the defeatists!

Some of them were fugitives from a Jackson Brown Song

The class warfare issue: my working theory is that wealthy individuals bought themselves a radical right party, believing — correctly — that it would cut their taxes and remove regulations, but failed to realize that eventually the craziness would take on a life of its own, and that the monster they created would turn on its creators as well as the little people. And nobody knows how it ends. --Paul Krugman

I seldom agree with Congressman Pete King (Republican, County Antrim...err, New York) about much of anything. Certainly, we both have the Irish ability to prevaricate which enables him to see a difference between the Provisional IRA and al Qaeda or Hamas that really doesn't exist. Seriously, Franz Fanon could have written about Falls Road as opposed to Algeria, and same story. So, King's advocacy for gunrunners and money launderers for Green Power while absolute condemnation of anything pro-Palestinian or prop-Arab is interesting. Since I stopped drinking 23 years ago, it's harder for me to do that. I just run out of patience with my own bullshit.

 

Fortunately for the Republicans, John Bohener hasn't quit drinking. So he's able to babble insanely and push a legislative and economic agenda he doesn't believe in for a bunch of clowns he probably despises surrounded by a team he doesn't trust and NOT HAVE HIS HEAD EXPLODE! Fortunate for the Republican party in the short term, but bad for the country and the Republican party in the long run.  But, with Guinness and Bushmills as opposed to Chardonnay comes clarity and Pete King has long since reached the point of cognitive dissonance and his constituents are probably telling him to knock off the crap and get something done. No Republican seat in downstate is a safe seat; to be successful, you have to understand people and compromise and the art of getting things done. So Pete King has a pretty good tether to earth and reality. Louis Gomert and Michelle Bachmann, not so much.  So, he finds himself in something like the position of Lot in Sodom, trying to find a few more just men in the Republican Caucus. Good luck with that: 

“We can’t be going off on these false missions that Ted Cruz wants us to go on,” King continued. “The issues are too important. They’re too serious, they require real conservative solutions, not cheap headline-hunting schemes.” 

If you've been reading my rantings for any period longer than, well, this you know that I am a skeptic about most things but a firm believer that the rich and hyper-rich who are paying attention have pretty consciously been engaging in class warfare for decades. Paul Krugman's and Ezra Klein's analysis is spot on in this case. The question really is how'd we get here...and I suggest listening to  The Talking Head's for the ontological answer. Or, Google the Senate Chaplain's Barry Black's opening prayer yesterday. As Alex Rogers commented at Swampland, Time Magazine's Washington Blog, 

For some, at least, the only thing left to do was pray. “Eternal God, our ever present help in trouble, as our nation stumbles toward a seemingly unavoidable government shutdown, keep our lawmakers from sowing to the wind, thereby risking reaping the whirlwind,” prayed the Senate chaplain Barry C. Black on the floor before the vote. “Remember that all that is necessary for unintended catastrophic consequences is for good people to do nothing.”

 

Well, they certainly didn't do nothing. Rather, they kept doing the same thing, and frankly, it's hard to pick out the most egregious, disingenuous piece of bullshit spewed by the Republican conference. I particularly like the idea that the President wasn't willing to negotiate. WE'RE IN THIS MESS BECAUSE THE PRESIDENT REFUSED TO ACCEPT THAT THE REPUBLICANS IN THE HOUSE AND SENATE WERE INCAPABLE OF NEGOTIATING IN GOOD FAITH.  If you have the patience for it, review the legislative history of the Affordable Care Act and the various budget issues over the last couple of years. I think in Barack Obama we are looking at the second coming not of Abraham Lincoln but of Woodrow Wilson. He's a reasonable man dealing with irrational people who are less interested in doing what's right for the country than in avoiding their "Base's" anger and primary action. Absurd. Wilson's ultimate failure was due to his inability to realize that some people won't see reason; Obama's history is yet to be inscribed, but I suspect that he'll have a similar fate.

I particularly like the R's decision to strip themselves and the Executive's employees of health insurance in supposed solidarity with what the American people are going through...despite the fact that there's a huge difference between the situation of the folks affected by the insurance coverage of the Affordable Care Act and the people who work for the Executive and Congressional Branches of Government. The Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, doesn't really have anything to do with the members of Congress or their staff...They Already Have Employer Provided Health Care. This is grandstanding by plutocratic jerks and while nothing will come of it, the staff of the Republicans on the Hill should start sending out resumes now. Just what K-Street needs, more lobbyists.

I'm also enjoying the coverage of the stench of booze on both sides of the aisle; however, it seems like the Dems wait until the bill is actually passed and something is done. (It's also possible that the media is trying to be "fair and balanced" damning both sides. ) Well, now we know...for sure. Wouldn't you love to get a urine sample result from Michelle Bachmann? A breathylizer reading from Boehner?

Sometimes the only question is, did anybody do anything right?

Failure of Leadership with Lots of Unexpected Consequences

I have been relatively quiet on Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden because I am very conflicted about what to think. Like a lot of folks who are reading this, I’ve had the clearance and the access and I remember the oaths I swore and the penalties. A lot of stuff then was pretty silly, but the primary reason for the BURN BEFORE READING stamps was fairly simple – releasing the information would reveal the source. Since I had a kind of obscure specialty for a while, I can recall being dragged out of the Fort Clayton Golf Course Bar by a CW4 who had been one of my students to read traffic that came in as HOTHOTHOT and reading, shaking my head and pointing out the problem. It was pretty funny, the chief went back and bought me another beer and we howled. But, I still can’t talk about more than 20 years later.

Nor would I. Someone got some information they probably should not have had and passed that along to someone else who somehow got it to someone else. The fact that in that chain of someone’s was probably a source just like Bradley Manning or Mr. Snowden is irrelevant. I don’t need to get cheap laughs. However, if you have a SCIF handy, read me back on and I’ll tell you the story.

So, you don’t talk about what you know. I taught at the INTEL School and that’s where I learned my SKIF etiquette but that training started a lot earlier. A boss of mine was reading one of Kissinger’s books where it referenced the clearance that he had, and the boss went ballistic – some things are incredibly sensitive even if you don’t care why. Henry the K didn’t care about a couple of 10000 grunts and a couple of 100000 Vietnamese and Cambodians or so; why would he care about something silly like the name of an access? The boss’ boss came in to talk to us about it, and said that “We are held to a higher standard.” You put on the uniform and you are held to a higher standard.

