The never ending war.

It's wrong. It's unpopular. It has killed a million Muslims. It is becoming the Arab holocaust. So what do we do?  We create shadow armies within the CIA, the Pentagon and the State Department.  We kill anyone we like anywhere we choose. The President's advisor, John O. Brennan has the President's ear and he is gnawing on it.  The Obama wars are now worse than the Bush wars in every way.

Pakistan is flooding.  No surprise there - the very first overt sign of runaway anthropogenic global warming is radical weather.  Why?  Because the earth has now warmed enough to maintain between five and ten percent more water vapor in the atmosphere. Water vapor is our primary greenhouse gas. When it rains, it will be a hundred or thousand year flood.  Areas will get their entire annual rainfall all at once and then go dry. Pakistan-type floods will be...and already are...commonplace. Enormous damage, plague, crop destruction and disaster has begun on the largest scale we have. Our planet is now going to kill us.

The people who told me (and still insist) that the increased CO2 level is good for plants and that more water vapor means more rain and that's good too, and that anthropogenic global warming is a hoax are going to die because they cannot see what is happening around them and will not be prepared. It is not a liberal plot to socialize America.  It is not a conservative plot to destroy the economy.  It is a global issue and it is not going to get better.  Everyone...conservatives and liberals, Democrat, socialist, Communist whatever...eat and use energy.  Many drive cars.  Blaming the result of those activities on a political subgroup is irrational.  In fact, it is insane.

Further insanity is the belief that Obama is a socialist or a closet Muslim.  If you look at what he has actually done and disregard what he SAYS, you discover that, in reality, he is an old-school Republican. He has carried over and expanded every disastrous Republican policy Bush started. 

All of us know the economy isn't getting better but Obama won't lead us. He will not take on anything controversial. He says the economy is improving because Geithner and Summers, two of the principal architects of the collapse, tell him it is. Keeping them put the foxes in the henhouse.

Instead of grabbing the reins, the President founders and is reduced to injecting himself into minutiae: the college professor who was NOT really a victim of racism...he had to walk that back... a USDA firing which was NOT justified...he had to walk that back. Now the mosque in New York and, of course, he has to walk THAT back. Constitutionally, he was right - but it wasn't a Constitutional issue. Politically, it was a disaster he cannot correct. The conservative right now has proof, in their minds, that he is a Muslim and he can't walk that back.

It gets worse. Look at the President. He doesn't smile and joke anymore His agenda is in tatters. ALL the advice he took about Afghanistan (and EVERY OTHER MAJOR ISSUE) was wrong. He stepped up and took ownership of the war. Wrong. Someone on his staff convinced him to renege on every campaign promise he made (net neutrality is the most recent) and is leading him down the garden path. Because he misplaced his trust and cannot make corrections, the economy is lost for a generation.

From Robert Reich:

Forget a Double Dip. We’re Still in One Long Big Dipper.

Saturday, August 14, 2010

It’s nonsense to think of the economy heading downward again into a double dip when most Americans never emerged from the first dip. We’re still in one long Big Dipper.

More people are out of work today than they were last year, counting everyone too discouraged even to look for work. The number of workers filing new claims for jobless benefits rose last week to highest level since February. Not counting temporary census workers, a total of only 12,000 net new private and public jobs were created in July — when 125,000 are needed each month just to keep up with growth in the population of people who want and need to work.

Not since the government began to measure the ups and downs of the busines cycle has such a deep recession been followed by such anemic job growth. Jobs came back at a faster pace even in March 1933 after the economy started to “recover” from the depths of the Great Depression. Of course, that job growth didn’t last long. That recovery wasn’t really a recovery at all. The Great Depression continued. And that’s exactly my point. The Great Recession continues. 

Even investors are beginning to see reality. Starting in February the stock market rallied because corporate profits were rising briskly. Investors didn’t mind that profits were coming from payroll cuts, foreign sales, and gimmicks like share buy-backs — none of which could be sustained over the long term. But the rally died in April when investors began to see how paper-thin these profits actually were. And now the stock market is back to where it was at the start of the year.

What to do? First, don’t listen to Wall Street and the right.

Forget the Neo-Hoover deficit hawks who day we have to cut government spending and trim upcoming deficits. We didn’t get into this mess and aren’t remaining in it because of budget deficits. In fact, the only way to reduce long-term deficits is to restore jobs and growth so government revenues rise and expenses like unemployment insurance drop.

Ignore the government haters who say we have to void or delay upcoming regulations of Wall Street and big business. We got here because Wall Street went bonkers, the housing bubble burst, and the middle class couldn’t continue to spend becuase their health-care bills were soaring and their pay was stagnating. New regulations of Wall Street and big business are necessary to avoid a repeat.

