2009: Unemployment, Bailouts, Climate Change, Health Reform, Counter-terrorism, and Skiing

Whew- what a year, one most people would like to do-over or forget. When the skiing is really bad at Cannon the locals have two sayings to strangers to the mountain, “It doesn’t get any better than this”, and “yeah- cold, icy, windy and steep, we ski it so you don’t have to”. There’s something about Cannon that draws some people to love it when it’s at it’s worst, while reaffirming a “never go there again” feeling from others. Gluttons for punishment, the diehards relish the extreme conditions- it builds character and makes you a better skier…I have a lot of unemployed ski buddies hoping their character doesn’t need any more building.

We had no shortage of character building opportunities this past year. I was skiing with a day trader friend of mine on March 11th of this year when the market was bottoming out around 6500 (although we didn’t know that at the time). I asked him if the time was right to jump into some of the depressed stocks. He said, no, no, the market is heading for 4500. We jumped on the lift and I pondered that sage advice from a former Manhattan Wall Street trader turned semi-retired day trader/ski bum as my 401K was sinking like a rock. What could I do after deciding to sit tight except sit tight and ride out the storm?

Things were bad, yet we managed to live through the crisis and except for the 10 million or so people who are still out of work things are turning around. At least that’s what the newscasters are telling us. I dropped off a pair of old tele skis for my dentist to try out. He’s an alpine skier and wants to take up telemark. You know times are bad when a dentist lights up with excitement at the thought of a free pair of used skis! He thanked me. We chatted. He mentioned business was down over 25% this year. I didn't realize so many people consider dental care descretionary spending- below food and housing anyway I suppose.

It seems that big companies that had a lot of money and lost it through greed and stupidity all got obscene loans from us, the taxpayers, to get well, and get well they did. The big Wall Street firms are paying out record bonuses this year on the profits they made with the free money we spotted them. We’re so generous to the people who don’t need money. Our upside down generosity makes my head hurt. Soup kitchens are doing a land office business. Homeless shelters are so over crowded, people stand in line all day so they can get a bed at night. That doesn’t leave much time to look for work.

An unemployed ski buddy of mine used to sell high end wines around New England.  She lost her job. Pricy wine sales tanked fast this year. Even Wine Spectator ran a few issues on "Great Wines under $20". They still don't get it. People won't spend five bucks on wine if they're out of work. I gave up buying expensive wines when I retired. Pabst Blue Ribbon works for me. My ski bud says shes retooling herself- going back to school and getting a green job. I hope for her sake some of the green gets in her wallet.

The climate change crisis is still with us and the experts say things are getting worse even though the global temperature continues to slip downward. The term Global Warming is slipping out of vogue because the data indicates a downward trend may be real. Sometimes I wonder if the inertia of our convictions makes us disbelieve the data. If the earth continues to cool down are we going to take responsibility for that too? I’ve always thought a colder earth would be a lot more trouble than a warmer earth. A good example is the limits of our recorded history, which seem to begin at the end of the last ice age. Everything that preceded the meltdown (that would be 3-4 million years of human development) is either lost in the glacier rubble or people were too cold to record anything. As a skier I cherish a good nor’easter, but as a New Englander, free heat seems like a better deal than free cold.

On health reform, what can I possibly say that hasn’t already been spun by both sides of the issue? I’m glad it’s over, or almost over, or maybe getting ready to be almost over. We may get some reforms, yet the beneficiaries of these reforms appear to be the insurance companies, not the people. A good indicator of this is the record high stock prices of the health insurance companies the day the Senate voted to pass their version of the bill. Clearly, the stock would’ve dropped if the people were expected to be the beneficiary.

Oh, and finally war, war and more war. I didn’t vote for that. I wish this were all a bad dream. Did John McCain really win the election? What a nightmare. This really makes my head hurt. And as if Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan aren’t enough places to go kill people- brace yourself for Yemen and who knows where in 2010. Onward Christian soldiers, keep the homeland secure. Boy, it didn’t prevent Ft Hood nor the Detroit bound Northwest Airliner.