On the other hand, the stuff that Manning leaked through International Man of Mystery Julian Assange was primarily battle journals. In other words, the old DA 1594s or whatever they are calling them now, some SITREPs, some raw SPOT Reports and so on. He was a computer geek and a very junior Intel Analyst. He plotted stuff on maps. If he had access to a lot of highly classified stuff, that was really stupid.

But, the material is pretty damning. We were in a war that we should not have started, fighting a professionals’ war against the people – with the exception of the Kurds, at one time or another we were fighting everybody while they consistently were and are fighting and killing each other. We don’t get the culture, the religion, the climate the history. We still don’t, but that last time worked out so well that there’s really no reason not to do it again. I just don’t see a statue of Tommy Franks in the future of West Point.

Manning was getting a view of how silly that was, how insane, how brutal and how fruitless. I don’t know what motivated the guy. But, I do know that most of what he revealed was probably vastly over classified. And then we get to another problem, one that I realized last night at dinner with my wife who in her Army incarnation was a Documents Custodian in a Brigade S2 in Europe.  The coin dropped; she worked as a civilian for DOD and DOT and I had been a contractor. Guess what – no way if any current security procedures were being adhered to could Manning have gotten the stuff he had to Wikileaks. We’re not discussing a highly trained intelligence operative here, we’re talking about a pretty flakey private in a combat zone., who appears to have been violating every principle of handling sensitive and classified material in the book; according to Wikipedia he told one of his biographers that he smuggled the stuff out on his data card.

When the coin dropped, I dropped my sandwich. My wife at best tolerates my jousting with windmills, but this one bugged her as much as it bothers me. This should not have happened. And it did – and it was not Manning who was the weak spot, but the supervision and leadership that let him do whatever misguided and deranged crap he did.

Manning was on a secure DOD/ Army system, in a sensitive compartmentalized intelligence facility (SCIF) of some sort and he was able to download highly classified materials to either thumb drives, data cards or CDs. The military banned all that stuff on its computers prior to the kid's enlistment. While it might be possible to cheat if you were on night shift in a CP someplace with just a normal Army computer and nobody checking on you, in a SCIF there are a lot of people checking on you usually. When you enter the SCIF, you are subject to search; brief cases, backpacks and similar things are checked as a matter of course. HOW THE HELL DID HE BREACH THE BASIC IT SECURITY AND THE PHYSICAL SECURITY PROTECTING THIS STUFF? This is a serious concern. Certainly, the officers and NCOs running the place should be investigated for either complicity or negligence or both. If they say him with a CD, they needed to act immediately; if they saw him with a data stick, ditto. Slipping a micro into a slot would be really disturbing. Either they didn’t care, they allowed it to happen or they just didn’t bother to watch this obvious candidate for Soldier of the Millenniums. Somewhere, SGT Morales is crying.

The fact that somehow this kid had access to TS and higher should bother a lot of us. Did DOD not investigate the guy prior to the granting of the clearance? Was there no interview? How did he keep the clearance after reprimands? WHO GETS REPRIMANDED FOR ASSAULTING AN OFFICER? Maybe some hard corps grunt dealing with the problems of cooling down after a fraught mission and being asked some silly crap; but, this guy was a REMF. There's a lot to be concerned about here, but Manning's actual leaks are the least of it. He was a computer GEEK and gee, the Army needs those for places like Fort Meade and various Field Stations. Was he in a Field Station? No, he was in the SCIF in a Forward Operating Base in Iraq. The Army knew he needed help; they were going to discharge him during Basic for unsuitability. Instead of washing him out, they sent him on to AIT and he got a TS/SCI clearance. The unit wanted to leave him behind instead of taking him to Iraq but they were short analysts so...  Where the hell were the Counter-Intelligence people who were supposed to be there? He was acting out all over the place in all sorts of ways…and nobody noticed until a hacker reported him? Seriously.  In a combat zone, prior to the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the guy was openly gay, disrespectful and out of line.

Now, many years ago there was an Army Security Agency analyst we’ll call Randy. Randy was at Field Station Augsburg and was very, very gay. Openly gay. Blatantly gay. He cross-dressed and hung around the Bahnhof according one guy who knew him. Nobody cared, he was really good at his job. The MI community was always very tolerant of a lot of deviance, up to a point. One story had the Politzei catching him at the Bahnhof along with the MP liaisons and there he went. How do I know the story is true? One of my officer students at the INTEL school told me about him; then others told me about him; and then, when I was facilitating course with the Warrants and the subject of stress and reactions to it was on the table, one of the Warrants started saying that none of that was problem in the old ASA, none of their soldiers had issues and this was a waste of everyone’s time to consider. “Chief,” I asked, “Were you ever in Augsburg?” “Yeah, Sarge, I spent most of my enlisted in Augsburg.” “Chief, did you ever know a guy named Randy?” Silence…followed by laughter. “Oh hell, Sarge, Randy was my squad leader…” “Were the stories true?” “Oh Shit! You had to be there…”

So, yeah, Manning is guilty of a lot of stuff. However, given the obvious questions and the way the guy was treated while awaiting trial -- Marine Stockade as opposed to Army Stockade? Solitary confinement because he was suicidal? Naked? -- make me think that justice could be best served in his case by sentencing him to reduction to E-1, a Less than Honorable Discharge, and a couple of years in Leavenworth. I'd actually prefer the reduction, a General Discharge under Honorable Conditions and time served. 

And then, the Army needs to start asking some hard questions about what the hell happened to common sense and adherence to basic procedures safeguarding materials. Manning's Chain of Command needs desperately to have a bunch of their careers ended so they can move on to their true calling of asking if you want paper or plastic. If they'd been doing their jobs, this wouldn't have happened. Everything about Iraq that went bad, down to the way we found out a lot about it was due to a failure of leadership at a really existential level.

I’d also like to turn to the helicopter footage that has gotten so much attention. Why would that have been TOP SECRET? I wonder why it would have been more than CONFIDENTIAL – where was the serious harm to the nation in that footage? It was sad, tragic, reflected poorly on the rules of engagement and all the nonsense we’ve been told about how carefully precise everything is on the digital battlefield. It’s not, and we know. Reuters knew the stuff existed and asked for the material. They submitted a Freedom of Information Act request and were rebuffed. The FOIA request should have been granted, with some redaction, and then de-classified.

