Both columns keyed off his testimony yesterday before a House panel. I saw clips of that encounter and got some pretty clear insights about the way our Treasury Secretary thinks. They convinced me the man must go.

What made this so obvious was Geithner’s response to a query from one of the House panel’s Republican members. This congressman pointed to the 10.2 percent unemployment rate and asked the Secretary if that didn’t incline him to quit. Geithner proceeded to blow his cool.

He railed that a Republican had no business saying something like this given the record of the eight years Bush and company were messing up the economy, and went on to say that by any measure things are better now than when he (and the Obama Administration generally) came into office.

Was he right that he and Obama inherited a horrid mess from the Bush years? Of course. And without in any way seeking to minimize the extent of the economic foul ups in those years, it could also be said that the eight years under Clinton and his own Treasury Secretary, another Goldman Sachs alum, Robert Rubin, featured the so-called “American Consensus” that added mightily to the mess Geithner and the rest of the Obama economic team inherited. Reagan’s policies were another big factor here, and you could even credibly track the beast back to President Johnson’s guns-and-butter spending.

None of this history, however, amounts to a good excuse of the bungling of Geithner during the almost full year he has helped shape economic policies. Beyond this, to suggest, as Geithner did, that his own culpability for economic matters only began when Obama came into office is not just disingenuous but outright deceitful. He was head of the New York Fed for five of the Bush years during which his predecessor at Treasury, Hank Paulson, was doing his own bungling. Geithner is almost as guilty as Paulson and Bernanke at the Fed for the awful economic nostrums of Bush. Blaming the pre-Obama policies of the Bush team without noting that he was joined with this team at the hip in order to deflect blame from himself doesn’t pass the smell test.

The other part of Geithner’s defensive railing yesterday was even more striking. He actually used the term “by any measure things have improved” to describe what his work at Treasury hath wrought for our present economy. “By any measure.” Think of that. Think of what it means. Because what it means is that the measures he is using to gauge economic improvement are measures that benefit banks and Wall Street.

Yes, bank books have improved because of his policies. Yes, Wall Street has surged back. Yes, the investing community is doing very well again — at least the top tier of that community. By every one of the measures that might make a banker or Goldman Sachs manager happy his work has most certainly improved things.

But his “by any measure” does not include employment. Foreclosures. The economic angst and anguish of most Americans not part of the financial gang.

Tim Geithner isn’t a bad man. Nor was Hank Paulson. Not was Robert Rubin. They are simply, by virtue of who they are, what they’ve always done, who they associate with, part of a community that thinks Main Street exists to service the needs and perks of Wall Street, rather than vice-versa.

Tim Geithner is out of economic touch with most Americans. We need a bigger man with a bigger view for his job. I’d suggest Paul Volcker.

center>http://www.wallstreetpoet.com ]]> http://themoderatevoice.com/53583/geithner-must-go/feed/ 5 http://themoderatevoice.com/53553/abortion-and-health-care-reform/ http://themoderatevoice.com/53553/abortion-and-health-care-reform/#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:07:08 +0000 KATHY KATTENBURG http://themoderatevoice.com/?p=53553 Abortion has been a part of human existence since human beings first took their place on earth. There have always been women who needed to end pregnancies, for uncountable reasons — and there always will be. Moreover, abortions have not always and in all places been illegal. As Jeffrey Toobin points out in a very trenchant comment published in The New Yorker (and this is something I’ve known for years), abortion in this country — both in colonial times and after the formation of the United States — was perfectly legal and widely available until about the middle of the nineteenth century, when the medical field started to become institutionalized, and doctors began to feel the need to protect their professional investment from the informal network of providers (mostly women, many of whom were midwives) who had done the procedure up until that time. States began to pass anti-abortion laws, and by the start of the last century, abortion had been criminalized pretty much everywhere in the United States.

Which is, of course, not to say that women no longer had abortions. And so it will remain, regardless of what happens with the law. But the same cannot be said about insurance coverage for abortions. In the remainder of his piece, Toobin addresses this point, and the larger issue of this one specific medical procedure that, in varying ways throughout U.S. history, has been treated as if it somehow had nothing to do with health care:

Throughout this long legal history, the one constant has been that women have continued to have abortions. The rate has declined slightly in recent years, but, according to the Guttmacher Institute, thirty-five per cent of all women of reproductive age in America today will have had an abortion by the time they are forty-five. It might be assumed that such a common procedure would be included in a nation’s plan to protect the health of its citizens. In fact, the story of abortion during the past decade has been its separation from other medical services available to women. Abortion, as the academics like to say, is being marginalized.