I'm no expert on human behavior, but we seem to be nurturing more enemies than friends. And by making everyone be strip searched before they can go visit Gramma they've won anyway. We seem to forget that Nazi Germany was a very secure country. Another upside down logic at work- destroy all our personal freedoms so we can be secure and reminisce about the good old days when the Constitution meant something.

Skiing is the one thing that seems to be going well, so I’ll focus on that and enjoy myself for a few months. Maybe by spring the world will look a little brighter and people will be finding jobs.

Happy New Year!

Yumpen Yemeni- Here We Go Again

In rapid fire succession the government has aided and assisted the bombing of suspected al Qaeda terrorist strongholds in Yemen, and of course made a big deal of linkage both to the Ft Hood shootings by a mentally ill Army major and the airline fiasco in Detroit- I suppose to bring a measure of credibility to the actions. It doesn’t bother me that we are diligent about seeking out people who might do harm to us, we should do that, but to confront our adversaries via a process of assassination does bother me.

What ever happened to the top secret rendition we’ve been doing for the last eight years? Why can’t we round these people up and put them on trial? I have a guess as to why. They haven’t really done anything yet. It would be like arresting someone for speeding because they hung around with people who have speeded. So instead we kill them. That bothers me.

Also, there have been reports out of Yemen of many civilian casualties associated with these attacks, but not one word about civilian losses has come from our press or our government. If they’ve been able to conduct surgical raids against suspected terrorists and not injure any innocent people in the process, I would think that would be newsworthy. Americans would feel relieved if they knew we are capable of killing people we think are bad and not kill a single innocent person in the process. However, I don’t think that happens. We kill innocent people every time we bomb suspected terrorist facilities. We justify their sacrifice as collateral damage in the cause of a greater good.

We should at least have the decency to report on the innocent people we kill and show some formal contrition toward their loss, but we don’t seem to do that either. We don’t even mention the fact that they were killed by us. They aren’t even called collateral damage anymore. They’re just ignored as if they never existed.

Maybe we should start measuring the effectiveness of our fighting forces with an effectiveness ratio of bad guys killed divided by innocent people killed. Maybe if we kept an eye on the innocent lives being lost we’d be a little more careful about what we do. Maybe the public that funds these surgical assassinations would want a say in what we do as a government. You know, the democracy thing.

If we’re going to kill people for speeding before they speed we should at least keep score of who and how many people are killed- the women, the children, the elders and the suspected terrorists.

The Pursuit of True Justice Above All Else

The notion of different moral values competing with each other is as old as Plato, maybe older. Our pursuit of the greater good between conflicting values and differentiating how they rank from one to the other is at the heart of our social existence. I’ve been thinking about this as we move to escalate the war in Afghanistan. The moral value of homeland security seems to be the President’s rationale. He believes this value is worth killing and dieing for. Yet I have a hard time placing security in my moral spectrum. Just where does it lie? Security seems to be trumping freedom, liberty, peace and justice, yet it’s pretty far down my moral ladder. Is security all that important?

If a person attempts to invade my home and I have a gun and I kill them, am I on morally high ground for my actions? Maybe. But what if he turned out to be a Jehovah’s Witness or the UPS guy? Then I’d be prosecuted. In Afghanistan how do we know all these people we kill are intent on doing us harm? Did we ask them? Did they say they are? If they turn out to be largely farmers, ignorant of the US and illiterate as well, and they’re killed indiscriminately, is this still the moral high ground? I don’t think so.

After 9/11 we imposed unprecedented security and sought revenge in the name of justice. We pursued justice in Afghanistan. But justice has two faces, one that seeks fair treatment and another that merely seeks revenge for a morally wrong act. We seem to be overly inclined to revenge- making sure people get the punishment they deserve for their crimes and transgressions, including death if we’re so motivated.

