Black and Proud of It (or Where to Now?)

As the title suggests I’m black and proud of it. Not because of some movement that grew out of disenfranchisement with the white establishment in the mid to late 60’s, but because I live in a nation that is at least willing to give me a chance based on my ability to be a productive citizen regardless of my skin color, ethnicity, religious affiliation, sexual preference or gender.

Sounds politically correct, doesn’t it? Don’t let that fool you. I am the product/recipient of a lot of sacrifices, struggles and landmark judicial decisions whose sole aim was to make sure that the American dream didn’t pass by any of Lady Liberty’s children. Yet, I’m reminded on an almost daily basis that race (and the aforementioned categories) still plays a role in our lives, like it or not.

I’ll start with the Tea Party activists since I think that they are the best hope for this country in a lot of ways. Much has been made in the news of someone in the crowd shouting a racial epithet (the N word) at several members of the CBC (Congressional Black Caucus) as they walked from their offices to the Capitol to participate in the health care debate. It strikes me as funny that:

1.      They weren’t using the customary underground transit system or automobiles to make this trek.

2.      They picked (and I would dare say timed) their route so that it would coincide with the protest outside the capitol.

It’s unfortunate that someone in the crowd would resort to this sort of name calling, but it is a fact of life. What I cannot understand or forgive these black leaders for is the willingness to see if they could try and stir up some sort of reaction from the crowd just by their very presence. This isn’t Selma, Montgomery, Tupelo or anywhere else in the Deep South where racism was running rampant. It is the seat of our national government and they are elected officials, sent there by their constituents to conduct the business of government (an oxymoron, I know).

The Tea Party has been among the most vocal groups (or network in this case) that has been critical of the direction that our government is taking. Regardless of whom the chief executive is (in this case he happens to be black), he is still one of the faces most Americans can readily associate with when they think of the Federal Government. It is because of this that he will be among those most likely to feel the wrath of an unhappy electorate. To categorize the crowds at these protests as right wing zealots, Republican shills, racists, homophobes or any other moniker that can be hung on them, is to be in denial of their true purpose there. Republican, Democrat, Independent, black, or white, I’ve seen them in the crowd while I’ve been watching coverage of the protests, and have heard their stories and reasons for being there. You’re going to tell me that a black man is going to participate in a protest with a group that would have nothing to do with him? Let’s get real here!

As with everything we’ve seen on the political front, it comes down to power, authority and influence. If the general public can be made to believe that these people are not representative of what’s going on in this country, then those in power have a tool at their disposal that can be wielded any time they see fit. That tool of course, would be popular opinion. Blacks are no different, we are told that one party could care less whether we live or die. We are told that we need to vote along certain lines, because it’s in our best interests. We are continually told both overtly and covertly that we need to be beholden to one group, party or ideology since this is our best hope when it comes to making progress which has been denied us for so long.

The problem here is that nothing could be further from the truth. Sure we’ve struggled, but so have other groups. Look at Asian Americans, here is a group of immigrants (albeit of differing national origins) who were exploited as railroad workers, or stuck in internment camps during the Second World War, but yet they have a disproportionately large number of success stories compared to other ethnic groups in this country, including whites. Why is that? Could it be that, unlike post Civil Rights Era blacks, they still have a sense of community, they are willing to make sacrifices for the good of their children and families; they put a high priority on the value of a good education?

My three children graduated from a high school located in a St Louis suburb. A large number of their school mates were bused in from the city to attend school in our district under the VST (voluntary school transfer) program. A lot of these kids were in no way prepared for the academic rigors of a high school with college preparatory and AP (Advanced Placement) tracks and quite a few of them didn’t seem all that interested in making the best of their situation (i.e. trying to get an education). One has to wonder (albeit not for very long) why the State of Missouri took away accreditation from the St Louis City school system. I’m not saying that these kids didn’t deserve a quality education, lord knows that all of our kids do, I’m just disappointed that they chose to fritter their time away over the course of a seven hour day instead of doing the things that matter when it comes to getting ahead in the world.

