to further America's global leadership." as described by the WPR Editors.

By the way, one thing should never be forgotten in regards to Afghanistan when Mr. Obama talks of essentially doubling down on winning there:

During the campaign, Obama promised to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan. It bears noting, however, that the Soviet-backed government had 329,000 men under arms when the Soviets withdrew in 1989; this is a larger force than the current Afghan National Army plus the U.S., NATO and coalition forces combined. This is why the British commander on the ground recently concluded that there is no military solution to the problem of the resurgent Taliban insurgency.

Stop the Madness!

2008-11-17T16:48:00.000-08:00

This just in: The Republican Party is NOT dead.

Seriously folks, no political party since the Federalists has perished in this country, especially not from one election. (The Federalists one could easily argue are actually still alive; they're just split between Republican and Democrat.) Another thing of note: They still had 48% of the vote. Electorally was the bigger victory for Mr. Obama than percentage of popular vote.

A few of the seats picked up by the Democrats were on the coattails of President-Elect Obama's massive turnout. That wont be there two years from now during the mid-term elections when the Republicans will win back some of there seats. Another thing to keep in mind is that quite a few new seats came from districts President Bush carried in 2004 so it isn't like they'll be some hard liberal Democrats that will 100% toe the line with Pelosi and Co.

The best thing the Republican Party can do is make their voice heard on things from the Obama administration and work with him on things they can agree on. This most likely means a lot of work with Sen. McCain for the Obama administration. They also just need to have Governor Palenty, Gov. Jindal, and Gov. Palin improve there state's and hope the Democrats learned nothing from the 1970's and 1992-94. It seems though that unless President-Elect Obama implodes they need to come up with a strategy that sets them up greatly for 2016 more then 2012. Very few Presidents haven't held two terms.

Tribes: Pakistan

2008-11-14T20:37:00.000-08:00

The West has never taken the time to truly understand the tribe structure of the Middle East but on to the article...

Until gangs (or lashkars) like my friend’s formed, not even the police dared to stand against the Taliban. Now, just a year later, posses and tribal militias are the backbone of Pakistan’s aggressive new counterinsurgency campaign. The use of the lashkars hopes to mimic the Anbar Awakening in Iraq, where Sunni tribes left the insurgency and banded together with the U.S. military to drive out al-Qaeda. But will feuding gangs accomplish American security goals, or create even nastier problems down the road?

But rather than siding with tribes against the Taliban, Pakistan often tries to play one Taliban faction off another. It distinguishes between “good” and “bad” Taliban: the “good” ones focus on fighting U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and the "bad" ones target Pakistani troops and politicians.

In April 2007, a mini-civil war in South Waziristan pitted “good” Taliban fighters from the Ahmadzai Wazir tribe, under the command of Maulvi Nazir, against several hundred “bad” Uzbek militants belonging to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and to al-Qaeda. The Uzbeks had killed scores of Pakistani tribal chiefs. When the fighting began, the Pakistani army sided with the Taliban and provided helicopter- and artillery-fire. The ranking general later told me that he ordered soldiers to strip off their uniforms, don a shalwar kameez, and lead the "good" Taliban to victory. (The incident, while encouraging, highlighted the degree to which Washington and Islamabad’s security priorities are mismatched. Among the rash of recent drone attacks in the tribal areas, several missiles have targeted "good" Talib Maulvi Nazir and his associates in South Waziristan.)

Lashkars in the tribal regions face a significantly greater challenge than did the Sunni tribes in Anbar. Al-Qaeda had undermined tribal authority in Anbar for not even three years when the tribes fought back. The Pashtun tribes of northwestern Pakistan have been undermined for three decades, ever since the arrival of thousands of foreigners in the 1980s for the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan.

No lashkar will achieve swift and decisive victory over the Talibs. But as more and more tribesmen turn against the militants, the comfort zone for Osama bin Laden and top al-Qaeda leaders in the tribal areas since 2001 could shrink. And the lashkars could distract the Taliban from fighting U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the strategy could create even more serious problems later. The medium- and long-term effects of the “Awakening” in Iraq are unclear. After all, Anbar’s Sunni tribes are fickle: they switched from al-Qaeda to the United States in a matter of months. Why not switch sides again? New tactics should be treated with caution. The tribal areas are, after all, already rife with weapons and gangs. Men walk to the grocery store with AK-47s slung over their shoulders. Taking sides will have consequences.

And there’s another reason to be wary of comparing Pakistan's tribal areas and Anbar: there are no U.S. soldiers in Pakistan to buttress the embattled tribes. We've seen what happens when posses are left to fight over a lawless space. You get mujahideen factionalism, as in Afghanistan's protracted civil war in the early- and mid-1990s. Eventually, a force bigger and badder than anyone—Mullah Omar’s Taliban—swept in on the beds of Toyota pickups to subdue warring clans, eradicate highways bandits, and establish peace. The Taliban are already partisans in the current struggle in the tribal areas.

Afghanistan: Even After 200 Years

2008-11-14T20:05:00.000-08:00

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/ben_macintyre/article5141513.ece

Elphinstone, the first European diplomatic envoy sent to Afghanistan, had been dispatched from Delhi to coax the “King of Caubul” into an alliance against Napoleon, to explore this terra incognita, and - in the unlikely event that he survived - to report back to London on the “wild and strange” land beyond the mountains.

For a month Elphinstone slogged through the desert wastes, encountering bandits, warring clans and ferocious tribal chiefs off their heads on opium and alcohol who could be spoken to only in the early afternoon, that being the “interval between sobriety and absolute stupefaction”. For guidance, he had to rely on accounts of Alexander the Great's expedition, written more than 2,000 years earlier.

Afghanistan, he wrote, could be understood only through its kaleidoscopic tribal structures. “The societies into which the nation is divided possess within themselves a principle of repulsion and disunion too strong to be overcome,” he noted. When the British marched into Afghanistan to bring about regime-change a few years later, Elphinstone, now in retirement, advised that the venture was hopeless.

There are small signs that the realities Elphinstone understood two centuries ago may finally be sinking in: General David Petraeus, fresh from Iraq, plans to enlist tribal leaders against the Taleban; a political settlement, John Hutton, the Defence Secretary, insists, is essential to a long-term peace.

Before he [Obama] sets off, he might ponder the insights of the very first emissary to that beautiful and benighted place, and the words of an Afghan tribal elder who accosted Mountstuart Elphinstone, two centuries ago, to explain his turbulent world.

“We are content with discord, we are content with alarms, we are content with blood,” the old man said. “But we will never be content with a master.”

Education, education, education!

2008-11-14T19:57:00.000-08:00

An article on education and how desperately we need it. As I said just a couple days ago, education is our future. Without it, we will only continue to struggle.

The United States is the only country in the industrialized world where children are less likely to graduate from high school than their parents were, according to a new study by the Education Trust, an advocacy group based in Washington.

The most effective anti-poverty program we could devise for the long run would have less to do with income redistribution than with ensuring that poor kids get a first-rate education, from preschool on. One recent study found that if American students did as well as those in several Asian countries in math and science, our economy would grow 20 percent faster.

Houston: Democrats Have a Problem

2008-11-14T19:10:00.000-08:00

It is called VERY HIGH expectations. They ran on fixing everything. They ran on fixing the economy, ending Iraq, fixing health care, fixing our energy problems, fixing our horrid and disgraceful infrastructure, etc That is a huge promise to the citizens of this country and if they fail, well, expectations are so high that if people think we see frustration with our government right now, this country hasn't seen anything yet.

We'll find out how many Democrats learned from 1992/93. We'll find out just how serious President-Elect Obama was about working across party lines. It does seems promising, from the Democrats point of view and those who voted for Mr. Obama that so far he and his team seem determined to get his entire, or at least as close to his entire platform done as possible. The argument against big reform or new spending has and will always be "can't afford it" or "not in a down cycle economy". The truth is that things will only get more expensive, especially when it comes to energy policy and we've been hearing that for decades. We don't know that the country cares how much it costs anymore. It seems they just want it done, regardless of anything -except higher taxes.

If the country senses the slightest partisanship, from either party, that party better watch out come mid-term elections.

If we were to label the public's opinion on his top 3 priorities that he must get done if he wants to win re-election, and/or especially if he wants to win re-election easily are:
1) His promised tax cuts without the tax increases.
2) His energy policy and infrastructure spending to create more jobs. (Expect something extremely similar to the current Virginia economic model. VA is currently rated the number one state for business and all of the in depth economic pieces written about Mr. Obama and/or economic interviews with him, he talks about a lot of things that mirror VA's current economic policy.)
3) If President Bush has not signed it, signing the current Iraq pact that has 100% of US troops out of Iraq by the end of 2011. It will be longer than his 16-month plan which would've left a "residual" (60-80,000) force behind but 100% and before his re-election year will matter more.

Does the Republican Party Actually have a Problem Going Forward?

2008-11-14T13:03:00.000-08:00

This obviously depends on the issue. Socially? Not currently. In the future, yes. On abortion both parties can make a strong case that they're on the correct side of the issue. Not in terms of ideology or morals or the like but because polling shows the country evenly split (with only about 30-35% believe no abortion even in the case of rape and/or incest -even see Laura Bush and Mrs. McCain).

When it comes to gay marriage, the social conservatives of the Republican Party are fighting a losing battle. For now, they have won numerous state level bans (every one they've attempted -except in Massachusetts). They'll even continue to do so in the coming 5-10 years, specifically inward of the coast (the next time on the CA ballot it loses). However the younger generation by margins of anywhere from 2/3 to 3/4 see gay rights as a civil rights issue and as they get older while more and more generations grow up gay marriage will eventually win so this issue will in fact become a problem for the party.

When it comes to energy policy, depending on the poll 60-70% (so let’s just say 65%) of this country wants more oil drilling. Even those who want more oil drilling generally believe in "all of the above" as well. The problem seems to be more in the rhetoric ("drill baby, drill") than the actual policy stance -at least if we take Sen. McCain's energy policy as the standard bearer of the Republican Party (which we're doing for the sake of this argument). The Republican rhetoric on energy policy is one that acts as if oil drilling is the only answer. That is where their problem lies on the energy front: rhetoric and the message. On a side note: If President-Elect Obama came out saying he'd be for limited oil drilling if the renewable energy plan he wants was part of the package and that was appreciated...would the Republicans who claim to be for "all of the above" put oil drilling ahead of getting started on an energy policy? Would they block President-Elect Obama's energy policy simply if it ended up not including oil drilling to the detriment of this country? Would they accept "something is better than nothing" or would they continue to tolerate today’s status quo?

On less government and government is the problem: this is the huge elephant in the room for the Republican Party. When your party's rhetoric is "government always gets it wrong, we need less government" and then your party has 100% control for 6 years and its standard bearer has an approval rating under 30%, voters put two and two together. It seems they are now in need of defining "less government". Which programs and functions the government should be controlling as opposed to a blanked "less government". This is also a generational gap problem though. Older generations have fears and/or are hesitant with Democrats because they remember the 70's and the 80's before Reagon's lower taxes took hold. For people 30 and under they associate Democrat with Bill Clinton and Bill Clinton with a strong economy. They associate Republican with Bush Sr (who raised taxes) and Bush Jr. That's a huge difference between comparing LBJ/Carter to Nixon/Reagon. We could parse and semantic everything but since the general populace doesn't understand fundamental economics and how government works, and how long things take to actually have an effect in real time, that they simply see the big picture, because of the Clinton years the general consensus of the country is that Democrats run a better economy.