Toobin then turns his attention to the Stupak amendment, and its implications for abortion coverage for all women, not just poor ones:

A clear understanding of the structure of the health-care proposals currently under consideration shows why the Stupak amendment is such a threat to abortion rights. At the heart of the proposals is the idea of an exchange, where consumers will be able to select among competing insurance plans. Theoretically, the exchange will increase consumer choice, promote competition, and (somewhat more theoretically) lower costs for everyone. If there is a public option, it will be offered through the exchange. At first, many of the people using the exchange will be those who are unable to pay for health insurance on their own. For them, the government will offer a sliding scale of subsidies. It is largely these subsidies which will increase the availability of insurance; estimates of how many people will gain coverage vary, but it may be close to forty million.

Restrictions on the use of federal funds for abortion go back to the Hyde amendment, which became law more than thirty years ago; for example, there has long been a ban on abortions under Medicaid or in military hospitals. But the implications of the Stupak amendment are broader, because of the structure of the exchange. To start with, Stupak states that anyone who buys insurance with a government subsidy cannot choose a plan that covers abortion, even if that person receives only a small subsidy, and even if only a tiny portion of the full premium goes for abortion care. And the influence of the amendment reaches beyond the recipients of federal subsidies. Stupak would prohibit the public option from offering any plans that cover abortion. Further, it is expected that each year more Americans will use the exchange, including people who don’t need subsidies, but under the Stupak amendment insurance companies would have no incentive to offer those people coverage for abortion services, since doing so might cost them the business of subsidized customers. Today, most policies cover abortion; in a post-Stupak world, they probably won’t. With a health-care plan that is supposed to increase access and lower costs, the opposite would be true with respect to abortion. And that, of course, is what legislators like Stupak want—to make abortions harder, and more expensive, to obtain. Stupak and his allies were willing to kill the whole bill to get their way; the liberals in the House were not.

It is widely held that we should welcome diversity and not stoop to such a level anymore. Our society now insists upon political correctness to a fault. We are a nation of people who are walking on eggshells when it comes to how we talk or write about people and things these days. A pox upon us if we offend anyone. We are also way too cautious in how we deal with bonafide threats to our national security.

How many more incidents like the one at Ft. Hood must the American public endure before we get serious about our defense. When citizens take the oath upon enlisting in the military, they swear to protect the country and the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. (I did notice, however, that this particular phrase was missing from the Presidential oath of office during the last inauguration.)

We are dealing with a very different enemy now than we were dealing with during World War II. Our current enemy strives to maximize civilian casualties and uses our diverse societal structure against us. Laugh at Homeland Security if you wish, but it must be taken seriously. Take the massacre at Ft. Hood, for example. The gunman, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, is not only a devout Muslim, he had displayed behavior that raised red flags with his superiors and government officials, yet they failed to act upon this information.

News reports revealed that Hasan had belonged to a radical mosque in Falls Church, VA. According to the Telegraph.co.UK website, the Dar al-Hijrah mosque had also been attended by two of the September 11 highjackers. Also, the FBI knew that Hasan had been in contact with the radical former leader of the mosque, Anwar al-Awlak, whom the Telegraph website identified as an American born Yemeni imam.

In this day and age the American population has Muslims everywhere. Some are in plain sight and openly supportive of Islam and the jihad and others are posing as Mediterranean types or even South Americans. Those just mentioned would be worthy of our hard scrutiny. While it is true that there are many innocents among the American Muslim population, we cannot afford to be less than vigilant just to be politically correct. That Hasan was not only a Psychiatrist but an American army officer in a position of high trust only proves that we must not let our guard down for any reason. However, it does seem quite stupid on our part that we didn’t even bother to profile this killer. All of the signs were there, and they were blatant.

Here again, we are in the political position nationally where we are making serious mistakes with our national security in favor of political correctness. With the profiling tools currently at our disposal we have no one to blame but our own incompetence for overlooking simple facts such as the ones found in the Hasan case. And given what we know about how Islam is preached and what its goal is, we would be foolish not to realize there are people who are serious threats all over the country who are worthy of being placed under the microscope. More to the point, once we have suspects under watch we should know that watching someone to see if they will lead us to al-Qaeda or the Taliban has risks and that those risks need to be tightly managed. At this point it doesn’t matter whether Hasan acted alone or on orders. Thirteen dead and 42 wounded is still 13 dead and 42 wounded.

But rather than play the blame game we should focus on preventing incidents like this one from happening again. We really need to wise up to the fact that our penchant for political correctness and the cries against profiling are creating huge gaping weaknesses in our ability to protect our country from enemies like who we are now at war with. And realizing that war is no game and that we cannot play at it as though it were, we should also consider that there may be very real benefits to changing our rules of engagement for our war against radical Islam.

We should focus on winning and not be as concerned as we are with how we intend to accomplish the victory we need. Sun Tzu once said that the general who is more concerned about his own integrity will lose. America should wake up and realize that we have not won this war. We should also be mindful that pulling out of the Middle East will not necessarily end it. Our troops may be over there–but the enemy is definitely over here. And any refusal to admit this to ourselves is simply naive at best, and dangerous if not fatal at worst.