Soldiers in combat cause collateral damage. Soldiers in combat do a lot of things to block the horror. We know that. But, the American people need to know that. They need to have their noses rubbed in it so every time some yahoo decides to start demanding we go off to some war some goddamned place, there are no surprises. Bradley Manning broke the law, broke his oath as a soldier and did it irresponsibly and almost blithely. No Luther-Ellsberg existential “Here I am, I can do no other…”anguish there. But, he needed help, guidance and the attention that soldiers, especially weak soldiers need and deserve all the time, not just in combat.

I had soldiers like Manning. Any NCO or Officer who led troops had to deal with people like Manning. Too smart for their MOS, too smart for their duties, not fitting in, not a lean mean fighting machine – just a kid who needed his ass kicked and his shoulder patted. Instead, he was ignored, not mentored, not helped and this is what happened. I had 200 soldiers in my last company, and I knew all the flakes and made a point of watching them. I didn’t bully them, I didn’t berate them, and I sought ways to help them grow and adapt. I know my last company was at Fort Lewis and this was in Combat. I don’t care; the way you operate in garrison is the same way you need to operate in the field. If you take care of you soldiers, they’ll amaze you when the chips are down. If you don’t, well, this is what happens.

Manning appears to have had other problems. He lived an openly gay life prior to enlisting in the Army. While If you can salvage a marginal soldier, you might create a superstar. But if you can’t, and it appears his chain of command had figured out he wasn’t going to hack it, you don’t take them Iraq, you don’t cut them slack for acting crazy, you don’t look the other way. You get them out of combat, away from the unit and let the psychiatrists and JAG determine what needs to happen next. YOU DON”T SHOVE THEM IN A POORLY SUPERVISED SKIF for fifteen hours a day. But, “ Farrell, we were short analysts in the worst way”. To which I can only respond, “Yeah, and look what that kind of short term thinking got you.”

 

 

 

 

 

Deep Treason by shallow minds...

Speaker Boehner has had the privilege, which he screwed up both times, of swearing in the members of the House of Representatives. In that oath, they swear to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies and then engage in a ceremonial reading of the Constitution  which they have screwed up both times. What I'm missing is how a party that crows so much about patriotism and country can then turn around and do everything they can to undermine the Constitution and the government that is the instrument of upholding and enforcing it?

 The 14th Amendment primarily is the guarantee of due process to all citizens and has language that may confer the same guarantees on all persons under the jurisdiction of the United States or the various states. But, Section 4 is even more clear --

Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

The first sentence says it all. The United States pays its bills, and does nothing to call that public debt into question; rather, it does everything to pay the debt as it is accrued and comes due. So the news that Boehner and the Boys(and Girls) of the Republican Party are planning on a new way to pay the debt using some sort of magic bill doesn't strike me so much as absurd, stupid or asinine -- although it's all three and any other negative adjective you'd like -- but is in fact a violation of the Amendment.

By voting for it, I believe they have engaged in a conspiracy to undermine the United States government and violate the Constitution. The fact that so many of the Republicans in the House voted for this abomination should scare anyone with a bit of sense. If you begin to stake out the debate by establishing the pattern of taking your marbles and going home, it gets to be difficult for the other side to take you seriously. And, if you response to a systemic problem is to dance around like capering apes, well, it gets even more difficult to stand to be around you. Frankly, neither Boehner nor McConnell have shown any tendency to keep their words, promises or principles. They don't want to lose their jobs -- which is interesting, since I would think that passing out campaign money and other bribes...err, gratuities...no, bribes in the name of whomever is paying them would be right in their G-spot. Together, they could be the Dancing Queens of the K-Street Crowd.

 

Ok, the bill violates the Constitution  It also has no chance of passing the Senate, and if it somehow passed the Senate, it would be vetoed by the President. It's pure stubborn ignorance and  obliviousness. The President is hampered here by the fact that he's a constitutional law professor and has read the document a few times. The President can recommend policy and the President gets to enforce the law, but the tax code and taxes begins in the House. The Debt Limit isn't like the filibuster where you can imagine a bill or a nomination so mindbogglingly awful to demand a response like it. It's a done deal, and all the spending cuts in the world -- most ill-advised, of course, can't fix that. We spent the money...now it's debt and "shall not be questioned."

A great deal of the discussion of this ploy, as with so many of the things coming from this version of the House, is easily summed up with the question "What the HELL are these fools thinking?" What they're thinking is that the last debt ceiling thing worked out so well for them, that they should just go for round 2 only with a bill that is unpassable and unconstitutional because, well, Michelle Bachman brought a Minnesota Hotpot and Mitch McConnell is sending over a couple of cases of the best Kentucky White Lightning.

 

Of course, what makes this particularly funny is that China is not even close to being our largest debt holder. If you do as they suggest, paying China first and then do the rest of it however they get around it it, the Republicans are screwing with the American people in order to benefit Asian-Commie-Atheists. I'm as fond of Asian-Chinese Commie Atheists as anybody, but this is probably not the way to show it.

The Republican strategy in this case actually will have the impact of hurting the economy and American business. If the bill were to become law -- which it won't -- the current accounts would be the thing that doesn't get paid. Defense Contractors are like everybody else -- they bill monthly and get paid eventually. So, Boeing, NGC, Lockheed and all the rest might have to lay off everybody.The ripple effect will be profound...More to come.  

 

Problems and perspective at the Karma Bar and Grill

If you watched the HBO series “Rome,” you saw a re-enactment of Julius Caesar’s triumph of 46 BC: Caesar riding in a golden chariot, his face painted red, dressed in purple and white robes, a slave holding a wreath over his head. If you had looked up an explanation for this uncanny garb, you would probably have been told: the red paint was there to imitate the red-painted face of the statues of the god Mars; the robes were those of Capitoline Jove; and the slave was to whisper in his ear, “Remember thou art mortal.” 

  There's a combination of schadenfreude and sadness at the Petraeus affairs. A lot of us here know people like the folks involved here, and the problems are basically the fact that we're all human. Too human, maybe. The resignation is a shame in some ways, but in others probably not...it's a distraction, and the timing is pretty awful in that regard. While the beltway press pursues the latest shiney  object, well, who knows what nefarious things will go bump in the night.