Based on the tax plan that President-Elect Obama ran on, the Republican Party did apparently win the tax argument. Not entirely mind you as Mr. Obama is going to raise some taxes but in the past Democrats just increased taxes on everyone. At least they have the Democrats wanting to lower taxes on some level. Hey, it's a start.

It is very hard to tell whether the Republicans are on the winning side of healthcare. President-Elect Obama ran very much on his healthcare plan and he won but given the anti-Republican environment it blurs whether people actually voted based on liking his healthcare plan. Only about 10% or so of people in exit polling said that was why they voted for him. Well, that only says that 10% or so voted on that as the number one issue, not whether or not all the other votes’ loved/liked/disliked/hated his healthcare plan. It doesn't seem Republicans really have a healthcare platform. Mr. McCain didn't talk much about it and most polling shows his healthcare plan wasn't really taken to. The Republican Party is going to have to decide on what kind of healthcare system they're for as opposed to what they're against as the current status quo on this country's healthcare system isn't seen as good. Not sure that is fair or not but it’s just a matter of fact that people believe healthcare needs reforming.

Socially, this country is in fact still center-right (less and less so as the years go on), especially compared to most of Europe. On Government function however, this center-right claim isn't true. Here is why: Bill Clinton won two terms, Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000, and President-Elect Obama won with the highest percentage of any Democrat. It took until 1994 for the Republicans to control Congress and it took only 12 years for this country to change them out. If you go back to 1960, you had eight years of Kennedy/Johnson, then eight years of Nixon/Ford, then four years of Carter, then 12 years of Reagan/Bush Sr., then eight years of Clinton, eight years of Bush Jr., and now at least four years of Obama. So since 1960 by 2012 we'll have had 24 years of a Democrat running the White House and 28 years of a Republican running the White House. During that entire time the Democrats controlled Congress for many more years. What should this tell us? If your party fails to fix what the population believes needs fixing they will fire you and try the other party. This only happens in a Republic designed for the general population to choose its representatives and the general population caring far less about ideology of a political party and more about our government functioning and working for us, the people.

Here is the other problem for conservatives though: When a country lives in the center (yes that is center in front of -right) it is actually progressing. Now liberals and conservatives would argue that isn't true but one could go country by country and show that socially, unless -at times even despite- it is being controlled by a dictator or theocracy, society always progresses. Social conservatives have never won. Even the social conservatives in the Arab world before 2001 were losing the societal battles, let alone now.

Social conservatives failed to stop the elimination of religion from our government (and in recent years have tied the two back together a bit). They failed to stop the end of slavery. They failed to stop de-segregation. Before the attack e-mails or comments for this paragraph come do not confuse the word conservative with Republican or that it is being claimed that today’s conservatives wish none of those things had happened. Of course today’s conservatives are proud of those things ending.

Social conservatives over the course of history have been a part of every political party this country let alone world has ever known. We had social conservatives in the Democrat party fighting against de-segregation and against ending slavery. We had social conservatives in the Federalist Party that believed in slavery and if it ever were to end they should all be shipped back to Africa.

We should make the distinction though between societal conservatives and family values conservatives. Their is some blurring at this point in time as their is really only one issue in today's world that a case can be made for it to be considered both: gay marriage. Societal conservatives essentially don't want the social order of things to change. Family value conservatives are more about believing that a family stays married (no divorce), is a man and a woman, and has kids. That video games and the TV aren't good enough. That parents have to actually parent. They have to instill discipline and the differences between right and wrong.

Look, the Republican Party is going to have to decide whether they are more concerned with governmental conservatism or social conservatism. More concerned with limited but functioning government or social issues. If it is social conservatism, they are guaranteed to lose. They will never become a "big tent" party and in a country where minorities as a whole will become the majority, that's a problem.

The Final Tallies

2008-11-14T11:24:00.000-08:00

Obama:
True 49
Mostly True 31
Half True 33
Barely True 19
False 25
Pants on Fire 2

McCain:
True 30
Mostly True 28
Half True 28
Barely True 27
False 34
Pants on Fire 7

Biden:
True 8
Mostly True 5
Half True 7
Barely True 6
False 4
Pants on Fire 2

Palin:
True 6
Mostly True 2
Half True 5
Barely True 3
False 2
Pants on Fire 2

Obama's Economic Transition Team

2008-11-07T00:14:00.000-08:00

David Bonior (Member House of Representatives 1977-2003)
· Warren Buffett (Chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway)-will participate via speakerphone
· Roel Campos (former SEC Commissioner)
· William Daley (Chairman of the Midwest, JP Morgan Chase; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Commerce, 1997-2000)
· William Donaldson (Former Chairman of the SEC 2003-2005)
· Roger Ferguson (President and CEO, TIAA-CREF and former Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve)
· Jennifer Granholm (Governor, State of Michigan)
· Anne Mulcahy (Chairman and CEO, Xerox)
· Richard Parsons (Chairman of the Board, Time Warner)
· Penny Pritzker (CEO, Classic Residence by Hyatt)
· Robert Reich (University of California, Berkeley; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Labor, 1993-1997)
· Robert Rubin (Chairman and Director of the Executive Committee, Citigroup; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Treasury, 1995-1999)
· Eric Schmidt (Chairman and CEO, Google)
· Lawrence Summers (Harvard University; Managing Director, D.E. Shaw; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Treasury, 1999-2001)
· Laura Tyson (Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley; Former Chairman, National Economic Council, 1995-1996; Former Chairman, President's Council of Economic Advisors, 1993-1995)
· Antonio Villaraigosa (Mayor, City of Los Angeles)
· Paul Volcker (Former Chairman, U.S. Federal Reserve 1979-1987)

Some interesting names. Only two truly stand out and matter, or at least matter most. The names you need to think about most are Robert Rubin who some have said is the best Sec. of Treasury this country has had since Alexander Hamilton. He was the Sec. of Treasury for 4 years under Bill Clinton and this country has him to thank for us having a balanced budget during the Clinton years. Mr. Rubin in fact even, well, seemed to of backed Mr. McCain during the election based on how his Op-Ed's read, specifically on the Wall Street Journal Opinion page.

The other name that should matter to you is Paul Volcker. He was the Fed Chairman for the final year of President Carter and the first 7 years of President Reagon's two terms. He is talked about as the man who in fact started the lowering of interest rates and pushing for deregulation before Mr. Reagon had even taken office. It seems he was more liked by Republicans during the Reagan years than Mr. Greenspan under the Bush Sr., Clinton, and Bush Jr. years.

Their are some key names of some key businesses, one of which (Google CEO) endorsed Mr. Obama. The other thing that bodes well is that he has a balance in the types of business CEO's he is wanting to hear from. You have a major Hotel CEO, the CEO of Xerox that is involved in/deals with most aspects of business relations and services, they deal with every type of company this country has. The other CEO's are involved in the financial world (Citigroup; JP Morgan-both companies having survived this financial mess), entertainment/media business (Time Warner), and the most prominant internet company (Google) that continues to grow and will most likely actually challenge Microsoft someday.

Lawrence Summers, he is being rumored as the top choice for Mr. Obama's Sec. of Treasury. Their is a lot of room to be desired with him depending on who you talk with and/or read but the biggest benefit of Mr. Summers that arguably outweighs everything else is that he's done it before and what we need right now is someone who can step in on day one and have as smooth of a transition as possible. President-Elect Obama seems to be wanting a team that can act instantly and with first hand knowledge of how the White House functions so that their will be no stalling.

This group is, I'm sure, a bit too liberal (especially the fact Robert Reich is part of the group; their is a reason he is at Berkley) for staunch conservatives but the reality is that this is a diverse group who has an extremely good track record of economic growth and balanced budgets under the Clinton years. The other thing that should be noticed, especially when you look at president-Elect Obama's choice for Chief of Staff, is that he is focused on getting started instantly and good governance. We can debate his policies, which is a valid and needed debate but we need to seperate good governance from good policy. Yes, their is a difference.

A couple side notes:
Interesting that he brought in the Mayor of Los Angeles. I don't know that he has much of a track record although he could be interested in knowing about the illegal alien work force? I don't know this Mayor's track record on business and his overall stance so I wont pretend to.

We can be sure that the Governor of Michigan is there so he can get a real sense of what is really going on with the Big Three US car makers. They are asking for ANOTHER $25 Billion with Ford saying they are going to have to cut all funding for research into future development of cars. Let us be honest about the troubles the Big Three are having. They were having trouble before this economic down turn. They have been making inferior cars to Honda and Toyota and even Mazda for years now. They have had image issues. They have product lines with far too many models, especially GM. No one wants to see those jobs lost but it should not be the governments job to bail out companies that have run themselves horribly and failed to think ahead for over 20 years. US car companies are happy about 30+ MPG on the highway just now in 2008 for christ sake. Excuse me? Has it not been almost 10 years since Honda and Toyota have done this? The worst part is that is all they're getting out of Hybrid's. Excuse the diversion off topic.

The Future: Education

2008-11-06T11:16:00.000-08:00

"None of the candidates really look beyond the walls of ......
We haven't paid attention to the future generations. I have told them: stop talking about housing problems and start looking at education. None of them really had a sense of the continuity in the .... world. You care for your children, but you don't care for your grandchildren. What we have suffered from so far is the absence of leadership."

Think about that quote. Let it sink in.

Now, think about our government’s lack of attention for decades now to education and watching our government get more and more ineffective. People with money being given more and more power only to predictably run things based on how much they could make, not on what was best for their company in the long-term and for the country.

Now, know that the quote is from Suleiman Mutawa, the former minister of Kuwait when talking about Kuwait and the Arab world back in the early 1990s.

Luckily, Obama has talked about it and hopefully follows through on his rhetoric of "army of new teachers" and being a believer in "holding teachers accountable.” The concern is the Democrats’ ties to the teacher’s unions. At least President-Elect Obama is open to charter schools and some other things that don't make teacher unions entirely happy. We'll see. It'll be on the citizens of the United States to make this government finally confront the problems in our education system.

One of President Bush's biggest failures has been the lack of actually funding No Child Left Behind and paying attention to education. Let us be clear though, every president has ignored education for far too many decades. Essentially, our government has believed education will take care of it self. We are living in the results.

We could, to our detriment, get caught up in the argument of too much ideology being taught, too much partisan views being taught on our youth, but our biggest problem is simple math, standard science, and spelling and grammar.

In trying to teach the intentions behind, and the implications of, certain events in our history you end up teaching ideologies instead of facts. The context of the times in which an event occurred is important, but there must be a careful balance between teaching the facts and the potential to impose ideologies. What happens after a specific event rarely gives an accurate and true context to an event, which is one thing to keep in mind as well.