Those that decry what has happened to inner city schools and claim that more money for education is the only way we’re ever going to fix things are missing the point. The city schools spent more per pupil than any of the suburban school districts did, but look at what happened. I’m not an educational expert, nor do I have the faintest desire in becoming one, in fact my wife will even tell you that I could have done a better job of seeing to our kids’ education. My point here is that far too many people (especially the so called experts) think that there is some “magic bullet” solution that can be applied to fix the problem, but neglect to look at the underlying causes, kind of like continually finding water in your basement and fixing the roof when it’s your foundation that’s cracked.

What affects the black community can be broken down into three areas in my humble opinion:

1. Identity Politics
2. Demagoguery
3. Cronyism

In fact I will go out on a limb and say that no society or culture has progressed very far or survived for very long while these forces are running rampant. Latin America and Africa come to mind for starters, with Venezuela and Nigeria being the poster children for their respective continents. Here are two nations that have had the blessings of wealth bestowed upon them through an abundance of oil, yet squander their earnings on things that do nothing for their people. Why?

Identity Politics. When you set out to demonize a particular group, or pit one group against another, you’re playing identity politics. In Nigeria the result is sectarian strife based in no small part on who should be the recipients of the petro dollars being generated. In Venezuela it’s going after everyone who doesn’t agree with the current regime, or those “meddling” foreign powers. In America, race or socioeconomic backgrounds (class warfare) normally rear their ugly heads.

Demagoguery. When one seeks to gain power or popularity by arousing the emotions, passions, and prejudices of the people, he or she is guilty of demagoguery. We need to look no further than El Jefe himself, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. In Nigeria, it would be split between the leaders of the factions fighting for the oil wealth. Here at home that honor would be bestowed upon the Reverends Jackson, Sharpton, Farrakhan, and Wright. If these are men of the cloth, then I most certainly do not like the cut of their collective jib.

Cronyism. No explanation needed. Again we turn to our boy Hugo and his friends who are sucking the country dry. Check out Maria Conchita Alonzo’s letter to Sean Penn on his misplaced sense of loyalty (and dare I say reality). If you’ve ever stumbled upon a Nigerian phone, or bank scam, you’ve seen the result of what years of corrupt government does to the mores and work ethic of a country’s citizens. Otherwise productive, intelligent people stooping to such lows because of a bleak economic picture at home, and a government incapable of doing anything to stop them since it still needs to put its own house in order. With us, it comes down to getting a seat at the table, and that can’t be done without bringing followers with you. The more folks you bring with you (i.e. influence), the more prominent your place at the table.

I cannot tell you the number of times where I have had my political convictions questioned by my fellow blacks because I wasn’t in lockstep with them on certain issues. As good consumers we’d never think about blindly purchasing a product without first checking to see if there were any worthwhile alternatives/competitors. It’s kind of like sticking with a Sony when the Toshiba across the aisle got better reviews and costs much less. With blacks and politics, that’s exactly what happens. Black leaders know this and play it for all it’s worth. Any attempt to remove the blinders is met with stinging rebukes, criticism, and of course the obligatory attempts at character assassination.

When the black community finally finds within itself the willingness and ability to conduct a fairly objective self-examination, then things will improve for blacks as a whole. Then and only then, will all of those cruel realities of the world at large have finally sunk in and a realistic course of action can be charted to judiciously navigate through the minefield that is race in America.

The Media and the Court of Public Opinion

What do Trayvon Martin, the fitness of airline flight deck and cabin crews, and Climate Change have in common? The Mainstream Media.

In each of these cases the MsM has been at the forefront of convincing the populace that the view of the world that it chooses to espouse is the only one out there.

In the Trayvon Martin case, the media has been leading the charge to arrest the shooter, George Zimmerman and possibly have him charged with a hate crime along with, at the very least, manslaughter. It has gone out of its way to paint Zimmerman as a gun happy, self-appointed, racial profiling, neighborhood watch Nazi. It has tried to take what little circumstantial evidence that has become available in the public domain and turn it into a noose to put around Zimmerman’s neck. The Sanford Police Department and State Attorney’s Office, much to their credit, have been loathe to take the bait and have promised to see this case through to its logical and legal conclusion.