Here's the thing that bothers me --There's another problem with this. The affair occurred in Afghanistan while Petraeus was the commanding general. Adultery is a serious violation against the UCMJ. In addition, sexual relations in the combat zone -- and under his desk in Kabul or at that monster base we've got outside Kabul -- certainly qualifies as a combat zone. Soldiers are routinely disciplined for this behavior, and this guy probably signed off on a few court martials and other punishments for this during his career. Fun facts to know and tell about generals -- when they retire, they really don't retire. And, this is definitely contrary to good order and discipline. I would expect that some disciplinary action on the Army side would happen for the affair. Possibly just a letter of reprimand or a fine; possibly a reduction in rank to the last rank at which he served honorably, which was 3 stars. Will be interesting to see what, if anything happens with this one... Of course, Ms. Broadwell was an Academy Graduate. It's interesting to ponder whether or not she retained a reserve commission; if so, an investigation by the Army could conclude that in addition to adultery, there was a violation of the fraternization policy. Basically reflects very badly on his judgement, and he is very clear about that in his resignation. Good for him by the way, and good for her in that she's handling this like an adult.

 But, the teenage crush aspect of it is kind of amusing. He gets to be head of the CIA, she decides to end the affair and he pursues her. Sends her dirty emails supposedly and generally acted like a 19 year old boy.Sheesh...

 I have an odd take on marriage these days. I think we just live too long these days for marriage to work. The fact that Clem and Elma were married for 77 years always elicits the "Cute, oh, they're so cute response." Not from me -- I've been married for 36 years, and frankly, it's a habit and an economic arrangement. We're fond of each other, but except for NCIS and baseball don't really share very much. Petraeus spent most of the his time since November of 2001 either deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq or getting ready to go -- his wife had a life, his kids are grown and GUESS WHAT! They'd been married for 37 years after getting engaged when he was in the Academy. Not an inevitable thing, but the seeds are there. I'm not making excuses for the guy, by the way -- I don't consider the affair particularly heinous, but the hypocrisy and silliness make you wonder. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. But, I can say that I never let any nuttiness about who was sleeping with who turn into persecution or prosecution when I was in the Army in leadership roles, and stopped more than a few puritanical witch hunts. But, if he ever signed off on a 15-6 for a court martial for any sexual relations issue, he's probably getting a payback in the old Karma Bar, Grill and Continuous Soiree.

 Supposedly he was pretty unpopular in the CIA as a know-it-all, outsider, Army guy. Not terribly surprising in a way -- and I never did get the idea that he'd be a great president. Intellectuals and generals have at best a spotty record as President. Washington, Jackson...and Zachery Taylor? Rutherford B. Hays? William Henry Harrison? Woodrow Wilson? Herbert Hoover? Jimmy Carter? Ike and Jefferson are the only ones I can think of to really set the world on fire...or in Ike's case despite the jingoist paranoia of the age, to not set the world on fire.  I generally don't have a lot of issues with generals, except if you want to talk about being out of touch with the American people, lots of them are so far removed that, well, they tell young people in good physical condition living in extraordinary stress that having sex is a bad idea. And, frankly, the whole counterinsurgency thing was vastly overrated. The Iraqis figured out that we were going to leave and this was a good way to get us out of there earlier. We basically bribed the militias and let the Shiites take over the country. And left...Afghanistan was never going to work, and the smartest thing to do is draw down quickly but not in a panic and leave. Most soldiers with an actual appreciation of history always saw that war as a mistake. Best thing to do with Afghanistan unless you're willing to kill 3/4 or so of the populace like the Moguls did is to bribe the bastards to stay in their cages and retaliate massively when they stick their heads out. And, I know a few Afghanis and I like them. But, substitue opium for moonshine, and they're hillbillies with Korans.

 Petraeus got out of there with his reputation intact because of the Gates-Panetta transfer and the fact that the Rs couldn't oppose his nomination. Logical move on the part of the Obama Administration. But, unlike Colin Powell, Petraeus was not a general with a lot of political experience. He was a light infantry guy, and while not as crazy as a Special Operations Guy like McCrystal, he wasn't used to the corridors of power. Check out his Wikipedia entry and look at his career. His high and mighty assignments were with soldiers. He's a dirty boots kind of guy.

In fairness, he is an extraordinarily bright guy - Princeton PhDs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy don't come easily -- and had a great reputation as just a helluva soldier as a brigade and division commander. And, in the Infantry you don't get stars by being a total prick and incompetent. You can be either -- most aren't -- but the total douchebags are rare. Tankers are different -- all the noise warps their heads. Special OPs guys have a tendency to be outlaws in a lot of ways. But in some ways this is a shame, in some a gut check for the Army , and in some just irony. And yeah, "the powerful are in fact people" realization is important.

 

Too much of nothing is too much...

 Some of us have more problems with heroes. Steve Earle comes to mind -- he often tells the story of playing a gig early in his career in Houston, and his hero Townes Van Zandt showed up and sat in front. He then proceeded to heckle Steve for the rest of the evening. "Play Wabash Cannonball. You call yourself a folk singer but you don't know Wabash Cannonball." It wasn't a zen moment; Townes, when drunk and off meds could be a real asshole. While touring in support of his TVZ album, Steve touchingly says that after years of thinking about it, the main reason more people don't know Townes Van Zandt was Townes Van Zandt. 

 Steve also tells the story of leaving a tour during his drug days, driven by the sudden need to hitchhike off at Thanskgiving time and see William S. Burroughs. Not that he knew the guy, but Burroughs was a hero of his too. So, with two guitars -- one wouldn't be enough -- a gun, a stash and a roll of money he took off. He showed up, and Burroughs was the sort of host an insane junky crashed in Lawrence Kansas would be expected to be.. Burroughs was not the sort of guy to feel comfortable with a left-leaning country singer in the early 90s...do ya think?

 

Steve had better luck with people like Guy Clark, Emmy Lou Harris and Johnny Cash. But, those stories are not so funny. I'd be curious to listen to a conversation about writing and meaning between Steve and Bob Dylan. That would be interesting. 

I just saw a thing that Jabba Hut Lindbaugh has an annual Thanksgiving story about how socialism almost killed the early pilgrims. Not exactly. And, as usual, he's a total dipshit about it. It's true that the pilgrims had an agreement at first to have all thing in commons. However, they departed late with one ship instead of the two that were planned, and did not finally get to Plymouth until December. They looted some graves of corn left as offerings for the dead, but they were in coastal New England during what we know to have been a particularly cold cycle in the world's climate and they were short of supplies to begin with. 

Pure socialism is as stupid a system as pure capitalism. However, it wasn't the communitarian living plans that almost killed these folks -- it was bad navigation, poor planning, insufficient supplies and insufficient knowledge of what to expect. The Pequot tribesman who actually helped them lived in a communal arrangement that worked really well until disease, warfare and Protestant Christianity did them all in. 

