The True Third Rail in American Politics

First, in an effort at scrupulous accuracy, I should note that yesterday's calculation of the budget deficit for fiscal year 2009 incorrectly stated that the $150 billion stimulus package was not included; it is, actually, thus reducing the actual deficit to the high $600 billion level. However, the Treasury Department's forecast is based upon a growth rate of 2.7% in GDP, which is unrealistic if the United States is in fact entering a recession (an implication the growth rate will be negative for at least two consecutive quarters), as the CBO notes. One way or another, Paulson's forecast is made out of moonshine and fairy dust, and Bush is going to leave office with huge budget deficits, a staggering national debt and reeling entitlement programs, and mainly all because of That Thing Which Cannot Even Speak Its Own Name, which, as a public service, the PondMeister lays out here:

The world's top 10 military spenders and the approximate amounts each country currently budgets for its military establishment are:

1. United States (FY08 budget), $623 billion
2. China (2004), $65 billion
3. Russia, $50 billion
4. France (2005), $45 billion
5. Japan (2007), $41.75 billion
6. Germany (2003), $35.1 billion
7. Italy (2003), $28.2 billion
8. South Korea (2003), $21.1 billion
9. India (2005 est.), $19 billion
10. Saudi Arabia (2005 est.), $18 billion.

It might be noted that Saudi Arabia's military budget is actually a subsidiary account of the U.S. budget, since the Saudis spend their money on American high-tech gizmos and jet planes. Be that as it may, if you add the bottom 9 budgets, they come to about $323 billion, or about 1/2 of the American budget. Now, the American budget is actually understated; adding in, as Chalmers Johnson does, the "black budgets" of the CIA, the Department of Energy, Homeland Security and the multitude of intelligence agencies (all of which are unconstitutionally kept secret from the American people), the real figure is about $1 trillion per year for defense and homeland security.

If you support a mainstream candidate (meaning, someone who could actually get elected and preside over this fruited plain), the one thing you will never hear him or her say is that we ought to drastically cut military spending. This is the ultimate no-no. When Bush talks about cutting "government spending," he never means the military budget; on the contrary, his budget proposals always urge increases in military spending.

Since we're spending all this money, here's a fair question, I think: against whom are we defending ourselves? Here's another question: why did the 9/11 plotters use hijacked American passenger jets as missiles? Answer: Because they were part of a ragtag terrorist group that couldn't afford its own air force, that's why.

Suppose, as a rule of thumb, the USA decided to spend as much as the next four countries on the list combined. That comes to about $200 billion. That assures us that if Russia, China, France and Japan ganged up on us, we would have the resources to handle them, although the notion of a war among such advanced countries is a little anachronistic anyway. No country on that list is going to tolerate a massive invasion of their respective "homelands." They're going to go nuclear, just as Israel would in the event of a massive invasion of its territory by surrounding Arab countries. We all know that. The days of Normandy Beach and island-hopping American conquests in the Pacific are over. The A-Bomb made them obsolete. The USA maintains a large standing army and all this expensive hardware so we can invade countries which are not nuclear powers in order to influence geopolitical conditions, mainly, fossil fuels; however, if we gave that up as American policy and focused our expenditures simply on (a) a military sufficient to protect the American homeland from invasion and (b) a nuclear deterrent, how much would that cost?

If any other nation on the list can pose a serious threat to the USA, with its budget reduced to the parameters noted, how would they go about that with their own budgets so limited? Why are they able to operate so efficiently where we can't? It doesn't make any sense. The United States could institute a program of one-year, universal military service for every American, immediately after high school (as countries such as Germany and Switzerland have done) to guarantee itself a large pool of able-bodied people who could defend America against invasion. It could reduce the standing army and decommission all overseas bases. It could refocus its military and intelligence apparatus against the interdiction of terrorist acts carried out in an "asymmetrical" way.

It's too bad that Obama, or Clinton, or someone with the nation's attention won't take the time to educate the American public about what's really necessary to defend the USA. The vast amounts spent arise simply from the inertial force of the military-industrial complex and are unrelated to our real needs. With the available tax revenues, we can't fix anything else unless we reduce the military and intelligence budgets.

Co-Dependent Nation

The stock market is tanking again today (in the morning, as I write), an indication that the Plunge Protection Team meeting in the basement of the White House is running out of gas. They just don't have the scratch to do it all by themselves, folks. Look, all you American Idol fans: you've got to do your part. Isn't there anything you want to buy right now, even if you're unemployed and you've missed your last two mortgage payments? Where's your sense of commitment? The "service sector" numbers are down, and since "service sector" = "the economy," we've got a real problem. And the American consumer is causing it. How can we put this to you? Try this: Buy shit or die.

I've been watching Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson bob and weave before a Senate committee this morning, and he's valiantly striving to explain how Bush's last budget can be reconciled with his pledge to balance the books by ...some date in the future. The current estimate calls for an "official" deficit of $409 billion; however, it must be pointed out that this number fails to include anything, even though everyone knows that huge expenses are being deliberately left out in order to maintain the fiction that Bush's "budget balancing" is an actual phenomenon and not the reality distortion of a dry drunk trying to convince himself he's done something he hasn't.

You can see how the personality problems of our national father engender anxiety symptoms in his citizen-children. How come Daddy still refuses to admit that he's not including the Social Security surplus of $200 billion in his calculations? So that takes our deficit to $607 billion. And what about the uncounted "emergency appropriations" for Iraq & Afghanistan, which apparently will add up to $70 billion? So we're up to $677 billion. And then the "stimulus package" of $150 billion, taking us to $827 billion, or twice the official figure. That's about 25% of the total budget of $3.1 trillion, and will take the national debt to about $10 trillion when Bush leaves office.

The Senators, however, are obviously afraid to point out Daddy's problem. He's addicted to military spending. No matter how bad his financial situation gets, he absolutely insists that his war jones has nothing to do with it. He's got it under control. He needs it, in fact. While we're talking about that, this year he'd like more money to feed the monkey. He wants to cut medical research, education funding, subsidies for seniors freezing to death because of high fuel oil costs, transportation funding (like resurfacing our washboard roads), benefits for veterans getting maimed in his wars, but dammit -- give me that military money!

Gee whiz, it does seem that until someone has the guts to point out to Daddy he's got a huge problem, and that he's nowhere near his fantasized goals, that we're going to remain stuck on Step One. Where we've been, unfortunately, since January, 2001.

The Unsinkable Patriots

I was watching the Super Bowl yesterday in my den in the company of a lifelong pal, a fellow I can share stories with about seventh grade teachers as easily as the current perplexities of the American economy. A liberal like me, whose views of society were informed as much by the lower middle class California housing tract we both grew up in as by our later exposure to student agitation at the University of California at Berkeley in the late Sixties.

So maybe you'd expect us to be a little cynical watching the Declaration of Independence reading that preceded the game. Switching from one NFL star to another (and including others, such as Pat Tillman's wife), most of the Declaration was read, all except the bill of particulars laying out the specific grievances against the British Crown. I have a framed copy of the document on my den wall, in fact, and I make it a practice to read the entire Declaration every Fourth of July. So maybe I expected myself to be inured to yet another reading, and if so, I would have been wrong about myself, too. Because both of us sat there crying, within a few moments of "When in the course..."

The Declaration of Independence is simply the most eloquent, stupendous, inspiring, and brilliant political document in the history of the human race. Yet there was something else going on there, too. Maybe the thing was being broadcast on the Fox network; maybe half the guys reading it are Bush supporters; maybe it's simply my wishful thinking, inspired in part by the ascendancy of an African-American man and a woman to positions of political prominence in current politics. Maybe all that's true, and yet the inclusion of a couple of vignettes before and after the reading, Ben Franklin warning that the Declaration was a perilous act ("either we hang together or we shall surely hang separately") and the signing by John Hancock in large letters so that "George" would have no trouble reading it...and the inclusion of Pat Tillman's wife, who has been a courageous critic of Administration propaganda...is it possible that entities so mainstream and corporate as Fox and the NFL were subtly sending out messages that it's time to reclaim the spirit of democracy once again, and to demonstrate the courage of the Founding Fathers in our own time?

