Fear and fairness in determining the collective good

Author's note: My post from September, 2005, Katrina and the collective good is my "most read" post. This post expands on the concept of the collective good by examining the essence or essential nature of fear and being fair in an industrial/technological society. Also, two recent books make this an appropriate time to revisit these issues:

The Squandering of America,
by Robert Kuttner

and

The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy,
by William Greider

Plus, this article in the December, 2007 issue of Vanity Fair:

The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush,
by Nobel laureate, Joseph E. Stiglitz

To live in fear is the essence of slavery, or the essential characteristic of liberty is to live without fear. Freedom is having no fear.

As FDR -- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- said in his first inaugural address, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that theAnd only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
First inaugural address

And fairness? What is fairness in our individual lives interacting with each other? What is fairness in the commons, the public arena? How does what we do privately affect others publicly, and what is fair about it? How does what is done publicly affect us privately, and what is fair about it?

In political history we have specific interpretations attached to fairness such as President Harry S. Truman and his Fair Deal, and the Fairness Doctrine as an FCC regulation.

Here I want to strip away this historical baggage and get to the core meanings of fear and fair as we live our daily lives ... starting as children on the playground where we learn to handle bullies, and we go by the rule, "fair is fair".

Here I will explore the premise that my country, the United states of America, is faltering because our leaders are bullies who have abandoned fairness.

Economic smoke and mirrors ... or the love of money is the root of all evil

Fact: The cost of oil and food are not counted when measuring "core inflation".

Fact: The unemployment rate does not include workers who have given up looking for a job.

And our vaunted leaders have kept telling us the US economy was doing great ... right up until now when the plummeting value of the dollar has pulled back the curtain ... a la Wizard of Oz.

And we no longer have the industrial base to take advantage of a weaker dollar. We don't have anything to sell except Manhattan real estate. (That's metaphorical, folks ... just in case you didn't catch the sarcasm.)

And we the people have our brilliant idiots — our leading economists — conspiring with our greedy elite ruling class of global corporationists to thank for the mess we are in, and the coming catastrophe ... which they will sell to us via the religion of True Believers as the moral decline of the people ... when they should be reminding us of the age-old wisdom of "the love of money is root of all evil."

For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

- 1 Timothy 6:10 KJV

"The flimflammery of official statistics ... "

The country has been in denial for years about the economic reality facing American families. That grim reality has been masked by the flimflammery of official statistics (job growth good, inflation low) and the muscular magic of the American way of debt: mortgages on top of mortgages, pyramiding student loans and an opiatelike addiction to credit cards at rates that used to get people locked up for loan-sharking.

The big story out of Mr. Bernanke’s appearance before the Joint Economic Committee was his prediction that the economy was likely to worsen. Only the people still trapped in denial could have believed otherwise.

This is what Representative Maurice Hinchey of upstate New York told the chairman:

“This economy is not doing well. And the example of the mortgage closures on 2 million people — and maybe a lot more than that as time goes on — is really not the cause of the economic problem we’re facing, but it’s just a factor of it. It’s a factor of the weakness of this economy.”

In an interview after the hearing, Representative Hinchey discussed the disconnect between official government reports and the reality facing working families. He noted that the unemployment rate does not include workers who have become so discouraged that they’ve given up looking for a job.

And the most popular measure of inflation, the Consumer Price Index, does not include the cost of energy or food, “the two most significant aspects of the increased cost of living for the American people.”

The elite honchos in Washington and their courtiers in the news media are all but completely out of touch with the daily struggle of working families. Thirty-seven million Americans live in poverty and close to 60 million others are just a notch above the official poverty line.

- Bob Herbert
Recession? What Recession?
OpEd - NYTimes
Saturday, November 10, 2007

When the labor movement in the United States failed to fight for the right of every person willing and able to work to be able to work at a job that at least paid a living wage for a worker's family, the labor movement failed the worker and his/her family.

The principle of having a job that pays a living wage for a worker's family for everyone willing and able to work is NOT socialism, communism or even unionism. It is the cornerstone of a free society.