If we intend to fight the good fight for a better world and a better society, seeking true justice has to be at the top of the moral ladder. Not vengeful justice, but securing the just treatment of people by governments and authorities. That’s the good fight. That’s more important than what type of economic system we live within- Communist, Socialist, or Capitalist. That’s more important than what kind of governance we live within- Democracy, Republic, Dictator, King or anarchy. For they all can be morally bad or morally good in how they treat the people.

So as the year comes to an end and we enter the ninth year of a war half way around the world, let’s keep our eye on the ball of justice first and foremost. Let’s not get so hung up about government structures and economic systems. Let’s make the pursuit of true justice the highest moral ground; the ideal worth fighting for, and maybe everything else will follow.

If we’re ever going to win the hearts and minds of the Afghanis we need to help them build roads and homes, get more tractors, build schools, factories and hospitals… things they need and would appreciate. That’s how we can make America more secure- not by killing them and making them hate us so much they are willing to die for their cause.

The Weight Challenged Person is About to Sing

Please forgive me while I vent my frustration with the apparent end state of the senate version of the health care bill. There isn’t much, if anything, about the bill that makes me want to jump up and do a happy dance. If I were a senator I would probably have to hold my nose and vote for the bill even though it looks like a meatless chicken- all bones. Or maybe I would become an Independent and threaten to filibuster unless I got the public option and a few other meaningful reforms.

Disappointed progressives like Bernie Sanders and Jay Rockefeller have agreed to hold their noses and vote for it so how can I possibly be more pious than them? Liberals are searching their weegie boards looking for a rationale to defend the sorry state of the bill after being the target of multiple hijackings, or maybe I should I say extortions.

The Republicans all hate it and many liberal Democrats do to. So we really have a minority of senators who are feeling good about what came out of so many months of negotiations and debate. One view says we now have a toehold on medical reform, traction so to speak, to amend and improve the bill in the future. When I get gum stuck on the bottom of my shoe I have traction too, but picking at it doesn’t make it better, it makes it worse.

We talk a lot about infrastructure improvements and modernization, and building on a framework of basic agreements, much like the wishy-washy language countries agreed to in Copenhagen this weekend to fight climate change.

The climate accord and the health care bill suffer from the same problem- they’re politically expedient agreements to allow the Administration to claim some measure of progress and success to an agenda that screams out for real changes, while in reality they don’t change anything. The health insurance industry is the big winner with 30 million new customers to sell profitable insurance to. The climate accord saves face for the President, but China and India flexed their muscles and kept quantitative verifiable agreements off the table.

Good foundations are critical to everything and anything that expects to carry a heavy load, last a long time and support additions and changes in the future. One might say the US Constitution has faired well in that regard. However, neither the accord that came out of Copenhagen nor the health reform bill have any hope of providing any such foundation from which great outcomes can be expected in the future. If anything, they will both be high value fodder for the Republicans in the 2010 elections and beyond.

I close with a quote from Will Rogers, “I don’t belong to an organized political party. I’m a Democrat”. How right he was!

Joe Lieberman Jabs Again

I’m sitting in my Audi dealer lobby waiting for my car to be inspected. You do these things when you’re retired- wait for your car- because there’s no demand on your time. It’s a benefit and a curse. Waiting isn’t fun, but to make up for it I can make an appointment at 2 pm and turn the whole experience into a lazy hour or so on the computer.

I haven’t been motivated to post a blog for several days, partly because I’ve been skiing my brains out up at Cannon Mt, and partly because the health care reform discussion du jour changes about as fast as a tryst affair on “As the World Turns”.

The only news today is the continuing saga of the failing mental faculties of poor Senator Joe Lieberman. Joe suggested extending Medicare illegibility to 55 with a self-funded buy-in back in September. Now that the Democrats have taken him up on the idea, he’s indicated that although he hasn’t read this version and doesn’t know the details (I’m not making this up!) he said the proposed Medicare extension is not what he proposed, and he said he would vote against the health care bill if this Medicare extension is included. So there you have it… He doesn’t know what the details are, but he’s inclined to vote against it even though he proposed the same deal a mere three months ago.

