Category Archives: Essays

Probably the only thing that has worked effectively in the so-called War on Terror has been not winning the war. That’s right, Cheney is wrong in warning that Obama’s policies may put the U.S. at greater risk, unless of course Cheney is worried that Obama may make the mistake of prevailing in Afghanistan.

Cheney isn’t the only one who is mistaken. In a pair of articles published in today’s Washington Post – one by David Ignatius and the other jointly by John McCain and Joseph Lieberman – the writers give opposing views on our military operations in Afghanistan. One side preaches a moderate approach, recognizing the perils of the historically untamable region. The other side stresses the importance of immediate “victory” (McCain, if you recall from the elections, is obsessed with winning wars, which must be some subconscious fear of having lost in Vietnam). Both sides are wrong. Continue reading →

I really enjoy the great breadth of topics and interviewees on the Leonard Lopate Show. On yesterday’s show, Lopate’s guests added an interesting view to the conversation about the economic crisis.

Have you found yourself wondering latley “who or what destroyed the economy?” Well, New York Times columnist David Leonhardt and labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan have a simple answer to that question: we’ve been robbed. In his article “Infinite Debt” for the April issue of Harpers Geoghegan theorizes that the legalization of usury created perverse incentives for investors that led to a flight of capital. Leonhardt takes the theory a step further in his Times article by suggesting that investors knowingly looted money from the government in the form of bailouts.

Listen for yourself.

The Republican tax cut hoax, costing future tax payers billions in indebtedness is not the only ideological sham of American history. As the Chinese government now questions whether it should continue to finance American debt, Robert Scheer on Left Right and Center, just made the very true observation about the irony of American capitalism needing to be bankrolled by its Cold War nemesis the Chinese Communist Party.

For all the talk about how great it was that Reagan won the Cold War, the fact is that China is run by the communist party that was our sworn enemy in the Cold War, and we were told that if we don’t end their reign the world will never be safe. And [now] we are depending on the Chinese communists to save the world’s biggest capitalist economy. They evidently invested wisely. They still seem to have a growth rate. And I think that is one of the great ironies of the last fifty years of history. And I think [Wen Jiabao’s] point was valid: [the Chinese government] invested a lot of our money in [U.S.] treasuries, do [Americans] know what they are doing? Are they solid? Are they serious?

From Gary Varvel. Good find Mundo Reactivo!

I was just looking at this funny anti-Obama poster calling Obama’s spending plan the Debt Star. Ironically, though, the real Debts Stars — the guys who amassed the largest deficits in American history — were Reagan and W. And they did it with the help of tax cuts paid for by debt, an arms race paid for by debt, and wars paid for by debt. As a matter of fact, the whole notion of tax cuts in the U.S. is really just one festering delayed taxation scheme we pay for in the short term by borrowing. We simply redistribute the wealth today by making someone else pay for it tomorrow.

And here we go again, the Republicans are calling for more tax cuts and Obama has had to put tax cuts into the stimulus bill. One day we’ll look back and won’t be able to distinguish the tax cuts from the toxic mortgages, predator lending, bailed-out flunkies and ponzi schemes.

I just saw an ad for the new Ford Flex. What is Ford’s response to the American auto industry’s dire outlook? A seven-seater SUV. Yes, another bigger, un-exportable vehicle is exactly what the U.S. needs for energy independence and economic survival. Unless, of course, energy independence is merely a ruse, a political gimmick, a distraction while government continues to dedicate citizen resources to enrich oil companies, resurrect the auto industry, and perpetuate consumer waste, aka the American Way of Life. That’s not all, the new Ford Flex has refrigerated cup holders in each of its three rows to keep our obese sodas perfected chilled while most likely sitting solo in traffic on absurdly long commutes. That’s exactly what we need.

Yesterday I was listening to a conservative pundit rant against the Obama administration’s health care ambitions, what he called a return to “big government”, and then, out of the blue, he whined about trial lawyers. Later in the day, I read about how the conservative, Republican nominated Supreme Court justices dissented, arguing against state rights; in other words in favor of federal preemption and federal regulation. Sounds like a major bout of conservative schizophrenia to me. Continue reading →

Last night I saw Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino. The movie did have a few touching (a.k.a cheesy) pro-immigration moments, but overall I would sum it up as Lurch meeting Charleton Heston. Eastwood spends the movie either sounding like Lurch from the Addam’s Family — errrrrrrr — or campaigning to take Charleton Heston’s role as the aging Hollywood face of the N.R.A. Was Eastwood purposely making the argument that the only way to protect one’s self, family and home from crime was to build up a personal weapon’s arsenal? Having found the only two minorities in the entire Republican Party (Michael Steele and Bobby Jindal) and promoting them as its new face, maybe the Grand Old Party hopes that Gran Torino will fool immigrants into believing that the Second Amendment alone can protect them from gangs.

In today’s Washington Post, ultra-conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer writes that Obama wants to make the U.S. like Europe. Some Americans like me who actually live in Europe don’t think that is necessarily a bad idea.

I think I have already made this point ad nauseum, but I will repeat myself: throughout continental Europe, health care is free and universal and there is no noticeable difference in quality to that in the U.S. Meanwhile, public transportation and infrastructure is very noticeably superior in Europe and crime rates are much lower. And imagine, with fewer vacation days and labor strikes, American workers are actually on par with their French counterparts in terms of productivity. Continue reading →