The recent Jet Blue incident where the Captain had a yet to be determined episode which caused a Vegas-bound aircraft to divert to Amarillo Texas, is just the latest in a string of events where airline crewmembers have presumably gone off the deep end in the past year. The media has turned it into a flight safety issue and conflated it with pending legislation on flighttime and duty limitations and minimum pilot qualifications. What does this mean? Possible psychological evaluations for crewmembers, where if you have anything which puts you at risk for becoming mentally unstable or may have shown signs in the past of any sort of episodic behavior, your career could be cut short.

Global Cooling, no make that Global Warming, no make that Climate Change, has been at the forefront of the world’s consciousness since Al Gore’s Academy Award winning film “An Inconvenient Truth”.  We are continually bombarded by the facts about why we are in an era that will make or break us if we do not take action to stop, or at the very least, arrest the amount of greenhouse gases we are pumping into the atmosphere. Sea level rises, loss of habitats, mass extinctions and the like are thrown into a witches brew of doomsday scenarios, the better to scare us into compliance with what those touting the message (and those who are behind the curtain pulling the strings) want.

A free and unfettered press is supposed to be one of the cornerstones of a democracy, that is, if it has any hope for long term survival. What has occurred in this country in the past 40 years however, is that we have a press that has lost its objectivity and has become incapable of remaining neutral in any argument that has the potential to shape (or reshape) our society and the world in general. It has, in fact, become complicit in supporting one side over the other, much to the detriment of the people it is supposed to serve. Ideals such as truth, blind justice, common decency, and courtesy have been swept aside to make room for partisan agendas.

A look at the three examples listed above should give everyone an indication as to what has been unfolding.

The only people who know what happened in the Trayvon Martin case are George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin.  Young Mr Martin is dead and as the saying goes, dead men tell no tales (the science of forensics notwithstanding). We have been treated to security videos leaked from the Sanford PD showing Mr Zimmerman being brought in for questioning with no apparent/visible injuries, despite having claimed that he had been set upon by the late Mr Martin and roughed up to the point that his nose had been broken and bloodied, and there was a gash in his skull where it had been banged against the ground in the scuffle. The media and the race pimps (who have been adding to the narrative) had a field day with this. The only problem is the fact that the police report told a completely different story. Zimmerman had received medical attention at the scene (i.e. cleaned up). One of the officers also remarked that he looked pretty beat up and the back of his shirt was grass stained and soaking wet (it had been raining that evening). Then there’s the fact that a certain cable news network, that shall remain unnamed (but is affiliated with a certain bird of bright plumage), sought to sully Mr Zimmerman’s reputation by cutting and pasting a discussion he was having with a 911 operator to make it seem as if he was intentionally profiling young Mr Martin. The actual unedited taped conversation reveals Mr Zimmerman doing nothing more than answering a series of questions from the operator.

Damn those pesky little facts!

No one knows exactly what happened to the Jet Blue Captain, except that he had been acting erratically just before the flight and that his behavior only started to go downhill as the flight progressed. The investigation into what happened to him, just as with the Martin case, will be done behind closed doors (as has always been the case, so as not to prejudice the outcome). But that has not stopped the press from deciding that crewmembers should not be allowed to set foot in an aircraft without some sort of psychological evaluation being conducted on their fitness to fly. Being a pilot is a high stress job, given the fact that you are responsible for the safety and security of not only yourself but dozens, if not hundreds of folks. Any mistake that could possibly end your life would do the same for your charges in the back. Consider the fact that you have to be medically cleared to fly twice a year, depending on what seat you’re in. Consider the fact that you are going to have to get evaluated twice a year, both in a simulator, as well as in the aircraft. The level of scrutiny that you have to endure on a routine basis is not for the timid and takes a special breed. But none of that interests the media, they only see a problem and as far as they are concerned, that problem needs to be fixed.