There’s just no end to the obstructionist activities Senator Lieberman will stoop to. The Republicans couldn’t be happier. The bill will now get another lobotomy before 60 votes can be assured. I was really hoping Senator Snowe would jump onboard, but that appears unlikely.

So I’ll keep skiing, finish Christmas shopping, and post new blogs if something interesting happens… maybe

The Sausage is Almost Done

Senator Nelson seems to have lost sight of the fact that the Supreme Court ruled restrictions on abortions are unconstitutional. They have never ruled on bans of abortions by the Federal Government and the amendment to the health bill that he supported was thankfully voted down. The scary thing though, with the 5-4 conservative majority in the Supreme Court, they would in all likelihood find no conflict between government restrictions on abortion and the status quo upholding the Roe v Wade decision. The Supreme Court has a knack for looking at spaghetti, and when someone drills a hole lengthwise in the middle of it, they’re very comfortable calling it macaroni.

Senator Reid’s health care bill has been massaged and tweaked to a point where a 60-vote majority may now potentially exist. The details are hard to come by. He cited broad agreement, yet except for a few tidbits we, nor the other Senators have much insight to the latest negotiations amoung the ten Democrats, five liberals and five centrists who've been working the details. Here's what I've read or heard. I'm sure it will change again before the bill is actually voted on.

On the plus side, people age 55-64 may now be able to buy into Medicare. This will help a lot people who are having trouble getting insurance at that age with pre-existing conditions- many of whom are early retirees, or laid off workers. I would love to see Congress keep lowering the age every year until it gets to zero. Then we’d have what America needs- universal health care for all, and not profit motivated.

People will have choices of private plans from an exchange pool, if they can’t get insurance through their employer. private non-profit plans, administered by the government will be available.

People will no longer be denied coverage with pre-existing conditions, although the cost may still be prohibitive. There is a cap on the cost, but it may still be out of reach for many people.

People will no longer be dropped from their insurance when they become sick

Lifetime and annual caps on benefit payouts will be lifted.

On the negative side, the public option is dead.
The government will mandate that everyone carry insurance, even without the public option, thus guaranteeing new business for private insurers with no incentive or competition to lower prices.

A trigger will be included that may invoke a public option if the private insurers fail to meet cost and availability targets. You can be sure these targets will be a slam dunk- the insurance industry would never leave itself vulnerable to a defacto public option triggered by their failure to meet targets. And states can elect to opt out.

That’s about it. The House and Senate still have to merge a single bill, assuming this Senate version actually gets approved.

Here’s an article on the subject: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/health/policy/10health.html?hp

EPA Endangerment Finding Caught Republicans Off Guard

The EPA acted with the full authority previously granted by Congress and defined a set of green house gases to be endangering the public health of Americans. By classifying CO2 as endangering the public health the EPA can assert it’s authority to regulate and control carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, factories, and automobiles.

This government action is a huge proactive step to curb green houses and completely bypasses the foot dragging delays and stalling tactics going on in the Senate against the cap and trade bill. By acting to declare carbon emissions as endangering public health, the government now has the ability to invoke strict regulations and controls independent of any cap and trade legislation. In fact, cap and trade will now instantly become a bill that industries will likely support because that gives polluters an opportunity to buy pollution rights if they want to avoid the more expensive implementation of emissions controls.

President Obama has performed the perfect end-run against the Republicans who were hunkering down for a long cold winter of opposition to the cap and trade bill. This is a landmark move, on a par with the government’s declaration that smoking will kill you back in 1964. Conservatives will be calling for the President to be impeached over this move. I love it!