We cannot ignore the saying, "Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it." Look at this financial mess, with too many similarities both in how we got here and how we're trying to fix it, as well as how we dealt with the great depression and the savings-and-loan problem of the 80s.

This country is clueless in its history. Liberals today don't know it was Southern Democrats who filibustered against the civil rights’ bills. Conservatives today don't know it was Republicans who wanted everything to do with religion stripped from governance of this country. Don't misunderstand either of those points. It was a Democrat that got the civil rights bills started and passed in the end. Republicans were religious people; however, they did not believe religion should play a role in dictating laws and policy. Religion was to be a deeply personal thing, practiced and talked about privately and/or among friends.

One thing our Founders understood, especially Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, was that educating the populace was the key to keeping this country afloat and prosperous. Maybe we'll get a Congress and a President that understands that some day. We can only hope that day is upon us.

Some Thoughts on Mr. McCain's Campaign...

2008-10-28T18:12:00.000-07:00

Sen. McCain finished his campaign as the McCain he should've been all along. He turned his campaign back into "I have the experience" and "You've known me a long time, you can still trust me like you always have".

It is generally acknowledged that this was not a base year, especially for Republicans who saw there national registration numbers fall while the Democrats rose quite significantly. Despite this, Mr. McCain ran a campaign with rhetoric and message aimed at the base of the Republican party.

Could he have won without them? Highly unlikely. Was picking Governor Sarah Palin and switching to supporting off-shore oil drilling enough to bring them home? Yes, yes, and yes. Add to that how conservatives didn't take long to think of Sen. Obama as an "extreme" liberal (socialist) and you have your base.

You'd swear, especially from the difference in crowd sizes that the conservative base of the Repulican party think they are voting for Gov. Palin and Sen. McCain isn't even on the ticket. It is how they have talked about her and how they have defended her.

Now, what Mr. McCain is that short, strong, and sweet sound bite saying what he wants to do. He attacks, attacks, and attacks some more. Moderates and independents want to hear what he'll do. They pay attention to both candidates and decide on who is best. They don't need one guy telling them what they think about the other guys proposals. Let the VP do all the attacking.

The top of the ticket has to explain what his/her plan is. Everything should be spent, as far as the free media sound bites, on getting your tax plan or energy plan or health care plan out there. Every time you turn on a TV and Mr. Obama is talking you're hearing about his "95%" tax cuts or his $15 Bill on energy or McCain is Bush. Mr. McCain, although finally campaigning on Mr. Obama's plans, even if they're attacks rather than laying out his plan, still doesn't have that consistent soundbite and he never had it. Not this entire election. Country first died within two weeks.

What Isn't Being Reported In These Final Two Weeks

2008-10-28T16:59:00.001-07:00

We got an election about the issues, FINALLY. Not just that but the polls tightened because of it. Yes, the McCain campaign has used name calling (socialist, etc) mixed in with its attacks on Obama's tax and health care plans but he is attacking the plans. Obama is failing to answer the attacks and instead simply making what he is calling his closing argument. Excuse me, he is simply side stepping the attacks as “old politics” and leaving his ad nausea response of "McCain will continue President Bush policies". We actually have each candidate emphasizing the differences between them. Enjoy these final few days of debate over the policies, something both promised yet both failed to do. We could get into who went off policy only attacks first but it is irrelevant unless one believes two wrongs make a right.

Sadly, the media hasn’t reported what is going on in this light. For the most part I’ve had almost no issues with AC 360 but I disagree with what they said last night, that it wasn’t a media driven thing to talk about Palin’s wardrobe 4-5 days later than when it first broke because she mentioned it Sunday. it would have been nice if they had talked about instead her speech on energy and her speech on special needs children. Part of this is also her campaigns fault though. They’ve spent so much time on gimmicks and tactics that they’ve failed to push forward there message. It also kills any attempt at policy message when you have out right idiots in fighting but in public and leaking personal attacks on the VP of their own ticket.

My Picks For Best Election Coverage

2008-10-28T15:37:00.000-07:00

Best Network:
CNN

Best shows:
Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN
Morning Joe on MSNBSC
Studio B/FOX Report w/Sheppard Smith on FOX News

Shows of Note:
Race for the White House on MSNBC
Lou Dobbs on CNN
Cambell Brown, Election Center on CNN
Special Report w/Brit Hume on FOX News
Verdict w/Dan Abrams (MSNBC until canceled)

Best Sunday Show:
Fareed Zakaria/GPS
Meet the Press (More so before Tom Brokaw)

Best Analyst:
David Gergen of CNN

Other Analysts and Pundits of Note(some are also hosts of shows):
CNN: Gloria Borger, Ed Rollins, Roland Martin, Kevin Madden, John King

MSNBC: Tim Russert(RIP), Luke Russert, Chuck Todd, Joe Scarborough, Harold Ford Jr., Pat Buchannan, Mike Murphy

FOX: Brit Hume and the usual "All-Star" cast on his show.

If McCain Loses

2008-10-25T12:49:00.000-07:00

If Sen. McCain loses this race it won’t be because of Sarah Palin, it will be because of Senator John McCain. The top of the ticket is responsible for the message the campaign puts out, the people who run his campaign, who he chooses as his running mate, and everything else.

This election, excuse the cliché', has always been about big things. This election has always been about the economy hitting a down turn and us being in two wars with possibly a third (some say even a forth) on the horizon. Unfortunately all we've seen from the McCain Campaign is tactics without a strategy. We have not seen a single, cohesive, easy to figure out strategy. For a while there it was a new tactic every week, now it’s been a new tactic daily. No cohesiveness, no repetitiveness. On the flip side, with Mr. Obama, you've heard "McCain is Bush" to ad nauseum. You've heard it so much so that you catch Republican pundits on TV saying "Bush" instead of "McCain" when they're clearly talking about Mr. McCain.

The McCain camp was winning on the experience issue and they should've never left that topic but more importantly they should've been talking about the economy from the start. Now everyone knows that the economy is Mr. McCain's weak spot (as experience is Obama's) based on polling but that doesn't mean that he had to run from it. His tax rhetoric has been minute and said in an off-handed manner almost as if he wants to say "I'm a Republican, of course taxes are getting cut and none are being raised, why I even have to talk about taxes?” He has been so weak on the tax issue that polls have shown voters believing McCain will raise their taxes. How does this happen unless due to a bad campaign?

They were swinging the polls to there favor with the celebrity ads. Now it was obvious you couldn't simply hit Mr. Obama like that for 4-5 months but when those had traction is exactly when they should've brought in William Ayers. What those ad's could have done was give an opening for people who were starting to question what Mr. Obama was all about and really hammer on that feeling, on that wonderment.

Mr. McCain also simply failed to hammer President Bush. He could have and should have beaten Mr. Obama to this attack. No one who truly follows politics actually believes Mr. McCain and President Bush get along or like each other. While Mr. Obama hammered away at Sen. McCain voting with President Bush 90% of the time McCain could've pointed out all the Democrats who have voted with President Bush 70-80% of the time while highlighting his own staunch differences from our current president.

Time was also wasted, far too much time, on how right Sen. McCain was about the surge and failed to hammer home just how well things are going over there because of it. If they talked about it and hammered away about it, the media would've covered it. Now no Republican who supported going in and staying there without an end game was ever going to win that argument. Not with the poll numbers, in regards to Iraq, as they are. That only played to his base. What he should have done is instantly pivot to Afghanistan and own that issue. Afghanistan and winning there, getting Bid Laden, that is what has allowed Mr. Obama to at least hit par on foreign policy (again, based on the polling). His being against the war from the beginning simply helped him solidify his base.

Country First. We've all heard it right? Do you know what it means? Ah, it varies doesn't it? The McCain campaign never defined this. They never turned it into "Fixing our economy. Country First." They could've defined it and used it to describe everything. They made a veiled attempt to early on when they first started rolling the phrase out but they didn't ever make it stick.

In the end, if Mr. McCain looses it will be for these simplified and key reasons: 1) No strategy 2) Never a strong message 3) Too much knee jerking 4) They didn't own a single issue in terms of rhetoric 5) Horrid rollout of Gov. Palin and kept her far too controlled

Debate Two and Debate Three

2008-10-17T10:52:00.000-07:00

If you listen to the debates on the radio and/or just read the transcript, Mr. McCain won both debates. He won the third debate by a wider margin as he constantly tried to land strong right hooks but they continued to not entirely stick. You watch the debates however and how much he won is diminished, one could argue greatly. It felt like after the second debate the polls wouldn't move more than a point or two because Mr. Obama simply didn't screw up and/or hand Mr. McCain a true game changer. (It is interesting that every "snap poll" has Sen. Obama winning all three debates by essentially the same exact margin...hard to account for that unless too many of those polled were wanting to vote for Sen. Obama but just wasn't sure of him yet. I suppose that would speak to those who have said all along this entire election has been about Mr. Obama and not in fact Mr. McCain -which I disagree with almost entirely. Disagree or agree with Mr. Obama's policies, he did in fact come across presidential in all three.)

Expected a bigger a bounce for McCain coming out of the third debate. If nothing else he certainly did a much better job of reminding American's why they've respected him all of these years and he left himself open to get voters to take a second look at him. He screwed this up however. He didn't take advantage of the opening to get out a new, strong, consistent message. Frankly McCain hasn't been hard enough on Obama. He has let Obama off the hook far too easyily. You can't kind of toss out points or attacks when you're behind and in a climate that Mr. Obama has successfully continued to tie Mr. McCain to President Bush.

McCain's Bailout Problem

2008-10-07T13:35:00.000-07:00

An interesting thing happened with Sen. McCain's bailout vote and how he handled the situation. He created competing messages for himself. On the one hand he'll "end earmarks" and on the other he votes for this bailout despite all of the added pork. Now as we've discussed before (in more detail the coming days) this bailout was needed. At the end of the day, some form of bailout is better than nothing.

Here is the problem: every poll taken showed the general public not wanting this bailout. Some didn't because it "only helped the rich" while others said "this is socialism, no socialism". When he "suspended" his campaign for barely 24hrs in order to go to Washington "until the deal is done", that showed him leading the charge for this bailout, it showed him essentially as the champion of making this happen.

Now this had to of infuriated the base who were the ones screaming "no socialism". On top of that however, you had even non-"no socialism" voters not wanting this bill. Then the media gets a hold of the bailout. They immediately point out every dumb piece of pork added to the bill, every earmark. Now, not only did McCain "suspend" his campaign to make this bailout happen and vote for it, now he voted and supported it despite it having far too many (one was too many) pieces of pork in it.

Without a better job from the media and our candidates and our president explaining the necessity of it, his leadership in this and his voting for it will hurt him from here on out. Of course Sen. Obama voted for this bailout as well but in the general publics eyes he has never been Mr. No Earmark nor did he suspend his campaign to guarantee this got done. Sen. Obama was actually brilliant in being as hands off as he was in terms of not rushing back to Washington. This is a situation where what Mr. McCain did should get him more credit but instead the opposite is happening, he is hurting because of this. This is for the simple reason that right now, the general public didn't want this bailout and he supported/lead the charge for it.