Variations on the human theme ...

We all know that people have different eye colors ... and that there are major differences like brown and blue ... and that there are tint and pattern variations of the main differences.

Most of us know that traits like response to certain stimuli also vary, like sexual arousal to specific visual images ... and that individuals are aroused differently, to different levels of arousal, by different images.

What we may not have thought about is how that translates to different levels of group identification. I would suggest a spectrum of emotional commitment to one's "identity groups" -- family, and other forms of "tribe" such as religion, alma mater, company, etc. --from intense embedding to casual acceptance like, "Oh yes, I belong to the local bowling league."

I would speculate further that the ability of the symbols of any one of our identity groups to trigger an emotional response is a key indicator of "embeddedness" within that group. In examining the relationships of symbols to their emotional responses, the variations of individual emotional response need to be factored into the analysis.

"Symbols" in this context mean any "identifying" signs, sounds, rituals, etc. For instance our national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner" is a symbol of our national identity.

Taking a leap ahead, we can envision a political party that unites the "religious identity" with "national identity" as creating a strong pull on its members. And those individuals with the strongest positive emotional response to religious symbols are -- hypothetically at least -- the ones who would develop the strongest positive emotional connection to the political party and its symbols.

We should keep in mind that slogans and phrases can become symbolic elements of group identity as opposed to rational elements of public discourse.

And if the political leaders merge the religious and national identities of the people by using symbols of the religious identity to interweave the emotional connection rather than overt statements which would be rationally rejected out of hand ... and if they do this consciously ... don't we have what is actually going on today in the United States? And what went on in Hitler's Third Reich within the lifetime of some of our citizens?

And isn't this the whole thrust of the neocon a la Leo Strauss political movement?

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Strauss

"They" are trying to hold back worldwide panic over the dollar ...

Just before Christmas in 2005 I advised my friends that they should either sell their home in the coming year or plan on staying in it for awhile.

Their children were going to college and it was obvious from all the key indicators that the housing bubble was getting ready to pop. Mostly I had been reading Paul Krugman's column on the OpEd page of the NY Times and putting two and two together.

Currently it is obvious that the economy of the United States is tanking. And if the US Dollar becomes funny money, the Chinese are going to be pissed. Like 1.5 trillion dollars is a lot of swag anywhere ... and there is only so much Manhattan real estate ... and as the dollar plummets ... the amount you can get for any given million or so is less and less.

What will our brilliant financial idiots do then? Like, when the dollar tanks? Right now they are trying desperately to hold back the panic that a real run on the dollar would cause.

And you see, folks ... there isn't any vast industrial base to pick up the slack ... in like churning out something the world wants at the lower prices the falling dollar would bring ... so we are caught in the economic vise of our own making ... not the making of we the people, but of the making of our great greedy leaders ...

The only question left is who are "they" going to blame.

Oh ... and my friends didn't sell their home. They enjoy living in it, their neighborhood, and their community. And they will not retire for another ten years or so. They love what they do and how they live.

Well, we're in for it now ...

How I see things as an American citizen ... now that General Musharraf of Pakistan has declared a state of emergency and suspended that country's constitution.

Our military's ground forces are almost totally decimated by the protracted military occupation of Iraq since our victory there in the Second Iraq War ended by mid-2003 with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. (But we still have our nukes.)

Russia, Venezuela, and Iran are earning gajillions off the "risk tax" added to the price of oil by our participation in destabilizing the Middle East.

China is buying up the world's resources with our U.S. dollars as fast as it can, ahead of the falling value of the U.S. dollar.

What else? There is so much more going on ... like the resurgence of Hezbollah in Lebonon and the Taliban in Afghanistan ... and we haven't even begun to decipher the deterioration of our moral authority with the all but concrete revelation that we tortured human beings in our custody.

The Cheney/neocon/Bush 43 administration's foreign policy has been a disaster in so many ways that it is hard to keep track of them all ... and the large number of problems cannot be hid by the relatively small fig leaf of General Petraeus's tactical surge with its principle outcome being the balkanization of Iraq ... which, by the way, benefits Iran to a great degree.