Major Hasan may have succumbed to the pressure and cracked under stress, but that is unlikely. As a Psychiatrist he should have been above the inability to manage stress to the degree that would result in a shooting spree. He had been in contact with a radical, anti-American Imam. He attended the same mosque as some of the 9-11 highjackers. He was shouting “Allahu Akbar” while remaining calm during a shooting spree that left 13 dead and up to 42 injured. And according to the Telegraph, he stated at the Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C., “during an hour-long talk he gave on the Koran in front of dozens of other doctors,” that “infidels should have their throat cut.”

According to the same Telegraph article, published on November 5, “One of Hasan’s neighbors described how on the day of the massacre, about 9am, he gave her a Koran and told her: ‘I’m going to do good work for God’ before leaving for the base.”

According to one civilian police officer who was interviewed, Hasan was “hiding behind a telephone pole and shooting fellow soldiers in the back as they were trying to get away. Many writers in the Media have taken the wrong tack by labeling this a hate crime. What this really was, was an act of war. This attack was clearly carried out with intent. This was no mistake on Hasan’s part, and there was clearly premeditation here. With these pieces of information at hand, it certainly does not look like someone who was simply overcome by stress.

The Ft Hood Massacre was preventable. It was also as much the result of our political correctness as it was Milik Hasan’s radical inclinations.

In 1992 Bill Clinton’s campaign was built around the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid.” That’s what voters cared about. Bush One’s failure in that realm was what got Clinton elected.

In 1993 the newly elected President Clinton came into office and focused on health care reform. His efforts there flopped, and the rest of his presidency pretty much flopped as well.

Which brings us to 2008. Candidate Obama largely got elected on Bush Two’s economic bungling. People wanted economic “change,” which was what Obama was peddling in 2008. They didn’t care about GDP growth. They wanted jobs, a secure home, a fairer distribution of national wealth.

Obama got elected and immediately in 2009 focused his presidency on health care reform. The way Clinton did, rather than focusing on improving the economy. Obama has kept Bush Two’s economic policies largely intact, bolstering big banks and Wall Street while unemployment soars, foreclosures soar, and food pantries proliferate and increasingly must feed the working poor as well as the indigent elderly and disabled.

The Clinton years, with all their many missed opportunities, at least generated a short-lived number of federal budget surpluses. The spectacular failure of Obamanomics has not only not bettered most Americans economic well being, it has indebted the country in a truly frightening way. An administration in Washington mesmerized by GDP growth is seemingly oblivious to the fact that growth itself is not important — what is important is how any added wealth is spread among the population. Oh, and by the way, the present GDP “growth” is not even growth at all, it’s simply treating extra money created by government borrowing and printing funneled to banks and Wall Street as if it were actually new assets.

Will we finally get real health care reform in this country? I hope so. I really do. But Mr President, it’s the economy! It’s always the economy! Always! And if the geniuses you’ve surrounded yourself with don’t understood that “the economy” that matters is not an economist GDP economy that benefits a few bozos on Wall Street, they are not just foolish but dangerous. They are also threatening your presidency and your legacy.

center>http://www.wallstreetpoet.com ]]> http://themoderatevoice.com/53472/1983-all-over-again/feed/ 36 http://themoderatevoice.com/53415/more-twisted-than-terrorist/ http://themoderatevoice.com/53415/more-twisted-than-terrorist/#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:02:39 +0000 ROBERT STEIN http://themoderatevoice.com/?p=53415 The more we learn about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the thinner the line stretches between ideology and mental illness, and the more troubling is the question of why, surrounded by psychiatrists, his potential for violence was not sufficiently recognized to remove him from his position as a healer of trauma victims.

Yesterday brings a report that “military superiors repeatedly ignored or rebuffed his efforts to open criminal prosecutions of soldiers he claimed had confessed to ‘war crimes’ during psychiatric counseling,” an unmistakable sign, if true, of Hasan’s own disturbance, an eagerness to breach doctor-patient confidentiality to serve his own pathology.

“If there was a failure to take appropriate action before the shootings, there must be accountability,” President Obama has said, and there is increasing evidence that Hasan’s erratic behavior was noted and then disregarded as far back as his service at Walter Reed Hospital.

A psychiatrist who worked with him there gave this account to a reporter: “From the beginning–and Hasan was there for four years–the medical staff was very worried about this guy…He did not do a good job as a psychiatrist in training, was repeatedly warned, you better shape up, or, you know, you’re going to be in trouble. Did badly in his classes, seemed disinterested…

“(H)e was very proud and upfront about being Muslim…and nobody minded that. But he seemed almost belligerent about being Muslim, and he gave a lecture one day that really freaked a lot of doctors out.”

Read the rest of this entry.

With the powers invested in me by executive order, the first and only decision I will make is abolish the Bowl Championship Series aka BCS.

