Archive for the China Category

Time To Talk: Hear The Guitar (December 9, 2013)

Posted in China, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Military, O'Bama, Romney, Syria on December 9, 2013 by e-commentary.org

. . .

A          “In the past, proclaiming ‘National Defense’ supported any project or excused any invasion.  Today, merely alluding to ‘National Security’ rationalizes anything however short-sighted or foolhardy or counterproductive or illegal or unconstitutional.”

B          “Chanting ‘State Secrets’ is allowed to terminate the inquiry.  We need to repeat the need for diplomacy over and over to advance our real National Security’ interests.  We cannot bomb our way to peace.”

. . .

A          “Making sense of Syria is problematic.  And a problem.  We support one group this year that becomes our reviled enemy next year.  The enemy we despise this year is our tenuous ally next year.”

B          “The enemy of my enemy is my enemy, now or later.”

A          “The enemy of my enemy is my enemy, just you wait.”

B          “I don’t know if a person with a clear head and a thousand hours of spare time and a generous budget could discern what has gone on and is going on over there.”

. . .

A          “Today, we are blessed because we don’t need to know the issues or the factions or the politics, we just need to know the players in America.  The same folks who brought us the Iraq nightmare now propose to bring us the Iran nightmare.”

B          “Elections have consequences.  Romney would have us at war.  O’Bama is avoiding the bait.”

A          “He should have been prescient or at least astute enough not to proclaim a line, because the line often is just one side of the box that imprisons you.”

B          “Mark my words, more is going on than we can even generally intuit.”

. . .

A          “Everyone is concerned about the financial mess we are bequeathing to the proverbial grandchildren who are trotted out during spending debates.  If America could transition from an unsustainable Empire to a sustainable Republic, we could reduce offensive military spending and bestow less debt to the proverbial grandchildren.  We also could bequeath a world with proverbial grandchildren in other lands who have not learned from their grandparents to hate America.”

B          “Hate is contagious.”

A          “And inherited.”  

. . .

A          “China and Japan are playing mouse and cat over some islands.”

B          “Who is the mouse?”

. . .

A          “And the Falklands are returning to the international radar.”

B          “Some pronounce it the Malvinas.”

A          “Oil, baby, it’s always pronounced oil.”

. . .

[See the “e-ssays” at The Drums of War (February 20, 2012) and Syria: Gas and Fog (August 26, 2013).]

Bumper sticker of the week:

Diplomacy is what happens when the body count gets high enough

Centrist-Conservative Beats Corporatist-Culture Warrior (November 12, 2012)

Posted in Blue States / Red States, China, Elections, Iran, Journalism, Newspapers, O'Bama, Political Parties, Presidency, Press/Media, Romney, Russia, Southern Strategy, Spending on November 12, 2012 by e-commentary.org

. . .

C1        “Or should the headline read ‘Black And Browns Outwit Whites And Green (Paper).’”

C2       “Or ‘Ascetic Triumphs Over Bully.’  The election was a ‘campaign’ conducted in ‘battleground’ states by ‘operatives’ operating in a ‘war room’ who unwittingly are continuing to prosecute the ‘Great American Civil War.’”

C1        “The ‘Republican Southern Strategy’ is the ‘Republican National Strategy’, yet the Republicans were not able to conquer more than the ‘Contemporary Confederacy.’”

C2       “For two score or perhaps two score and four years since Nixon patented the policy, the ‘Southern Strategy’ was the go to play in the Republican playbook but may now need to be revisited.”

C1        “America is divided between the ‘Educated States’ that vote Blue and the ‘Uneducated States’ that vote Red.  States such as Massachusetts, Maryland, Colorado, Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey, Virginia, New Hampshire, New York and Minnesota are the ‘Educated States’ that vote Blue.  States such as West Virginia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Alabama, Nevada, Indiana, Tennessee and Oklahoma are the ‘Uneducated States’ that vote Red.  Those who are less educated are motivated by and respond to fear.”

C2       “Nevada is the only exception in that group.  The citizens may not sport as much formal education, but Nevadans are a spunky group of transplants.”

C1        “And O’Bama and Reid also ran a great ground game in Nevada and in all the other battleground states.”

C2       “The residents of the upper Midwestern states such as Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Illinois and the pivotal Ohio do not sport as many sheep skins, but they exercise horse sense in abundance.”