My God, it is a mess, isn't it?

What is more ... our enemies know all this.

Wages for labor is the primal discussion ...

Wages for labor is the primal discussion ... how do we divide the rewards of the hunt ...

If we view "labor" as a cost like any other material than we actually/literally make those who labor into commodities, something other than primary participants. But we all know this ... and we console ourselves by becoming consumers.

The narratives we pass onto our children and our children's children is "be good and we will buy you something" ... the emotional expectation of becoming an adult gets wrapped in the opportunity to buy ... not in the ability to do ... for too many of us.

We who labor have all to often accepted the role of gun-bearer and guide to the Great White Hunter as if he were some kind of god-man when it is our labor and skills that allow him to hunt.

The problem from the labor side is that too often labor has been organized to exclude, and organized labor becomes viewed as an obstacle to many -- if not most -- who want to work ... an obstacle to those who want to, but are not allowed to join the hunt.

As long as organized labor colludes with the man to limit access to work, labor in general will lose.

That is not to say that specific skill sets/individual parameters cannot be defined or selected for specific jobs/assignments, or that pay rates can't vary. It is to say that labor solidarity must be for the principle that everyone willing and able to work must be given work at a living wage (in the context of a working family's needs).

I don't really give a rat's butt how many rich folks there are, as long as all who want to work can earn a living wage.

My labels ...

Politically, I consider myself a conservative progressive ... for example, I believe in states rights but not to block minimum standards from some, rather to provide a necessary flexibility on how we apply those standards in our communities for all.

I know, I know ... issues like that can get rather nuanced ... and that is why our founders created a republic with a balance of powers (not a one-man, one-vote herd-like democracy) based on levels of representation ... so we could sort it all out as we moved forward ... carefully. (The "moving forward" is the "progressive" part.)

Now, I gotta admit, our Declaration of Independence is a pretty radical document ...

Philosophically, I consider myself a Christian Existentialist ... for example, I believe the values of individual dignity and worth coming out of our Judaic-Christian heritage are supreme ... and without a sense of purpose and destiny expressed in the concept of "God", we descend into brutish chaos as Nietzsche predicted with his "God is dead."

As an Existentialist I believe with Sartre that it is immaterial whether God exists or not. What is material to MY awareness of MY existence (existence preceding awareness) is whether I BELIEVE in God ... or not.

I choose to believe that human existence IS in itself (life is, actually) an expression of purpose and destiny ... therefore God exists.

There's something going on in the economy ...

There's something going on in the economy that is being covered up ...

Inflation.

The price of oil is going through the roof ... medical and education costs have been mounting (among other things) ... the value of the dollar is falling precipitously ... AND "undocumented" workers aren't sending as much money home to Mexico ...

But the financial wizards tell us that inflation is not growing ...

Are they covering up the numbers until we have a Democrat in the White House to blame everything on?

Am I a Christian Existentialist? - Revisited

On July 26, 2005 I posted Am I a Christian Existentialist?.

I want to come back to it and pose the concept that we are ethical life-forms because we can choose our immediate action based on what we have learned from past experience what we now believe to be the best course of action for what we have also come to believe is the best future for us.

I would further suggest that this is the "God in us", that we can learn from our past and consciously attempt to teach ourselves how to have a better future by what we do in the present.

We can choose based on what we know. Expanding to its limit, the wisest choice is when we know everything ... thus being the oracle of the omnipotent and omniscient—or God—is the highest position for a human being.

It isn't too hard to figure out that there are those who come along and pretend or even think they are oracles of God in order to advance their own selfish ends, leaders who use religion or science to rule for their personal benefit or the benefit of their particular group. They are wolves in sheep clothing. Some do it purposely, like Hitler. Some actually believe what they are doing is ordained by God, like George W. Bush.

Nor is it difficult to realize that the siren song of relative ethics can degenerate into short-sighted selfish behavior. "If I do what is best for my future, then I am doing what is best for the collective future" is the dictum of the coward.