Just for a moment I didn't feel so alone in this sense our country has been betrayed, that if I'm a crank writing under the sobriquet "Waldenswimmer," that's okay, because I'm doing it for the right reasons. Because patriotism isn't dead in this country, and it will live to fight another day, just as Tom Brady will recover from that injury and resume his greatness soon. It's very early on a Monday morning and I find myself utterly incapable of cynicism, a triumph in itself; and I feel resolved to demonstrate in my own life at least 1/10th of the courage of Adams, Jefferson, Washington and Franklin. Or, for that matter, Eli Manning on the last magnificent drive.

The Bush Foreign Policy Legacy

I think that's a pretty cool title for this essay. It makes me feel like Walter Lippmann or someone like that. Very summary in its breadth.

My hope is that we now know what Bush's foreign policy legacy will be, at least in rough outline. While the Decider talks about "sprinting to the finish" and that sort of thing, it's okay with me (far preferable, in fact) if he just sort of ambles along, taking the time to clear brush and ride his bike and use his elliptical trainer or whatever. I, personally, would have no problem if he collected his 400K now for 2008 and took early retirement. I didn't see the SOTU address the other night (I'd eaten some bad filet of sole and didn't want to risk it), but numerous commentators pointed out that Bush seemed perceptibly giddy with the realization that this was it, he could stop the serious act now and go back to being...whatever he was before.

We probably won't get that lucky, and Bush will "build" on his progress to date. Which consists of: the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Now, you can say whatever you like about our 43rd President (and most people have), but one thing you must admit, if you're at all honest, is that the mustachioed, Ernie Kovacs look-alike, who always wore uniforms that made him look like a generalissimo in Woody Allen's "Bananas," is permanently gone from the scene. Deposed, captured, hanged. Dead as a doornail.

That's it, of course. That's the sum and substance of Bush's record of foreign policy successes. Afghanistan? Um, I don't know. Are the Taliban really gone? I don't think so, principally because they were actually a Pakistani phenomenon, and Pakistan's insidious capacity for generating mischief is as vibrant as ever. Anyway, the Big Cheeses of the Afghan situation, Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, are still very much extant, more than six years after 9/11. You can't declare victory in Afghanistan with the Evil-Doers waiting in the wings for a Lib softie to take over in the USA.

But Saddam? He's done for. Kaput, finis, terminado. We took care of that problem. Which was...what again? That's right, he was a despot from the same part of the world that gave us the 9/11 hijackers. Bush used just those words to remind us of his wisdom in toppling Saddam. "Imagine if Saddam was still in power in the same part of the world where the 9/11 hijackers came from," something elegant like that. By the "same part of the world," he means, of course, just north of Saudi Arabia, where Osama and 15 of the hijackers were from, and sort of northwest of Egypt, where Atta and Zawahiri were from. I confess this is a little confusing.

Personally, I think most Iraqis, despite everything, were glad to see Saddam go. Especially if you were a Shiite during his reign of terror. The arbitrary brutality of despots makes everyone nervous. By somewhat similar thinking, I'll be glad to see Bush go because his pattern of routine law-breakinng (FISA, the Geneva Conventions, the 4th Amendment, designation of American citizens as enemy combatants) makes me nervous. Maybe we can get someone in office (Obama, Clinton, either way) who understands how the Bill of Rights works, and sort of gets the whole separation of powers thing. So that when a statute (like FISA or Common Article 3 of Geneva) is inconvenient, you amend the damn thing, you don't simply commit a felony and then ask Congress to exonerate you retroactively.

But we were talking about Saddam. He's gone. We can all agree on that. And he was an Arab, just like Osama and Atta. It's not surprising, of course, that Iraq would have had an Arab as its leader. But still...where was I?

Another Year, Another SOTUS

So a rabbi walks into a bar in New York City with a duck on his head. "Where'd you get that?" the bartender asks. "Brooklyn," replies the duck. "There's hundreds of 'em."

That's a pretty good joke and useful for deconstructing the nature of humor. It has the familiar elements: surprise, absurdity and conflict. We're surprised that the duck answers instead of the rabbi. The absurdity and conflict arise because we can't quite make sense of a duck commandeering a rabbi and going to a bar. Your mind races to comprehend a situation made of nonsensical elements and for some reason it makes you laugh.

The idea of George W. Bush mounting the podium and delivering his seventh State of the Union address (which the Washington Post calls "probably" his last - why probably? oy vey) has some of the same feel of a silly joke. If the element of surprise is now gone, the sense of absurdity and conflict is as vibrant as ever. One way or another this country wound up under the bumbling leadership of Chance the Gardener. For seven long years, going on eight. We all have our comical parts to play: Bush will pretend to be giving a serious speech in which he's interested, and the people sitting in the House's chamber will pretend to take him seriously, and then lots of TV pundits will weigh in and dissect another dumb oration which describes a world which doesn't even exist. It is all an exercise in mass delusion and everyone involved knows it's a delusion and they all do it anyway.

If the United States seems completely nuts these days (and it does), I think this process explains how we got there. Our everyday lives are like the rabbi, the duck and the bartender. It is an absurdist farce that is so far out of whack with rationality that we can no longer even get our minds around it. We intuitively sense that the President, instead of reciting a serious speech written by other people who at all costs want to avoid saying anything even remotely connected to reality; about lots of things the President barely grasps; instead of all that, we know that Bush would much rather prepare for his oration by eating Texas-style chili for about three days and then walking around the floor of the House asking esteemed Members to pull his index finger and see what happens. If he did that, we would have a better sense of who and where we are. It wouldn't be so funny, but it would change the joke. The bartender would ask the rabbi where he got the duck, and the rabbi would answer: "What duck?"

Let's Face It, It Will Be Fun

"The American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy, a naughty boy. I'm going to speak out for the citizens of my state, who in the majority think that Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy." Senator Larry Craig, speaking to Tim Russert about William Jefferson Clinton, 42nd President of the United States, circa 1999.

Okay, Senator Craig, you're batting .500 while playing Truth In Politics. You whiffed with the "I never have been gay" stuff a few months back (that misplaced adverb is a tell), which statement, in its studied and manifestly fraudulent vehemence, matched Bill's "I never had sex with that woman, that Ms. Lewinsky..." a decade or so ago. Remember Bill's face, as he pointed at the camera in self-righteous indignation? What man, who dares call himself a man, hasn't played that game? Richard Pryor summed it up with his deathless, "Who you gonna believe, me or your lyin' eyes?"

Of course, we realize now that Senator Craig's conjoined adjectives were simply intended to titillate himself. He was picturing President Clinton one stall over in a Union Station men's room. The esteemed senator from the Land of Potatoes (memo to Dan Quayle: the "e" goes only with the plural) was in the throes of a reverie: granted he's bad, most assuredly he's naughty, but could he even be nasty? How his heart must have thumped!

So now Bill is that close to being back in the general vicinity of the White House. He's overplaying his hand these days, of course, but that's simply a measure of how bad he wants it. I think Bill doesn't quite exist to himself if he's not in the limelight. If the Baby Boom's vast legions represent the Culture of Narcissism, then Bill Clinton is our patron saint, the personality around whom the cult coalesced. We can't hate him without hating ourselves, and to love him is to affirm ourselves, to authenticate our image-obsessed, amoral, ethically irresponsible dedication to our self-aggrandizement. He's so American. L'etat, c'est lui.

I think he's coming back to the center ring, where he belongs. And you know what that means: bimbos on parade. Seriously, gentle readers, whaddya think Bill's been up to between about January 20, 2001 and the present moment? The differences between the Bill Clinton of his presidential days and the Bill of Billary are these: now he's very rich, very independent, free-spirited, less scrutinized, and far less careful about what he says and does. In short, he's even more attractive, and not just to the Republican Senatorial caucus, although that's a gimme. He's been traveling all over the world since he left office. While Hillary is often in Washington D.C. , Bill has been based in New York, Southern California, anywhere he wants. Thus, the question: what kinda numbers do you think we're talking here?

Now it's true he had the multiple bypass surgery not so long ago, and he probably takes cardio medication which could slow him down some; but since 2001, medical science has also made great progress on what you could call compensatory pharmacology. Net result: no great loss of potential. So you take a lady's-catnip guy, give him a hip new wardrobe and millions and millions of dollars from speaking fees, fly him around in private jets to exotic spots all over the world in the company of female volunteers who share his passion for eradicating hunger, AIDS, poverty, the heartbreak of psoriasis, maybe even erectile dysfunction -- who share all his passions, in fact. Get out your calculators, folks.