Pollster.com

2008-10-07T13:08:00.000-07:00

Pollster.com has set it so any blog can embed its electoral map so for the last 30 days I'll be leaving it at the top of blog. Realize it looks out of place but it's fun to keep an eye on it.

General David Petraeus Interview: Afghanistan Part

2008-10-06T02:30:00.000-07:00

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,581088-2,00.html

SPIEGEL: Hardly anyone disputes that there has been great progress in Iraq. On the contrary, you have been credited with a huge success. And now they want you to repeat this success in Afghanistan?
Petraeus: (laughs) I was hoping to run this interview out before we got to that question ...
SPIEGEL: Do you think it is possible that you could also get that far in Afghanistan?
Petraeus: First, let me say that this has never been about one person. Progress in Iraq has always been about teams of people and teams of teams -- and ultimately about young men and women, Iraqi as well as people from the coalition. There are some ideas that will translate from Iraq to Afghanistan and there are many that will not. The first lesson of counterinsurgency, in fact, is that every situation is truly unique, has its own context, its own specific set of factors -- and you have to understand that context in enormous detail to be able to craft a sound and comprehensive approach. In Iraq 18 months ago, I often envied the commander in Afghanistan, truly. Now, Iraq has gone from being on the brink to being on the mend, and it clearly has some big advantages. It has enormous oil reserves, it has virtually untapped natural gas resources. It also has water, many Iraqis are well-educated and it has considerable infrastructure.
SPIEGEL: Afghanistan is the opposite in many ways.
Petraeus: In many respects you're right. In Afghanistan you are not rebuilding, you are building. There is very limited infrastructure and extreme terrain, with deserts in the south and mountains so high in some areas that helicopters don't even fly well at a certain altitude because the air becomes so thin. The country has a serious problem of illiteracy, especially after so many years of war and Taliban rule. It has other enormous challenges as well, including a political system that is still very much developing, although there has been some progress in the past several years. There is also a growing insurgency threat from al-Qaida, the Taliban and other extremist elements, some of which comes from the tribal areas of Pakistan, as well as from the Northwest Frontier province and Baluchistan. The ISAF commander, General David McKiernan, calls it a syndicate. Given the cross-border threats, you have to approach the situation as a region, not as one country or the other.
SPIEGEL: How long will it take to win this fight, according to your cold realism?
Petraeus: I did a week-long assessment in 2005 at (then Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld's request. Following our return, I told him that Afghanistan was going to be the longest campaign of what we then termed "the long war." Having just been to Afghanistan a month or so ago, I think that that remains a valid assessment. Moreover, the trends have clearly been in the wrong direction.
SPIEGEL: What do you expect from the NATO allies?
Petraeus: It is not up to the US Central Command to expect something, it is up to the NATO command. Secretary Gates suggested the other day that the allies can contribute in many ways, not just in the provision of significantly larger numbers on the ground. They can provide additional financial and equipment support for the Afghan National Army, for example, or for reconstruction and capacity building efforts.
SPIEGEL: As long as there aren't enough troops available on the ground, you have to stick with air raids, which again and again results in the loss of civilian lives.
Petraeus: There is very careful examination of that ongoing. The employment of close air support has recently been reviewed by General McKiernan. And he has put out instructions with considerable clarity about the employment of air support in a manner that strives very hard to avoid civilian casualties...
SPIEGEL: Former ISAF commander Dan McNeill, who led the troops until this summer, has said that under the current doctrine, 400,000 troops would be needed on the ground to bring peace to the country.
Petraeus: The question is always how you get the number of troops needed. They do not have to be coalition forces. We also have to expand the training program for the Afghan National Army and the national police, in particular. and Defense Secretary Robert Gates has already announced support for a significant increase in the Afghan army. Meanwhile, there will also be additional help provided to the local police, as they are the most vulnerable personally, especially when one thinks of their families.

General David Petraeus Interview: Iraq Part

2008-10-06T02:14:00.000-07:00

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,581088,00.html

Gen. Petraeus sat down for an interview shortly after no longer being the head commander in Iraq.

SPIEGEL: ...You will be in charge of such difficult countries as Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Lebanon ...
Petraeus: ... Yes, and don't forget Yemen, where there are also extremist elements, as we saw recently.
SPIEGEL: Saudi Arabia is on the list, too.
Petraeus: The situation there has improved tremendously. Over the last four years they have done a superb job in their fight against al-Qaida. ...Since then, the Saudis have employed a very intelligent and comprehensive approach to counter al-Qaida, including precise operations based on good intelligence, changes in their corrections facilities, superb strategic communications programs and a host of other initiatives -- all of which, together, have helped Saudi Arabia achieve impressive results in their fight against extremists.
SPIEGEL: ...the rest of the world was stunned by the progress in Iraq, you almost sounded like the greatest skeptic.
Petraeus: There has, indeed, been very substantial progress in Iraq over the past year -- violence is down by 80 percent, civilian deaths by about the same, and so on. ...As you know, according to the constitution, the Presidency Council has to approve all legislation that is passed by the Council of Representatives. This means that the Kurdish president and his Sunni and Shia vice-presidents all have to approve legislation; this means, of course, that each of them thus has a veto. Thus, without a reasonable degree of consensus there are clear limits on what it is that can be done.
SPIEGEL: But how stable has Iraq become as a country?
Petraeus: ...The appropriate assessment is therefore one that reflects a degree of caution when it comes to Iraq.
SPIEGEL: Do you still see the threat of a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites?
Petraeus: I think that is much less likely and this a remarkable fact. The level of sectarian violence was horrific in the winter of 2006-2007. There were, for example, over 50 dead bodies every 24 hours in Baghdad alone in December 2006 just from sectarian violence.
SPIEGEL: One of the great miracles in all this is the behavior of Moqtada al-Sadr, who for some time now has kept his Mahdi Army quiet.
Petraeus: It was not a miracle at all. It is very easily explained. The Sadr movement’s reputation was tarnished badly by the actions of the militia that bear the Sadr name. ...Elements of the militia were extorting money from shopkeepers, they were kidnapping for ransom, they were linked to the killing of two southern governors and three police chiefs and they caused reprehensible violence in the whole city of Karbala in August 2007. Al-Sadr realized that his movement was on the verge of the worst possible situation -- popular rejection -- and he declared a cease-fire. ...Al-Sadr really had no logical alternative.
SPIEGEL: And the Sunnis, on the other hand, were bribed into cooperation, as Bob Woodward writes in his new book "The War Within"?
Petraeus: That's not completely accurate. I will tell you what we have done. The Sunni Arabs began to realize that they had made a huge mistake by not voting in the election of 2005 and by not being part of the new Iraq. They had reasons for this: They were effected by the disestablishment of the military and by de-Baathification (the dismantling of Saddam Hussein's party) in winter 2007-2007. They increasingly recognized that their future lay in being part of the solution rather than a continuing part of the problem. But they couldn't reject al-Qaida without our provision of security. So we took care of their security, we moved into their neighborhoods, we protected their tribal leaders who led the rejection of al-Qaida. And then we cleared many of their towns and cities and rural areas of al-Qaida Iraq and other insurgents, sometimes with their help, but often without it. And once their areas were clear, many of them sought to help us keep them secure -- and, over time, we began hiring them to man checkpoints and help keep their areas clear. You know, we had money for emergency reconstruction programs, and this seemed a wise investment -- as reconstruction is not possible without security -- and they helped to maintain it.

Tom Davis

2008-10-06T01:29:00.001-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/magazine/05Davis-t.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

Nice article about House Rep. R-Tom Davis ending his political career. He makes some very good points about how disgusting the partisanship in Washington has gotten. Worth a read.

Then he asked for a list of the three bills to see if he really did want to vote yes: A nonbinding resolution “recognizing that we are facing a global food crisis.” O.K., Davis said puckishly. That’s a yes. A second resolution “expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the emergency communications services provided by the American Red Cross are vital resources for military-service members and their families.” O.K., another yes. A third resolution “condemning the use of television programming by Hamas to indoctrinate hatred, violence and anti-Semitism toward Israel in Palestinian children.” A third yes. “They read me pretty well,” Davis said, chuckling at the absurdity of it all.
Three resolutions offering platitudes, none of them carrying the force of law, none of them actually doing anything. Davis asked for a list of all 20 bills on the floor that day — naming post offices, recognizing the anniversary of Bulgaria’s independence, honoring an old American war sloop. Davis wanted me to have the list. “Tell them about the important work we’re doing while Rome burns,” he said.
...Congress has become so infected with a win-at-all-costs mentality that there is no point in staying. “You know, the Cubs fans used to put the bags over their heads,” he told me when we met for eggs at Mickey’s Dining Car in St. Paul the first morning of the Republican National Convention. “That’s what I feel when you say you’re from Congress, because there are just so many things we’re not doing.”
“When you get the majority, the leadership team sits around the table, and the first question the winners ask, sitting in this ornate room, is ‘How do we stay in the majority?’ ” he said. “Now the members, a lot of them, are willing to tackle these issues, but they elect leaders, and the leaders’ report card is: Do they get their members re-elected? You see what I’m saying? And the minority, by the way, sits in a little less ornate room, a little smaller room in the Capitol, and they say, ‘How do we get it back?’ And so for every issue it’s ‘Do we cooperate or do we try to embarrass them?’ Very few times they cooperate.”
Davis is one of 26 Republicans who have chosen to retire from the House this year, many of them moderates like him, compared with 6 Democrats. “There’s no question we’re a dying breed,” said Representative Jim Ramstad of Minnesota, who is also giving up his seat.
This evolution has been fueled by migration patterns, demographic shifts and, many argue, redistricting. Most lawmakers represent safe districts, giving them little incentive to tack to the center and work together. Indeed, many incumbents worry more about “being primaried,” as they put it, drawing a primary challenge from within their own parties for being insufficiently orthodox.
“We moved it through a lot of land mines,” he recalled. “That taught me right away up here — if that had been a partisan deal, it never would have gone.” That is the model he says is missing today. As coarse as politics seemed in the 1990s, Davis remembers it as a productive period when Clinton and Gingrich and their parties actually did business. They overhauled welfare and eliminated the deficit. “If you’re solving a big problem, whether it’s welfare reform or Social Security, you want every perspective at the table — not so they can veto it, but so you can get everyone involved,” he said.
The two sides, he says, are so divided that they are incapable of recognizing what he sees as the looming crisis of our time — the massive debt accumulated during the Bush years. “The fiscal thing is awful,” he told me. “When you’re running $300, $400 billion a year in debt every single year and nobody wants to face the issue, the time is coming pretty soon where it’s going to have a huge effect on things.”...“Nobody keeps an eye on anything unless it hurts the other party,” he said.
“This compounds the whole deficit issue,” he said. “It’s huge. I listen to McCain and Obama and they mean well. But there’s no money to do anything.”
He says that members of both parties shy away from the hard stances, like raising the retirement age for Social Security or ruling out new tax cuts.
Then again, another Senate seat is up in 2012. “I can step back in it if I want — if they’re looking for a problem solver,” he said. “But right now, neither party is looking for that.”