But as a wise man taught, "By their fruit, ye shall know them." For what is the value of one person's wealth if all others are paupers?

That is why in my culture I choose to be labeled a Christian Existentialist ... and because Jesus taught "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God."

Archetypes as interpretive images ...

The way I look at it ... Part III

We have sets of evolved integrated responses on which the awareness of self as an individual being is superimposed.

These sets of integrated responses are "automatically" triggered by our internal/external environment ... and then given culturally appropriate (and accepted) descriptions or interpretive images ... as Joseph Campbell wrote about the masks of God ... each becoming (the description or interpretive image becomes) an archetype.

We become aware of these integrated responses as they occur, such as fear in response to danger, or lust in response to sexual stimuli when we are mature enough to be sexually aroused. (More about the process of fear becoming motivation for fight or flight ... and the forms that our personal fighting or fleeing will take.)

We start off as newborns with these sets of integrated responses—hardwired within a range of variations in all of us—and a fairly blank mental "slate" or awareness of who we are. We are taught a sense of self, a narrative our personal existence, by others ... out of their own narratives of existence ... with the "stories" of the culture's archetypes to explain the emergence of the integrated responses as we mature in body and mind.

We are a boy or a girl. We are of specific ethnic and cultural heritages ... with friends and enemies. We are expected to behave in certain ways ... keep our clothes on and NOT urinate or defecate in public (here in western civilization). We have "invisible fences" put in place around our psyches.

This sense of self (inside the fence), we have labeled our "soul".

Archetypes provide us with mind gates for integrating our sense of self with our internal and external environments. These mind gates allow us to mentally—both consiously as in rituals and storytelling of all kinds, and subconsciously as in dreams—interact and integrate with these "prewired" sets of response—the archetypes evokes the set of responses in us—in preparation for the real thing. The more realistic the evoking of the set of responses, the more realistic we consider the archetype.

When I speak of "we"at this point, I am really speaking of a the limited group of individuals who share similar narratives of existence with me. And maybe I need a new word such as "we-as-me" ... weasme? ... as opposed to the broader sense of "we" as the whole human race ... so I would rewrite ...

This sense of self (inside the fence), weasme have labeled our "soul" ...

I will exploring all these issues in my new play, "On His Steps" ... the story of a fallen warrior trying to find and then reintegrate into a weasme community.

Life is a biochemical process ...

The way I look at it ... Part II

See ... life is a biochemical process that dynamically replicates itself by interactively integrating with its environment.

If it didn't dynamically replicate itself by interactively integrating with its environment, it wouldn't "evolve".

The proof that it does (replicate itself by interactively integrating with its environment) is that it has (evolved).

One can say, the "purpose" of life, therefore, is to evolve. That is what it does.

This, then, is the basis of ethical value ... the pursuit of the evolution of life ... which is NOT now best served by conflict, but by cooperative collaboration ... not by guardians on the boundary (though necessary) but by the community they protect ... though we need our guardians—our warriors—to preserve and protect the community.

See, the way I look at it is ...

See, the way I look at it is that we—as a life-form—are a set of interactively integrated biochemical processes dynamically responding to the environment within which we are interactive.

Over the course of our emergence as a life-form, awareness—our conscious sense of our existence—has also emerged. And as it has emerged, we have created—as best we can—a narrative to explain the emergence of our existence and the type of awareness that has developed out of the biochemical encoding of current states of existence as memory for future reference.

We not only interact in the present with the environment "out there" but also with the memory environment from past experiencing of existence, and with the sets of "automatic" responses "hardwired" into us ... such as that of fear or lust or awe.

It is important to note that others as well as ourselves can erect a "mental monument" or archetype such as a concept of God that becomes a reference in our lives for the rest of our lives.

Death takes on resonance in reflection ...

We don't like to think about death and dying much—individually, about our own, that is—in my community. We certainly don't talk about it much.

Death is closing in on me.

I'm coming face to face with it ... again. This time it's not as close as last time. Theoretically there's some space, some distance ... some time.

