Vinsite

When I began this blog I was naive about how to attract readers.  I found political blogs tedious to access.  I desired a dialogue, but found my blog was a monologue.  I need to change that because the impending election is too important.  Feedback is welcome.

I am sixty-seven.  Over the years I have read and heard of the numerous unethical and illegal activities of the members of both major parties.  I am not a partisan.  In each election I vote for the individual who I perceive to be the best (or the least evil).  This year the choice is uncommonly easy

Current events have pushed the economy to the forefront, but the economy is the common thread that links almost all the issues together.  George Bush began his first term with a significant surplus.  That was gone before the term was half over.  The credit freeze roiling the economy now is the result of  laissez faire policies favored by John McCain, whose initial response to Henry Paulson’s annoucement of a crisis was to say that our economy is fundamentally sound.  He reversed himself a day later.  You would think that the owner of seven (7) houses might be more concerned, but given his wife’s  fortune, maybe the houses are all paid for.  His tax plans indicate that he has little concern for us commoners (he has said that you have to have $5,000,000 before you are rich).  He plans a 3 billion dollar tax cut for the richest people in the country.  He has voted more than 90% of the time in favor of George Bush’s policies.  Of course this should not surprise anyone who has been paying attention.  He is linked to the same corrupt infrastructure that put Bush into office.

There are significant similarities in the rise of Bush and McCain to prominence.  Bush is third generation politician and McCain is third generation military.  Their respective checkered careers strongly suggest that the opportunities they have had arose in the first instance from their family’s influence.  McCain’s real break came when he married mon… Cindy, his second wife, heir to a beer fortune.
So this year, after eight long years of duplicity and incompetence by the leader of the Republican party, I find myself a partisan of sorts, not a Democrat exactly, simply an anti-Republican.  That party will be suspect as long as they countenance the presence and the advice of Karl Rove in their midst, a latter day Machiavelli, if ever there was one.

By the way, a 72 year old man who runs for President is not putting his country first.  His choice of Sarah Palin over other more qualified Republican women says more about him than about her.  Neither McCain nor Palin has the temperment or the intelligence that I want in the President or Vice President of the United States of America.

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     Bush began his fight against terror by retaliating against Afghanistan, where terrorist training had been exposed.  But the triumvirate of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, aided and abetted by Tenet, clearly accepted flimsy evidence supporting their impulse to attack Iraq, while rejecting any evidence to the contrary.

     Rumsfeld fell on his sword (to relieve some of the pressure on Bush).  But who was Rumsfeld, or Bush for that matter, to tell career military men how to carry out an invasion and its aftermath?

     Bush then appointed the Iraq Study Group, only to reject their recommendations.  By the way, Bush’s military service seems to have been more apparent than real.  Not only did he reject the Iraq Study Group recommendations, he has now ordered a minor increase of 21,000 troops to continue the failed military action.  The total force is still way below the “several hundred thousand” troops originally advocated by General Shinseki.

     I am not the first one to suggest that someone who continues to do the same things over and over again, hoping to get a different result, is probably insane.

     Speaking of which, Dick Cheney claims we have had “enormous successes” in Iraq.  In his lexicon, then, perhaps annihilation of the entire solar system would be described as a minor set-back.

     The (indirect) assasination of Saddam Hussein has been accomplished.  The cost of this has been over 3,000 American lives, many thousands of civilian lives, and about half a trillion dollars … so far.

     Bush criticizes senators and congressmen who oppose the troop surge, saying that they must propose an alternative.  The Iraq Study Group did.

     Bush and Cheney claim to be clairvoyant about what would happen when American troops are withdrawn.  They have been spectacularly wrong since the first month of the occupation.  Why should we believe them now?

     Once again the fool in the white house has the arrogance to go against the clear desire of the majority of Americans to get out of Iraq.

     His inclination to send in more troops reflects his pusillanimous refusal to admit that the invasion of Iraq was a big, expensive mistake…expensive in lives, maimings, and money.

     His attempts to micromanage the war, ignoring the advice of the Iraq Study Group, as well as the advice of most of his generals is vintage Bush…because it is bush.  His own avoidance of military service makes this escalation of troop strength look all the more feckless.