We are, of course, going to hear all about it. What fun that will be compared to these dreary tales of waterboarding and wiretapping and subprime and all the rest of the dreary litany of tired subjects the present dibbick in the White House burdens us with in his sour, dyspeptic, buzzkill way. We're going to have a good time again! Dirty talk, the kind that made Ken Starr glad he was raised in a fundamentalist church just so he could savor the delicious feel of moral outrage (and excruciatingly tantalizing images that troubled his sweaty dreams) that another guy, much sexier than he could ever be, was playing around with the luscious...oh never mind. Moralists, fasten those seat belts. The front car has just reached the top of the roller coaster...

Economics, Definitively Explained

I know there's a lot of confusion out there right now about the American economy. Has it reached its bottom, as measured by the stock market indices? (No.) Will the U.S. economy collapse? (No.) Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (Not in January.)

I base my analysis not on the smug explanations of a bunch of guys wearing pastel ties on the business cable channels, as so many people do, but on the work of the British astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington, circa 1927. To wit, Sir Arthur gave us the elucidating phrase "time's arrow" to describe that curious temporal asymmetry in macroscopic phenomena that can only be explained by means of statistical probability. Time's arrow, in any complex system, tends always towards greater entropy, which we call the future, subject to the fluctuation theorem, which holds "after the discovery of statistical mechanics physicists realized that the second law [of thermodynamics] is only a statistical one, so that there should always be some nonzero probability that the entropy of an isolated system will spontaneously decrease; the fluctuation theorem precisely quantifies this probability."

Look, I'm not going to take a lot of time to explain why these ideas, as applied to the American economy, clear everything up. You're either with me to this point or you're not; however, the resistance to entropic anomalies implied by massive and complicated phenomena (like a big economy) certainly teaches us that the egg is not going to reassemble itself on the floor and leap up onto the counter from which it recently rolled. Agreed? Of course. By the same token, Chicken Little guys like Jim Kunstler, with his collapse ideas and sudden reversion of America to the Stone Age, proceed at their own peril and in defiance of clear and settled laws of physics. I mean, geez...the idea I actually have to spell this out. Sometimes for fun I read their stuff, but it's just for the colorful language. If the reassembling of the American economy has a statistical probability approaching (but not reaching) zero, by a parity of reasoning a sudden acceleration in entropy in defiance of the system's inertia and tendency toward modulated and highly interdependent processes is also (although not as) unlikely, providing the limiting criteria are held constant over the period in question (availability of resources, productivity, steady-state workforce, etc.). Again, I realize I'm being obvious, but these points are important.

I believe in rigor and in the laws of thermodynamics, wherever they may lead me. So let me tell you where the bottom of the Dow Jones Averages will be (other prognosticators shy away from such predictions; not me, I relish the opportunity to be precise). The Dow will move to 9,100, or a drop of about another 20% from its high of approx. 14,000. I know you know how I got there, but for the sake of those new to the class, look: the American economy = 70% consumer spending. The source of the money for spending was, during the period about 2001-2006 the sum of x (employment earnings) + y (MEW, or mortgage equity withdrawals); thus, x + y = .7(G), where G = gross domestic product. (Why do I have to crunch these equations all by myself while the guys making $500,000 per year on CNBC get by with all this blather about "market exuberance" and its opposite number?) During this period x ='ed y, approximately; thus, simplifying, 2x = .7(G). .3(G) came from somewhere else (Bill Gates's money market account interest, probably). 2x/2= x, (reflecting the fizzling out of MEW, or y), thus leaving only .35(G) as the contribution of consumer spending to GDP, or a reduction of 35%.

14,000 x .35% = 4,900. Subtracting this number from 14,000 = 9,100.

There will be another kegger in the quad Friday at noon. Please liquidate your Schwab accounts and plan to be there.

365 Days to Go

Various pieces here and there on the Internet have noted, with a great exhalation of relief, that George W. Bush has one year left to finish up his impersonation of a president. Some of them were a trifle premature in precisely noting "365 days to go," perhaps forgetting that American presidential elections happen during leap years, and that February 29 occurs between January 20, 2008 and its counterpart in 2009. Today, however, we can actually make that statement.

In our fevered times, the learned analysts and commentators are impatient with the actual transpiration of history and yearn to write it before it happens. Thus, we see in these "prehistories" an anticipatory description of what life will be like in America after Bush returns to Crawford or Dallas or Asuncion, or wherever he winds up. Most depict a country trying to haul itself up out of a morass of problems and quagmires caused by Bush's reign of incompetence and cupidity. These efforts are all versions of chewing gum with the mind, in my opinion. We just don't know at this point, any more than we know what will happen over these last 365 days.

With all that in mind, however, we can reliably predict that Bush's vaunted "sprint to the finish" (a signal characteristic of Bush's thinking is that his self-image is wildly incongruent with his lived reality) won't produce any great breakthroughs. Bush starts things and doesn't finish them. That's true across the board. Can we recall his "Road Map" which was going to lead to a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian standoff? Anthony Zinni as the envoy, way back when, Colin Powell leading the way to peace in our time? If that seems like ancient history it's because it is. Bush didn't want the United States to participate in the Kyoto Protocol; he was going to propose a different regime "based on science." He never came up with anything. He let the United States languish in the obstructionism of inertia.

His counterpart in the White House, Dick Cheney, is very different. He made his bones as a career apparatchik by always finishing his tasks. With the assistance of his Man Friday, David Addington, Cheney installed his torture regime in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram, and at all the black sites in the CIA's gulag of illegal prisons. Cheney was determined to work the "dark side," as he put it, and he delivered. The Executive Branch's obsessive secrecy and utter contempt for Congressional oversight are other hallmarks of Cheney's influence. These two features of the Bush/Cheney years, the sullied reputation of the United States as a moral force and a broken balance of powers, will linger far into the future after Bush leaves office.

On the economic front, we could say that Bush has no head for business and Cheney is indifferent to the national prosperity, although the VP is intensely interested in his own net worth. I don't think either one of them realized how much the global economy was changing while they were in office because their focus was always on wars of aggression and investing in the military-industrial complex. America's dependence on foreign sources of oil is as great (and ruinous) as ever, and the balance of trade issue remains a looming disaster. By staking his reputation on a single failed project, the Iraq war, Bush diverted vast national resources to something which cannot possibly yield a decent return on investment. Had the one trillion dollars been invested in domestic uses (alternative energy and rebuilding infrastructure), the United States would have made progress during his tenure. It is the cardinal sign of a lousy businessman that he can't figure out how to allocate his money to bring about optimal results. In this sense, Bush has simply replicated his brief failed career in the oil business.

You might say that when January 20, 2009 rolls around, the new president will face a situation where all the problems which existed in January, 2001, have been exacerbated, and many very serious dilemmas have been added to the mix -- America's economic competitiveness, the insolvency of the entitlement programs, the unmanageable national debt, the unaffordability of energy supplies such as oil. Eight years will have passed with nothing but depreciation and deferred maintenance to show for it. A truly patriotic gesture on Bush and Cheney's part would be to resign now and to allow successors to get started on the salvage operation. Consistent with their attitudes to date, however, we can be sure they won't.

What Is It Bush Isn't Telling Us?

Something's happening here,
What it is ain't exactly clear...
-- Buffalo Springfield, "For What It's Worth."

My analysis of anything George W. Bush says or does is guided by certain interpretive principles, or canons of construction. The first of these is that his announced purpose is never the actual purpose. For example, his program to "spread democracy in the Middle East" is a sham. Some of our closest allies are the most repressive police states in the world, and Bush will brook no criticism of these regimes, e.g., Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan. Bush never urges American intervention unless oil lies under the soil of an uncooperative government, for example Iraq and Iran. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Second, Bush never espouses any national policy where the chief purpose is to benefit what you might call the "American common man." Our President has no interest in American citizens per se. His loyalty is vouchsafed first, foremost and only to the high-net-worth investor class, from which he comes and among whom he has lived his life. Why the American booboisie, in its cracker barrel wisdom, would think that such a person would naturally incline toward their interests is one of the wonders of the modern world.

So now Bush is proposing a massive giveaway of about 800 bucks for every American whose name shows up on a tax return as a "short term" stimulus program. Tellingly, Henry Paulson, the fidgety and harried Secretary of Treasury, talked today in terms of refunds to "consumers." The taxpayer moniker is just an ID badge for sending the checks. The idea is to get money out there to the weary American buyers with the hope, the prayer, that they'll run right out to Wal-Mart and buy a Chinese hair dryer and save the U.S. economy. The cavalry has mounted up their Broncos and Mustangs (by Ford) and are attacking the mini-mall! Sound the bugle! We ain't finished yet, Jedediah!