Last time in July, 2002, it was in my face and touch and go whether I survived the next few hours as my medical team brought me through acute renal failure. I had lethal levels of potassium and creatinine in my blood from my kidneys shutting down.

This time I have significant blockage in my left carotid artery. I smoked heavily for a lot of years and I have had high cholesterol for as long as I can remember. The chickens are coming home to roost.

I'll have an MRI in the next few weeks and then my medical team and I will assess the risks. My biggest fear is a stroke. And the biggest problem in addressing that fear is my ongoing chronic kidney failure that has left me with less than 30% kidney function. Surgery will be risky.

I will be thinking about dying and I will share my thoughts here. Mostly—I think—because I can. And I am curious about how I will write about it ... knowing anyone can read this.

My death could be years away. It could be tonight. That hasn't changed. The change is that because of the blockage in my artery, I am reflecting on my death ... creating the resonance in my mind.

Alan Greenspan claims Iraq war was really for oil

Dah!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article2461214.ece

Powerful interests play "we the people" like a drum. In the United States it's an oil drum. (Cheez looueez, aren't I clever?! *wink*)

Global monopolists cloak themselves in the trappings of petite market capitalists and decry government regulation ... so the global bullies can control (aka regulate) the markets. And we blissfully let them.

Think sports ... where would we be without foul lines, umpires, field judges, rules and regulations? Without 'em the Yankees would move the homerun fence closer every time they were up to bat at home, and refuse to play anywhere the other team did the same. 'Cuz they have the juice.

And now that our elected officials have sold out to corporate power and wealth ... and we've let them ... the checks and balances of our republic have been lost. We are consumers, not citizens.

We had better figure out a way to get our nation back ... we should be choosing between leaders more like Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, than like Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton.

Pogo was right all along, "We have met the enemy and they is us."

We won the war and failed the occupation

It's always been about the oil. It's the neocon ideologues who tried to frost the cake with the Zionist agenda (which is NOT synonymous with "Jewish" agenda or even "Israeli" agenda).

Basically it was the Gunfight at the OK Corral between the Cheney gang and the Baker (Street?) Boys. Cheney had the upper hand for a time as he played Junior (aka Bush 43) as the clown puppet he is. Now the Baker(-Gates) front line of the Big Oil Bushies A-team is on the ascendant arc ...

We won the war and failed the occupation ... and now we are federalizing (balkanizing?) Iraq to secure our nation's strategic objective (since when? WWII?) of access to Middle East oil.

And the Democrats' leaders (my party) know full well that it isn't just getting "Vietnam" draped around their necks and jerked, its having odd-even days at the gas pumps coming back. And they damn well remember what happened to Jimmy Carter.

The freedom the majority of Americans will vote to support FIRST, is the freedom to come and go in their cars, pickups, and SUVs.

Pogo said it best, "We have met the enemy and they is us."

Living with hope as a horizon, rather than fear as a fence, Part I

Whew, I can hardly say it ... "Christian transcendentalist existentialist". Actually the transcendentalism is at least implied in the existentialism. But that is what I am, a Christian trancendentalist existentialist.

I wish by the time Sartre and Camus got into full swing they could have come up with a more easily pronounced label besides "existentialism" ... but be that as it may ... it is not as deep as you might think, though it can be kind of scary on the first go-round of thinking about it ... because we do wind up kind of floating out here in the cosmos as individual centers of awareness for god knows why ... and when you are right smack dab in the middle of the Nazi ascendency with swatikas flying over Paris--as Sartre and Camus were ... well ... that must have been a wee bit stressful, don't you think?

Anyhow, existentialism--to my way of thinking about it--is simply understanding that awareness--our consciousness, the fact that we think about ourselves as unitary beings for one thing--is produced or comes out of our existence. Awareness does NOT exist BEFORE existence. In other words, awareness does (did) not produce existence, existence produces (produced) awareness.

So if there is a "God", he, she, or it does not necessarily "think" like we do. And it matters not to the existentialist whether there really is a God or not ... we still must deal with our own personal awareness of our existence. If I choose to believe in God, fine. If I choose not too, fine ... maybe a wee bit more scary, but still fine. It really is up to me to choose ... even if the narrative of existence with a God is so ingrained in me that I never think about the actual choice.