Climate change has gone by other names in the past. During the 1970’s, scientists warned us that we could be entering a new ice age based on the amount of carbon dioxide we were pumping into the atmosphere. They dubbed the phenomenon Global Cooling. During the first decade of this century, scientists warned us that the greenhouse gases we were pumping into the atmosphere would lead to a warming effect that could bring on all sorts of disastrous consequences. They dubbed it Global Warming.  They presented us with all sorts of data to prove their point. The gold standard of research institutions was the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University in England. The same CRU whose leaked (not hacked) emails gave the public a glimpse into the chicanery that was being foisted on it. To add insult to injury, the winters in Europe and North America were more harsh than usual during the same timeframe. The Global Warming moniker was dropped and the Climate Change label was quickly adopted. The media trumpeted the message to the public like a mythical siren luring a sailor to his doom on the rocks. Granted, there has been evidence that we are undergoing some sort of climatological change, but whether it is man caused or just another phase in a system we have yet to understand, has become the real argument, but you would think that by the way those who believe we are the cause of it all (and their foils in the media) are acting, that the science is settled and anyone who would deny the truth must also think that the Earth is flat.

I don’t know about you, but I revel in being a creature of intellect and not emotion (much to my spousal unit’s consternation). It’s the one thing that helps me remain a skeptic in the case of arguments where questionable logic is being thrown about, especially when the object of the argument is to get one to react on an emotional level and not on an intellectual one. As a military officer I watched people get taken advantage of, not out of a sense of duty, but out of a sense of loyalty or obligation. Our emotions can be taken advantage of, but not our intellect.

The media and its sideline supporters seek to make the arguments they put forth emotional in nature. Since they cannot win the argument by intellectual means, they have sought to do so by exploiting the most vulnerable part of our humanity, our emotions. As with Pavlov’s dog, they know that a certain stimulus, having been applied over a predetermined period of time, will produce a desired result. The problem comes when the ridiculousness of what they’re attempting to do starts to overshadow their own argument. It is then and only then that the blinders will start falling from the eyes of those who have been bamboozled by their illogical ramblings and machinations. The more ridiculous their antics become, the more obvious it becomes to an even greater swath of the populace.

Winning in the court of public opinion only lasts as long as you can hold the attention of your audience. Once you’ve lost that, it’s all over but the shouting.

Sluts

Rush did it again!!!

As most listeners know, the man says some incredibly over the top things that are bound to piss off even the most saintly of individuals. The young woman who testified before Congress last week about contraception, and why a woman has a right to it, really stepped in it as far as I’m concerned, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Now what did Rush call her? A slut, I believe. Well, the definition he tried to attach to a woman who has sex for money is not a slut. A better description would be a prostitute. A slut, per the definition given by dictionary.com is an immoral or dissolute woman. A prostitute would be a good example of one, but not all sluts engage in sexual activity for money. Rush used the wrong word, too bad for him.

Okay, why did that young woman step in it when she testified about why contraception was a necessity and a right for women? Well, if a woman’s body and reproductive system are protected by what can only be called God given rights, then it stands to reason that along with those rights come responsibilities. If a woman chooses to engage in sexual activity, she does so knowing that there are consequences for each and every action she undertakes. For her to decide that she can sidestep any sort of accountability for those decisions, tells me that not only is she acting in a selfish and immature manner, but she has decided that the burden of any ramifications of her actions should be shared by society as a whole.

I can understand that certain women may benefit from using contraception in terms of it being more of a medical necessity than a “nice to have”. But that sort of thing is normally worked out between a woman and her doctor, and the doctor usually prescribes a given treatment. That physician directed treatment is covered by insurance, so there should be no need to force employers or insurers to give blanket coverage for contraception to all women.

Up until now, abortion had been the hot button issue concerning a woman’s reproductive system/rights. Thanks to a well placed campaign time bomb and a conservative pundit whose mouth, at times, resembles a runaway semi with no brakes, it has been supplanted by contraception.

I don’t mean to pick on the fairer sex as far as this issue goes, but this is another indicator of how “entitlement creep” is affecting society and our way of life. Think about it. Why is it that somehow, someone somewhere, decides that something that has been readily available but not in the hands of all, should now be given to everyone by government edict or mandate? You have a right to a job, housing, food, clothing, clean water, healthcare, a college education, reliable transportation, a telecommunications device, and a television, right?

Wrong. You have a right to go out and try and obtain those things (legally), without anyone erecting any sort of artificial barriers to prevent you from doing so. Beyond that, it’s all on you.