And don’t believe the supply-siders who say we have to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Because the wealthy save rather than spend most of their incomes, extending their tax cut won’t do squat. And restoring their marginal tax rate to what it was under Bill Clinton won’t harm the economy. The Clinton years had the best sustained economy in American history.   

The central problem is lack of demand — and that’s what has to be tackled. 

Three of the four sources of demand have stopped working. (1) Consumers can’t and won’t buy because they’re still under a huge debt load, can’t get more credit, are afraid of losing their jobs (or already have), depend on two wage earners at least one of whom is working part-time and pulling in less, or have to save. (2) Businesses won’t invest and spend on creating more jobs if they don’t see consumers willing to buy more. (3) Exports are stalled because the dollar is so high they cost too much, much of the rest of the world is still struggling with recession, and American firms can make things for sale abroad more cheaply abroad.

That leaves only one remaining source of demand — government. We need a giant jobs program to hire people and put money in their pockets that they’ll spend and thereby create more jobs. Put ideology aside and recognize this fact. If it makes you more comfortable call it the National Defense Jobs Act. Call it the WPA. Call it Chopped Liver. Whatever, we have to get the great army of the unemployed and underemployed working again. 

Also: Put more money in consumer’s wallets by eliminating payroll taxes on the first $20K of income (and make it up by applying payroll taxes to incomes over $250K.)

Also: Get more hiring by giving the states and locales interest-free loans — so they can rehire all the teachers, fire fighters, police officers, and sanitation workers they’ve fired — to be repaid when their state employment rates hit 5 percent or below.

Also: Get more credit by having the Fed return to “quantitative easing” — expanding the money supply by purchasing mortgage-backed and other types of securities.

If we let the deficit hawks and government haters dominate this debate, as they have, the Big Dipper will continue for years. The Great Depression lasted twelve.

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From Mark Knoller:

After the Senate passed that $600 million Border Security Bill yesterday, President Obama issued a statement asserting that securing the southwest border has been "a top priority" since he took office.

But if you think Mr. Obama can have but a single "top priority," you'd be wrong. He's got a load of them.

In an Address to the Nation two months ago, Mr. Obama declared "our top priority is to recover and rebuild from a recession that has touched the lives of nearly every American."

More than any other issue, he has used the phrase "top priority" about digging the economy out of the recession and creating jobs. And on this issue, he drew a distinction between "a" top priority and "the" top priority.

"Creating jobs in the United States and ensuring a return to sustainable economic growth is the top priority for my Administration," he said in an Executive Order last March on his National Export Initiative.

Early in his administration, Mr. Obama also assigned the "top priority" label to his campaign promise to overhaul America's health care system. But a check of his speeches since taking office, reflect a bevy of other "top priorities:"

FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS: "...that's something that's going to be a top priority." (4/27/10)

ENERGY SECURITY: "And that's why my energy security plan has been one of the top priorities of my Administration since the day I took office." (4/28/10)

EDUCATION REFORM: "To train our workers for the jobs of tomorrow, we've made education reform a top priority in this Administration." (2/24/10)

STUDENT LOAN REFORM: "This is something that I've made a top priority." (2/1/10)

EXPORTS BY SMALL BUSINESSES: "This is going to be a top priority." (12/3/09)

HEALTH ASSISTANCE TO 9/11 FIRST RESPONDERS: "I'm not just talking the talk, we've been budgeting this as a top priority for this Administration." (2/3/10)

END HOMELESSNESS AMONG VETERANS: "I've also directed (Veterans Affairs) Secretary Shinseki to focus on a top priority: reducing homeless among veterans." (8/17/09)

HURRICANE PREPAREDNESS: "Our top priority is ensuring the public safety. That means appropriate sheltering in place or if necessary, getting as many people as possible out of harm's way prior to landfall." (5/29/09)

H1N1 FLU VACCINATIONS: "And throughout this process, my top priority has been the health and the safety of the American people." (5/1/09)

SUPPORT FOR MILITARY FAMILIES: "These military families are heroes too. And they are a top priority of Michelle and me. And they will always have our support." (5/30/09)

STRENTHENING TIES WITH CANADA AND MEXICO: "We're going to make this a top priority..." (10/16/09)

CONSUMER PROTECTION: "During these challenging times, the needs of American consumers are a top priority of my Administration." (2/11/09)

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION: "So this is going to be a top priority generally improving our environmental quality." (11/5/09)

The dictionary defines "top" as a singular entity: "the part of anything that is first or foremost."

By designating a multitude of "top priorities," Mr. Obama can be seen trying to score political points with the constituencies for all of these issues.

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China is now the world's second largest economy.  We borrow a billion dollars a day from China just to cover the interest on our Chinese debt.  Why do I feel the need to mention this every single day?  Because China has a national agenda and China has several things we don't. Patience. A sense of history. A trade balance. No uncovered debt. Choices.

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