Our National Debt

2008-10-06T01:03:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: This is not an endorsement of Sen. McCain and/or his tax plan.
Both of these candidates don't care about our national debt. The idea that cutting every earmark (except a $300 Mill reward for a new car battery) will matter/make a difference in our national budget is ridiculous. It is equally ridiculous to claim as Mr. Obama has, that he's layed out exactly how he'd pay for all of his new spending. Hogwash the both of them. Nothing they want to spend money on is going to happen unless they ignore our debt.
It is dishonorable to this country to not talk about our national debt and want to fix it. Fixing our national debt will take a great deal of things.
1) Shrinking our government. Specifically actually get rid of all the fraud in our programs. Anywhere from 50-90% of our government programs are twice as big as they need to be.
2) Do everything it takes, short of spending more government money, to get the economy back on track. We need to take even more advantage of free trade. Part of this would include lowering business taxes. It is nice for Mr. Obama to frame Mr. McCain's tax plan as "more tax breaks for big oil" but in reality it is tax breaks for all companies. Small, medium, and big.
The facts are the facts and the fact is our corporate tax rate is too high, we're the second highest in the world. Now Sen. Obama is right that because of loopholes our companies in fact do pay much less than the current 35% but if he truly wants to cut tax loopholes then he must lower the tax rate at the same time to spur growth. If he closes the tax loopholes and leaves the corporate tax rate the same or even increases it then we'll see a lot more jobs leave this country.
It isn't simply the loopholes/tax breaks that make U.S. companies go over sea's, it is also the corporate gains tax and corporate tax rate being higher than most of the world. The more our companies grow the more jobs get created and the more revenue for the country.
This article although a bit slanted anti-Obama makes a couple key points:

While governors are forced to acknowledge harsh fiscal reality, the presidential candidates continue to dodge it. During their first debate, Obama and McCain evaded repeated questions from moderator Jim Lehrer, who pressed both candidates on what they would give up, in terms of priorities, in light of the current fiscal crisis.
"There are a range of things that are probably going to have to be delayed," Obama said, without specifying. He said he still hopes to "invest in alternative energy, fix our healthcare system. . . make sure that college is affordable. . . and rebuild infrastructure." Meanwhile, Obama is also promising to roll back the Bush tax cuts.
McCain said he would cut spending and lower taxes. McCain also tossed out the general notion of a spending freeze on everything but defense, veteran affairs, and entitlement programs.
Both presidential candidates seem blissfully out of sync with the overall message of doom and gloom emanating from financial analysts.
From Massachusetts to the presidential campaign trail, citizens need less hope and hype and more honesty about what it takes to live within their means.

The Moderator

2008-10-02T23:40:00.000-07:00

A lot of questions about the moderator of this vice presidential debate going into it but in no way did she come across as someone with a bias or as treating either candidate better than the other. That said, she didn't try to hold either candidate down enough to actually answer the question and she had a rather annoying habit of asking two seperate questions at once.

Color Me Irritated

2008-10-02T23:32:00.001-07:00

Could someone explain what the heck Palin was talking about when asked about the role of the vice president and saying something like "wiggle room" in the constitution? This particularly irritates me because of all the books I'm reading (as seen in the bar of "Recent Books" on the left side of my blog) and in no fashion did the Founders of this country ever intend to have the vice president have any real power at all. No one need look further than the very first vice president of this country John Adams or our second one, Thomas Jefferson. At least Joe Biden understood the role of the vice president.

Update: On Hannity and Colmes Karl Rove tries to say that Article I doesn't pertain to the Vice President. I suggest "the architect" read the constitution and read the line in Article I, Section III, paragraph 4 that says "The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided. " which is what Joe Biden said in the debate.

Vice Presidential Debate

2008-10-02T22:45:00.000-07:00

Early in the debate it felt like Palin was going to take over the debate but as it went on and she couldn't get off talking points, Biden got stronger and won but far from decisively. In fact it was probably only a minor win for Sen. Biden. Mr. Biden won if for no other reason than he gave no big gaffe nor did Palin create a game changer and when you're on the front running ticket the net result is a win. Palin failed to do enough to change the electoral map but she did stop the bleeding.
It seemed like Biden gave the strongest debate appearance out of the four in these first two debates, arguably of his career. Biden also came across as the man that has some older Democrats wishing he was the one on the top of the ticket, that the ticket was reversed.
It is clear she was coached to attack and not worry about defending which was effective. What worked best for Palin was making sure to talk to the camera almost every second she spoke. That really made it feel like she was talking to you the viewer. It seemed, unfortunately, like every time she was asked a question or found herself heading down a road where she couldn't go into detail beyond the stance of the McCain campaign she found a way to talk about energy or taxes or how Sen. Biden disagreed with Sen. Obama before he was his VP.
It is quite obvious that the Republican base loved her but it is very hard to see many Independents being swayed by her. She allowed Biden to make too good of a case that McCain is Bush III. In fact he did a better job than Obama. What was learned was that she isn't always the same woman from the Katie Couric interviews. She very well may have brought parts of the base that had been uncomfortable the past week or two back home but she had no depth on foreign policy and she dodged more questions than any of the four candidates. Biden dodged questions as well but he seemed to be more on message than on talking points.
They both exceeded expectations.
I'm sure I'll get hit for being biased but this is me giving you my honest take and I'd point out I thought the first presidential debate was a draw or a minor Obama loss.

CNN Poll has Biden with 51% did better, Palin 36%.
Biden than expected: Better 64% Worse 14% Same 20%
Palin than expected: Better 84% Worse 7% Same 8%

So the McCain camp did a brilliant job at lowering expectations and apparently everyone was assuming Biden would put his foot in his mouth.

Is Palin qualified to be president?
Before: Yes 42% No 54%
After: Yes 54% No 53%
More in touch with problems of people like you?
Biden 50% Palin 44%
And yet...who seemed more like a typical politician?
Biden 70% Palin 21%
These are numbers from only people who watched the debate and for Palin to be lower than Biden on being "in touch" absolutely means she didn't get the needed game changer.
Drudge Poll:
Palin 72% Biden 26% Neither 2%
CBS Poll:
Biden 46% Palin 21% Tie 33%
...and ties go to the front runner which is Obama-Biden.

Having Issues

2008-10-02T22:41:00.000-07:00

Blogger has been having issues for a couple days now so bear with me...

ENOUGH!

2008-10-02T14:19:00.000-07:00

WHY in the heck is McCain and Palin saying "I'm a Federalist in that I believe it to be a state matter"...? Excuse me??? When, in this country, did Federalists start believing in state/sovreign state rights??
Federalist's were Alexander Hamilton and his followers. President George Washington and President John Adams were more moderate Federalists. President Thomas Jefferson was a Republican because he believed himself to be not quite a Federalist or an anti-Federalist.
ANTI-Federalist = STATE rights. Federalist = FEDERAL Government control. Can either of them at least read ONE single book on the Founding of this country?? Just ONE???? Sen. McCain was allowed to get away with this in the Civil Forum with Rick Warren. This is inexcusable.

This is Unacceptable

2008-10-02T01:43:00.000-07:00

According to this article, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/10/a_debate_moderator_in_the_tank.html , the moderator doing the VP debate is a seriously pro-Obama lady. This article was written by a lady.

The title of Ifill's book? "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama." Nonpartisan my foot.
Despite the protestations of her colleagues that she will be fair, Ifill has appeared on numerous radio and TV talk shows over the past several months to cash in on her access to the Obama campaign. She recently penned a fawning cover story on the Obamas for Essence magazine that earned much buzz. The title? "The Obamas: Portrait of an American Family."

Some Good Points

2008-10-02T01:23:00.000-07:00

Michael Tucker makes some very good points.

The Day the Bailout Failed

2008-10-01T22:39:00.000-07:00

A few things:

1) You don't bring a bill to the floor this important without knowing you have every vote needed to pass it. You don't bring this type of a bill to the floor for a vote that has a chance at failing. Period.
2) You don't make highly partisan speech's that ruffle feathers.
2a) You don't allow someone to act like herself and say a bunch of stuff she always says effect your vote.
2B) You don't put your country second to hurt feelings. That's how you cost 500 trillion more than the entire bill itself.
3) As the party in power, you pass a needed bill whether the minority party helps you or not.
4) You don't call "regular order" when the minority party is trying to stop the vote process in order to rally his party to make sure they get behind and support the bill instead of allowing it to fail.
5) You don't somehow run from your party's president and possible next president just because the Republican brand name is in the trash can right now. You support them anyway because you know the plan is needed.

For those who are confused by point number four: When you see a bill you want to pass isn't getting the votes you know it needs, you can essentially call for a motion on the floor of the House to stop the voting process without it killing the bill itself. At the time the Republican leader in the House was trying to do this, Barney Frank (D) yelled out "regular order" which blocks the motion and forces the roll call vote to continue.

Why the Bailout Failed

2008-10-01T22:11:00.000-07:00

A bit late as the Senate just recently passed a tweaked version of the bailout but this is important. In another post we'll address how we got in this mess but here's why the bill failed:

Our government and the media failed to explain why this bailout, well a bailout was needed. Not just needed for Wall Street and the rich but for the poor and middle-class, or sorry, allow me to be cliché..."main street". This bailout was needed for that card shop down the street you love buying and collecting sports cards from. Yes, that small business needed this to get money from his/her local bank(s). That salon you love getting your hair and nails done at? Yes that one needed this bailout to happen so you can keep going there. That local car dealership you're eyeing that new or used car at? Well you needed this so you could get that car with a car loan from your local bank.
This mess was 'caused for so many different reasons but to have the overwhelming majority of North American's not understand this is needed to help them; that this bailout from tax payer money helps the same said tax payers is an absolute failure on the part of our current president first and foremost because the president of this country is always supposed to explain and lead the people. Then every Senator and Representative and our entire TV media and print press has also failed.
If our entire government and the media had done a better job of not simply saying "do this or great depression" (especially when the overwhelming majority of North American's don't trust anyone in our government -except apparently Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain) but instead explain exactly how and why this was needed, the same tax payers that would've been helped by this wouldn't have been calling our Congress non-stop to demand this bailout be stopped.
How we got here wasn't simply from point A to point B, it was from point A to point Z but our government and media needs to explain this in an A to B fashion in order to get the United States tax payer to get on board with helping themselves.
If this simple thing had been done the House never would've failed the bailout bill. Neither party would've voted against it (yes, they both did).

P.S. ~ I'd also agree with Sen. McCain that I would've been calling it a rescue plan from the start as it just sounds better.

First Debate: Part 1

2008-09-28T08:39:00.000-07:00

I made sure to record all of the post-debate analysis shows that I enjoy but still have yet to watch them. I haven't read a single article about the debate yet either. I have ignored all polls thus far as well. I've now given myself more than 24 hours but less than 48 hours to allow the debate to sink in. I isolate myself to allow myself to truly form my own opinion on this, even if it ends up sounding like many pundits out there. I'll talk a bit about the economic part of the debate but this was supposed to be about foreign policy and that's really my main focus about this debate. I'll be making a few different posts on the debate. Now, let me get to it...