So, what’s the solution? Well for starters, we throw this issue back at the people who chose to bring it up in the first place, and ask them why anyone would want to abrogate responsibility for their own well being, knowing that whatever control they enjoy over making such decisions would disappear (either gradually, or all at once) before they were any the wiser.

And folks, once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Road Rage

One bright and sunny winter day, a couple of weeks ago, I was wrapping up a visit with a buddy of mine and his family in Charlotte.  He had to report back to work that afternoon to start a three day trip and I would begin a four day reserve shift early the next morning.  It was decided that we would make the drive back to Atlanta together and were well on our way, when the following incident occurred. It put the whole issue of how irrational road rage is into perspective for me.

We had just passed through Gastonia, North Carolina, heading south on Interstate 85, in the right hand lane, behind either a pickup or semi. There was overtaking traffic in the left hand lane, but the distance and closure rate were such that I would be able to accelerate quickly enough to match the other vehicle’s speed and not create an undue hazard for either of us. I put on my turn signal, changed lanes, and accelerated.

As soon as I had completed negotiating the maneuver and was now in front of the slower traffic, I looked at the other driver, who was now passing us on the left, only to see her making wild hand gestures. It didn’t take a Nobel Laureate to figure out that she was upset at what I had done (despite there being no risk to either party). Her displeasure became even more intuitively obvious when she changed lanes, placing herself directly in front of my vehicle and then slowed down to match my speed.

Had that been all she did, I would have just chocked it up to general irritability and thought nothing else of it, but that wasn’t the case. She continued to slow down incrementally, until we were getting passed by the very vehicles we had been passing only moments earlier. My buddy and I looked at each other with knowing smiles and just shook our heads. I waited about a minute or two, put on my turn signal, changed lanes, and began accelerating to get around her. Not wanting her quarry to get away, she suddenly jumped into our lane, just ahead of us, and accelerated to match our speed. Now, my buddy and I were convulsing with laughter. This had to have been the most vindictive woman either of us had come across in recent memory, and it was just plain funny.

This little scenario played out for approximately another half mile before she decided to end it by quickly zipping across two lanes of traffic to make her exit ramp, which was at least in my opinion, probably the most dangerous thing she had done the entire time we were going through our little ritual. As we discussed what had just unfolded, my buddy turned to me and said that this had to be the subject of my next “rant”. He was right, so here I sit, pecking away at my laptop, trying to put the events and the emotions, which were at the heart of it all, into perspective.

What is it about some people that makes them susceptible to even the slightest and most insignificant stimuli? What is it that makes them turn what would be a non-event for the rest of us, into the most personally egregious affront ever? What is it that provokes some into irrational acts that border on incredibly stupid or even flat out dangerous? The only answers that I can come up with are perspective and attitude.

Perspective is how we view the world. It is, in effect, our take on reality and dare I say it, reality itself for a bunch of folks. Call it either myopia or tunnel vision, but this is what some people use as their crutch to get through their day. It ain’t pretty, it ain’t intelligent or rational, but it suits them just fine.

Attitude is how we handle those day to day comings and goings of events in our lives. No matter how big or small, planned or unplanned, controlled or uncontrollable, our attitude, in the words of Charles Swindoll, “is the one string that we have to play upon”. Despite how crappy one’s day might be going, attitude will determine whether it is salvageable, or on the verge of becoming a trainwreck.

It may be just a hunch, but I’d say that a change in one of these traits would more than likely have a profound effect on the other. In fact, any change for the better in one will amplify itself by orders of magnitude and produce fairly pleasant side effects in anyone who wishes to undertake such an endeavor. Furthermore, why anyone looking to improve their situation, wouldn’t seize upon such a simple formula for self fulfillment, is completely beyond me. So, if you know of anyone who could benefit from a polite but healthy dose of reality (especially if it concerns their driving), please feel free to share this with them. 

I enjoy being on the road with other motorists who are of like mind, it definitely makes the task of driving that much easier and safer.

Our Foreign Policy

This is going to be a tough nut to crack since there’s no easy way around a lot of what I’m about to say. Our foreign policy over the course of the past two hundred years, can be likened to having to deal with a bipolar individual (my apologies up front to those who suffer from this disease).