Suspiciously, Bush is in a real hurry to get this done. And get this: he's not even insisting that his cherished tax cuts be made permanent (his absolutely cherished wet dream) in exchange for this populist relief.

Applying the Waldenswimmer Canons, we can deduce the following: first, as suggested by Greg Palast recently, the actual purpose of Bush's trip to the "Middle East" was to see his old pal (and America's arch-enemy) King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. They required a cheek-to-cheek to discuss Bush's great need for lots of petro-cash, like right now, in order to fund this bonanza. I mean, let's face it. Bush can't keep sending money through a fire hose to Baghdad and fund this bribe unless he's sure the King will write the checks. Screw us on the price of oil with your systematic anti-trust violations, King, that just affects my stupid subjects. But I've got to have this cash as bridge financing until January, 2009, because I just can't face another financial meltdown while I'm in charge. You know what I mean: Harken Energy, Spectrum 7, and now the United States of America.

In his press briefing today, Bush looked uncharacteristically worried. Nervous, darting eyes, his head down, with Cheney in the frame just over his right shoulder, a sure sign that things are serious. Cheney was smirking, of course, because none of this is his fault (he's not in the Executive Branch, as he told us) and anyway, his corporate headquarters are already in Dubai, where the money is.

I conclude that Bush knows something he's not telling us, weird as that may seem (knowing something, I mean). Why would he do something as extreme as helping out ordinary Americans? He vetoed medical insurance for sick children, after all. I guess I have to leave it there. I suspect that certain of his friends in the "investment banking" world have gotten to him. They've told him just how close to the line they are. These billions floating in from the "Gulf States" to Merrill Lynch, Citigroup and the rest of them are symptomatic of some profound disturbance, so obvious (once it is drawn in crayon for Bush) that even the Decider gets it. No more horsin' around, George, they tell him. Drop the ideological bullshit and send some good Socialist pay-offs to the people. They can't borrow it anymore, so you're just gonna have to give it to 'em. Because if we start to fail, you're going to wish you'd been impeached three years ago.

The Cruelty of King Abdullah

In the course of kissing, hugging, dancing and holding hands with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, President Bush found time to put in a word for justice and decency. Not, this time, on behalf of the young woman who was going to be flogged for the crime of having been gang-raped, abudcted while in the company of a non-relative male (originally her sentence was 90 lashes, but it was increased [before her pardoning after international pressure from New Zealand and elsewhere] to 200 because she attempted to influence the "court" through the media), but on behalf of American SUV drivers. Please oh please, King, for the love of God & Allah, open the Royal Spigot. My people await this supreme act of generosity! Maybe the Minister of Oil had already told us to take a hike, but Bush had a Hail Mary plan (to mix religious orthodoxies) of his own. He's tight with Ab-doo-lah, the House of Saud and the House of Bush go back a long way, and surely the King, whom Bush has tirelessly protected from scurrilous insinuations (okay: factual and accurate allegations) that he rules a land where 78.94736841052631% of the 9/11 hijackers were born and raised, could grant a Royal Solid, don't you think? Bush went so far as to redact from official government reports any evidence that Saudi ministers were involved in financing the plot. All those blacked-out pages, and this is the thanks he gets? We sell them $20 billion worth of our best military toys, let them buy our biggest banks, let it all go that they were one of the few countries to recognize the Taliban, and you're tellin' me King Abdullah won't turn the goddam valve a little counter-clockwise?

Maybe the King is simply performing an intervention. Remember when W himself said we were addicted to fossil fuels? And now he's over in the King's enormous, country-sized sand box begging (like any junkie who's thought through the true consequences of his rash decision to get off the stuff) for petroleum. For our own good, the King is keeping the liquor cabinet locked up. If Bush is too weak to face the inevitable recession his previous bravado has brought on, the King, his goateed, fat, father figure, will be strong for him.

However -- I am reminded that a Berkeley prof once told us that Saudi Arabia is not so much a nation as a family-owned filling station. We need to remember that oil is what the Saudis do; what's under all that sand is all there is. The famous Ghawar field is sputtering out, they're pumping ever-increasing quantities of seawater into the wells to force the light, sweet (now salty) crude out. By constraining supply, they keep the price way up. What they have left is going to be sold for the highest price possible, because they foresee the day when those thousands of robed playboys, the Princes, who depend on the King's largesse for Monte Carlo condo payments, yacht upkeep, gambling debts, cell phone bills, and all those European whores on retainer -- will have to dip into savings, not income. The Saudis have finagled hard to keep the price in that nice $90-$100/ barrel range, and while they'd like to help you out, Georgie, out of deep respect for all you've meant to each other...

Besides, think it through. They'd just be encouraging us. If we'd gotten realistic a long time ago about mileage standards and had built a decent railroad system, we wouldn't have to import any Saudi oil at all. We have to concede that, as contrary as humility (and intellectual honesty) is to the American ethos. But Bush, that clever poker player, is reminding Abdullah that an America in recession can't buy as much oil. Ever thought of that, King, huh? (Bush snickered with the cleverness of that ploy - hehhehhehhehhehhehhehheh!) Unfortunately, the King responded by saying "I've got two words for you. China. India."

You have to read your audience, I guess. These could be the wrong people to stir with appeals to conscience. We’ll import as much oil as they’ll let us have, pay their price, and shut up about it. We have no choice. Do we, George?

The Narcissists in their Senescence

I'm re-reading Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism just to check in on the relevance of his ancient (30 years ago) ideas about American society, and to see whether they have any continuing pertinence to America's current travails. I think they do, maybe more than ever. Lasch (a prof at Rochester University at the time he wrote the book) was clearly a polymath and Deep Thinker with a profound interest in Freudian analyses of consciousness-formation, and in particular the role of society vis-a-vis the individual personality. Fascinating stuff. In essence, Lasch described a society in which the individual members were incapable of seeing their lives as part of an historic continuum, devoting their existences not to the creation of a society where general prosperity was enhanced and posterity cared for, but rather to a Hobbesian world of merciless competition and self-aggrandizement, where the only societal "values" were the acquisition of status symbols and the creation of an "image of success." Thus, the "Narcissist" dilemma: a society in which ordinary human connections were shattered in the relentless drive to survive in a heartless world.

Sobering thoughts. I suppose my own consciousness was "formed" during the Fifties, refined during the Sixties and cemented during the Seventies. A not uncommon path for a Boomer. I never experienced that "all for one and one for all" can-do ethos of the World War II generation. Our war was a vastly unpopular exercise in futile madness that galvanized my generation only in the sense that not many of us wanted to fight in it. Along with the Civil Rights Movement (largely the result of black leadership with the assistance of ethical Jewish intellectuals and Lyndon Johnson), the anti-war movement was the main "unifying" cause of the Sixties. Had there been no draft, I'm sure the Boomer generation would have been as indifferent to the killing and dying in far-off Vietnam as America (which includes the Boomers in their narcissistic maturity) is now about Iraq and Afghanistan. No skin in the game, who cares? I've got Porsche payments to make, and what if my kid doesn't get into Hoity-Toity Country Day School?

So it's somewhat amusing to see America in its current throes of recession, unwinnable wars and general ungovernability. We have another election cycle on top of us, and most of the candidates (including, perhaps especially, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama) want to be president because they want to be president. What could be more narcissistic than that? Their bromides and anodyne references to America's golden past are all nice to listen to for a few seconds, but no one is seriously proposing anything which is going to make the slightest bit of difference. As with all once-great empires sliding into decadence, the good folks of America in general do not see that the former wealth of the country was built upon its singular ability to harness a manufacturing and educational base to a world which could be exploited for cheap resources and a ready market for its exports. All of those factors have disappeared, and we're currently consuming our capital in order to maintain the (narcissistic) illusion of prosperity.

It is not that our problems could not be solved, as a matter of abstract empirical science, it's just that this society is not going to do it. To understand why, social psychology is probably the right place to start. Solutions require cooperation and a sense of common purpose, not an aggregation of 300 million special interest groups. On the other hand, Christopher Lasch wrote his book 30 years ago, and did anyone pay attention then?