I'm torn between a draw or a minor loss for Mr. Obama which actually helps the Obama campaign. Sen. McCain needed a game changer and with the absence of any gaffe by either man Mr. McCain didn't get one. Foreign policy is what Sen.McCain has essentially staked his campaign on and he didn't improve his standing on that but he may have at best (for the McCain campaign) put a ceiling on the level of readiness to be Commander-in-Chief for Sen. Obama. If in fact he accomplished this then he kept the race tight. Obama, outside of needing to look presidential, his biggest goal I thought was to make his case and explain that his plan for Iraq is not in fact defeat (it isn't). He attempted to directly do that once. It was nice to hear that both Sen. McCain and Sen. Obama didn't even know who they were talking about:

MICHAEL WARE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT BAGHDAD: And Tehran will be surprised to learn that there are late forces of the Republican Guards as opposed to the Revolutionary Guard. ...Know thy enemy obviously doesn't apply in the presidential debate.

If you just listen to the debate on the radio and/or read the transcript, on substance this was a draw. We, excuse me, political junkies learned nothing new last night but the stark differences were certainly emphasized. If you're a voter that just started around the conventions, you probably learned a great deal. If that is the case, here is a live fact check done by the Washington Post during the debate. Here is the fact checking from factcheck.org And here is the fact checking done by politifact.com

That Mr. McCain could never look at Mr. Obama was very odd as was McCain's lack of not looking into the camera. On style Mr. Obama won by a landslide -and his biggest goal was to look presidential, look safe. Mr. McCain certainly tried for humor but very little of it seemed to land. I do chuckle everytime he does the Bear DNA joke. Mr. Obama however looked directly into the camera a few times and was willing to look right at Mr. McCain who seemed like the only one he wanted to talk to was the moderator.

Shocker alert: They both stuck to there talking points.

This is absolute bull....

2008-09-27T19:08:00.000-07:00

According to this article House Democrats now want a "fee" on wall street if in fact five years from now tax payers lose money on this bailout plan we'll make matters worse by charging companies to make up the difference. Um, do the House Democrats realize that if the tax payers lose money on this five years from now it'll be because the bailout plan failed the financial system is still in the toilet?

On another note: anyone else scared as .... that the 3 page bailout is now over 100 pages?
We all knew the Congress would over do this didn't we?

Thank You

2008-09-26T13:53:00.000-07:00

This problem wasn't just Wall Street's fault.

Free Trade Helped

2008-09-26T11:59:00.000-07:00

As we've discussed here and here, free trade is needed but with a some tweaking. Not in the form of more tarriffs or other forms of protectionism but better globalization of our education and emphasis on various trades.
According to this article by C. Fred Bergsten, the director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, our countries balance of international trade has improved greatly. It makes the case that free trade has saved us from recession this past year.

The candidates deserve credit for recognizing the challenges posed by trade and foreign investment. But their tone obscures a major success story: the dramatic improvement in our balance of international trade. This export boom has saved us from recession over the past year and, despite the recent financial turmoil, is likely to continue doing so. It is generating at least 2 million new and high-paying jobs, about half of them from increased foreign sales by the beleaguered manufacturing sector.

Fresh evidence of the trend came last month, when the second-quarter growth rate for the U.S. economy was revised upward, to 3.3 percent. A record surge in net exports accounted for almost all of that expansion.
Our external balance has improved by more than $200 billion as calculated for gross domestic product (GDP) purposes, cutting the previous deficit by more than one-third.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development foresees continued modest expansion of the U.S. economy during 2008-09, with 80 percent of the impetus coming from trade improvement.
This favorable swing of at least $300 billion in the "real" trade balance translates into more than 2 million new jobs in the U.S. economy. These export jobs pay 15 to 20 percent more than the national average.

Here is a breakdown of Mr. Obama's free trade stance and here is the link to the free trade section of his web site.
Here is a breakdown of Mr. McCain's free trade stance and here is the link to the free trade section of his web site.

Free Trade: McCain

2008-09-26T11:21:00.000-07:00

Here is the link to the free trade part of Senator McCain's campaign web site.
Senator John McCain is pretty simple on free trade. He agree's with Sen. Obama that we need to utilize our Community College's better to re-train people for different jobs as our country continues to diversify the more we globalize. To be fair real quick, neither candidate actually originated this concept. It was another Democrat at some sort of convention a couple years ago. I apologize for not having the exact source.

Mr. McCain is essentially for free trade as it currently stands -with even less governmental interference. He'll take NAFTA and other trade agreements as is unless he can improve them but he has made no claim to re-negotiate or cancel any trade agreement. Mr. McCain's campaign web site seems to take free trade more seriously with it having much more details.

John McCain Will Push To Ratify The Colombia Free Trade Agreement. American exporters now pay an extra $3.5 million in tariffs each day because we don't have a completed trade agreement with Colombia.
John McCain Supports A Free Trade Agreement With South Korea. America exports nearly $50 billion in goods to South Korea, a key ally that deployed the third-largest contingent of troops to Iraq, and assisted in the rebuilding of Afghanistan.
John McCain Will Seek An End To All Agricultural Tariffs, And To All Farm Subsidies That Are Not Based On Clear Need.
John McCain Will Open Foreign Markets Across The World To American Farmers. The biggest obstacle to this goal, however, is not to be found in any foreign market, or in the policies of any other government. It's in the United States Congress, in the billions of dollars in subsidies served up every five years to corporate farmers.

John McCain Opposes The $300 Billion Farm Bill. John McCain opposes providing billions to subsidize large commercial farms with an average income of $200,000, and an average net worth of $2 million...

It seems McCain's opinion is that the more free trade agreements this country has the sooner this country see's more and more benefits from it. A free trade agreement with South Korea is a very new idea and considering the huge out cry against our US beef being imported to South Korea it would probably be an interesting political uphill battle. Although, maybe one would be easy if we just said "free trade without our beef". A free trade agreement with Columbia is fairly controversial in Washington but it probably needs to happen sooner rather than later. It is alleged by Sen. McCain that Mr. Obama is against such a thing but can't find any concrete proof of this.

Dollar keeps dropping.

2008-09-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

So the value of our dollar continues to drop under this turmoil and even more so while waiting for this bailout package. Good thing neither candidate has talked about or been asked about how they'd strengthen our dollar and bring down our national debt, especially since both candidates tax plans would greatly increase our national debt.

The 15-nation euro slipped to $1.4612 in New York from $1.4614 on Thursday.

Great Britain's pound traded at $1.8387, up from $1.8348. And the greenback bought ¥106.06, down from ¥106.69.

Here is a chart of the current world currency levels.

No Oil. Back to the 70's/80's?

2008-09-26T10:48:00.000-07:00

Now we all know that clothing style has gone back to the 70's in a great deal of this country (::shakes head::) but according to this article gas stations in the south are out of gas.

That's because nationwide our gasoline inventory is shockingly low. Liquidity must be restored soon to this market, or we could be facing a crippling run on the gasoline bank. And if you think Americans are outraged about Wall Street, wait until their Main Street grocery store doesn't get the bread and milk delivery for a week or two.
The scenes over the past several days in places like Nashville, Tenn., Anniston, Ala., and western North Carolina looked like file footage from 1979 - with bags over empty gas pumps and quarter-mile long lines of cars waiting to fill up at stations that hadn't run out. AAA reported that drivers were so desperate that they were following tankers to gas stations to ensure a fill-up.
As of this week, more than a dozen refineries around Texas City and Port Arthur were not operating at full capacity and, according to the Department of Energy, six refineries, with a combined capacity of 1.6 million barrels a day, were still not running at all.
In its most recent Weekly Oil Data Review, Barclays Capital pointed out that the U.S. gasoline inventory has reached its lowest level since August 1967, when demand was a little more than half its current level of 9.3 million barrels a day. At 178.7 million barrels, inventories are 21.6 million barrels below their five-year average.

Gas prices are down 10% from July but up 31% from a year ago according to this article.

For what it's worth...

2008-09-26T10:38:00.000-07:00

Here is an interview with Erin Callan, recent CFO of Lehman Brothers' until it was allowed to go under.

How could the Street have been so blind?

People have long asked when the crisis would end; and until recently it hasn't been okay for market participants to say 'I don't know.' The challenge in financial services when you have to answer that question is that you are in a confidence-based business. There is a fine line between expressing confidence in a business and highlighting its weaknesses.

The question about why within a day a bank's borrowing cost could double; that's the heart of the matter. It's not that somebody decides overnight that a bank is twice as risky. They wonder if their entire view was misplaced. They wonder whether these types of organizations without deposit bases should borrow at these kinds of rates. That worry stems from a lack of confidence in the institution.

Banks ran and still run on the fed?

2008-09-26T10:22:00.000-07:00

I'm not the most knowledgable person in the financial world but I've been reading as much as possible (some days every article which is usually around 20) on realclearmarkets.com and cnnmoney.com. This article makes me seriously wonder why we need $700 Billion to bailout banks and other financial institutions when they've been getting so much money already. How much toxic assets can these people actually have? We're talking about things stemming from 3 years of bad mortgages. We're also continuing to give the European Central Bank and now the Swiss National Bank money.

The deal will have the Fed provide $10 billion to the European Central Bank and $3 billion to the Swiss National Bank. In return, it will receive a reciprocal amount of foreign currency from each country.
The $13 billion comes on top of the $277 billion in such swap deals that had previously been announced, including $110 billion with the ECB and $27 billion with the Swiss National Bank.
Figures released Thursday showed that borrowing by Wall Street securities firms totaled $105.7 billion as of Wednesday, up from $59.8 billion a week earlier.
In addition, under an emergency program unveiled by the banks last week, commercial banks borrowed $72.7 billion through Wednesday in order to buy commercial paper from money-market mutual funds.
And loans through the traditional discount window rose to $39.3 billion, up $5.9 billion from a week earlier. Other credit extensions jumped by $16 billion to $44 billion.
The moves come as banks and Wall Street firms have become reluctant to lend money to each other, or to customers. There are reports of banks hoarding cash out of concerns about their own future as well as uncertainty about the financial condition of other institutions.

If they're getting what seems to be endless billions from the fed, without a congressional bailout, why are they concerned about money? If this sounds naive of such matters I'd be welcome to any enlightenment on where I'm wrong.

If you care about health care...

2008-09-26T02:53:00.000-07:00

...then here are a few things you must watch and/or read. All of these things should help greatly clarify each canidates plans.
Thanks to the New England Journal of Medicine you can watch McCain's chief health policy adviser Gail Wilensky and David Cutler, a Harvard economist who helped put together the Obama plan debate and explain each canidates policies. The video is remarkable for their clarity on this complex issue and for their civility. I would urge anyone who cares about this vitally important issue to watch and/or read.
Here is the video and transcript
This break down of the two candidtes plans.
Critique of Obama's plan by Joseph Antos of American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
Critique of McCain's plan by David Blumenthal of a liberal Health Policy Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital

Good Question

2008-09-26T02:40:00.000-07:00

In an article I came across on realclearpolitics.com, Stuart Rothenberg ask's a good question:
"When Campaigns Lie, What Should the Voters Do?"