We were supposed to stay out of foreign relationships and alliances that got us entangled in things and places where we had no business being. The founders knew that those sorts of things usually ended badly. The Monroe Doctrine was supposed to establish an umbrella over the western hemisphere where the nations on both continents could develop free from European intervention. The only problem was that it didn’t mean free from U.S. intervention.

The Mexican American War became our first war for empire. We were so enamored with the whole Manifest Destiny mindset that we were willing to do whatever it took to expand our nation’s borders from sea to shining sea. Then there was the Spanish American War. It wasn’t enough that we had carved out a good chunk of the continent for ourselves (not to mention the territories of Alaska and Hawaii). We had to have overseas colonial possessions just like the Europeans. Worse yet, was our purloining of the Panama Canal. Since Panama was originally part of Colombia, we essentially helped stage a revolution that gave us territorial rights (a modified lease) to the Canal Zone, where we finished up the job that Messrs De Lesseps and company had been unable to.

The First World War, the war to end all wars, was only a placeholder for the war to come two decades later. America, despite having sent her sons off to fight in Europe for the preservation of democracy and western civilization, got very little in return for her efforts, but then again we never asked for anything. We packed up and left after it was all over. The big winners were the Brits and the French. They both got to add to their empires and stuck Germany with a bar tab she would be unable to pay, setting the stage for the rise of the Nazis and the second installment of their unfinished business on the continent.

As the drums of war started echoing louder and louder on our side of the Atlantic, Stalin and his Minister for State Security, Lavrenti Beria, initiated a full court press to spy on the United States. Prior to this, the Soviets were content to confine most of their spying on their European neighbors.  As it became evident that the United States would become the biggest potential threat (both ideologically and militarily) to the Soviets and their expansionist plans, more attention needed to be paid to what was happening on our side of the pond. Enter the CPUSA (Communist Party of the USA), its membership, and the message that the responsibility for any good Communist was to do whatever it took to ensure that the Proletariat revolution was a worldwide phenomenon. The CPUSA, on instructions/guidance from the COMINTERN (Communist International HQ in Moscow), set up an underground apparatus to engage in campaigns of agitation and propaganda (AGITPROP), as well as espionage.

The Federal Government was easy pickings as the size and scope of government grew under New Deal programs. Bodies were needed to staff the various organizations and offices that were popping up out of nowhere. Under normal conditions, a vetting process would take place for any sort of civil service employment, but there was nothing normal about the Great Depression. It was into this mix that the Communists inserted themselves as New Deal Progressives.

At the conclusion of the Second World War, the United States pushed the idea that all of the industrialized nations (read the victors) needed to find a way to get rid of their colonial possessions, since that had been a contributing factor to the outbreak of hostilities. The Soviets had either installed puppet governments or had assisted in the installation of governments friendly to it in Eastern Europe and had no colonies per se. The French had been relatively slow to act, especially in French Indo China where a guerilla war for independence would eventually be waged by the locals.

NATO was originally supposed to have been headquartered in France. Control of all nuclear weapons on the continent would have been under control of the NATO Secretariat and North Atlantic Council. The French, who were looking for a way out of Indo China (in the middle of their war with Ho Chi Minh), were amenable to U.S. intervention on their behalf (or in this case, their proxies), in exchange for their support of NATO. Well, over the course of the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, neither happened. The French balked at not having control of their nukes, NATO HQ went to Belgium instead, and the U.S. got stuck in Vietnam.

Korea was a different story. The Soviets along with their Chinese allies had been the sponsors of the regime in Pyongyang. It wasn’t until the Soviets had tested their own atomic bomb (courtesy of well placed spies at the Manhattan Project) that Stalin gave the go ahead for the North to invade the South. If the United States had maintained a monopoly on the bomb, it would have made it very difficult to launch an attack, knowing that the threat of nuclear annihilation hung over their heads.