     Bush should be impeached.  But right now it is more important to get the troops out of Iraq.  We can not, should not, wait for a courageous President.  Bush undoubtedly wants to be able to call all who resist escalation in Iraq “soft on terrorism.”  (Joe McCarthy got a lot of mileage out of this tactic before people caught on.)  But getting out now is the right thing to do.

     No amount of military force can make the residents of Iraq get along together.  Declare victory and bring the troops home, so we can begin healing America.  Please contact Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to urge them to prevent further escalation.

     By now it was predictable.  One of the few virtues of the pusillanimous prince of prevarication has been his predictability.  So, now that the Iraq Study Group (ISG) has come out with its recommendations for extricating our troops from Iraq, the President’s tepid response should have been expected by anyone who has been paying attention.  Particularly fatuous was his remark that “We have not succeeded as fast as we wanted to succeed.”  No one, including his sycophants, has come up with a cogent definition of success for Bush’s war.

     Once in a great while he is inadvertently correct, such as when he described himself as a uniter.  He has succeeded in uniting terrorists around the world against the USA, even though those terrorists may have some differences in their motivations for their atrocities.

     Mr Bush had no experience in foreign affairs prior to his appointment by the Supreme Court.  He had had no success in business that wasn’t the result of peddling the family name.  He got away with transgressions (eg. selling Harken Energy stock on the basis of insider information, or being AWOL from the Air National Guard) based on the family name.  So he surroundedd himself with a number of his father’s appointees.  Didn’t that absolutely radiate insecurity (with good reason) on his part?  Too bad he didn’t learn from one of his father’s sagest judgements, to wit, Bush I did not invade Baghdad and destroy its physical and political infrastructure.  Bush II broke Iraq, so US taxpayers own it.

     Our next national election is still 2 years away, but it is already clear that the people, not the politicians, must lead.

     Let’s take a conservative (no, not a “Bush Conservative” - whatever that is) point of view.  We will be generations digging out of the financial and political fallout from Bush’s totally irrational response to the 9/11 attack.

     There’s even a rumor that Osama is willing to contribute money to America’s far right, to help them pass a constitutional amendment that would permit Bush to serve a third term.   

This posting will be the best, and longest…so far, that I will have posted.  I wish I could write like Alan Abelson, but the following is an article he wrote for Barron’s, normally a bastion of conservatism

“The Godfather”

“An unfortunate side effect.”  Thus spake a Texas exterminator last week when confronted by the results of his handiwork-namely, a rain of dead pigeons on the celebrants of Texarkana’s annual festival.  In case you’re wondering, the exterminator was not Tom DeLay.

For one thing, this exterminator obviously is given to understatement, something Tom DeLay has never been accused of.  For another, Tom DeLay is too busy trying to stay out of jail to go after a flock of pigeons unless they happen to be of the stoolie kind.

At the behest of the management of a local bank branch (a favorite perch of pigeons making deposits), fearful the feckless birds might besmirch the festivities, the exterminator scattered some poisoned corn on the roof of the bank.  The pigeons dropped like flies, except, of course, they’re much larger and weigh more and tended to make a considerable splat.

To judge by his verbal reaction, the exterminator was conflicted, as, in the circumstances, any of us would likely be,  On the one hand, he did discourage the pigeons from doing their thing at the festival.  On the other hand, instead of just making them queasy so they’d get off the roof, his action resulted in the unfortunate side effect of wholesale pigeonicide.

We relate this touching tale to show that exterminators, even those from Texas, are not natural-born killers and are capable of empathy for their victims, whether a pigeon or even a flea.  And beyond the unexpected compassion, that he confessed to having erred speaks well for the character of this particular exterminator.

On that score, we might respectfully suggest that some of our other public servants could do worse than follow his example and own up to the odd mistake.

Vice President Cheney immediately comes to mind, because he has been the constant target of vicious attacks by mean-spirited Democrats for what they claim is his habitual obstinacy in refusing to concede that he’s human and hence not blessed with perfection.

Just recently, the veep took some fierce blasts of heat when he averred that even had he known back in 2003 Saddam didn’t have so much a toy mock-up of a weapon of mass destruction,  “We’d do exactly the same thing.”