C1        “Wherever you find oil and gas, you find racism and corruption.  Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, North Dakota and Alaska.  With the discovery of oil, Alaska transitioned from Minnesota to Mississippi.  Astute pollsters note that these states tend to vote Red.  And then along comes North Dakota that elects to elect Heidi Heitkamp as a Senator.  Dead dinosaurs are destiny.”

C2       “Demographics are destiny.  Demo-graphics versus Republica-graphics.  And the outcome is graphic.  The Last Great White Hope is hopeless.  The rich White boys who want power are facing a reality that even the Red States are becoming Browner and Blacker.”

C1        “A strategic planner who seeks to locate a business that exploits the workers and despoils the land migrates to a Red State.  An enterprise that requires an educated populace searching for a sustainable quality of life migrates to a Blue State.  There are exceptions in pockets like Austin and a thousand other havens and oases, yet the general rule is true.”

C2       “Virginia’s senatorial contest between the Klan and Confederate Party candidate George Allen and the Centrist Party candidate Tim Kaine reveals the schism in many states that are described as Purple.  North Virginia went with Kaine and South Virginia went with Allen in a state where there are now more North Virginians than South Virginians.”

C1        “The educated electorate in North Carolina did not do it this year because it is so desperately small.  Curious that Bank of America’s decision to locate in Charlotte years before the 2008 election may have provided enough additional voters to provide the margin for O’Bama in the state in 2008 but not in 2012.”

C2       “South Florida is populated by transplanted Northerners who voted for O’Bama and North Florida is an appendage of Georgia and voted for Romney, but there are more Northern voters in South Florida than South voters in North Florida.”

C1        “And a few Browns.”

C2       “And a few Browns.  In an election that looked like it would be bought by a few faceless billionaires showering money from above and using Anger Mongering radio, billions of ordinary citizens on the ground really did made the difference for O’Bama.”

C1        “And two candidates shot themselves in the foot and then put the foot in their mouths and proclaimed that rape is akin to a sprained ankle or a trick knee.  New Hampshire was in play until Tuesday night and after the smoke and mirrors cleared on Wednesday morning, the smarter gender is in control in the first all-women delegation.  And the neighboring Bay Staters are banking on Elizabeth Warren.”

C2       “Brown did not do well in Massachusetts.  Tammy Baldwin, an openly gay female Senator-elect from Wisconsin, and Krysten Sinema, an openly bisexual Representative-elect from Arizona of all places, were not the pick of the billionaires.”

C1        “Tammy Duckworth, a wounded veteran from Illinois, finally made it.  Unfortunate that Pete Stark, the lone atheist, lost his seat.” 

C2       “The first Hindu member of Congress, Tulsi Gabbard, and a combat veteran.”

C1        “With Pete Stark gone, someone else must take up the Carbon Tax effort.  God voted under the name ‘Sandy’ as a single issue voter this year.”

C2       “Without showing any photo id.  The place is going to look like America.  Blue States such as Washington and Colorado have declared peace in the war on drugs and legalized the recreational use of marijuana.  Chalk up another win for freedom and liberty.”

C1        “And Washington, Maine and Maryland now allow an individual to decide if he or she wants to get married.”

C2       “Another win for freedom and liberty.  And Minnesota voters rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to ban marriage equality.”

C1        “Washington state is awfully pushy.  All the talented folks will migrate there.”

C2       “When the Nobel Committee signals that it will reward the conclusion, someone will connect the dots between freedom and liberty in a state and clean and green growth and development.  The Blue States vote for freedom and liberty.”

C1        “In 2004, O’Bama came to national attention aspiring for one United States of America, but only a little more than half of America will ever give him a chance.”

C2       “And now that petty pernicious pol Mitch McConnell is committed to making O’Bama a two-term President.”

C1        “We are the Red States of America and the Blue States of America.  There is no shame in candid self-awareness.” 

C2       “And yet the two countries confront many common concerns.  Iran is still Iran, China is still China, Russia is still Russia, and the fiscal fiasco is straight out of Wile E. Coyote.”

C1        “Europe may implode; the Middle East may explode.  Someone may want to take a look at the numbers that underpin entitlements and unnecessary defense/offense spending.  They still don’t add up.”

C2       “For decades, the Blue States have subsidized the Red States, yet we may see Illinois, California and/or New York, three small Blue countries in America, in need of major subsidies.”