College football is the only major sport in America not decided on the field but by sportswriters, broadcasters, coaches and computers. It is not an objective way to determine a national champion. The reason it is this way is money, greed by college presidents and ESPN.

My plan is to install a 16-team playoff format. It would consist of conference champions, independents-at-large (i.e. Notre Dame) and, if necessary, conference runners-up if their records warrant an invitation to the Sweet 16. That way, the school ranked 17th, has no one to blame but itself. More on those guys later.

I would reduce the season to 11 games that would conclude on the Thanksgiving weekend with conference championship games played. The three Saturdays in December would hold the first three rounds of the playoffs. The national championship game would be played the first week in January. Proceeds from the games would be distributed proportionally to all the conferences participating based on how far they progressed.

That would mean the most any two teams would play is 15 games in a season which is two more than the way it is now under the BCS. Four teams would play 14 and, of course, 16 play 13. I believe that deflates the argument the college football season is too long since more than 100 other NCAA Division One teams would play 11 or 12 at the most.

Most of the nation is glued to their television sets during March Madness when college basketball holds its 64-team tournaments. Who’s to say college football couldn’t draw equal frenzy?

Under the playoff system, no longer would we hear sour grapes from Boise State or TCU because they played a weaker conference schedule than the SEC, Big 8, Big 10 or Pac 10.

It also would determine if the Southeast Conference is really the best football conference in America. They say they are but that’s not enough. Prove it on the gridiron, not the press box.

I’m a native Southern Californian and for years believe the East Coast bias short-changed the really good teams playing in that media’s wrong time zone. USC under coach Pete Carroll has received its national acclaim rightfully. But, why are they in the top 20 at the moment when they have been killed by Oregon and Stanford as well as losing to Washington?

Stanford is getting no love outside of the West Coast because they have the reputation of bad teams in the past. The last two weekends they could have beaten Florida, Alabama or Texas. The Pac 10 does not have a championship game so their chances for the national title are nil in the BCS format but a darling of destiny in a playoff system.

Under the playoff system, teams not qualifying could still play in bowl games and the bragging rights for the winners just the same as under the BCS. Last year, the Pac 10 was 5-0 in bowl games which raised no eyebrows from those elitist experts on the East Coast.

Unless they lose their next games, the BCS most likely will select either an undefeated Boise State or TCU play the loser of the SEC championship game. That’s a half loaf compared to what really would be meaningful under a playoff format.

You see, Glenn Beck, being a czar is not a bad gig. Besides, I have the president covering my backside. He, too, wants a playoff system in college football.

Yours truly, a West Coast biased football fan. Go (Oregon) Ducks. Go (Stanford) Cardinal.

That’s what Mr. G did while heading the Federal Reserve Bank of New York when it was bailing out A.I.G. those few months ago. A unit of A.I.G. had insured the quirky derivative products issued by the likes of Goldman Sachs to the tune of billions of dollars. When these derivatives tanked big time, and the Goldman crowd stood to lose billions, they came to their insurer, A.I.G., demanding what they felt was owed.

Now of course A.I.G. itself usually attempts to negotiate down any claim against it. That’s what all commercial insurance companies have always done, as anyone who has ever put in a claim for, say, hurricane damage to a house has discovered. That sort of negotiating to get the best pay-off price possible wasn’t done with respect to the Goldman crowd’s claims, however.

A.I.G. didn’t have the money to honor its insurance commitments. Uncle Sam, represented by Mr. G., was called in to save the situation.

It must be remembered here that it wasn’t Uncle Sam who actually owed the Goldman crowd anything. The reason it became part of these negotiations was the threat that if A.I.G.s commitments weren’t met, the world economy would tank.

So here’s was the resulting situation. You had a claimant, the Goldman crowd, trying to get its money from an insurer that don’t have it, with absolutely no actual recourse but to go to court to do so, backed by the bluff that if the U.S. government didn’t pay the debt the world economy might unravel. On the other side was the government, whose own money comes from us, which does not owe the Goldman crowd anything, but which has to come up with something nonetheless lest the larger economy be threatened.

In this situation, here’s how the negotiation should have played out.

Goldman crowd: “We want our money and we want it all.”

Government represented by Mr. Geithner: “We’ll give you 50 cents on the dollar.”

Goldman crowd: “We’ll go to court. And by doing so the world economy will tank.”

Mr. G: “No, the world economy won’t tank. We’ll back A.I.G.’s other agreements in full, most of them are solid commercial agreements, and we’ll announce that we’re entering serious payment negotiations for your claims. This will settle the markets, and because of the way courts operate, your own claims won’t be settled for a decade or two. And then you’ll only get pennies on the dollar because we don’t owe you this money in the first place and A.I.G. won’t be able to do any better.”

Goldman crowd: Fifty cents on the dollar is too low. We might, just might, accept 80 cents.”

Mr. G.: Sixty cents. Take it or leave it.”