Regardless of system, scarcity is the problem. If there is not enough and Jesus hasn't provided the receipe for multiplying wine, fish and bread, any system can be stressed to the near breaking point. Interestingly to me, the retreat from a communal to a more traditional structure occurred after a supply of food and goods was secured. Dylan summed this problem up very well --scarcity is the problem. 

 

As I said, it would be interesting to listen to Dylan and Earle and Clark talk about songwriting. We know that Dylan and Cash spent a lot of time together, so I suspect that some of the others have also been at Cinnamon Hill or at Hendersonville for a guitar pull or two. 

Conjuring the ghost while the demon won't go away...

Children now in third grade might graduate from high school without ever experiencing a totally Romney-free day. This is not something I’m happy pointing out. For one thing, I don’t want to believe I live in a country that would seriously consider bestowing the nation’s highest office on a man who once drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car.   ---Gail Collins, New York Times

Two pieces in the New York Times this morning kind of sum up something about the zeitgeist, using two people from totally opposite ends of the spectrum, Hank Williams and Mitt Romney. Williams has been dead for 58 years, and is still a factor in American life. That's made really obvious by a new project, Bob Dylan's collaboration with poets, seers, prophets and troubadors to bring a box of unfinished songs written by Hank to life. While it seems like Romney has been bothering us for 58 years or so, the gollum from Michigan-Massachusetts-Utah-New Hampshire really hasn't been on the national stage that long. His major accomplishments have been downsizing and eviscerating American communities and industries, losing badly to Teddy Kennedy and getting health care reform passed in Massachusetts because he's such a strict constructionist. Yea, team...

Collins recommends giving your Republican friends cookies as they come to the realization that Romney's probably the one. A Romney - Pawlenty ticket looms and I'm sure that from Kennebunkport to the OC, from the Chamber of Commerce to the John Birch Society, nothing but glee abounds. MITT MITT MITT MITT. I suspect a pint of Everclear might be more appropriate. 

Speaking of which, Hank Williams is a far more interesting person and source of inspiration. I'd like to thnk that 50 years from now, Mitt Romney will be a footnote in history -- also "ran for President based on a sense of entitlement and weaselliness in 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020. Died in 2022. Ran for President in 2026, 2030." But, fifty years from now, Hank Williams will still be haunting us. If you play guitar and sing American music, it's probable that at some point you've tried to do a Hank Williams song; if you listen to country, rock, blues, jazz, folk you've listened to Hank Williams songs. If you've been in love and had it go wrong, you've lived Hank Williams songs. 

So, this will be an interesting project with great players. I know I'm ordering it right away, and I recommend that you do too. Years ago, I had the stereo on in my office in Germany playing some Hank Williams, and a bunch of my young black soldiers came in and sat and listened. They were taken by it-- "I'm a rolling stone, all alone and lost; for a life of sin, I will pay the cost; when I walk by, all the people say, there goes a guy on the lost highway..." They thought I was listening to country blues, like Robert Johnson -- well, I was...

 

Stars knocked out of alignment...

This is par for the course in the creative industries: the two best places for young people on the make in Hollywood to meet the players are bars and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.But celebrity can be an even more powerful drug than cocaine. It encourages people to push the limits: the more scandalous they are the more they attract the attention of the paparazzi. Mr Galliano produced ever more outrageous fashions as his fame grew. In 2000 he dressed his models like tramps—le look clochard—with newsprint dresses and dangling pots and pans. He probably counted the fact that protesters surrounded Dior’s offices as a publicity triumph. Celebrity also makes people think they are fireproof: their fans love them come what may. Mr Sheen seems to have revelled in his bad-boy image. But there is clearly a line that you cross at your peril: insulting your boss in Mr Sheen’s case or endorsing the Holocaust in Mr Galliano’s.      --Schumpeter, The Economist, March 3 2011

I was reading through one of Harry Turteldove's alternate history volumes last night, and there was an extended piece on how well things would have gone had the media been as omnipresent in 1941 as it is today. Well, the answer is not well...little things like announcing Doolittle's raid and the location of ships headed for Midway resulted in defeats leading up to Roosevelt's impeachment. Point taken -- in an era where everything can be known to everybody at everytime and anything can be said and gain some credence, Churchill's idea of the Bodyguard of Lies for truth becomes more important and less achievable.

The Schumpeter column from The Economist is focused on the creative industries, especially film and fashion. However, it's a cautionary tale for anyone who achieves stardom. Athletes face it, but people in business, industry, the military and government need to pay attention. Hubris, the overwhelming pride that the Greeks used to set up heroes for failure -- and possibly redemption -- is the real issue. When you start to think you're irreplaceable , you're one screwup away from the door.

There's a great line from the first season of Justified, when Raylin says to his ex-wife that "I never thought I was an angry man," and she responds, "You don't show it, but I've never met an angrier individual." It seemed perfectly reasonable to Raylin Givens to give a thug in Miami 24 hours to get out of town, and then to get into a gunfight. So, he finds himself back in Harlan. Hilarity ensues, and the show is supreb and captures that Scots-Irish flavor of the Mountains. And, the anger...

The difference between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton was miniscule, except that Burr was fairly open in his scandals, and Hamilton was discreet. In a time when honor was critical, piercing the veil of hypocrisy could be fatal. As attorneys -- and by all accounts, very good ones -- both Hamilton and Burr knew that truth was the absolute defense. Had Hamilton admitted that he had said somethings about Burr that were uncalled for even though true, and apologized publicly, he could have avoided the duel. Unfortunately, that was impossible.

Personally, I have on more than one occasion decided that I needed to stand on my hindlegs and sound off. While not convinced that I was irreplaceable, I was pretty much convinced that I was right and that right was an absolute defense. Things normally worked out fine, but at some point the bosses felt compelled to do something else. I could have been right, and might even have been civilized and restrained in my approach on this occasion, but they'd been backed into a corner by my previous behavior. In most cases, we parted friends, but we parted.

Have I changed? I'd like to think so, and that I am more careful about picking my fights. However, as I look around, I see a world where lots of people are not careful. I have opinions, and I express them. Since I no longer drink, I suspect that more of them are rational than there were 20 some years ago. I hope I am more articulate and reasoned in my approach...

But, one thing to remember is that everybody get's tired of people who are always right. Sometimes teh wisest thing to do is shut up early and help pick up the pieces.