C1        “Someone will say something about immigration.”  

. . .

[See the “e-ssay” titled America Recycles Day, November 15 (November 15, 2010).]

Bumper stickers of the week:

Women are people too.

The odds for the election of the first gay Buddhist Brown woman to the White House should be available soon.

George Will:             Romney:         331;    Obama:        217

Michael Barone:      Romney:          315;    Obama:        223

Glenn Beck:               Romney:          321;    Obama:        217

Dick Morris:              Romney:          325

Carl Rove:                   Romney:          279

“I have been assured that everything is in place for a Romney sweep of the Electoral College and the popular vote.  Talk is cheap.  Are you man enough to put your money where your mouth is.  $100 that Romney takes it.”  “I don’t have any assurances.  There is $1000 where my mouth is.  If you are man enough.” 

“I have been assured that everything is in place for a Romney sweep of the Electoral College and the popular vote.  Talk is cheap.  Are you man enough to put your money where your mouth is.  $100 that Romney takes it.”  “I don’t have any assurances.  There is $1000 where my mouth is.  If you are man enough.” 

Flip Flop and Flim Flam v. NObama and Smokin’ Jo? (September 10, 2012)

Posted in China, Elections, Iran, Iraq, O'Bama, Political Parties, Politics, Presidency, Romney on September 10, 2012 by e-commentary.org

. . .

I1          “I wish that I had been the first one to coin it.  Flip Flop and Flim Flam fits on a sticker.”

I2          “Fading NObama stickers still adorn many bumpers.”

I1          “Lyin’ Ryan is resonating.”

I2         “Smokin’ Joe puts on a smokin’ show.”

I1          “What do we do now?”

I2         “Choose between Tweedledee and Tweedledum.”

. . .

I1          “Yet there is a difference between the two candidates.  I hold O’Bama to the high standards he has set, although he has not met them.  Romney does not have any standards other than the acquisition of money and the pursuit of power at any cost.  He already acquired one and is now pursuing the other.”

I2         “If he runs the country the way he ran the company Bain Capital, then he will run the country into the ground.  He will fire 40 percent of the American workers, leave the country burdened with unmanageable debt, claim that he increased employment by the 60 percent of the population that remains employed, and walk away with all the money.”

I1          “What if China refuses to fund Romney’s desire to invade China.”  

I2         “Dredging up the ‘neo-cons’ who instigated the Iraq travesty is a disturbing development.  Those treasonous chickenhawks are itching to start a war with Iran, even though America may have already committed acts of war against Iran that justify Iran attacking America.”

I1         “Are they ‘old-cons’?  They should be cons, but as always the ruling class escapes indictment and incarceration in public housing.”

I2         “So they are not cons.  With a subtext of racism, this election revives the debate whether America should start World War III or not.”

I1          “World War III still strikes me as a bad idea.”

. . .

[I1 = Independent Voter; I2 = . . . ]

Bumper stickers of the week:

10 percent of those who are allowed to vote in 10 states will dictate the next President

Snipers for O’Bama

LGBTs For Romney

My vote cancels your vote

Gettin’ It Right (June 4, 2012)

Posted in Abortion, Capital Punishment, China, Death Penalty, Global Climate Change, Global Warming, Race, Society on June 4, 2012 by e-commentary.org

. . .

R          “We need to continue segregation and maintain the policy of ‘massive resistance’ to integration.”

R          “We need to continue to enforce miscegenation laws.”

R          “We need to continue not to recognize Red China.”

R          “We need to continue sending troops to Vietnam.”

R          “We need to continue sending citizens to the gallows.”

R          “We need to continue our control of the Panama Canal.”1 

R          “We need to continue treating women as second class citizens.”

R          “We need to continue a man’s right to decree that a woman does not have the right to choose.”

R          “We need to continue mistreating those who are gay, lesbian, and transgender.”

R          “We need to continue disregarding overwhelming evidence that we are abusing Mother Nature.”

R          “We need to continue . . . .”

. . .

1          “After all, we stole it fair and square.”

[See the “e-ssay” titled “I Am A Republican (February 7, 2011).”]

Bumper stickers of the week:

When you are trying to measure someone’s credibility, take a gander at his or her track record.

Will the Chinese finance America’s invasion of China? 