Goldman crowd: “Seventy-five cents and this is killing me.”

Mr. G: “Seventy. I have no authority to offer more. My hands are tied.”

Goldman crowd: “Alright, already. Take my first born, too. Seventy-two cents on the dollar and it’s done.”

Mr. G: “Deal.”

That’s how you’d do it to settle a credit card debt if you had to. That’s how the ABC Company would do it settling a debt it couldn’t pay in full to the XYZ Bank & Trust. Too bad the folks playing with our tax dollars aren’t quite that adept at protecting our money.

center>http://www.wallstreetpoet.com ]]> http://themoderatevoice.com/53235/uncle-sam-gets-it-for-us-retail/feed/ 6 http://themoderatevoice.com/53174/still-troubled-times-still-a-good-question/ http://themoderatevoice.com/53174/still-troubled-times-still-a-good-question/#comments Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:44:59 +0000 KATHY KATTENBURG http://themoderatevoice.com/?p=53174 Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello singing “What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love and Understanding?” (Lowe wrote the song, which I never knew before):

“S&P 500 Claims the 1,100 Mark — Recovering ‘07 Levels.” This was on the MarketWatch site. ‘07 levels, you may recall, were at the height of the bubble that burst with such awful worldwide economic consequences. But maybe this time it will be different.

Here’s a head from today’s Bloomberg site. “General Motors Generates $3.3 Billion in Cash, Will Start Repaying Loans.” Sound good? Sound like GM is selling lots more cars and bouncing back from its recent bankruptcy? That’s not exactly the case. The company actually lost another $1.15 billion in the last quarter. But heck. That beat analyst expectations so things with this outfit and its primary owners (U.S. taxpayers) will doubtless all work out just fine.

My favorite head of the day appeared on the New York Times site. It reads: “Mexicans Send Money North to Help Relatives.” No, this is not a joke. It did appear in today’s Times, not in The Onion. But don’t worry. Like you, I have enormous confidence in our economic planners in Washington and Wall Street. They almost certainly know what they are doing. And if not, well, maybe the headlines will just keep getting even more amusing.

center>http://www.wallstreetpoet.com ]]> http://themoderatevoice.com/53167/amusing-economic-headlines/feed/ 1 http://themoderatevoice.com/53165/what-big-pharma-and-mexican-drug-cartels-share/ http://themoderatevoice.com/53165/what-big-pharma-and-mexican-drug-cartels-share/#comments Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:17:31 +0000 JERRY REMMERS, Columnist http://themoderatevoice.com/?p=53165 The murderous Mexican drug cartels are known for their viciousness conducting their illicit trade. U.S. drug manufactures are less sanguine but equally adept at protecting their profits.

In anticipation of new health reform legislation that would curb their oligarchy, drug makers have raised their prices about 9% this past year while the Consumer Price Index has fallen by 1.3% during the same period.

The widely acclaimed deal the industry struck with the White House and Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus to shave $80 billion in prices over the next 10 years looks as if someone got snookered. It wasn’t Big Pharma.

The industry’s rapid price increases on brand names protected by patents are fairly chronicled and explained in an article in today’s New York Times.

What the article fails to mention is that an amendment to the senate committee’s bill was defeated that would have allowed Medicare to purchase drugs for low-income seniors at the same price that Medicaid pays for the drugs. The Congressional Budget Office estimated it would result in a loss of $106 billion over 10 years to drug makers. That tells you who has the upper hand in this process. It isn’t the consumer. The House bill hopes to cut drug prices by $140 billion over the next decade.

The thrust of the price increases is to protect profits required for research and development of new drugs, the Times story quotes industry spokespersons. One of them, Ken Johnson, senior vice president of the industry association — the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America — argued medicines create health savings.

“Medicines often reduce unnecessary hospitalization, help avoid costly medical procedures and increase productivity through better prevention and management of chronic diseases,” he said.

Artificially inflating prices is nothing new for Big Pharma. Reports The Times:

A Harvard health economist, Joseph P. Newhouse, said he found a similar pattern of unusual price increases after Congress added drug benefits to Medicare a few years ago, giving tens of millions of older Americans federally subsidized drug insurance. Just as the program was taking effect in 2006, the drug industry raised prices by the widest margin in a half-dozen years.

Don’t you love our free market sources at work? It’s more civilized than the Mexican drug lords. After all, we consumers are mere peons.

I thought I’d share a little of the magic.

That bastion of conservatism, The Drudge Report, signaled its disgust by shouting in 42-pt. boldface headlines “How Low Can He Get?”

And, get this. Drudge uses as an example of diplomatic decorum none other than former Vice President Dick Cheney shaking hands with the emperor at the same residence in a 2007 file photo.

The Drudge article written by Andrew Malcolm didn’t stop Obama’s kissie pooh of royalty there. It reminded us of its outrage when our president had the gall to bow to the Saudi Arabia king earlier this year and Michelle Obama’s patting Queen Elizabeth on her back.