"Transcendentalism" means that "what is" came out of (was produced by) "what was". And whether I am a point of consciousness running on a predetermined track or a fractal event in chaos, I experience my awareness of my existence as coming out of the past and going into the future. The future comes through the present. And I have no reason to think this has not always been the case which puts no limits on how in fact that happens to be the case.

OK, now the "Christian" part. Life--my individual being--is an enigma wrapped in the mystery of existence, to tweak Winston Churchill's phrase. My quest for resolution stems from the sense of awe I feel when looking up at the stars on a moonless night in the dead of winter from the frozen banks of the Yukon River, or hold my child as a newborn in my arms. What is this all about?

I choose the life of Jesus as an "iconic image" for resolving the mystery in my consciousness: What is it all about ... for me? I ask, and I must answer ... because I stand alone as a center of awareness in the cosmos ... or, rather, I experience myself (am aware of myself) as a unitary being in the environment in which I find myself. How do I live in that environment? How do I harmonize with the mystery?

I want to live with hope as a horizon rather than fear as a fence. Moving forward, horizons recede before me. Fences come closer.

Personally, I don't consider it necessary to believe that Jesus was a real person, nor that he was "the only begotten Son of God". And I find it strange that many who do believe, do not follow his message by trying to live their lives according to the values attributed to him.

For me, the message attributed to Jesus teaches us how to live without fear and full of hope ... and that is what I want focus on next.

You have to hand it to Baker and Gates, the Big Oil Bushies' A-Team front line ...

They--Baker and Gates--know what the hell they are doing.

And they ARE protecting the clearly defined strategic interests of our nation even if it means losing the 2008 election to the Democrats ... which is me, because I'm registered as a Democrat to vote.

And this is the huge difference between the talking heads type of leadership of my Democratic party and the serious professionals in the global arena. The top professionals like Baker and Gates are focused on achieving results.

Do you notice how Cheney is moving farther and farther into the background? God, what a deranged ideologue that guy was ... is, rather. Talk about the man behind the curtain in Wizard of Oz! Of course, Cheney knew how to make Junior--aka President Bush 43--think he (Junior) was President in more than title. What a mess!

And guess what? The Bush family pros are cleaning Junior's mess up once again. And I say, THANK GOD!

I mean, for chrissake, Baker handed the Democrats political leaders a bipartisan solution to Iraq in the policy recommendations of the report of the Iraq Study Group ... and they couldn't handle it! See, the Democratic pols are too worried about the 2008 election to focus on what is best for our nation. They simply think getting Democrats elected is ipso facto best. (Tell THAT to us folks in New Jersey, and you will have us rolling in the aisles ... laughing.)

Think about it, Bush threatened to veto anything he didn't like. So? Then he's left with nothing! The Democrats couldn't handle that. How the hell does anyone think they can handle a culture with young men and women willing to commit suicide for their beliefs?

And then we have all those Cheney-Rumsfeld-neocon clowns ... all of 'em hiding behind Cheney's juicing the imperial presidency concept of unitary executive powers with Junior as President? Baker must have seen the trainwreck coming over the horizon. (Personally, I think it was Barbara Bush who intervened. "You have to do SOMEthing, Papa. They're creaming our boy.")

Geez loueez ... if it weren't for people like Mitch McConnell I might even register as a Republican so I could vote for Ron Paul in the primaries.

Baker and Gates are good at what they do ...

The big Oil Bushies' A-Team--headed by James Baker (the Third)--organized the best possible strategy to clean up (once again in G.W.'s life) the mess Junior (aka President Bush 43) had made in Iraq. This strategy was spelled out in the policy recommendations of the report of the Iraq Study Group last year. Remember?