Is The American Consumer Irrelevant? (December 12, 2011)

Posted in Bankruptcy, China, Consumerism, Pogo Plight, Society on December 12, 2011 by e-commentary.org

. . .

P          “Another holiday season and consumers are consumed with consumption.  They say that seventy percent of our economy is or has been driven by consumer spending.  They also say that something that cannot go on forever will not go on forever.  And it can’t go on forever.”

L          “It can’t.  The consumers have not paid for their past consumption.  The Chinese have provided the goods and the money to get the goods and deferred payment but not forgiven the debt.  The American consumer is becoming an afterthought in the world market.”

P          “They say that saving is up in the aggregate, yet only very slim sliver of individuals who actually have money, distrust the stock market and seek to protect principle are saving.”

L          “Consumption is an addiction.  Advertising provides the shallow inducements and exploits deep fears and anxieties.  Economic health warnings should be added to all advertisements.  ‘Purchasing this product may be dangerous to your economic health.’”

P          “For so many today, keeping up with the Jones is not adequate.  Vanquishing the Jones is the goal.”

L          “And the Jones cannot afford to keep up with let alone vanquish their neighbors.  From another perspective, the parvenu of the last few decades are a sign of a society with upward economic mobility.  The economic mobility has reversed direction and is rapidly moving down.  Few are arriving.”

P        “Too many individuals are gullible.  There are too many iPhones, iPads, iPeds, iPods, iBooks, iMacs, iMeMines.”

L          “Individuals must take more responsibility.  If you circumnavigate the grocery store and only acquire goods from the shelves and refrigerated cases along the outside perimeter, you will find a variety of tasty and nutritional foods.  The junk food is piled in the middle of the store.  The market works if you understand the layout of the market.”

. . .

[See the “e-ssay” titled “Consume, Don’t Invest? (Nov. 9, 2009)”]

Bumper stickers of the week:

He who dies (having played in a responsible way) with the most toys wins

Live simply so that others may simply live

Trade in a credit card for a library card

Bernays was right on the money

Plan B Is Part Of Plan A

From e-con-omics to eco-nomics? (August 1, 2011)

Posted in Bankruptcy, China, Economics, Economics Nobel, Education, Energy, Environment, Pensions, Schooling on August 1, 2011 by e-commentary.org

. . .

(           “The Keynesians are using a screwdriver to hammer a nail.  The monetarists are using a hammer to drive a screw.  The wrong tool is selected because the challenge is not understood.”

)           “So we are screwed and hammered?”

(           “E-con-omists do not even recall the central tenet of economics.  Resources are scarce.  Not enough resources are available today to provide the growth needed to provide everyone with a first-world life style.”

)           “You know that observation is politically unacceptable.”

(           “The department of e-con-omics today should be merged with the department of religion.  The e-con-omists are marketing voodoo.”

)           “What about the department of psychology?  Or the department of environmental sciences.”

(           “What about creating a department of 3Es – energy, economics, and the environment?  What about adding a class in Mega-eco-nomics to the traditional classes in Microeconomics and Macroeconomics?”

. . .

(           “Economics is laden with rich irony.  The use of the word ‘gross’ in ‘gross domestic product.’  The products and services often are gross.”

)           “Look at the felicitous term ‘trickle down’ in ‘trickle down economic policies.’  The theory posits that all the money should be given to the wealthy and very little will trickle down to the populace.  Should anyone be surprised that very little trickles down to the populace.”

(           “And the Laffer Curve was worth a laugh but not much more.”

)           “We need more eco-nomists who recognize and accommodate limits to growth even though the realization is anathema in today’s political climate.”

(           “Very few are going to go quietly.”

. . .

Bumper stickers of the week:

You are stronger than the tool; the tool is smarter than you are.

Central Falls falls

The Senate confirmed Gary Locke as Ambassador to China by unanimous consent on July 27, 2011

The Silent Takeover (May 23, 2011)

Posted in China, Cyberactivities, Economics, Foreign Policy, Locke Gary, Middle East, Military on May 23, 2011 by e-commentary.org

. . .

C1        “Take over America.  Of course we are.  You say that you have a better plan, comrade.”

C2       “The primary lesson of the Twentieth Century is that it is easier to take by investment than by invasion.”

C1        “Clear thinking, little butterfly.  Invasion is costly and ineffective.  Invasion only assists the defense industry.  You can eat butter; you can’t eat a gun.  We focused our spending on efficient invasion technology.  We are letting the Americans spend on offensive technology to allow them to go bankrupt.”