The coal powered electric industry says the cost of electricity will double. The manufacturing lobby says America will lose jobs to overseas production- duh, like that hasn’t happened yet? Manufacturing has always gone where the cheapest labor is. Allowing pollution to continue in the states will not keep jobs here- they’re already gone.

In another interesting news piece, the World Meteorological Organization announced the last ten years to be the warmest decade recorded in the last 150 years. While there has been a slight downward trend in the past few years the overall temperature of the earth remains at a record high level. The best chart of land and ocean temperature is computed and published by our National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). I’ve included the most recent publication below. The blue line is a five year average. There have been a lot of arguments against global warming because this chart shows a downturn in the last few years. It will take several decades of continuous decreasing temperature to cool the earth sufficiently to stem the effects of glacier melting.

Whether we’re still getting warmer can be debated, but what can’t be debated is the temperature we’re at today compared to the past. If the earth's temperature stayed about where it is today, the effects would be negligible. The concern for global warming is based on projected warming in the future. The recent trends support the argument against continued global warming and the Climategate controversy (hacked emails from noted authorities posted on the web) also points to that data.

The President has stuck his chin out pretty far on this decision. The fallout over next several months, even years, will be very interesting to watch.

Here are a couple articles on the subject:


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/science/earth/09climate.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-obama-environment8-2009dec08,0,3159719.story

The Other Day That Lives in Infamy

Until 9/11, Pearl Harbor was the only attack on our homeland. On December 7, 1941, the attack caused massive deaths, destroyed every ship in port, and signaled the beginning of our entry into World War II. The nation was shocked by the attack, which took place on a quiet Sunday morning. Unlike Al Qaeda, Japan focused their air attacks on US military targets. We suffered devastating losses, and President Roosevelt addressed Congress and asked for a declaration of war. Up to this time Congress had been opposed to declaring war on Germany, but we were justified in declaring war against Germany as well because they had an alliance with Japan. We were so fearful of the Japanese we proceeded to round up all Japanese Americans and intern them in the desert for the duration of the war.

Looking back, the events that preceded the war had many similarities to our predicament today. The stock market crashed in 1929. Roosevelt was elected in 1932 on a campaign of change- The New Deal. Unemployment was peaking about that time. By1934 the nation was mired down in a horrendous depression and Republicans took many Congressional seats away from the Democrats. The recovery programs undertaken by Roosevelt just couldn’t work fast enough to make people feel that economic recovery was happening. Republicans saw his first two years in office as a failure to pull America out of the depression, and they accused him of dragging America down the slippery road to ruin with a Socialist agenda. A downtrodden, unemployed America, responded by voting against his party two years after his landslide victory.

By 1936 the stimulus programs were beginning to run out. Roosevelt won re-election, but it wasn’t the landslide of ‘32, and increased Republican strength in Congress hampered his ability to enact new programs. America slipped backwards into a recession in 1937. The economy was struggling. Then Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. President Roosevelt began a massive build up of military equipment in anticipation of possible war. The military build up was a second stimulus, with all the effort being applied to employ as many people as possible. Unlike the civilian stimulus programs like the WPA and CCC, the military build up was highly bi-partisan and received the full support of Congress. Congress remained against the war even in the face of relentless blitz-kreg air bombing of England, but our entry into the war was only a matter of time.

It took a massive attack on our homeland to turn Congress in favor of declaring war. The war is credited with pulling us out of the depression. Government spending at unprecedented levels got everyone back to work and then some. The productivity of the American workers still defies believability even today. In 1943 America produced 120,000 aircraft. In one year! Today our production goals for new aircraft are in the range of one aircraft per day, or 365 aircraft a year. The greatest generation did the impossible, and they did it over and over. It was our finest hour. In less than four years we defeated two major adversaries simultaneously on two oceans and two continents.

Germany and Japan surrendered unconditionally. They stopped fighting. We never had to worry about guerrilla warfare or IEDs in Tokyo after the war. When the war ended, everyone was at peace. The enemy accepted defeat and conducted themselves with humility and compliance to our demands.