Oh, my gosh. Obama has denigrated our national dignity to the level of some third world country — say Somalia — the report would have us believe.

Let’s review. World opinion of the United States sunk to an all-time low during the cowboy diplomacy of George W. Bush and the ever-popular Mr. Cheney. Obama has spent a good part of his first year in office trying to restore our image after eight years of an administration that flipped the bird to our friends and foes alike.

I see Obama as showing respect to the other world leaders by recognizing their customs. That doesn’t diminish our role in international affairs. It enhances it. And, in the case of Japan and China, it’s not like he is giving away the key to our treasury. Hell, they already own it by acquiring our debt.

So what’s the problem? It’s what I call the Ugly American Syndrome. It’s the belief we are the greatest country on earth and if others don’t like it then stuff it. If others still resist, we will nuke them.

Now, it is only natural patriotism for any given country is a healthy thing. It is natural one wants to defend what he cherishes. The French are masters of that. Americans consider the French arrogant because they cling to the past, as Bush’s former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld observed.

Because fate delivered me born in the USA, I’m perfectly content and fortunate for all the perks it offers. Do I think we’re the greatest nation on earth? Not really, but I wouldn’t want to change places with any citizen in any other nation on the planet.

Unlike the rightists, I don’t need to thump my chest and claim I’m better than you, you poor slob living in the caves of Afghanistan. Look at the public opinion polls. The U.S. can’t make the Top Ten list in numerous categories, the most embarrassing one being education. We can’t spell without a computer spellcheck system. We can’t locate our states on our maps. We can’t do math without a calculator.

But, yes, we do one thing very well. We can knock the crap out of any nation at any time by pushing a red button.

It makes the discussion about how deep did our president bow so petty it stinks.

Author’s Note: The link to The Drudge Report referred to a Los Angeles Times story. I couldn’t find it on-line but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.

UPDATE: Here’s the link to the LA Times post.

Not even a year has passed since he stepped into the Circular Office and everywhere you read, everyone and their dog has a bone to pick with the President. “Why is Gitmo still open? Why are we still in Iraq? Why are we still in Afghanistan? Where are the jobs? Where’s our rights?”

There is also an interesting narrative that is starting to creep through into mainstream media suggesting that Obama will be a one term President – really?

“This isn’t the change we voted for”- insert blog author/ TV pundit/ Politician name here.

For a man that has managed to save America’s economy which was on the brink of flat lining, committed to closing Gitmo in his first week and is in reaching distance of health care reform, he’s really not getting any slack. And why should he.

I have stated many times that I think Obama is quite frankly the most talented politician of my time (23 years old) – but the times we are living in are impatient ones. My generation wants everything yesterday, we want our news 24/7, on the move, we want to get rich without breaking a sweat – so for us, closing Gitmo, solving the economic problems, fixing healthcare, giving gay people their equal rights, an energy bill and reducing the deficit needed to be done a long time ago…say in his third month.

What is clear is that the GOP still hasn’t addressed its leadership problems or its strategy to effectively combat Obama. Let’s be honest, if health-care passes Obama is a two term President and goes into top 10 presidential material. More importantly the GOP will lose a generation of voters because of a lack of ideas and leadership to suit the times.

For example – Obama’s decision on troop numbers in Afghanistan. GOP says: “He is divering. He isn’t protecting our troops. He is losing the war. He is putting America in danger. Military knows best. Win at all cost.” This is the same Vietnam mentality which has haunted the elephant party since the 60s. But I submit to you that people of my generation are more than happy for a President (or a Prime Minister) to carefully consider his strategy for war (I also don’t see an issue with a President saluting a dead soldier or allowing a nation to witness the true cost of war). I don’t see anything wrong with Obama not committing troops until his generals give him a clear exit strategy. That isn’t showing weakness that is showing smarts, and this way of thinking will only strengthen his grip on the coalition he managed to put together for his election victory.

As for the economy, the Republican Party are damaged goods in this department. If Obama can combine the recent recovery with falling unemployment by 2010 then I truly worry for the party of The Gipper. Moderates are not ideology, they have a comprehension of history and I don’t believe they will vote in the same people who caused the economic downturn.

In short, the GOP need to start again. They need to look further than 2010 and see that the world is changing around them. They need to dampen down on Reagan and reclaim Lincoln. More Snowe and Christ and less of the two leaders they have in both houses. Less “no”, less party protesting, less anger, less fear, less guns, less war and more hope.

Even shorter, the GOP need to out hope the great Hoper.

Therefore, I find it not at all unusual that today’s authors of Op-Ed columns in today’s Los Angeles Times argue amongst themselves. The issue is not whether Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan committed a terrorist act. He did.

The issue which is only partially addressed in the opinion pieces is why the army failed to connect the dots of his behavior that culminated in the massacre.