C2       “They are already bankrupt.”

C1        “They are.  They are also too big to fail, but not too big to own and operate efficiently.”

C2       “Increase the purchases of t-bills and t-bonds by another fifty percent to a holding of 1.5 Trillion U.S.  They will be worthless, but they are one of the tickets to control.”

C1        “We will decide what they are worth later.”

. . .

C2       “America has an unproductive class of third-rate minds and fifth-rate characters who suck staggering amounts of money without contributing anything of value.  They are identified as CEOs, CFOs, COOs, and their like and ilk.  They run companies and run them into the ground.”

C1        “Comrade, we plan to teach them how capitalism really works.  Survival of the fittest.  They are not fit.  They will not survive.”

C2       “They do not have a working market for talent at the top of American corporations.  The market is broken . . . and fixed.  The brigands and hooligans run the companies.  The American schooling institutions feed and fuel the broken market.”

C1        “The brigands and hooligans will be fixed like the mongrel dogs they are.  They will be sent to regional re-education camps . . . to be re-educated.”

C2       “Were they ever educated?”

C1        “Very good.  You will go far.  What about the cyberfun we are having with them.”

C2       “You should taunt them with simple technology and gauge what they have to combat the efforts.”

C1        “We can send a message internally to the Seventh Fleet to ‘stand-down’ at any time that looks like it is one of their own.  We can even send a message to have the crew stand on their heads.”

C2       “We can?  What will you do with the people?  The people do not produce.”

C1        “They produce but not products.  We provide the goods and the money to buy the goods for now.  They will be allowed to consume as long as it is in our interest to allow them to consume.”

. . .

C2       “Soon the Middle East will be our challenge.”

C1        “A problem not a challenge.  It is now an American problem and will remain an American problem.  America has a place in the world and a role to play.”

. . .

C2       “We have our own domestic problems.”

C1        “Not if we don’t acknowledge them.”

C2       “Look at the problems we don’t acknowledge.”

C1        “Who asked you?”

C2       “Our comrades are becoming . . . filthy running dog consumers.  We are creating our own mess.”

. . .

C2       “I have another plan.  What if we tried to work with them?  Why don’t we have a beer with Gary.”

. . .

Bumper stickers of the week:

Is it possible to go through the day and encounter something or anything not made out of oil and not made in China?

Gary Locke – nominated to be the Ambassador to China.  O’Bama’s most astute and foresighted appointment.

The Double Ought (00) “Decadent Decade” (January 4, 2010)

Posted in Afghanistan, Bailout/Bribe, Bernanke, Bush, China, Congress, Debt/Deficits, Economics, Federal Reserve, Foreign Policy, Greenspan, Health Care, Housing, Iraq, O'Bama, Presidency, Supreme Court on January 4, 2010 by e-commentary.org

1999:  No major wars yet percolating problems in a dozen venues; budget deficit surplus of about 236 billion dollars, although Bush inherited about a 5.7 Trillion dollar National Debt; and a boiling but unstable and slowly cooling economy.

The decade that threatened to come in with a bang sauntered in with only the traditional fire works.  Y2K may have been such an epic universal non-event because everyone realized that it was a real deadline that could neither be disregarded nor overlooked.  It was not Y2.001K.  Problems were timely addressed in a timely manner in time.  That was not the attitude for the remainder of the decade.

An outwardly non-descript and largely unknown bumbling scion who had been shepherded by others for their own purposes through an uneventful life was appointed by the Supreme Court to run things.  The ship of state sailed uneventfully for a time.  A written invitation to impending disaster delivered to and disregarded by the White House in August, 2001 was honored in September, 2001 by a quartet of airships.  The course of action was simple.  Know who we are and remain faithful to who we are.  Stay our course.  Redouble our vigilance and redouble it again (and redouble it one more time).  Too many in power and influence in the country lost their heads.  Leadership was non-existent.

A perfect storm.  An obscenely incompetent President, a flagitious and arrogant vice-President, a smug, bungling and petulant Secretary of War/Defense (Rumsfeld), hamstrung Secretaries of State (Powell and Rice), a mendacious Secretary of the Treasury in the second term (Paulson), a marginal Attorney General (Gonzales) and their ilk were not the Dream Team.  The damage they inflicted in the decade will take decades to repair.