The enemy we’re fighting today in Afghanistan has no military equipment to speak of. They don’t have aircraft, tanks, ships, or submarines. They have guns, rocket propelled grenades, shoulder launched missiles, and improvised explosive devices. We have the best military equipment ever made. We have worldwide instant communications, instant satellite visual coverage of the battle space, instant location of every soldier on the battlefield, the most modern Army, Marines, and Air Force in the world. We out number Al Qaeda by over a hundred to one. Yet if we ever defeat Al Qaeda, the outcome won’t be the same. Al Qaeda will never surrender despite our overwhelming force. We continue to search out this adversary nine years after hostilities commenced.

The troops deserve our greatest respect for serving their country, but this is not our country’s finest hour. This war feels like Vietnam, despite the President’s claim to the contrary.

When is Intelligence Action War?

The CIA is conducting an unacknowledged war in Pakistan using drones to fire Hellfire missiles into suspected enemy strongholds. There have been many incidents of innocent people being killed by these attacks, including many women and children. The administration says they refuse to discuss the particulars of any intelligence actions, but the CIA’s activity in Pakistan is laughably the world’s worst kept secret. I’m all for keeping intelligence activities secret as long as strict governance of their activities are ensured and they remain legal. After all, our ability to know what our adversaries are doing gives us a tactical and strategic edge. But when our intelligence activities include deliberate acts of war within a country that is supposed to be our friend, the Agency seems to be way overstepping the authority granted to it for intelligence purposes.

Few people seem to realize that the CIA doesn’t fall under the direction of the Department of Defense. In fact, the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence who reports to the President. This presents an interesting situation. All the war activities in Afghanistan are under the direction of Secretary Gates, while all the war activities in Pakistan are under the direction of the Leon Penneta, the Director of the CIA. This relationship of having two different organizations executing parallel war efforts places the President smack in the middle as the only decision maker, and arbiter for disputes between the DoD and the CIA, as they conduct their respective wars in adjacent countries that have a very porous boarder.

General Petraus and UN Ambassador Rice have both described the situation along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border as a borderless border- a region occupied by tribal peoples, many of whom are Taliban recruits, moving freely from one country to the other because the border is essentially nonexistent to them.

We forget that Great Britain created this border, along with just about every country in Southwest Asia, after World War 1. Britain was motivated to divide and separate malcontent tribal areas throughout this part of the world to ensure stability and control the people who would resist or attempt to rebel against their imperial rule. Two regions most directly affected by this policy are the Talibans along the border area of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the Kurds in the Turkey, Iran and Iraq region. Resentment of this suppression runs long and deep. Osama bin Ladin referred to it in his message to the world after 9/11 when he called 9/11 an attempt to retaliate for 80 years of imperial rule. We don’t have to agree with him, but that’s what he was motivated by. The Taliban are not being pushed from one country to another. They actually view the region as their own, and move as necessary to avoid attack by the Army on one side and the CIA on the other.

So the bad guys are currently in Pakistan. We don’t have authority or approval to occupy Pakistan with boots on the ground, so we’ve pressured Pakistan to permit us to fight a war from the air, under the direction of the CIA. Pakistan probably didn’t have any say in the matter; else they bite the hand that feeds them- weapons anyway.

But we are not Pakistan. We are the people of the United States and we have a right to know why the government is using the CIA to fight an unacknowledged war in Pakistan. Someday this may lead to boots on the ground, and we’ll be told this is another war of necessity, a good war. Bull. We shouldn’t have to wait until we’re stuck in the mud in Pakistan, beyond a point of no return, to have a say in what we’re doing there and why. Now is the time to get this new war out in the open and in front of the American people.