Then, there are people like Charlie Sheen and others who just can't shut up. In his case, the constant media and self-aggrandizement and just plain craziness far exceed what one might expect a boss to tolerate. Unfortunately for Charlie, so long as his lifestyle seemed in line with his character on Two and a Half Men, he could act out as much as he wanted to. However, rich drunks and crackheads tend to become mean drunks and crackheads, and then violent drunks and crackheads. If you lead your life in a transparent bubble, and make a point of shooting off flares to attract attention, you're going to bump into an unpleasant reality, from which recovery is difficult.

If you must be outside the normally acceptable range of deviance, I recommend that you do everything you can to make your deviance be simple and not let it extend to all aspects of your work. Barney Frank is an openly gay man; however, he does everything he can to keep his personal life a fact, but stand in the public as an expert on government and the economy. But, some people can't avoid crowing -- Newt Gingrich is so far removed in character from the moral paragon he purports to be...and yet, he feels comfortable crowing about morality. He's intelligent and a deep-thinker on some levels; but, he's neither as bright, charismatic or intelligent as he thinks.

In a similar way, Sarah Palin draws fire from the moderate right through hard left for what many commentators see as a "snowbilly" white-trash existence. There is probably some justification to that view, but in a way she's a more modest Alaskan version of Daisy Duke. I suppose Todd could get his snow machine to jump a ditch or two...Palin became a star nationwide for no discernible reason, and her ability to stay on script and mouth cliche's has kept her in conscious for a while. But, she's one bit of craziness from becoming a denizen of infomercials, and that's probably where she'd be most comfortable. Bristol and Levi and the rest are really the Kato Kaelins of that experience. Again, so long as she stays on message and doesn't really say anything, she'll be fine.

The thing about being a Rock Star is that unless you actually are a Rock and Roll person you really shouldn't aspire to lead your life that way. Chris Hillman tells a story about trying to find Graham Parsons back in the Byrds days for a gig that he was probably going to be late for, and found him hanging out in a recording studio with the Stones. When he refused to leave, Jagger got very angry and basically threw him out of the studio, telling him that "Whatever else, you do the gig." When you start missing the gigs, you tend to go away. Somewhere, Brian Jones is nodding to that, and for a change not because he's high...

 

Jack Bauer meets Tax Policy!

Bob Dylan - Idiot Wind - Bootleg Series Vol.2 - MyVideo

If it weren't for his willingness to jump into the abyss of torture and torment, Jack Bauer would have been the hero as opposed to anti-hero of the first decade of the 21st century. It wasn't that Jack wanted to be a bad guy -- but, he was faced continuously with impossible odds and the ticking clock. Backed into a corner, he had to do things -- slap somebody with a defibrillator, let the ghouls pump some sort of psycho-poison into an informat, hook up their testicles to a nuclear reactor -- to save the nation. His justification and that of the Bush administration for its affinity for torment was that the bad guys offered him no choice. He would accept the scapegoat role, but the country would not fail due to the venality and greed and intransigence and flawed ambition of the others.

Keiffer Sutherland is Barrack Obama. Nobody else can stomach his response to the Republican holdup on taxes, so he'll do what others of principle cannot, because he responds to a higher principle.

OK, AXE...do you believe that shit? Yeah, to a point. The thing about intransigence and drawing lines in the sand is that you really have to be on a cliff's edge or raging river's bank for them to have any real meaning. If your flanks are naked, you're fucked. Rolled up, enveloped, surrounded and overwhelmed. Between the media noise machine and the short attention span of the public, a stand on principles that fails to accomplish the policy goal but is noble but still looks like a failure to most Americans. In this case, the principle in the House may have been some sort of progressive realism, but Obama's has been far simpler -- let's cobble together a government that might work, and do what is necessary to get there. Jack Bauer is a reflective enough character; he knows that he's defending the last, best hope of man by violating the rules and principles that make it the last best hope. I'm pretty sure that Barrack Obama -- Ironist-in-Chief, self-reflective pardoner of turkeys -- realizes the the contradiction. But, what the hell is he supposed to do?

Now, feelings in the House of Representatives have been pretty naked. They've done what they've been asked, and Nancy Pelosi will go down in history as an incredibly effective Speaker surrounded in government leadership by jackasses. That said, this is not the time for hurt feelings --

Resistance is expected to be fiercest in the House, where Ms. Pelosi planned to discuss the proposed agreement with rank-and-file lawmakers later in the day.

“The tax proposal announced by the president clearly presents the differences between Democrats and Republicans,” Ms. Pelosi said in her statement. “Any provision must be judged by two criteria: does it create jobs to grow our economy and does it add to the deficit?

“The Democratic provisions will create jobs and help 155 million workers through tax cuts for the middle class, helping working families who are struggling and growing the economy. The Republican demands would provide tax cuts to the millionaires and billionaires, fail to create jobs and increase the deficit.”

She continued: “To add insult to injury, the Republican estate tax proposal would help only 39,000 of America’s richest families, while adding about $25 billion more to the deficit.Republicans have held the middle class hostage for provisions that benefit only the wealthiest 3 percent, do not create jobs, and add tens of billions of dollars to the deficit.”

House Democrats last week approved President Obama’s preferred tax plan, which would have let the Bush-era rates expire at the end of the month on annual income above $250,000 for couples and $200,000 for individuals.

Well, Speaker Pelosi does in fact sum it up well. Unfortunately, the alternative to passing this thing are complex and generally bad. I think that the compromise doesn't do enough, by the way -- the 99ers need help and there needs to be more job creation. I've always thought that the best tax approach was to allow tax credits in some places instead of deductions or in addition to deductions. If United Motherfuckers should increase the number of employees making less than $100000 by 100, they've got some additional productivity; they also have a deduction from their costs equal to the cost of salaries and benefits; sweeten it by adding a 3% credit. If you do that, well, you're reducing taxes as a reward for adding jobs, not just because...

However, that gets arcane. It's just to point out that there are other possibilities that could have been investigated. However, that would require a willingness to engage in actual thinking as opposed to exchange of talking points. The real corruption of the Bush years is going to lie in our increased inability to think beyond talking points on a PowerPoint slide.

A greater problem is time. This discussion should have been happening in the summer of 2008. Yeah, 2008. And, it needed to stay way up on the agenda! There would have been time for debate, discussion and forced compromise. FORCED COMPROMISE. Lock the bastards in the fucking room and keep them there until they can come to an agreement.Or, get a majority big enough to not need them.

Probably not going to happen with this President and this Senate Leader. Harry Reid is tougher than he looks, but the Senate is a "deliberative" body, occasional flareups of assholeness aside. But, at this point the time has run out...doing something for most is better than getting nothing done for any in the real world.