Taking Stock of the Bush Years

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) closed at 10,587 on January 19, 2001. Today it closed at 12,606. There were times during the Clinton years when the DJIA was well over 11,000, but to be fair, one must use the benchmark established on Clinton's departure and Bush's inauguration when assessing how well even this somewhat irrelevant marker of national economic health has fared under George W. Bush.

Thus, the Dow has gained 2,019 points in the seven years of Bush's presidency. Dividing 2,019 by 10,587 = 19%; dividing this result by 7 = 2.7% per year. While the Bureau of Labor Statistics maintains tables for yearly inflation (increases in the Consumer Price Index), these are notoriously (almost hilariously, in a darkly humorous way) non-inclusive of the things an American citizen needs to buy in order to remain alive; nevertheless, even using these fantasy numbers, the overall inflation between January 19, 2001 and the present at least equals the average growth in the DJIA. If one were to undertake a serious analysis of the increase in the price of imported oil (from about $20 per barrel when Bush took office to a figure approaching $100 now, with concomitant increases in the price of gasoline), and the effect of increased transportation costs on the general cost of living, it's clear that during Bush's reign it would be optimistic to say that we've made no progress.

Sometimes the "subprime" mess gets talked about as if it were some adventitious growth on the otherwise healthy body politic. In reality, the subprime mess is the essence of how even the miserable performance of the American economy during Bush's years was achieved. Namely, with wages stagnant against steadily rising prices, Americans resorted to mortgage equity withdrawals (MEW, re-fi's with cash out, lines of credit) to the tune of about $800 billion per year in order to persist in their roles as the world's go-to consumers. This was Bush's "ownership" society; a chimera achieved by the Asian habit of lending money back to us at dirt cheap rates in order to sustain a housing bubble to use as a home-sized ATM for the vanishing American junk-buying junkie.

That's over now. Wall Street is freaking out because Americans aren't buying anything anymore, the MEW game is up, and the economy, which depended on consumer buying for 70% of its life blood, is now on a heart-lung machine. There will be no revival in the short term. If you think you've seen flop sweat on Bush's brow in the past over such debacles as the American occupation of Iraq and the Katrina fiasco, you ain't seen nothin' yet. The candidates running for president, mostly old white men with secure personal fortunes who made their money, in many cases, from using their political connections, can't talk about this unnerving reality because it's too negative for Americans to face. Instead, having presided over a political system which has bankrupted the social entitlement programs beyond redemption, and will thus visit an unsustainable burden on GensX&Y, they talk about assuring that today's youth will enjoy the same prosperity which they knew as boys. In truth, the Old Ones will be lucky if they do not become the main course at a GenX&Y Cannibal Banquet.

Mauling & Mayhem at the San Francisco Zoo

We already had the wild animals but the circus didn't come to town until Mark Geragos, Esq., made his appearance for Tatiana's victim of the Famous Christmas Day Attack at the San Francisco Zoo. It's all there now, another made-for-TV biopic with new story lines every day and every angle played to within an inch of its life.

It so happens that I have had a long, long association with this particular zoo, nearly as long as anything in my life. It was called the Fleishhacker Zoo in those days, in the mid-Fifties, and my first of many visits was occasioned by the periodic weekend marooning to which my younger brother and I were subjected by our parents, to a small, fog-swept house in the Outer Sunset, not far really from the zoo itself, where our paternal grandmother lived with her third husband. We made the most of it; we were hardy and inventive boys, and even on the most stultifying of Saturday evenings, while the old folks watched Lawrence Welk on their tiny black-and-white, we managed to entertain ourselves.

But during the day we needed to get out, so we'd be loaded into the ancient black Dodge coupe and driven to Fleishhacker Zoo. Over and over again. If we were lucky, we'd be there when the Lion House was in operation, when the big cats were brought in from the grottoes outside into small individual cages. A keeper would pass along a narrow aisle between a restraining rail and the cages with a wheel barrow full of horse meat (chosen, I realize now, because it probably tasted a little feral), and toss the lions and tigers their lunch. The bedlam in that cavernous space was unforgettable. Lions and tigers, in full-throated roar, demanding to be fed.

Seeing them outside in their paved enclosures was not much of a thrill. They didn't do much, of course, because they were bored out of their minds. Maybe somewhere deep in their limbic cortices they recognized that they were the enslaved representatives of their species, displayed to provoke sympathy for the wild cousins still out there in the real world. The SF Zoo always had a bad rap, and even after some healthy changes in the enclosures it was always cited as an example of the cruelty of zoos. I could see that even then, as an eight-year old boy. It was kind of a maximum security lock-up for African and Asian beasts.

One thing I never felt was any sense of danger. I could imagine that those magnificent Siberian and Bengal tigers, in all their sinewy and sinuous glory (so evident when you saw them up close in the Lion House) could escape the grotto if they really felt like it. But looking at them lying around in the windy cold a mile from Ocean Beach, you knew they had no interest in bothering anyone. They were there to serve their time, a life stretch with no possibility of parole. Geragos would understand that, since his most famous client is on Death Row and will leave San Quentin in a box.

The reports are now trickling in that Tatiana was taunted, teased and provoked by a group of boys standing at the rail of her grotto. Duh. Geragos claims that the eyewitness testimony of independent observers with no connection to the zoo is in some unspecified fashion part of a zoo cover-up and PR campaign to deprive his clients of the wrongful death settlement they so obviously deserve. The public, of course, is overwhelmingly on Tatiana's side. She was shot dead at the scene. The zoo was closed for nine days and then reopened with all kinds of newfangled "safety glass" between the viewers and the grotto and warnings and bullhorn announcements to "protect the public," all done on the advice of the City's lawyers, of course, since everyone is now on notice that tigers can jump and climb if provoked, and if it happens again... So that future little boys can have the immediacy of the experience of seeing a big cat diminished by these distancing contraptions, while we all titillate ourselves with the thrill of phony danger held at bay by more "security."

And all that was ever necessary was to leave Tatiana alone. Just look at her, as she looks at you, and behave your damn self. A lost art in these coarse and hooligan times.

California High Speed Rail and other Abstract Theories

Not too long ago, the California High Speed Rail Authority conducted a couple of meetings in Sacramento to make some crucial decisions about the route for the first leg between Anaheim and San Francisco. Along with various dignitaries like Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, the consumer lobbying group, Train Riders Association of California (making for an easily remembered acronym) was there, and of course lots of chamber of commerce types who strenuously argued about whether the line should curve west at Altamont Pass, on a latitude with Oakland, or at Pacheco Pass and head north through San Jose. The latter route was chosen, perhaps reminding us that San Jose, after all, is the largest city in the Bay Area and the only metropolis with more than a million people. San Francisco and Oakland tend to forget this. The Santa Clara Valley is also where all the money is.

The HSRA is headed up by Chairman Quentin Kopp, who in other incarnations was a lawyer in San Francisco, a member of the Board of Supervisors and a Superior Court Judge. At the time of his appointment to the Authority, he was approximately 114 years old, which is a suspicious circumstance vis-a-vis the true level of government support for this project in the Golden State. It is true that the Authority has a younger and more energetic executive director, but still...Nevertheless, so much has been done. Environmental impact reports, mainly, but also acquisition of rights of way, which mostly already existed, of course, and yet - a stunning achievement. Although we also have to admit that not a single rail has been laid...

Once upon a time, the idea was that the high speed rail line, which would whoosh passengers between downtown San Francisco and Los Angeles's Union Station in 2-1/2 hours, would be in operation by 2012, certainly within my reasonably-expected lifetime, and even within Quentin Kopp's, if he stays away from the heavy sauces. Alas, there were delays, as the state fell into financial insolvency following the dot.com bust, and the new Govenator decided that this fun toy was not a priority compared to building more jails to provide more jobs for the prison guards union and trying to close the fiscal deficit. The $10 billion bond measure, scheduled for placement on the sacrificial altar of the 2008 general election, will determine whether the first installment on the estimated cost of $40 billion for the whole system will be funded. Schwarzenegger would prefer to delay the bond proposition once again, as it was the last time it came up. I don't think he has to worry much. I suppose it depends on the PR campaign that TRAC and others are able to bring to bear, but don't hold your breath, train lovers. Anyway, the costs now are multiples of the original estimate because of all the delays, and if they started immediately after a favorable vote in 2008, it would probably be 2025 before any trains rolled.