Bush proclaimed that WeMaD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) and almost everyone joined in the madness.  No one ever made a compelling case for the invasion of Iraq.  The national press (WP, NYT and so many others) yearned for war, any war, just give us a war with photo ops and film at eleven.  The major television networks (NBC, CBS, ABC, Faux) were thrilled and went wild with glee.  It was a time, the only time, to watch their coverage non-stop to bear witness in real time to the folly and the madness.  The few dissenting voices (Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay with Knight Ridder’s Washington Bureau, Terry Gross and guests with NPR/Fresh Air, Walter Pincus with the WP and a few dozen other courageous individuals) did not reach a wide audience.  They were voices in the darkness.  The Iraq quagmire is the greatest foreign policy blunder in American history.

Deficit spending and economic looting became the national pastimes.  Almost everyone involved in directing and controlling the economy (Reagan, Gramm and Rubin in earlier decades with the assistance of Bush, Greenspan, Paulson, C. Cox, Geithner, Summers and others in this decade) almost without exception (Brooksley Born and a few others) were committed to undermining the American economy at every opportunity for the benefit of a few.  One must concede that they succeeded handsomely.  Although they are domestic economic terrorists, their activities never became the subject of the vaunted “war on terror.”  No one ever made a compelling case for the bribery and bailout of Wall Street.  Bernanke* remains the enigma, the outsider and the ultimate insider, who did not recognize what was obvious before and after he became Chairman in February, 2006 and disregarded the advice of his colleague Edward Gramlich.

The first African-Irish-American was elected President.  There were a few things they did not tell him before he got elected that he learned quickly after he got elected.  He re-nominated Bernanke* to run the Federal Reserve which may be the only option given the limited economic talent in America.  His appointments to date are adequate, yet the administration is still seeking traction and direction.  Health care is becoming his domestic economic quagmire.  Although it is not really the job of the government to provide jobs and/or homes, the populace wants a job to go to during the day and a house to come home to at night.

About the House.  And the Senate.  Congress could be declared a natural disaster area.  The Republicans are useless, the Democrats are not particularly useful.  Forty-five percent of Americans respond to and are motivated by fear and loathing; the Republicans know and stoke their base.  The Republicans may make great strides in the November elections.  The party committed to destroying government may again be given that opportunity.

The nine members of the Supreme Court are more myopic and narrow-minded than just about any other Court in the history of the Republic.  The Court sports two religions (with one exception), two schools (with one exception), and two (mas o menos) schools of thought (with a few exceptions), yet it has two women, too.  The war at the Court and for the Court continues.  O’Bama may have an impact, although the impact of the economy on O’Bama’s future will greatly impact his impact on the Supreme Court.

The profit-maximizing universities in America should be part of the solution, but they are part of the problem; they may be more accurately described as part of the process and the processing.  They recruit, train and drill the next McNamaras and Rumsfelds.  To their credit, they adhere to a thirty-year business plan rather than the three-month strategy pursued by other businesses.

The information made public in the National Intelligence Reports over the decade patiently and exhaustively chronicles the decline of America’s role in the world after six decades of preeminence.  America has done much wrong during that time, yet America has done far, far, far more good, often with resentment and usually without thanks.  On balance, everyone is better off with the United States as the dominant superpower.  This is China’s century.

Now:  Multiple wars, battles, skirmishes and police actions with two major foreign base camps (Iraq and Afghanistan); massive and growing deficits and about a 12.3 Trillion dollar National Debt; zero private-sector employment gain and zero economic gain for the average family over the decade; and no industry to inflate other than the federal government industrial complex.

[See the “e-ssays” dated Jan. 5, 2009 titled “The Millennium to Date”; dated October 6, 2008 titled “A Bleak Day:  The Trillion Dollar Tragedy”; dated September 29, 2008 titled “Futile Efforts”; dated May 4, 2009 titled “Picking the Supreme Beings”; dated May 14, 2007 titled “Term Limits”; and dated Jan. 30, 2006 titled “Greenspan’s Legacy:  Apres moi, Le Meltdown.”]

Bumper stickers of the week:

The Recession is Over.

The Recession is Over; Let the Depression Begin

Halcyon Ano Nuevo

The Audacity of Afghanistan (Dec. 7, 2009)

Posted in Afghanistan, China, Foreign Policy, Iran, Iraq, Military, O'Bama on December 7, 2009 by e-commentary.org

. . .