With the specter of Communist expansion looming ever larger, the United States embarked on a mission of threat containment, and took action wherever and whenever it had the perception that communism was making inroads into various locations throughout the world.  This would prove to be a double edged sword since it put the U.S. in a position of installing and/or supporting some of the worst despots in the history of the latter half of the twentieth century (Latin America, Iran, and Indonesia immediately come to mind). The term blowback was coined by military and intelligence experts to describe the potential side effects of our actions and policies, but a simpler way of understanding things would be the concepts of cause and effect and the law of unintended consequences. As a result, we became reviled in as many places as we were respected.

When the first Gulf War broke out, we were invited establish bases and other facilities by the governments of various Middle Eastern countries who were genuinely afraid of the threat that Saddam Hussein posed (the Iran/Iraq war in the 1980’s initially kicked things off with a U.S. military base in Bahrain). We were again putting ourselves in the unenviable position of supporting autocratic or authoritarian regimes. Some claim that it was all for oil, which is partially true, since ready flow and transport of oil throughout that region has a direct correlation on oil prices throughout the world, regardless of where that oil comes from (anyone for $5 or $7 a gallon gas?). In the Muslim world, we were viewed as the infidels or crusaders who had allied themselves with illegitimate governments desperately trying to cling to power any way they could. The idea of attacking American forces and interests as a roundabout means of affecting the policies of the governments in power became adopted doctrine by various political and terror organizations.

Prior to the death of Hafez al Assad and the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraq, Iran, and Syria all viewed themselves as candidates for the title of regional hegemon in the Middle East. Iran, in particular, has been keen on establishing an Islamic caliphate throughout the region and eventually expanding its ambitions to the rest of the world (where have we seen that before?). Although not closely allied (as far as anyone is willing to admit at this time), the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that has been around since the end of the first World War, has been on the same Islamic export crusade, since in its view, Middle Eastern countries became subservient to western infidel nations because they had lost their way, and only a return to Islamic precepts would bring about a return to greatness.

Then there’s Russia, a onetime superpower until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It is run by a bunch of ultra-nationalists, oligarchs, and revanchists. At the head of this sorry bunch is a strong man wanna be who has maneuvered himself into a position to be able to circumvent his country’s constitution all for the sake of keeping a tenuous hold on power. They have become the cash whores of the world. If there is money that can be made off anything, just take a look around to see if you can find a Russian company waiting in the wings.

The latest bogey to pop up on our radar scopes has been China. In the past decade she has been flexing not only her economic muscles, but her military ones as well. Rather than settle disputes over territory that contains some of the most coveted resources in the Western Pacific via diplomatic or economic means, she has gone on an intimidation spree to cow her neighbors into submission. Her rapid buildup of military capabilities and her willingness to engage in cyberwarfare, have become very troubling aspects in the awakening of this once sleeping giant.

The most disturbing part of this whole tragic opera is the fact that this president and his two predecessors have been Baby Boomers. Why am I picking on the Boomers? It’s simple. They, although there were previous generations who were idealists, have been the ones who have had the greatest impact on the events that have occurred on this planet over the course of the past two decades. They have, through a myopic looking glass, decided that they can cure all of the world’s problems. It doesn’t matter that they tend to intervene in matters that involve sovereign nations, they know better and it’s being done for the betterment of all. I give you the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, the Horn of Africa, and possibly coming soon to a combat theatre near you, Syria.

There are real dangers that this country has to confront on a routine basis. There are folks out there who have made it patently obvious that they want to do us harm. But to conflate nations or groups who really have no direct or deleterious impact on our national security with specific organizations or states who do, diminishes our standing at home and abroad when we try and claim the moral high ground, and dilutes the effectiveness of our military forces. The same goes for our willingness to think that we can geopolitically change the global landscape in the interests of making the world a better place. I’m all for American exceptionalism, but what I keep seeing is nothing that I would even consider exceptional, unless you consider hubris and acting like a hegemon exceptional.

The Math of the One Percent

This came from the 1 September 2011 airing of The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell:

In 1992 the top one percent of income earners made $1.7 billion and were taxed at a rate of 29 percent.

In 2008 those same folks earned $9.1 billion but were taxed at a lower rate of 21 percent.

This came from a business show or online finance article (can't remember which):

The federal government has increased spending year over year at a rate of 7 percent.