By comparison, the Japanese began operating their first bullet train on the Shinkansen line in 1963. The TGV in France between Lyon and Paris was initiated in 1981, running electrically on nuclear power. Through integration with the Thalys and Eurostar lines, you have been able, for many years, to zoom all over Western Europe on extremely comfortable, very fast (in excess of 200 mph) trains, and when you arrive, as in the Gare du Nord in Paris, you are already downtown. The same would be true of San Francisco to Los Angeles, of course; instead of finding yourself marooned on arrival in some distant outpost a long traffic jam from where you really want to go, you're there when you get there. At any distance up to 400 miles, high speed rail is actually faster than airplanes because of the elimination of all the check-in and strip search stuff, and the endless waiting in the airport and more waiting on the runway, and the vulnerability of planes to fog and heavy weather. In terms of fuel and passenger efficiency (passengers miles per hour), there is no comparison between high speed rail and automobiles, and trains are much safer and less exhausting to the rider.

Yet in California and the United States generally, high speed rail, at speeds and comfort levels comparable to the TGV and German Inter-City Express, has an abstract, theoretical feel to it. It's just something else that the United States lacks the will and the vision to accomplish. TRAC seems like an off-shoot of the Trekkie phenomenon, a group that gathers to argue about whether the transporter was or was not used in Episode 113. All the staff on the HSRA draw salaries, of course, and Mr. Kopp can supplement his five or six pensions with another stipend while he sententiously presides over these make-believe meetings. It all feels a little like string theory, an elegant and internally consistent construct with no actual direct application in the real world. Maybe when the HSRA meets in Sacramento, they roll out a model train diorama, with papier-mache mountains representing the Coastal Range, and plastic train stations, and the beautiful aerodynamic engines. Just like in France! And they huddle around (Quentin gets to run the transformer, of course) and watch the high speed train make a run up the plywood course from Anaheim to San Francisco (look at that cute Golden Gate Bridge someone made! and they put an Apple near San Jose! Get it?). The TRAC people look on; how they'd love to get their hands on that transformer handle! Still, they can cheer the high speed engine on. "Toot! Toot!" they all shout.

The Final Great Gift of the Baby Boomers

The satirical blogsite "23/6" has come out with a parody of AARP Magazine, as Generation X might modify it to reflect their true attitudes about this huge demographic bulge made up of Americans born between the years 1946 and 1964. It's very funny, standing on their heads all the well-worn tropes and delusions of this aging cohort, in whose number, admittedly, I myself dwell. Our narcissism; our Peter Pan delusions; our demand for attention. Laid out like a regular cover, there are "special sections," such as "Give It Up," with bullet points like "Stop Jogging." "Delete Your MySpace Page." And "60 Is Not the New 40: It's Old." "Sex: We Don't Want to Hear About It." It ends with a request that we simply die off and stop pestering everyone with our self-obsessions.

I was wondering when this generation would achieve enough life experience and wisdom to get around to looking at things this way. To tell the truth, I don't like my generation either. I like the "Greatest Generation" people, my parents' group. There was something so solid and real about them. They understood that life was inevitably hard work and travail leavened with a little joy. They did not treat every disappointment or down mood like a pathology. I like the generation born in the Thirties and early Forties, the ones who rebelled at encroaching materialism and gave us the Beat outlook, like Henry Miller and Bob Dylan. And today's kids, who recognize so well how we've trashed the place, clogged up the landscape with cars, and too-big houses, and devoured the world's open spaces and natural resources, and set in motion the cataclysm of global warming: I like their precocious world-weariness, their wry and ironic humor, even their patience with us, as we try to talk their lingo while wearing our oversized cargo shorts and texting on our Sidekick cell phones. They seem less inclined to spend their time "processing their emotions," or indulging in the fantasies of the "human potential movement." Sure, a lot of them have been spoiled by us, but they see through it: they know it's a bribe, the product of a guilty conscience. "Here, take all the shit we've cluttered our lives up with. We'd connect with you emotionally, but we don't know how."

That's where my generation went off the rails. It's how we became obsessive consumers alienated from one another and from the natural world we live in. We forgot the ancient cultural teaching that everything depends on human interconnectedness, that material comforts and success will do nothing without it, and that the essential attitude is not "self-assertiveness" but humility and reverence for Mother Earth.

So I think Gen X is right. And I suggest that, for once, we do something self-sacrificial to show we're sincere. I propose that we all die off. It needs to be mass suicide, of course. I do not want any painful reminders of Holocausts of the past. One other point on the AARP cover claimed "All Your Music Sucks." With that I don't agree. Taste in music is strictly a matter of cultural inculcation, and I liked our stuff. So a perfect venue for our mass die-off is a New Woodstock, a final Woodstock. Maybe in the middle of the country, near St. Louis. Every drug our generation devised can be available, to make the whole thing a little less terrifying. Those who want to be organ donors can exit that way (after all, we have a lot to atone for). The rest can enjoy the festival for a week before the Jonestown Moment.

Think of all we'll be accomplishing. An immediate reduction in American population by 80 million. The Social Security and Medicare crises: solved in a twinkling. The freeing up of vast tracts of affordable housing, which can be distributed to Generation X by the government, free of charge, as compensation for the Baby Boom inflation which made owning a house for Gen X a one-in-a-million shot. A solution to the problem of impeaching George W. Bush. But what, you say, of the tremendous loss of intellectual capital and productivity from this highly educated group? No, it's not that big a deal. They're mostly burn-outs at this point. The people born in the Thirties will still be around, and they're a helluva lot smarter than we are.

What remains is a solid waste management problem. I think I can figure some things out here, since I was educated in public schools before the Baby Boomers withdrew all the support for education in favor of buying Toyota Landcruisers and 12,000 square foot houses. Let's say, even in our SuperSizeMe era, where most of the Baby Boomers achieved their final playing weight with the aid of several thousand Double Whoppers with Extra Cheese and 48-oz. Pepsi barrels, that the average weight is 200 lbs., assuming a bloated weight of 250 lbs a man, 150 lbs for his pudgy little woman. So we've got total mass of 80 million x 200 lbs = 16 billion pounds. However, 70% of this mass is water (a little less in their case: I forgot to mention the Pre-KoolAid blood drive, where the donors will be encouraged to give and then give some more), which will evaporate out soon enough with decomposition. Some suggested uses: using the biomass to rebuild coral reefs destroyed by global warming. Incorporating the bulk in bricks for building the fence between Mexico and the United States (although it probably won't be necessary anymore). Repairing the levees in New Orleans. Organic compost. Rocketing the entire Baby Boomer generation in missiles aimed at the sun.

If we have the courage, for once, to take these necessary steps, we will be fondly remembered by those so glad to see us go. And really, we're not giving up much. The years left are the years of arthritic knees and bad backs which never relent, and occluding arteries, and cataracts and dental implants, hip replacements, diverticulitis, prostate cancer, all while trying to live up to our age group's demand for simulating the lifestyle of the young. And the epitaph written over our mass grave by a grateful Gen X: "Never have so many given so much to get the hell out of the way."

We interrupt this vacation to bring you late-breaking news

It was certainly brave of Benazir Bhutto to return to Pakistan. Amazingly so. She didn't have to, after all. She could have stayed in London, in safety, with her children. She had lost two brothers to violence in Pakistan, and her father had been executed by Zia al-Huq following a military coup. Pakistan is perhaps the most unstable and dangerous country on the face of the earth. I imagine Osama bin Laden lives there because he's addicted to chaos; it's his scene, man. Nuclear weapons, the Kashmir flash point poised to spin the world into Armageddon at any moment, an unpopular dictator running the country, 165 million people crowded into a small place. What a mess.

Bhutto's assasination occurred, of course, while Bush was on vacation. W can't buy a break. Nobody respects his time off. One must temper the notion of freak coincidence with the observation that Bush takes a lot of time off. What are the odds that a major world event will occur while Bush is on vacation, if a date is chosen at random? 1 in 3? 50-50? Still, the world should go on red alert when Bush goes to Crawford. While he's been there, the 9-11 hijackers finished up their planning, Katrina destroyed New Orleans, and now this. Bush dutifully put on a blue suit down there in the Western White House (he really should call it the "Southwestern White House" out of respect for the hallowed memory of Richard Nixon) and trooped before the press for a two-minute statement in which he demanded that the "extremists" responsible for this "cowardly act" be "brought to justice." Certainly we've heard that phrase before. The guy most immediately responsible exists now only in an atomized state, so he can be crossed off the list. What he did was certainly "extreme," but if others were behind him, Bush might want to hold off on calling them all "extremists." For example, running a fake democracy, arresting the chief justice of the Pakistani supreme court and rounding up all the lawyers might also be seen as "extreme acts," but Bush would never call the perpetrator an "extremist."