Chris Matthews had an interesting point yesterday, and Representative Anthony Weiner seemed to echo it. The President has a different job than the members of the Legislative Branch. At the end of the day, he has to execute policy, enforce laws and work with what he has to work with. While the screwed up mess he's stuck with is in large part his own fault -- although he had a lot of help! Martha Coakley and Massachusetts come to mind immediately -- Letting extended unemployment benefits go south and having everybody face tax increases with the highest percentage increase going to the lowest tax brackets interestingly enough, which just goes to show that math is interesting and kind of pointed. Holding your breathe until you passout for the sake of bitchslapping the rich is a flawed strategy.

If I were suddenly Chairman of the National Democratic Party, which is a fate I would do whatever I needed to in order to avoid, I'd stake out a message for 2012 and put that on ever Democratic piece of paper, legislation, sound bite and fence...Republicans are the party of the Rich! Had I been Speaker Pelosi in August of 2010, this would have been the issue. The changes in the tax code would have been sent to the Senate and trumpeted. Of course it wouldn't have passed the Senate as proposed; but, come on. Make the fight. People don't understand nor particularly care about the deranged, the arcane, the parliamentary. They care about what's happening in their lives.

Of course, the theory that small businesses and entrepreneurs are going to out and invest their extra money is silly. With the exception of people who can think long term, the Warren Buffetts and Bill Gates and Alan Mulallhys and so on, the rich will put their savings into the tools and toys of the rich--Maybachs, mansions and hedge funds. But, the rest of us will probably spend the money in order to survive.

The time to start the fight is now. However, it needs to be done in such a way that no more pain is inflicted on the average American. I suspect the Democrats will probably do that -- what will be interesting is the size of the pound of flesh taken out of the Republicans. Spin this correctly, and you set up Boehner and McConnell for two really tough years as their rough beasts not only slouch toward Bethlehem but take up residence in the inns and offices. Win the war after losing every battle...

It will probably be awful but it will definitely be interesting

“In the end all that’s left are flotsam, jetsam and photographs….” This used to be a pretty damn good country. Sorry to say used to be; however, things are definitely going wrong. My wife caught a few minutes of Sarah Palin’s Alaska by accident and then summed up our current reality with “What country do I want to move to?” Instinctively, Crusader AXE bristles at such remarks, but the instinct was muted last night...every place I'd want to go is either going to hell too or has already arrived there. 

Paul Krugman is becoming our Cassandra. In today’s column, he eviscerates Alan Simpson and the old coots comments about how he can’t wait for the bloodbath when the tea party people want to slash spending as payback for increasing the credit limit. As a soldier, I never had a subordinate worth a damn from Wyoming…Simpson is from Wyoming…Dick Cheney is from Wyoming. Nothing worth a damn is from Wyoming. I've been to Wyoming and I've met a lot of nice people there who really seem to have their heads screwed on straight. I guess the diseased, deranged and useless are driven out by the remainder cullign the herd. Simpson’s remarks remind me of that, which I do not find at all reassuring.

Krugman’s column today is well worth the time, but I’m going to cut to the climax. He writes

How does this end? Mr. Obama is still talking about bipartisan outreach, and maybe if he caves in sufficiently he can avoid a federal shutdown this spring. But any respite would be only temporary; again, the G.O.P. is just not interested in helping a Democrat govern.

My sense is that most Americans still don’t understand this reality. They still imagine that when push comes to shove, our politicians will come together to do what’s necessary. But that was another country. (And besides, the wench is dead…)

It’s hard to see how this situation is resolved without a major crisis of some kind. Mr. Simpson may or may not get the blood bath he craves this April, but there will be blood sooner or later. And we can only hope that the nation that emerges from that blood bath is still one we recognize.

My guess is that it will be worse than we can think, if only because the linked nature of everything wasn’t so great before. It’s uncomfortable to admit, but I think Krugman nailed it on his blog yesterday when he wrote that Obama appears to have bought into the right-wing myth about the New Deal and the way the world works…and, we should have known it.

More and more, it’s becoming clear that progressives who had their hearts set on Obama were engaged in a huge act of self-delusion. Once you got past the soaring rhetoric you noticed, if you actually paid attention to what he said, that he largely accepted the conservative storyline, a view of the world, including a mythological history, that bears little resemblance to the facts… And confronted with a situation utterly at odds with that storyline … he stayed with the myth. 

Governing in a Republic is not about power – it’s about using power to make things work for the electorate. In our country, the electorate includes all citizens over the age of 18. It’s not just the voters of your particular stripe, print or plaid – it’s about all the voters. This means having the sense to do things that are perhaps electorally unwise but that need to be done. It means being able to respond to the environment the way that it is. It doesn’t mean going off to sulk or hopefully get your head patted in India. It means getting mad and getting things done.

Not happening on this guy’s watch. The reason that we are in our current situation is not because of the Tea Party. The Tea Party came to be because of some structural things wrong with this nation and the inability or unwillingness of the President to do what needed to be done. He’s worked so hard to square the circle that he ended up with a trapezoid, and doesn’t get it yet. Nancy Pelosi got legislation passed, but Harry Reid and the Senate failed to do what needed to be done. It’s interesting that every time it looked like Reid would actually send for the mattresses, the Republicans would suddenly become reasonable on their various filibusters. But, in the interest of maintaining civility, the President and the Leader would collude…for what?

So, I think the senile gloating of Alan Simpson combined with the babbling of John Kyl and the rest of the Washington establishment points to a new day. A bad day, probably. Perhaps the President ought to take a page out of the Marine Corps’ book. My thought when hearing that the Marines were bringing some Abrams Main BattleTanks to join the party in Helmand province was along the lines of “What kept you?” While I wouldn’t recommend using them in Waziristan, the idea of laying down 120mm covering fire in an area of that Goddamned place is very attractive. There is nothing restrained about the Abrams Weapons System.

Here’s a thought about restraint? I keep hearing that the Congress has to recess for Christmas and Thanksgiving? Why? Bring that stuff to a vote – Unemployment Extension, Defense Authorization, Aid to the States and lay it out simply. If you don’t extend unemployment, this is what happens. If you don’t pass this Defense Authorization Bill, this happens. If you don’t pass the Aid to the States, this happens. And, get the goddamn mattresses out in the Senate…

Or not.  Jim DeMint has a lean and hungry look; Rick Perry and DeMint would make a great Cassius and Brutus. While no oratorical Cicero, I can see McConnell waiving his hands and babbling about Caesar’s tyranny and continuing to encourage this nonsense. Sarah Palin and Dick Armey make a great Clodia and Clodius…The thing that reassures me the most is that between the military, the media and the academy, we have more going for us than the Romans did. But, I’d beware the Ides of March this coming year…

 

Out of the park...