Now that both campaigns have lost all of their credibility by distorting each other's records and agendas, where does the 2008 presidential contest stand?
I'm tired of the bizarre distortions and half-truths, and of the endless platitudes. McCain, the straight-talker, isn't doing that anymore, and Obama is equally bad. Both are running blatantly misleading campaigns.
How stupid do they think we are? Pretty stupid, apparently.
Campaign distortions are nothing new, of course. But maybe it's the length of this campaign or, more likely, the fact that both Obama and McCain promised that they were different that makes this campaign so painful to watch.
When voters don't believe anything the candidates say...
As we saw last week, news -- real news, not controversies manufactured by the campaigns -- does have an impact on how people will vote...
Frankly, given the quality of the two campaigns, I can't really blame them regardless of their eventual choice.

Israel and Palestine

2008-09-26T02:20:00.000-07:00

Neither candidate has talked much on this issue lately, for obvious reasons, but after reading this article
....how much help, if any, can the US be and is there anything our country can do to actually help fix this?

Oil Speculation Bill

2008-09-26T01:51:00.001-07:00

This bill which would kill oil speculation, which would also affect speculation in all energy sectors (which many fear would hurt the growth of nuclear/renewable energy prices if this wasn't passed), has finally been passed in the House. It has yet to pass the Senate. President Bush has said he plans to veto it. Heads of oil companies have told Congress speculators are driving prices above where supply-demand actually is in Congressional testimony. This is something that both parties have agreed needs to happen. The proof that both parties agree oil speculators need to be stopped is from having watched every hour on C-SPAN2 when the first version of the bill (which was defeated) was debated live on the Senate floor.
Excerpts:

The bill requires the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to set position
limits on major oil and agricultural futures contracts and to monitor look-alike
contracts traded over the counter. It could set limits on those contracts, if
need be.
Backers said the bill would ensure futures prices are based on market fundamentals and avoid the ills affecting the stock market.
In its veto threat, the White House said the bill exceeded the recommendations of the CFTC, which regulates the futures industry. The White House said the bill would drive futures trading to foreign markers with less onerous regulations and swamp CFTC with new duties that "divert it from its core mission of promoting fair and efficient markets."
With Congress scheduled to adjourn by the end of September, it was not clear if there was time for the Senate to pass an anti-speculation bill and send it to the president. Senate Democratic leaders lean toward a broad-spectrum energy bill without the anti-speculation language.
The bill would:
--require foreign exchanges to adopt reporting standards and position limits similar to U.S. rules.
--require CFTC to set position limits on major energy and commodity contracts.
--add 100 people to CFTC enforcement staff.
--revise CFTC reports to list activity by swaps dealers in a separate category.
--set stricter conditions for exempting hedgers from position limits.
--require routine reporting on over-the-counter trading of look-alike oil and agricultural contracts; CFTC can set position limits if necessary to prevent market disruptions.

Just a thought...

2008-09-26T01:33:00.000-07:00

So if Washington Mutual can be bought out by JPMorgan Chase to avoid a government take over (but with help from the government), much like JPMorgan Chase taking over Bear Stearns (essentially under the same government help circumstances)....does either move show that maybe the government doesn't actually need to step in and that the free market can in fact fix this? Let Congress simply write the regulation that people all agree is needed without a bailout?

Is Congress serious? Another editor note

2008-09-25T21:10:00.000-07:00

So Congress looks the other way and ignores the markets' continual warnings that things weren't being done right, that some sort of regulation was needed to stop bad but legal business practices and now that Secretary Paulson comes in and essentially says "you idiots didn't do your job now give me $700 Billion to fix this mess" Congress says "wait, let us do our job and make sure this works and we get it right"......

Color me not amused.

You know if either of our beloved candidates had actually cared about this problem and wanted to fix it they could've done a lot more --in other words worked and worked until they passed a bill that fixed the known issues in the market place, at least some of them. Instead both candidates want a pat on the back and our vote because "hey, look at me, I introduced legislation that would've helped stop this but didn't do everything I could to work across party lines and get the bill actually passed....you know, didn't do enough to actually accomplish anything...."
It isn't like either candidate introduced legislation, worked to get it passed through both houses in Congress, and then has it vetoed by the president. Isn't this really why the United States just generally doesn't elect a Senator? There really isn't much either of these candidates are talking about they couldn't introduce as a bill in the Senate. Look at the energy bills about to be voted on, on the House floor. They didn't take President Bush to write or be introduced. Obviously the political power would be greater as president but a good idea is a good idea and not every bill or law signed by a president is written or introduced by the president.
For those talking as though this government bailout would be socialism I'd beg such people to do there homework and learn the history of this country better. Government rescue dates all the way back to Alexander Hamilton and the 1790's when Mr. Hamilton fought to have all state debts assumed by the federal government. (Such a shame more presidents and Secretary of Treasury's haven't considered Alexander Hamilton the model for national spending and finance...but I digress.) The savings and loan debacle of the 1980's wasn't fixed through socialism nor did the "cure" create socialism despite being semi-similar to today's mess.

From this article on realclearmarkets.com where the writer, Larry Kudlow, after making a strong case for Congress to stop adding to the bill, a similar point is made:

Actually, it’s a marvel that we permit government to infrequently come to the rescue of our credit system. It doesn’t happen everyday. But it has been necessary going all the way back to Alexander Hamilton’s original rescue of our failing debt system in the 1790s.

Understanding this history, conservatives should not panic or walk away from the Paulson assistance plan. It would be great to avoid either a deep credit-driven recession or a global banking meltdown -- or both. Paulson has always viewed his rescue plan as an economic-growth tool. I think he’s right.

Iraq passes voting bill

2008-09-24T22:19:00.000-07:00

This is great news with a bit of not so good news:

BAGHDAD, Sept. 24 -- Iraq's parliament passed a provincial elections law Wednesday that
paves the way for balloting in most parts of the country by Jan. 31 and that
could help bolster efforts at national reconciliation.
But lawmakers decided to postpone debate over one of the most contentious
issues facing Iraq -- the dispute between Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens over power
sharing in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. The legislators also did not resolve how
to best achieve political representation for Iraq's Christians and other
minorities.

Democrats still seeing the polls and caving to...

2008-09-24T22:04:00.000-07:00

...what very much appears to be the general publics opinion that more oil drilling is needed and should be allowed. House Speaker Pelosi, in a move to save a great deal of Democrats seats and not make waives in what appears to be a Democratic party landslide (in the Congress) agree's to let the federal ban on oil drilling expire.

Most likely she's allowing this hoping that she can get her bill passed -even if that takes waiting until Januarary hoping that she gets her 60 Democrat seat Senate which is looking more and more less likely. The House seems to still be safely in the Democratic majority with added seats. The Senate is looking like 55 seats max now while going into this year many, including fearful Republicans, thought 60 with relative ease.

Both the candidates...

2008-09-23T22:55:00.000-07:00

...in various ways were ahead of this financial mess.
McCain: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/record.xpd?id=109-s20060525-16&bill=s109-190

Obama: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s109-2280

There are probably more bills by both candidates but those are the two found with ease.

House Democrats now allowing Oil vote

2008-09-23T22:38:00.000-07:00

Excerpts from this article:

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Monday morning that the newest Democratic energy bill will be brought to the floor under normal rules and will be subject to a vote on a Republican alternative that is likely to call for even more drilling than Democrats are prepared to swallow.

“[Republicans] will have the opportunity to offer their alternative, yes,” Hoyer said in response to a question about how the energy bill will be introduced. “We understand that their motion to recommit will be their Republican alternative.”

The Democrats bill is the one mentioned previously that would essentially block almost all of the oil reserves off-shore.

Afghanistan

2008-09-23T22:02:00.000-07:00

Came across a very informative interview in Newsweek by Dan Ephron with Thomas Johnson, a research professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/160439
A couple excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What is flawed about our approach in Afghanistan?
Thomas Johnson: It's the same problem the Soviets had in their engagement from 1979 to 1989 …The United States, just as the Soviet Union, controls all the urban areas and especially provincial capitals and Kabul. But this is a rural counterinsurgency, just as the mujahedin's conflict against the Soviets was also a rural insurgency. ....
Some of this sounds familiar from General Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq. Are you talking about replicating the model in Afghanistan?
Afghanistan and Iraq are really very, very different. Iraq has traditionally had literacy rates of well above 90 percent of the population, Afghanistan you might have 15 percent of the population. Iraq is basically an urban society with some very major urban centers that have driven the traditional intellectual and social and economic life of the country. Afghanistan is 80 percent rural. The cities have never mattered that much. A rural insurgency is very, very different than an urban insurgency, which we're facing in Iraq, and you have to pursue different policies. Plus, in Iraq you've had a very dynamic pattern of sectarian violence between the Sunni and Shia. And while there are differences between the Afghan Sunni and Shia, it's never been one of the driving historical epics in the country.
Some of this sounds familiar from General Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq. Are you talking about replicating the model in Afghanistan?
Afghanistan and Iraq are really very, very different. Iraq has traditionally had literacy rates of well above 90 percent of the population, Afghanistan you might have 15 percent of the population. Iraq is basically an urban society with some very major urban centers that have driven the traditional intellectual and social and economic life of the country. Afghanistan is 80 percent rural. The cities have never mattered that much. A rural insurgency is very, very different than an urban insurgency, which we're facing in Iraq, and you have to pursue different policies. Plus, in Iraq you've had a very dynamic pattern of sectarian violence between the Sunni and Shia. And while there are differences between the Afghan Sunni and Shia, it's never been one of the driving historical epics in the country.
You believe that a surge in Afghanistan might actually be counterproductive. Why? I think the influx of large numbers of troops isn't the solution. ...I think we basically have a manpower distribution problem in Afghanistan. ...many of the rural Pashtuns...continually talked about how new large bases...established brought the Taliban into these areas. ...one argument that can be made that more soldiers coming into the country will be [countered] by more Taliban insurgent fighters that can cause problems ...Pashtun society as well as Afghanistan in general. ...Soviets had hundreds of thousands of troops in Afghanistan...distributed in the urban areas...not quell the mujahedin insurgency. ...bring more troops into the country, ...have them located at the district level...more impact on the insurgents.

Interesting health care tidbit...

2008-09-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

...from an LA Times blog:

On Sept. 16, the journal Health Affairs offered a web exclusive with a critique
of the Obama healthcare plan, saying its costs are unsustainable, and one of the McCain plan, saying the number of uninsured could grow from 45 million to 60 million in the next five years. Another article in the journal suggests that America's healthcare system could benefit from a mixing and matching from each of the plans.

So both candidates have bad healthcare plans?