I noted that Mitt Romney cited the attack as further evidence that "radical jihadism" threatens the civilized world, then quickly added he didn't know who had done it, then noted that the attack proves violence is not confined to Iraq and Afghanistan. It seems likely that al-Qaeda will claim responsibility for the murder; it fits their M.O. It's not as if they're concerned about their international reputation. If someone other than the attacker was involved in the assassination, my guess is we'll never really know who those people were. Romney's comments, as incoherent as they are, point the way to the conservative's favored characterization. These events always have a blind-men-with-the-elephant feel to them, of course. Bhutto's supporters, with perhaps a better sense of Pakistani reality, will accuse Pervez Musharraf. The Bush Administration will not entertain such disturbing speculation, and all of the presidential candidates, Republican and Democratic alike, will steer away from such "radical" thinking. Even if it's true.

Meanwhile, a brave and principled woman who dared to lead a Muslim country is dead, and a decent period of mourning will be truncated in favor of using her demise as a political football. Such is the way of the world. It would not have surprised Benazir, I'm sure, which makes her courage all the more poignant.

Deconstructionism and the 43rd President

In one of his pre-Christmas orations, the one in question to the Rotary Club in Fredericksburg, Virginia, President Bush emphatically defended his tax cuts and, in his own mind, dismissed once and for all the tiresome liberal canard that his program disproportionately favored the rich. The way he went about this was, in one of Bush's two favorite adjectives, interesting (the other one is "fabulous"). After a few lame, self-deprecatory jokes, W got right to the point:

"Now, sometimes in the nation's capital, they'll say, some people get tax cuts and others don't. That's not my attitude. My attitude was, if you're paying taxes, you ought to get tax relief. And so we cut taxes. And I mean we cut them on everybody. And when you cut them on individuals, it turns out you also are cutting taxes on small business owners. Most small businesses in America are Subchapter-S corporations, or limited liability partnerships, which means that the owners of the companies pay individual taxes. In other words, the company is subject to the individual tax rates. And so cutting individual taxes not only helps consumers and families, but it also helps small businesses."

Bush did cut taxes on everyone; how he went about it, however, does subject him to some suspicion about his true "attitude." The purpose of Bush's tax cuts was very simple. It's not quite what "they say" in Washington, as W frames it (Bush often sounds a little paranoid; who are "they" and why do they keep saying these things?). What "they say" (I've heard them too) is that the main feature, the cornerstone, the sine qua non of the program, was the reduction of the top marginal rate from 39.6% to 35% on income taxes. Junior did not quite convince Congress to reduce the rates as low as GHW Bush's 31%, which must rankle; however, Junior has the psychological compensation of knowing he couldn't because Bush the 41st ran the national debt through the roof with his tax cuts, building on the financial ruin set in motion by Bonzo's playmate.

Now, that may not sound like much. But for W's true constituency, the uber-rich, it is manna from heaven. Suppose you are the CEO of a military contractor, a Fortune 500 company, and Bush&Cheney have made you as rich as Croesus with their constant warfaring in the Middle East. You're bringing home the Fortune 500 CEO average of $400 million per year. Even after the gnomes at the firm's CPA office have worked their legerdemain, that $400 million is still heavily exposed to the nettlesome top rate of (let's round off) 40%. Clinton! First the chubby girl, now this! That's $160 million simoleons, and for what? Look what happens when you lower that marginal rate to a still-confiscatory 35%: total take by Uncle Sam is now $140 million. You just put $20 million in your pocket, enough for another vacation house in Aspen or Montauk, and will also ease the strain of paying your two alimonies and the upkeep on your trophy wife.

Why wouldn't these people love Bush? They do, that's the point. In 1944, the top marginal rate was 94%, but there was a war on, a real one, not one manufactured in order to siphon money from the U.S. Treasury to well-connected defense contractors and oil companies. Besides, people cared about the United States in those days; they didn't see the place as simply a "platform" or a casino. The point now is to pay as little as you can get away with. And that's a lot, because the current forecasts are that by the year 2010, 52% of Bush's tax cuts will redound to the benefit of the richest 1% in the "country."

So what the hell was Bush talking about with Subchapter-S and LLP's and the rest of it? Well, part of it is that Bush loves to use terms like "C corps" and Subchapter-S because it gives the appearance of some depth beyond memorization of the lingo. Very biz school. What he says is technically true; to avoid the problem of "double taxation" (taxation of the corporation and taxation of the income the corp. pays to employees) while retaining the corporate advantage of limited liability, the IRS invented these things, which in effect allow the net income of the corporation to pass through to the individual owners. Not always an unalloyed blessing. However -- so what? What's that got to do with the effect of the tax cuts? If the Sub-S owner is a very successful businessman who owns 50% of the business, and the business nets $10 million, $5 million will be attributed to him. If, say, $4 million of this is exposed to the top rate of 35%, he'll owe $1.4 million. Under Slick Willie, he would have owed $1.6 million, so he just pocketed $200,000 in exchange for becoming a Ranger donor for the Republican Party. Will he hire some more people? Maybe. Maybe he'll just blow it on a Mediterranean cruise. But who thought that "small business owners," whether they did business through a Subchapter-S corporation or out of a roadside fruit stand, didn't pay "individual rates?" Everyone pays individual rates (except for hedge fund managers, thanks to Senator Charles Schumer (Plutocrat-NY)).

What in the world is he talking about? I guess that's my question. "Small businesses" are individuals. That's what makes them "small," as opposed to, say, Halliburton. So let's see if we can analyze Bush algebraically as well as deconstructing this gibberish verbally. "Small business owners" = business run by individuals = individuals. Substituting in the term "individuals" for "small business owners" yields an expression reduced to simplest terms, namely, "it turns out when you lower rates on individuals, you are also lowering rates on individuals." I can live with that. Surviving another year and 25 days is an open question.

On the other Hand, Never Make Big Decisions on Monday

I need to mention this guy Dmitry Orlov, a Russian emigre who's been making a splash in those cultish circles where things like "systemic collapse" and "peak oil" are routinely discussed, those folks, in other words, who conceive of a paradigm shift in the status of American society which comes about by forces beyond our political control. Which are visited upon us, in other words. Born, achieve, thrust upon: as with greatness, other quantum shifts can arrive by any of three routes. The Soviet Union was a bad idea from the jump, then crystallized its badness through the Stalinist Cult of Personality, then had perestroika and glasnost thrust upon it because it was utterly rotted out. Among this pessimistic crew we can also number James Kunstler of the Clusterfuck blog and books, and then, of course, that most scholarly of the doomsday-sayers, my old Berkeley prof Chalmers Johnson.

Orlov on the American presidential "horse race": "It is certainly more fun to watch two Capitalist parties go at each other than just having the one Communist party to vote for. The things they fight over in public are generally symbolic little tokens of social policy, chosen for ease of public posturing. The Communist party offered just one bitter pill. The two Capitalist parties offer a choice of two placebos. The latest innovation is the photo finish election, where each party buys 50% of the vote, and the result is pulled out of statistical noise, like a rabbit out of a hat. The American way of dealing with dissent and with protest is certainly more advanced: why imprison dissidents when you can just let them shout into the wind to their heart's content?"

That should be reassuring to "dissident" bloggers everywhere. Why, indeed, should the executive branch pay any attention to the rantings and ravings of the general populace? By a substantial majority, for example, the American people want the Iraq occupation to end. They so voted in November, 2006. Two months later the war escalated. A Democratic majority in the House had the Constitutional option of refusing to allow a floor vote for war appropriations. This is clear, unambiguous, Constitutionally-prescribed reality. Over one year later, the occupation is in full swing. It has been funded through at least June, 2008. In June it will be "politically" impossible to upset the delicate calculations which produce Orlov's "photo finish" through something as jarring as political courage, i.e., denying Bush his war funding. To come out on the right side of the statistical noise this time, the Democrats merely have to appear as the lesser aspect of the repugnant spectacle known as national electoral politics. They may or may not achieve this. If Hillary Clinton is nominated, we may wind up with a Baptist preacher as President of the United States. Jerzy Kosinksi, who wrote "Being There," could never have dreamed this one up.