At first blush, that’s the kind of patently absurd statement that makes Mr. Cheney sound like he’s absolutely convinced he walks on water, and tempts the disinterested spectator to try to persuade him on the benefits of complete rest.  What both his enemies and his anxious sympathizers fail to recognize is that Mr. Cheney’s very special position in the administration prevents him from ever saying he’s sorry, much less acknowledging he’s ever made even the most minute mistake.

For Mr. Cheney is the godfather of this administration.  And as John Gotti or Marlon Brando could have told you, to fill that role successfully demands unquestioned authority, which means simply that you’re always right.  Always.  Period.  If at times, your adamancy appears irrational and monomaniacal- no sweat, you’re a godfather, in whose menacing presence underlings and enemies alike quake in their boots.  If he wanted to be a goody two-shoes, Mr. Cheney confides, he’d have been secretary of state.  Just to show you how rigid the godfather code is, Mr. Cheney recently was caught smiling (we think he was smiling; it’s hard to tell).  He got off with a light reprimand when he explained he had just received news that another No. 2 man in al Qaeda had been captured and had broken down under torture (oops, make that alternative interrogation methods).

The godfather complex, we should note, is not restricted to politicians and bureaucrats.  Indeed, it’s epidemic in Corporate America and is rampant on Wall Street.  Otherwise, how could so many obscenely paid people persistently lose so much money for their shareholders, customers, and limited partners?  What binds these unfortunates together is the firm belief that every decision is not only right but eternally so and that reversing it is a sign of weakness.

Both they and the veep might do well to consider the riposte by that great economist-speculator Lord Keynes when challenged by some smart aleck for changing his view:  “When the facts change, I change my mind.  What do you do, sir?”  The article continues, but those few paragraphs say so much about the course of this administration in a most entertaining way, that I had to share it with you.  Thank you, Alan Abelson.

I am in favor of voting out most of our incumbents, unless their voting records demonstrate that they have tried to resist the current administration.

The President and Vice President are demonstrably lying, corrupt, incompetents…as statemen.  To give them their due, they are very slick, duplicitous politicians.  Even Bush’scampaign slogan was/is a lie, as he is neither compassionate nor conservative.  The citizens of New Orleans can attest to the first lie.  Any non-partisan economist can attest to the second.  (The inaccuracy of labels can be the subject of another posting.)

Project Smart Vote is a good site from which to obtain voting records as well as other information about incumbents and candidates.

     American citizens have failed in their job.  Beyond voting, we have a duty to choose political candidates for their value added, not just because they belong to one party or the other.  In fact, Ralph Nader has made a strong case that the two major parties are too similar for our own good.

 Whenever I discuss a federal government action or policy, I frequently get a distinct impression that the other person(s) are reciting a party point of view rather than a reasoned personal conclusion.

As individuals we seem to fail to realize just how much the actions of our elected representatives influence our lives.  Mark my words, this country is now in decline, not because of 9/11, but because of the decisions and actions of our current federal government.  Vote.

     While there are those who claim that America’s ship of state is headed in the right direction, most citizens seem to think that things could be better.  Why are we in these circumstances?

     Philoshophers often provide answers to such questions.  That renowned philosopher, Pogo, proclaimed (in bad English), “We have met the enemy…it is us.”  I agree.

     We claim to have a democracy, or rather a representative democracy, where our elected representatives vote according to the wishes of the majority of their constituents, with the potential tyranny of the majority to be mitigated by a constitution and bill of rights.  We call this a constitutional republic.

     But it is more and more obvious that we have a plutocracy.  And now one party controls all three branches of government, something the founding fathers appeared to intend to avoid.  Ultimately, we the people, or at least the voters, are responsible.  Shame on us.

There are reasons for concern about  the future of America.  History does repeat itself after all.  In 1987, Paul Kennedy, a professor of history at Yale, predicted the decline of America in his great book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.  The last 500 years of world history suggests that “there is a very clear connection in the long run (sic) between an individual Great Power’s economic rise and fall and its growth and decline as an important military power (or world empire).

Our most important resource is our people.  The greatest cost of our military conflicts is the loss of lives and the continuing suffering and disability of those who survive severe wounds.   But this cost has been borne mostly by a small per cent of American families.

Our fearless leaders have done their best to cover up or minimize the casualties.  They have been more successful in obfuscating the purely economic cost of the war by relegating war epenses to the “supplemental budget.”  This has been estimated to be $2 trillion.  Could this be impacting all taxpayers?