  Thirty six years ago, realizing that the study of philosophy and liberal science had alienated me from the real world, I joined the Army. One would think that Barrack Obama would have had more than enough exposure to the real world to be fully grounded in it. Instead, his abstract and post ironic approach to everything has resulted in where we are at the moment. I'm all for Socratic Self-Examination and living the examined life, but Socrates refused to act and had to drink the hemlock. Plato, faced with the same problem later, left Athens, not wanting them to sin against philosophy again. Or, was it Aristotle? No real matter...

Obama channelling Grace Kelly. Since the election, I've been watching and listening to lots of people on the left whimper about how unfair life is; however, some commentators have been wondering what the hell? Jon Stewart gently scolded the President in advance, suggesting that the voters might have expected audacity instead of comity. At times, Obama has reminded me of Grace Kelly in High Noon -- there are other Quaker references available, but the whole "let's not be unpleasant, let's all try to get along, none of our concern," approach of this administration has pissed me off. It's not as if we couldn't see it coming...

For example,  Paul Krugman has chosen to once more lay out a strategy for politics as a contact sport-- explain what went wrong and what could work in the future. I have no reason to believe that this administration will do what he suggests, although if Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have any sense and don't want to see another debacle in 2012, they should be slamming dancing the guy, with Joe Biden pogoing on his ass to get him to remember something...

When Obama won, the Democratic National Committee was run by the Vermont madman, Howard Dean. Dean famously said when asked whether he was from the liberal or the conservative wing of the party that he was from "the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party." The party in 2008 seemed to understand that; this year not so much. I'm not going to vote for a moderate Republican unless my choice is someone like Ben Nelson. In fact, in that case I'll write in the name of one of my brothers in the Defeatists, or maybe a Malcontent from Area 51 like Cultureghost. I don't drink diet coke, I never liked light beer, and I truly dislike non-dairy creamer. IF I AM GOING TO VOTE FOR SOMEONE, I WANT THE BASTARD TO STAND FOR SOMETHING. Maybe even, something I believe in. Most Americans are the same way.

Another Democratic leader was Harry Truman. Truman was famous, according to Dylan Ratigan anyway for saying "People say I give 'em hell. I don't; I tell the truth and they call it hell." Krugman has a formula going forward...and it's worth paying attention to. In response to the complaints that the administration didn't focus on jobs, Krugman points out how the Republicans were allowed to capture the narrative. No reputable economist was satisfied with the size and scope of the stimulus...but, compromise and sweet harmony overcame good advice and facts. It is not wise to seek accord with rabid dogs, scheming slimesuckers and the insane or, Chris Matthews put it so well, the "hypnotized." Krugman has pointed out in other places that neither Geitner nor Summers were really Keynesian economists --Obama, to steal a line from Animal House trusted his frat buddies, the Deltas...he fucked up. Then, he began to endorse the thinking of the Omegas -- the Boehners, the McConnells, the Greenspans. If the Democrats thought they had a Blutarski, they were wrong...in fact, they may have had a Marmalarde running things. Krugman gets it right...

So where, in this story, does “focus” come in? Lack of nerve? Yes. Lack of courage in one’s own convictions? Definitely. Lack of focus? No.

And why would failing to tackle health care have produced a better outcome? The focus people never explain.

Of course, there’s a subtext to the whole line that health reform was a mistake: namely, that Democrats should stop acting like Democrats and go back to being Republicans-lite. Parse what people like Mr. Bayh are saying, and it amounts to demanding that Mr. Obama spend the next two years cringing and admitting that conservatives were right.

There is an alternative: Mr. Obama can take a stand.

For one thing, he still has the ability to engineer significant relief to homeowners, one area where his administration completely dropped the ball during its first two years. Beyond that, Plan B is still available. He can propose real measures to create jobs and aid the unemployed and put Republicans on the spot for standing in the way of the help Americans need.

Would taking such a stand be politically risky? Yes, of course. But Mr. Obama’s economic policy ended up being a political disaster precisely because he tried to play it safe. It’s time for him to try something different.

So, have the meeting with these guys, point out that you're still the President, and demand cooperation. Have Pelosi and Reid gear up and get as much stuff in the backlog passed as possible. If the Republicans block votes or filibuster, so be it. Publicize it, and show the nation what is actually happening. And, point out to McConnell and his crew in the Senate that filibuster reform is very possible, in fact, likely...after the new Senate takes office. Which will have a pared down, more liberal, more progressive base. And, it only takes 51 votes to pass a rules change when the Senate is seated.

Or not. I could see both parties becoming irrelevant. I think it would be a problem for the nation, doddering as we are on the issue of remaining  a world party or becoming a client state of China, but what the hell...I'll probably be dead before it all goes completely south. It won't be a great show, and it may drag on. But when you elect somebody who claims the audacity of hope as a trademark and then fritters away two years so that the next two years will be unnecessarily tough, you can't rule it out.

One other thing has irked me of late. The press has been blasting the White House for not selling its accomplishments. Well, in our Athenian Republic as advocated by the Founders and explained in the Federalist Papers, the press should have done that as a part of being fair, balanced and doing its job of informing the voters so they can make the best choices. Obviously, the framers and the authors were on crack. It amazes me that when any critical thinker realizes that the attention span and memory of  the average member of the public is about .5 nanoseconds (Ohhh, shiney!) the White House figures that its accomplishments, however historic and marvelous, but undeniably complex, will come to mind when Bob, who's wife has been laid off, kid has had to drop out of college and mother's home is being repossessed will remember that he can't be denied insurance next year or that if the kid had taken his loans out now instead of when he started, he could still be in school or that the bank did lower Mom's mortgage for six months, or that he has an extra $50 in his paycheck since they reduced payroll taxes and his wife has an extra $50 in her unemployment check. All he knows is that he's pissed off, screwed over and the people on Fox News use simple words and no big ideas. The last three Democratic Presidents -- Carter, Clinton, Obama -- have all been bright, highly educated and ultimately ineffective due to being so bright, educated and arrogant as to forget what got them there in the first place. Obama has two years to replicate Clinton and maybe fix this disaster -- we'll see.