They said employers would be less likely to offer coverage if they knew their workers could get it elsewhere. In all, the authors projected that 20 million people would lose their employer-sponsored insurance under McCain's plan, while 21 million people would gain coverage through the individual market — little more than a wash...And as monthly insurance premiums rise and the tax break stays the same, even that gain would erode...Another concern is that insurers would gravitate to states with less onerous coverage requirements. For example, 29 states insist insurers in the individual and small group market cover cervical cancer screenings. They could locate in states without such requirements.

The Democrat would set up a kind of government-run shopping mall that would negotiate prices and benefits with private insurers. One choice would be a government-run plan. No participating company could turn someone away because of pre-existing cancer, heart disease or diabetes. Nor would someone have to pay a higher monthly premium based on those conditions...The government would subsidize the cost for many who buy coverage through this exchange. But analysts say using third parties to subsidize the cost of a product exacerbates health inflation. Consumers and providers act as if any service that might yield some value should be covered...Obama would also require all but small businesses to make a "meaningful" payment for health coverage of their workers or contribute a percentage of payroll toward the cost of the public plan offered through the exchange.

Let's be fair here...

2008-09-21T15:24:00.000-07:00

Both campaigns have former CEO's and managers of this company and that company and every company. Both campaigns have lobbyists, Obama has no federal but plenty of state level lobbyists while McCain has plenty of both. This really should be irrelevant considering every politician is surrounded by such people. (Which is a part of the heart of the problem in Washington but it is never going to end so it is what it is.) What is relevant is whether those who surround the candidate are blatantly influencing there economic plan and/or whether you can connect dot by dot favors being exchanged. Neither candidate has been caught in such a way so we're left with the facts of each candidate policies.

Now, as Obama paints a nice little picture of the Republican Party being at fault here and forgetting that Democrats played a role in this mess as well, the truth and heart of this is that it isn't solely or even necessarily largely, the Governments -either parties fault. People in the financial business made stupid mistake after stupid mistake. They took gamble after gamble. The companies we see now that are still strong in the financial market are strong because they either A) Knew better than to go down the "stupid path" or B) Started down the "stupid path" but realized it early enough to adjust course.

The Government did play some role in all of this in various ways; some of it being from tearing down regulation too far and from manipulating the market. Our government used subsidies and legislation to push certain aspects of our economy in various directions. For example, from an Op-Ed by Russell Roberts on forbes.com (italics = an added point by me):

Ethanol mandates and subsidies try to create less carbon in the atmosphere than the market would create on its own. The result has been a worldwide increase in the price of corn that has hurt poor people around the world.

Politicians wanted more home ownership than the market produces on its own, especially among low-income families. (Remember the 2004 presidential campaign? How proud we should all be at how high home ownership had gotten...) To encourage this politically popular goal, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were allowed to privatize their profits and socialize (government bailout) their losses. At the same time, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) required them to expand their commitment to affordable housing. Freddie and Fannie achieved this goal by buying bundles of subprime mortgages.

A little known fact about corn ethanol and what it's being used for and who it is being used by: Clorox. That's right; corn ethanol wasn't simply to help create a bio-fuel for cars to run on but also to be used in cleaning products to make them more biodegradable in order to be more environmentally friendly. Here's the kicker though: Clorox also uses a Coconut-based cleaning agent with the corn ethanol. Haven't seen or heard of any coconut subsidies yet the market is using it...
More info: http://www.greenworkscleaners.com/
Interesting fact from a New York Times article by Joe Nocera:

Then again, maybe the S.E.C. is trying to cover up its own culpability in this crisis. Four years ago, the agency pushed through a rule that allowed the big investment banks to take on a great deal more debt. As a result, debt ratios rose from about 12 to 1 to more like 30 to 1. Guess what Lehman’s debt ratio was when it went bust? Yep: 30 to 1.

Just because the S.E.C. passes through a rule allowing such an insane debt ratio doesn't mean any company had to live by it. As we can see, not all of them did, mainly the ones that are now being given tax dollars.

An article by Colbert I. King in the Washington Post with another example of how this isn't simply the governments fault:

Point a finger at those old standbys: greed, imprudent financial decisions and ignorance on the part of people who should have known better....The shame is that banks carelessly extended subprime mortgage loans to the very people who should not have received them in the first place -- those who were least able to repay....But the lure of making a quick buck, coupled with the ability to lay the loans off to Wall Street, which converted them into investment packages, prompted bankers and mortgage brokers to look the other way and book the loans.

You see, blaming the opposite political party for failing to catch this doesn't do anything. It doesn't fix it nor does it address how this was allowed to happen. The truth is that even in times of too much regulation, too little regulation, or "just right" levels of regulation the people controlling the markets will find a way to make a quick buck and create a down turn in the economy after they've gotten rich.
Now certainly some of this was forseen by many people. In different pieces of legislation partly even seen by our two current candidates, but no one person or one political party was going to be able to stop this. Not when they've looked the other way on the economy for 20+ years. Wait, didn't we have tremendous growth in the 90's and pretty decent growth this decade....
So in the end, we're left to wait this out, hope the end is near, and hope that Washington can get something right for once.

The latest oil drilling bill

2008-09-21T15:20:00.000-07:00

In a nut shell, here is what the newest oil drilling bill from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will do (italics added for emphasis):

A: This bill permanently bans all drilling within 50 miles of the US coast, which just happens to be where most of the recoverable oil and gas reserves are. It permits drilling between 50 and 100 miles out only if the adjoining states agree - which they won't, since the bill denies them any share in the royalties the oil companies would have to pay, thereby eliminating any financial incentive for a state to say yes. Virtually all the oil off the California coast and beneath the Eastern Gulf of Mexico would be locked up for good. Don't be fooled: The only offshore drilling this bill really opens the door to would have to be 100 miles or more out to sea, where the oil companies have no infrastructure.

Economic stump speech's

2008-09-18T00:00:00.001-07:00

Not to take a phrase from CNN but here are the candidates "in there own words" regarding the current economic crisis (without sound bites that the TV media and articles live off of):
McCain in Tampa
McCain in Michigan

Obama in Nevada
Labeled "Confronting An Economic Crisis"

General Petraeus

2008-09-18T00:00:00.000-07:00

Agree or disagree with us even being in Iraq, General Petraeus deserves every citizens respect and appreciation. He will likely to go down as one of our Nation's best Generals. The turn around he oversaw in Iraq has been staggering. With any luck he'll be able to greatly improve Afghanistan in much the same way. This country can only hope that the new commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, will live up to the standard Gen. Petraeus has set.

Here's a nice article from the Washington Post by David Ignatius about Gen. Petraeus's farewell night and how his legacy may be seen in years to come.

A nice editorial from the Times of London

On a personal note: Thank you General Petraeus for doing a fantastic job and hopefully history judges you accurately for what you did for this country. God Bless you and our troops.

The Candidates Tax Plans: Made relatively simple

2008-09-17T23:54:00.000-07:00

http://www.taxfoundation.org/candidates08/compare/

Just wanted to give readers what the media wont...the facts on the candidates tax plans.

Editor Note

2008-09-14T17:31:00.000-07:00

I've tried to do my best not to cover the trash and smear politics that has been thrown out by both campaigns during this election. Obviously both candidates have failed to live up to there promises of running a strictly, 100% civil and issue based campaign. It has been cleaner than many previous elections and people that say otherwise weren't around for, at the very least, the Nixon election years (that isn't to solely blame Nixon by any means, simply his election years).

There are so many staunch differences on the issues (in their policies) that attacks on anything but policy are, excuse me, rather should be useless. Well I was watching FOX News Sunday w/Chris Wallace today and was struck by what Karl Rove had to say as I agreed 100% with his main point which was that both campaigns are going too far in attack ads and that there has been a childish air to them (excerpts without his specific examples):

Both campaigns are making a mistake, and that is they are taking whatever their attacks are and going one step too far.

— similarly gone one step too far, and sort of attributing to...things that are, you know, beyond the 100-percent-truth test.

They don’t need to attack each other in this way. They have legitimate points to make about each other that are beyond, you know, the…

But both campaigns ought to be careful about it. They ought to — there ought to be an adult who says, “Do we really need to go that far in this ad? Don’t we make our point and won’t we get broader acceptance and deny the opposition an opportunity to attack us if we don’t include that one little last tweak in the ad?”

Still talking about polls?

2008-09-11T23:15:00.000-07:00

Their has been a shift but Obama still has the lead on every single state by state map. Lets get back to this "why hasn't Obama had and maintained a safe lead?" nonsensical talk due to "the political climate". My original post on this still holds true and in an article by David Harsayni in the Denver Post a similar point:

...The economy, after all, is in terrible shape; no one likes the Republican president. There is no other way, it is asserted, that a candidate as talented as Obama could possibly lose this election. ...

...But is it possible, with all the problems we face -- rather the always-exaggerated problems we face during election time -- that other factors play an overriding role?

"You may or may not agree with Obama's policy prescriptions," Jacob Weisberg, also making the pre-emptive case in Slate, wrote, "but they are, by and large, serious attempts to deal with the biggest issues we face: a failing health care system, oil dependency, income stagnation, and climate change."

Well, yes. It is about policy. Voters may struggle with their mortgages and curse those high gas prices, yet most of them won't surrender core values or policy beliefs because of the vagaries of the economy.

If roughly half the nation's voters reject...Obama...it means they're Republicans.

You see, this country has sweepingly voted one way or the other for at least 40 years prior to 2000. It isn't likely to happen anymore. We have finally reached that point in our nations history where for three elections in a row now, we don't have a clear favorite. Hopefully we stay that way.

The Palin Affect

2008-09-10T00:31:00.000-07:00

There has been some seriously obsessive talking about the affect Palin has had. To be sure, she has energized the base unlike any other candidate would have, could have. To be sure, to the Republican base she is a breath of fresh air. The biggest thing though was that this is arguably the shrewdest political move the McCain campaign could've possibly made. The fact is that because she is so new the news channels have to vet her, and every day that they air something new, in order to vet her publicly, is another day that McCain-Palin gets talked about and less time for Obama to get coverage. Palin has become an absolute media hog (in terms of amount of discussion and coverage) without even trying. She's certainly given essentially the same exact speech at every campaign stop but every day she is covered is a win for the McCain-Palin campaign. Talking about "when does she finally answer questions?" is a win for them. Palin's coverage could last another two weeks as she gets around to doing more interviews and finally hits the Sunday talk shows. That shrinks the election to basically 40 days. That's essentially a sprint coming off of not only a convention but consistent coverage of a very engaging VP candidate.

Part of this was also an absolute over reaction by the Obama campaign and the media. A couple things come to mind in this regard:

1) Where are the surrogates to help attack the McCain-Palin ticket without focusing on just Palin?
2) Where is Joe Biden and why has he not been the attack dog VP like he's supposed to be?
3) Why hasn't Obama gotten back on message already? The Republican convention was over four days ago.

Obama is getting caught having to fight by himself for himself. Where are the Democrat surrogates? This can't simply be that Congress is out of session so they aren't in Washington to be easily accessed. How does the Obama campaign get caught attacking Palin while Palin attacks Obama? The surrogates should be doing this and helping to get the fight back to McCain. This is a very bad moment for the Obama campaign and to McCain's credit a brilliant moment for him.