Based on the numbers above, over the course of sixteen years, does the government need to increase the amount of money it takes in from the One Percenters?

(No need to account for inflation since the 7 percent figure accounts for both growth and inflation)

Forget the Presidency

I’m not sure why everyone has such a hard-on about the upcoming presidential election and whether the President gets to keep his job, or not. In my humble opinion, the whole thing is a wash. It’s the congressional elections that matter even more.

Why?

Let’s go back to Bill Clinton’s Administration and the claims by Democrats that he handed George W. Bush a budget surplus and a vibrant economy that he promptly set about ruining. For starters, the economy during the 1990’s may have started out as showing great promise, but quickly turned into another bubble, courtesy of the Federal Reserve and unrealistically low lending rates, but that’s another story for another day.

At the end of the Cold War, it became apparent that we no longer needed a large military and that our defense industrial base was far too large to be sustainable, given the fact that everyone was looking for some sort of “peace dividend” that could be plowed back into other sectors of the federal government. Defense programs were terminated wholesale by then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. Corporations who had invested large sums in technologies that were supposed to give us an edge over the Soviets had to find new ways to parlay those investments into something that would, at the very least, stem the flow of red ink they were experiencing as a result their programs undergoing the budget axe.

Although PC’s had been around since the mid to late 1980’s, they lacked the sort of ubiquity that video gaming consoles enjoyed during the same timeframe. Enter the high technology companies, who were now seeking to spinoff advances that would have gone into military systems. From a machine that had been mostly a tool for large corporations, government agencies, educational institutions, and hobbyists, we now had a multipurpose device that was ready for primetime. We watched the internet morph from something that had been set up as a means of being able to exchange information in a doomsday scenario, into a method of connecting anyone with a computer to a counterpart anywhere in the world, a neural network for the planet, if you will. It’s against this backdrop that you had a slew of companies come into being almost overnight: the internet and tech startups.

As we were ushering in a new age of prosperity in this country, we were also witnessing a change in control of the House from the Democrats to the Republicans after nearly four decades of one party rule. Part of the appeal of the Republicans being swept into office was a promise to bring smaller, more responsible, more effective government back to Washington as evidenced in their Contract with America. Despite the acrimony that may have developed between the two parties as a result of Speaker Gingrich’s leadership, Bill Clinton, however reluctant he may have been to go along with the legislation that was put on his desk for signature, became the recipient of quite a bit of “political capital” and goodwill among the American people. After all, we were in the midst of a period of incredible economic prosperity.

The 2012 election cycle will be an amalgam of three different electoral periods from what I can piece together. You have a repeat of 1980 with a weak president who has yet to have a single legislative, domestic, or foreign policy success (neither Obama-Care, nor killing Bin Laden and al Awlaki don’t count), and who seems to be foundering in the middle of a flatlining economic recovery. Next, you have the 1996 election, where there is no one on the Republican side of the aisle who can mount a decent enough challenge to the president to unseat him. Finally, there’s the 1994 congressional election which is where the Contract with America made its debut.

The House, even going back to Reconstruction, has always been the home to the more radical elements within our governmental structure. So it should come as no surprise to anyone who follows the goings on in Washington, why there is such a chasm between what the President wants and what a Republican controlled House wants. During a normal election cycle, one third of the Senate plus, all of the House members are up for re-election. Doing the math on this, we find that 2/3rds, or approximately 66 percent of the entire Congress can be replaced in one fell swoop. If you are a Republican, you would have to like those odds, knowing that your party may be able to gain a majority in the Senate and increase what you already have in the House.

Now I’m not much of a betting man, but if I was going to stake a wager, it would be on the Republicans claiming both houses of Congress, but not the presidency. If history is any indicator of why this a better option, one only has to look at the first two years of the current administration and the first two years of the second term of George W. Bush. Simply stated, single party rule throughout both branches, has failed this country miserably. An added benefit of having the loyal opposition in control of Congress is that it helps to keep an imperial presidency in check, and after the last ten years, I think that is a much needed thing.

I’ve only heard one talking head mention this in any sort of positive or constructive manner, the rest have been focused on the primaries, but then again, what do you expect from folks who claim to be the so called “experts”? Go figure.