The questions are — was it because he was a Muslim? Was it because the army was protecting its investment in his education since it not only was short on Muslims it was short on mental health experts? Or was it because the army brass was intimidated and too politically correct?

That last question really bothers me. It forces a hypothetical question which really cannot be answered. That is, what if the major was a white Christian from our nation’s heartland whose religious views trampled his objectivity as a psychiatric specialist? Or worse, what if he was totally incompetent as judged by his peers? Either way, would he have been drummed out of the corps? We don’t know. He should have been discharged without prejudice so he could rise or fail by market forces in private practice with an unblemished service record.

The problem with my analysis and the army’s is that hindsight is seen from a prism that is 20-20.

The Times commentaries are worth reading. One was offered by Tim Rutten, the paper’s resident conservative. The other by Judith Miller, an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a Fox News contributor, and David Samuels, a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine.

The article points out that even a modest buildup from present levels would wipe out savings from our Iraq withdrawal. A build up of 30,000 or 40,000 troops would cost between $30 billion and $54 billion a year more than our present expenditures there.

This article tells it better than I can here. It also doesn’t froth the way I do in the face of demands to fight another needless never ending war promoted by what Dwight Eisenhower first characterized in the 1950s as the military-industrial complex, and which today might better be labeled the military-industrial-contractor-talk radio-congressional complex.

The legacy of two failed administrations, Johnson’s and Bush II’s, was destroyed by stupid military adventures in places we had no business fighting for prolonged periods. Let us pray the Obama legacy doesn’t disappear down the same deep, dark rabbit hole.

center>http://www.wallstreetpoet.com ]]> http://themoderatevoice.com/53032/dollar-costs-in-afghanistan/feed/ 2 http://themoderatevoice.com/53004/the-cost-of-war-more-than-the-billions-spent-on-guns-and-bullets%e2%80%9d/ http://themoderatevoice.com/53004/the-cost-of-war-more-than-the-billions-spent-on-guns-and-bullets%e2%80%9d/#comments Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:20:44 +0000 DORIAN DE WIND http://themoderatevoice.com/?p=53004

I have consistently supported publicly honoring our fallen heroes—with the consent of family members—when they touch American soil for the last time at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware.

Much apprehension and controversy have surrounded this issue.

Finally, this spring, the Obama administration implemented a similar policy as we have at Arlington National Cemetery which allows the family to decide whether to allow media coverage.

The new policy permits the media to attend “dignified transfer” ceremonies with permission from the families and to pay the expenses of up to three relatives of a fallen hero to travel to Dover to watch their loved one come back home.

There still remained concerns and objections on the part of some organizations and individuals, fearing that media access and publicity would diminish the solemnity and dignity of the occasion.

In “A Fallen Hero Returns for All to See and Honor” and in “‘Dignified Transfer’ Ceremonies for Our Fallen Heroes,” I wrote how those concerns were tested when the first fallen hero, Air Force Staff Sergeant Phillip A. Myers who was killed by a makeshift bomb in Afghanistan, was welcomed home publicly under the new policy.

As I wrote at the time, “The ceremony was somber, solemn and dignified. It was broadcast on most networks. I watched it. It was moving. It was appropriate.” Most corroborated those views.

More recently, when the Afghanistan War claimed the lives of 18 Americans in one single week (15 soldiers and three Drug Enforcement Administration agents), President Obama was at the Dover tarmac at 4 a.m. to welcome our heroes home for the last time.

Of course, even on this most solemn and humane duty of a commander-in-chief, there was sniping by some. But Americans overwhelmingly appreciated the president’s respect for those who have already fallen in the Afghanistan War—especially knowing that this man will soon make a decision on whether to send more troops off to war, a decision that may result in so many, many more “dignified transfers” such as the one to which he wore witness that clear fall night at Dover.

On Veterans Day, the Los Angeles times published an article by a man who thought he knew the cost of combat.

He recommended plans to spend billions of dollars in Afghanistan from his desk at the Bush White House Office of Management and Budget. To him the cost of war was measured in “the billions spent on guns and bullets.“

After watching his friend’s flag-draped coffin come home at the Tweed-New Haven Regional Airport in Connecticut, this man, David S. Abraham, now “truly understands the price of war.”

In his article, Abraham writes:

For too long, that full accounting of war was hidden from our national emotional balance sheet. The media were prevented from showing the return of the dead; even families of the deceased were unable to make the trip to Dover Air Force Base to view their loved one’s arrival.

Watching my former roommate unloaded from a plane in a silver container brought an indescribable pain. But for family members and those close to the soldier, watching the arrival is an important step in coming to terms with the loss. The ritual, the simplicity, the slow process of salutes and patriotic symbolism offer an important modicum of comfort for what is one of the worst experiences life can provide. It brings home the reality of death, both physically and emotionally.