When the Democrats--having been given the majorities in both Houses of Congress by we the people--could not muster the political backbone to simply tell President Bush that nothing was going to happen until AFTER he adopted and started to implement the Iraq Study Group's report ... like, for instance, if Bush vetoes something he is left with nothing. Or am I missing something? What's this big threat of a veto? Congress passes the legislation. The Democrats didn't have the guts of leadership to stand up to Bush and his disaster ... even when handed the gift of the Iraq Study Group report by Big Oil Bushies A-Team!!! That was the easy out.

So the A-Team's front line (Baker-Gates -- that's Secretary of Defense Gates) is going to protect the strategic interests of the United States the hard way ... because they can't depend on the Democrats to do anything but talk. We are going to align ourselves with the Sunnis (think Saudis) to control access to the oil in the Middle East.

And the Democrats, again, aren't going to do a damn thing about it -- except talk -- BECAUSE they KNOW that if they force the pullout of troops, it isn't the bloodbath for Iraqis that the American public is worried about ... it's the odd-even days for pumping gas! aka the Jimmy Carter effect ... and the Democrats will be blamed for it.

You have to hand it Baker and Gates. These guys are good at what they do ... protecting the strategic interests of Big Oil ... oops! I mean the United States. Oh well, they seem to be the same for now.

The only people dumber than Bush 43 are the Democratic politicians ...

The reality is that the invasion of Iraq PLUS no serious plan for the occupation to follow BECAUSE THE CHENEY-RUMSFELD-NEOCON CABAL DIDN'T THINK WE NEEDED ONE was the pinnacle of foreign policy folly.

And the only people dumber are the politicians in the party under which I am registered to vote (Democrats) who are now letting the Big Oil Bushies' A-Team of Baker-Gates once again clean up Junior's mess. Instead of a regional arrangement involving all relevant parties (which Baker offered to us on a silver (gold? platinum? oil-slicked?) platter, we are aligning ourselves with the Saudis (aka Sunnis) to put the power politics squeeze on the Shiites and Iran. (We already have the Kurds.)

We are setting ourselves up for years of mischief by China and Russia in the Middle East instead of resolving this issue when we have the strength to do so, simply because our Christian Right supports a unilateral policy of support for Israel against all foes AND the Democrats didn't cement the Iraq Study Group policy into place when they had the chance.

The Democrats today do not have the operative wisdom necessary for strategic leadership. That wisdom is bought and paid for by the Big Oil folks on one side and the "Rockefeller" Globalists on the other. (I don't consider Hilary a Democrat. She's what I remember as a "Rockefeller Republican": internationally, a globalist; nationally, a moderate corporationist; locally, a pot-hole politician.)

We are kicking the can down the road, and the Democrats are playing right into it because they (we?) are afraid of two things (primarily): 1. The Jimmy Carter affect of losing strategic control over the petroleum we need to fuel our cars, pickups, and SUVs; and 2. The Zionist agenda (which is NOT synonymous with "Jewish" or even "Israeli" agenda) and their attack style of politics (Where did Rove learn his tactics? I wonder.)

While posturing to the left-wing base, the Democrats are doing nothing to effectively alter course, complaining that even with a majority, they don't have the votes. Dah! If Bush 43 wants to veto something, he winds up with nothing. That's pretty effective ... unless you're worried that it will backfire when gas is pumped on odd-even days matching your license plate. They could have simply said, adopt the Iraq Study Group policy suggestions or you aren't going to get anything passed.

When we Americans talk about our freedom, it is about a freedom to get up and go in OUR personal vehicle. Take THAT away and there is hell to pay. (Again, do you remember Jimmy Carter, folks?)

We WANT our government to protect our strategic interests ... wisely.

Gawd, how I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when the Saudi ruler had that sit-down "Let's get things straight" talk with Cheney.

From another perspective: All a person has to do is go to where the people are doing whatever it is they really want to do ... like living in the Alaska bush ... farming in the Northern Midwest ... or fishing for stripers on the shore when the bennies are gone *wink* ... and you get a sense that the dynamism of our culture is not in global monopolism but in petite market capitalism ... where people can effectively do their own thing. Protect the right of the people to do their thing within fairly applied (for all) foul lines, and that political party would trounce all comers.