I appreciate Orlov's sunny analysis of what he views as a certain American economic collapse. The only question, for him, is when. All of the elements necessary for such a paradigm shift are there, according to Dmitry. Bankruptcy (hard to argue when you're in hock $9 trillion); inflation (artfully concealed by leaving the two main things people need, food and fuel, out of the official calculations); huge foreign debts and trade imbalances (largest in world history, and growing at the rate of $1.3 billion per day); highly unstable dependence on foreign energy sources (20 million bbl of oil per day, of which 14 million must be imported, mostly from countries which hate our guts); a massively inflated military-industrial complex (according to Chalmers, if you add up everything that goes into defense and "security" [all the redundant intelligence services], it comes to about $1 trillion); healthcare as a profit center rather than a social service; a steeply declining quality of public education; and, of course, a representative government which concerns itself with Dmitry's "symbolic little tokens" of gay marriage, flag burning, abortion and other crucial issues which determine whether Americans can keep food on the table and their automobiles running.

Wrapping up the Blog

Look, even Thoreau only spent two years and two months at the Pond. It is sometimes incorrectly assumed he always lived there. He wasn't a crank; he was a Harvard educated intellectual who unfortunately could never shake his tuberculosis and died way before his time.

However, more influential even than H.D., in terms of this decision, is Dr. Johnson, who wrote that "nobody but a blockhead ever wrote for anything but money." Besides, to everything there is a season. So I want to say to the NSA, and to the CIA, and the FBI, and the Department of Defense, and the Office of Special Plans, and to the Executive Branch, and to those parts of the Executive Branch which apparently aren't, although I thought they were, such as Dick Cheney's office: no hard feelings, right? After all, you never (okay, rarely) saw me get personal with the Decider, like some other writers I could name. In fact, let me name names, in that fine old American paranoid tradition...okay, I won't. I might criticize policy, or certain teensy-weensy inroads on the Bill of Rights which have occurred in the last seven years. But we still have one or two left; let's not get greedy.

Anyway, increasingly I see that the democratic process in America does not quite work the way it used to, even compared to earlier stages of my lifetime. Is it possible that the almighty Framers, in their matchless wisdom and clairvoyance, designed a system that worked okay when there were about 3 million people (not counting slaves, and who was counting them?), 13 colonies, and a large city (like New York) had about 20,000 people, but doesn't work so well when the system is now so huge and complicated, and the issues so complex, and the general quality of education is declining, and incumbents are personally unknown to the electorate and are sent back to office, or defeated, on the basis of PR campaigns? When the system, in other words, has broken down because of its size and complexity?

As a salutatory note, that's what I think. It's the best explanation I can think of for the apparent irrelevance of government to the real problems of everyday Americans. It's not that government doesn't serve interests; it does, but those interests are the ones with the money and access to get the government to do something for them, and with the cash to run successful PR campaigns for public office, all of it mounted on electronic media using the tricks and tropes of the entertainment industry. Mr. Smith doesn't go to Washington anymore; the CEO of Martin Marietta does. That's a cliche, but like many cliches it's unfortunately true. So the same forces that made America an economic colossus are the forces that have locked the system into an ossified senility that cannot react rationally to obvious problems. It makes sense that such a condition would occur here now, in the late stages of the American empire. We can't respond effectively to crises like climate change, oil shortages, the national debt of $9 trillion, the collapsing dollar, the decrepit infrastructure, unaffordable healthcare, the absence of a national rail network worth anything, the shift from a manufacturing base to a "consumerist" economy, the huge and growing disparities between rich and poor - to anything, really, because it is a mistake to identify the interests of so-called "average" Americans with the political process in Washington, D.C. Note to the NSA: I don't mean anything radical by that. Nor do I propose that we do anything about it, in case you're wondering, because the whole point is that nothing can be done. Now I ask you: just how patriotic is that? A fatalist commitment to the status quo: as American as apple pie.

There will be another election season in which a group of candidates anxious for the perks and power of the nation's highest office traffic in a gaudy set of carefully-managed illusions and catch-phrases, promising great change, etc., and then one of them will go to Washington (or return there) and come up against the immovable inertia of vested interests represented tenaciously by America's uniparty; and most of the discretionary budget will go to the military-industrial complex, and the faltering social programs will limp along toward their eventual bankruptcy, and the cost of living will go higher and higher as the dollar falls, as oil grows inexorably more expensive, as Americans compete to buy American food with foreign purchasers anxious to take the country's last remaining export. I think we'll give up on the idea, after a few more years, of controlling foreign producers of oil by occupying them militarily because we just won't be able to afford it nor sustain the army to do so. And then we'll be at the mercy of the market. I think GW Bush will be the last of the great military adventurists in American history.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight.

And Everyone Has a Share

In Joseph Heller's masterpiece of World War II satire, Catch-22, Milo Minderbinder, the quintessential capitalist, stood in for war profiteering and amoral corporate business practices generally. Milo followed the profit principle wherever it led, mindlessly, indifferently, relentlessly. Eventually it led to Milo's joint venture with the Germans and to the bombing of his own squadron on the island of Pianosa. It might seem like treason to cooperate with the Luftwaffe, and indeed a court martial was contemplated, but then Milo, with the assistance of able counsel, demonstrated that what was good for business was good for America. The charges were dropped. In the most emotionally searing passage in the book, Yossarian, in his efforts to ease the suffering of the wounded airman Snowden in the tail of a B-25, finds the morphine syringe has been stolen by Milo and replaced by a certificate good for a share in M&M Enterprises, in which all the squadron members "have a share."

I was thinking about Milo when I read today that the United States military is now cooperating with the Turks on cross-border invasions into Northern Iraq in pursuit of PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) rebels. The Turks are flying sorties against Kurdish positions and the U.S. is helping with intelligence. The Bush Administration is quick to point out that the PKK is a "designated terrorist organization," but it's worth noting that the "central" government in Baghdad has protested the Turkish invasion in vehement terms. The U.S., however, has seen its popularity in Turkey fall from a post-9/11 52% to its current 8% and reasons it shouldn't do anything more to alienate this key ally in the Middle East, which, after all, is Israel's one solid ally in the Muslim world.

At this point an objective observer would have to admit that we're practicing a Realpolitik which Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, would have commended . These days we just do what we gotta do. Still, from a strictly formal perspective, one which takes into account the sovereignty of the "nations" involved, even Bush might have to admit that there is something anomalous about supporting an invasion of a country we're occupying, especially where the government we're propping up has gone on record as opposed to the invasion, as indeed Nouri al-Maliki's government has. It would seem (though no one, surprisingly, has even suggested this) that it is the role of the United States to deal with a destabilizing Kurdish separatist movement in the north in the same way that, I suppose, we deal with Sunni insurgents or Mahdi militia or Saudi infiltrators and jihadists who are trying to destabilize the central government.

This seems especially true when one considers that the eruption of a Kurdish separatist movement which would involve the Kurds in eastern Turkey was one of the complications which was earliest foreseen prior to the U.S. invasion. We knew this would happen; in fact, one of the major buyers of Bell and Sikorsky helicopters for decades has been the Turkish government, which has used them to bomb and strafe Kurdish militants on both sides of the Turkish-Iraqi border (see Spoils of War, by John Tirman, an indispensable book for understanding otherwise mystifying Congressional votes, e.g., Joseph Lieberman and Dianne Feinstein). So now they're doing the same thing but it's while we're occupying the country. Which is ...weird.

Until you consider that the U.S. just doesn't have the manpower to deal with the Kurdish question. We can't hazard the casualties, not with the surge "working," and it would be a PR nightmare for the United States to begin a program of ethnic cleansing in the north of the kind the Turks have been engaged in for a long time. The essential problem is that the Kurds do not see themselves as part of Iraq, and the PKK does not see the Kurds in eastern Turkey as part of Turkey, a position which probably many non-rebel Kurds hold as well. It's the reason that Saddam spent so much time crushing revolts in the north. As Bush reminded us every few minutes before invading Iraq, it was where Saddam Hussein used "poison gas on his own people." Every time the Baghdad central government, whether under Hussein or the current Shiite theocracy, has found itself under siege, the Kurds make a break for the exits and resume efforts to fulfill their ancestral dream of Greater Kurdistan.

Meanwhile, Milo Minderbinder would be proud that America is not a slave to unworkable principle. Maybe it's a fiasco in Iraq, but everyone has a share, and will for decades to come.