Abraham’s friend, Army Capt. Ben Sklaver, 32, “was killed in a suicide attack in what was the deadliest month for U.S. soldiers since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001. At the time, he was trying to meet with local leaders in a village outside Kandahar to see what infrastructure they needed. To those at home who see our troops strictly as combatants, this is not a traditional soldier’s role. But Afghanistan is a new type of war, and Ben was on the front line.”

Abraham goes on to commend the Obama administration’s decisions “to allow media coverage of returning coffins, to assist families of fallen soldiers to come to Dover and to attend a ceremony himself last month,” as they “are significant steps for us as a country to fully account for war. They highlight the total price of war — not just the more than $200 billion spent so far but also the thousands of lost futures both here and in Afghanistan.”

Abraham concludes:

What’s most disheartening this Veterans Day is that many of us, including some in government, are still too far removed to truly appreciate that our troops are engaged in battle daily. Maybe it is because the money we spend is too large, the costs too abstract or the fighting too far away from our daily lives to comprehend. I have no doubt that sentiment was true for many in southern Connecticut. That is, until Ben came home.

David S. Abraham is now a director at ClearWater Initiative.

The president has rejected four options on strategy and troop levels from his military intelligence team and instructed them to start over.

The U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, a former commander of troops in the Asian countries, has bucked the now top general and Secretary of State by claiming additional troops to Afghanistan would be a mistake because it would play into the hands of the corrupt government of President Hamid Karzai.

Some intelligence experts believe there are only 300 active al-quada fighters in the Afghan provinces at a time our NATO commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, is recommending a troop increase of 40,000 soldiers. An earlier report indicates military experts believe the influence of al-quada in Afghanistan is waning and a return of the Taliban would reject the more radical Islamic extremists. Admittedly, that’s a minority opinion.

While Obama insists in previous speeches the purpose of our forces is to prevent militants from taking over Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, Seymour Hirsch, writing in the New Yorker Magazine, quotes Pakistani military leaders that security arrangement between the two countries is tenuous at best.

A report from the military today describes our troop morale in Afghanistan is low and deteriorating rapidly.

If you read these dispatches as I did you will forgive our president for pondering what’s the best course of action. There is speculation that Obama will end up with a middle-course solution which I can’t imagine will please anyone.

The one thing I did find positive was the relative success of our drone missiles taking out suspected al-quada leaders in the Af/Pac region despite collateral damage to the civilian population.

The entire military-political purpose of our war efforts in the two countries is to prevent al-quada or any other radical group from gaining access to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Which is why I found this paragraph from Hirsch’s New Yorker Magazine article so remarkable:

A senior Pakistani official who has close ties to (Pakistan President Asif Ali) Zardari exploded with anger during an interview when the subject turned to the American demands for more information about the arsenal. After the September 11th attacks, he said, there had been an understanding between the Bush Administration and then President Pervez Musharraf “over what Pakistan had and did not have.” Today, he said, “you’d like control of our day-to-day deployment. But why should we give it to you? Even if there was a military coup d’état in Pakistan, no one is going to give up total control of our nuclear weapons. Never. Why are you not afraid of India’s nuclear weapons?” the official asked. “Because India is your friend, and the longtime policies of America and India converge. Between you and the Indians, you will fuck us in every way. The truth is that our weapons are less of a problem for the Obama Administration than finding a respectable way out of Afghanistan.”

I’ll say it for the umpteenth time. Mr. President, send our troops home.

The fact is, however, that the first problem is actually the solution to the second problem.

Joe is no longer a Democrat. He lost the party’s primary in Connecticut and then ran as an Independent. He then went on the support John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. The Dems now allow him to caucus with them anyway, to keep his prestigious post as head of Homeland Security committee and enjoy other party-in-power perks, because they expected him to go along on very important legislation. Like the health care bill.

But Joe can’t do it. He’s a man of conscience, he claims, and his conscience tells him it would be wrong to back the Dems on health care — the party that took him back when he begged to be taken back to enjoy all those governing party goodies.

Which brings us to the question of what happens after the health care issue is played out in the Senate. Would that 60 vote, veto-proof majority vanish for other important issues if the Dems throw Joe out of their caucus and deprive him of its associated perks? Might he become a Republican?

Not to worry. The Republicans might not have him because Joe’s long standing, conscience-based positions on issues such as climate change and abortion (all decisions are conscience-based for a man of conscience like Joe) go against that monolithic party’s credo. Even if Joe is accepted in the Republican fold, however, it won’t change his Democratic leanings on these other key issues. That’s because Joe as a man of conscience would never go along with Republicans just to be a good party man, any more than he’s doing now with the Dems and health care.

This man of conscience would thus continue to vote for Democratic Party issues even without being part of the party and receiving its benefits. Otherwise Joe’s present stance vis-a-vis health care would clearly, obviously, and undeniably be nothing but self-serving, attention grabbing hypocrisy.

And that couldn’t be the case. Could it?

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