“We can’t leave and we can’t stay.  But we must leave, because we can’t afford to stay.  But we must stay, because we can’t afford to leave.”

“The graveyard of empires will be the graveyard of the American Empire.”

“And of many American kids.”

“At least in ‘Nam, the long shoreline allowed the Navy to provide much needed cover deep into the jungle.  The ‘stans are all remote caves and stone quarries.  We haven’t even started bombing and yet the whole place looks like it already has been bombed back to the Stone Age.  Charlie could move among a few countries.  Now they can move around the world.  My concern is not that we are signaling when we may leave in 2011, my concern is that they have ample notice to move to another theater.  The world is their stage.”

“The real concern is Pakistan and the Bomb.  And oil.  They don’t want anyone to deploy the bomb or to divert the oil.”

“And no real support on the home front again.  The populace is so disconnected from the sacrifice.  I don’t think I detested anything more than that draft.  The only way to bring the effort home is to reinstate the evil draft rather than the poverty draft.  It still steams me that even with the draft in place cowards like Cheney, Bush, Giuliani and the chicken hawks dodged the draft and then got to deploy kids off to get killed.”

“It’s all about the Bomb and oil.  The only possible way to fund the American effort is to quit funding their effort.  Implement the Terrorist Tax on fuel.”

“You have gotta pay to play.”

“Yet it comes back to the Bomb.  That remains the problem.  They got it.  The surge in Iraq was not military, it was economic.  The surge was a splurge of dollars to buy and bribe the locals for a cessation of violence for a short period of time.  The bribes worked.  The additional troops were incidental and marginal to the military effort, yet served honorably as the paymasters.  In Afghanistan, the US cannot begin to bribe all the tribal leaders and followers and buy peace.”

“The villagers are no different than the villagers in ‘Nam.  They are just trying to get through the day.  At night, when the US leaves, they receive visitors.  They need protection from their own.”

“The US is borrowing money from a very problematic source, China, to put troops in Afghanistan to influence activities in Pakistan so that Pakistan does not deploy the Bomb on India.  The US cannot ask for or accept Indian troops to be stationed anywhere near Pakistan soil, yet a few rupees to support the cause are in order.  Now Iran is bracketed by US troops on both sides, yet the US cannot afford to pay for the grand endeavor much longer.  The tactic mistakenly described as ‘terrorism’ is a greater threat to Europe than to the US, yet the Europeans are not making a commensurate contribution.”

“And because the American people are not making any sacrifices, they are not invested in the discussion.”

“We cannot afford to maintain the American Empire.  Pass the Terrorist Tax.  When the first Bomb is deployed, admittedly a few things will change.”

. . .

Bumper sticker of the week:

Vietnam:  LBJ’s ‘Nam;

Iraq:  Bush’s ‘Nam; and

Afghanistan:  O’Bama’s ‘Nam

The Odd Couple – China & The U. of S.A. (January 12, 2009)

Posted in China, Economics, Foreign Policy on January 12, 2009 by e-commentary.org

Felix “China” Unger and Oscar “Uncle Sam” Madison are living together in a symbiotic/parasitic relationship.  In recent years, some pundit types said that the economies of the world are “decoupled” from the United States.  Some other types were skeptical.  The economies always seemed “coupled.”

Those who argued that the U.S. no longer produces any goods for export do not recognize the toxic commercial instruments foisted on the world over the last half dozen years.  And the world bought it.  And bought them.

China produces the goods and the money to buy the goods.  The U.S. consumes the goods and the money to acquire the goods.  Projections about the Trillion dollar domestic bailouts spurring enough economic activity to drive the American economy and begin satisfying the growing national Debt are delusional.  The U.S. will never pay off its national Debt.  [See the e-ssay dated January 17, 2005 entitled “America the Bankrupt:  Economics 210 in the Land of the Freeway and the Home of the Wave.”]

How will China (and Japan, England, and other creditor countries) respond?  Is the U.S. “too big to fail” or more subtly “too intertwined to fail.”  What if no other country or consortium of countries is in an economic position to rescue the U.S. economy or forgive its debt in later years?

Bumper stickers of the week:

We are all in this alone together

China – Shop (and let your currency float)

USA – Stop (shopping despite what others command)