Here are a couple articles on the subject:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/12/03-9

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/04/world/asia/04drones.html?_r=1&hp

Global Warming Getting the Best of Me

My beloved Cannon Mountain has delayed the season opening yet a second time due to warm weather. It’s Thursday, December 3, 2009, and it’s 65 degrees today. All that hoopla about global warming may be true. We measure the veracity of claims like that based on the impact to our selves. When the weather affects my skiing that’s hitting pretty close to home.

This is very disappointing because the weather was decided cool this summer. We had a lot of rain- the third wettest June on record and cold too. So the eternal skier optimist that I am, I extrapolated the cool summer weather to mean we’ll be in for a doozy of a winter, with tons of snow, ice dams, power outages, and so many snow days the kids would be going to school all next summer making up for the glacier winter I hoped for.

But alas, Old Man Winter hasn’t shown up yet. I realize that technically it’s still fall, but hey, fall ends at Thanksgiving. After that the ground freezes and turns white in New Hampshire. If we’re lucky, we don’t see the mud again until April. Global Warming may be rearing its ugly head in New Hampshire after all.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, predictions of winter’s demise may be premature, and I’ll be very happy to admit I’m wrong. I’ll remain depressed until then however. Like the weather, everything is going wrong these days. Health care reform is mired down in the debating pit. The Republicans are being more creative than anyone could imagine figuring out ways to block, stall, kill, defeat, mame, or otherwise hobble the bill from moving forward.

Our only squeaky clean, drug free, American sports hero cheated on his wife and ran into a tree, President Obama is beginning to sound like John McCain, and if that isn't depressing enough, John McCain is sounding like a Democrat accusing the Democrats of endangering Medicare for seniors and demanding the cuts in Medicare funding be removed from the health bill. What gives???

I think I’ll do my part to stimulate this sputtering economy and raise a fist against global warming. I’m off to buy four new snow tires; the best money can buy. So there…

Sadly, President Orders Troop Surge

I knew my prediction Monday of an India-Pakistan alliance was a long shot, but that was the only item I got wrong in my prediction of his address to the nation Tuesday. And while he gave a date to “start” withdrawal of the troops, he didn’t give us an “end” date for when they would be gone. This is something he chastised President Bush for in Iraq when he was campaigning for president. Apparently he’s had a change of heart on that point. Maybe it’s the water in the White House?

As the policy stands now, the President is escalating the war with a build up of 30,000 additional troops and possibly even more civilians within the next six months. Sounds like a new “surge”, but he doesn’t call it that- I wonder why??? I just hope he doesn't start singing "bomb bomb bomb Iran”…

President Obama made a point of stating how strongly the House, Senate, and the American people were in their support for the war way back in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks. That was true, but, and this is a big but, if President Bush had said we’re going into Afghanistan to overthrow the government, and then fight the people we kicked out for the next 12-15 years, I’m sure America and Congress would’ve said that dog don't hunt. Nobody would support a 15-year war. Nobody. We’re stupid enough to approve a war incrementally, but not smart enough to avoid the war all together.

I remember President Bush fired his first Secretary of Treasury, Paul O’Neill, for overstating the predicted cost of the war in Iraq (before we invaded Iraq). He said the cost would exceed 200 billion dollars. Secretary Rumsfeld put him down publicly and claimed the war would cost something like 80 billion. As the dust begins to settle the cost is over a trillion dollars, and that doesn’t include the long-term cost of the veterans benefits and the rehabilitation of the wounded soldiers that could exceed another trillion dollars. When all the collateral costs such as replenishment cost of equipment, etc,  are all taken into account the Iraq War will be over three trillion dollars. I would’ve fired O’Neill for being too conservative!

Deficit spending for a war doesn’t seem to be a problem for the otherwise domestic thrifty Republicans. Several Republican senators have already stated that if the President wasn’t opposed to going into debt to bail out banks and GM, why should he be concerned about deficit spending to fight a war- such a just and noble cause? So we seem to have a healthy majority for continuing the war with our big credit card  without concern for the national debt.

This certainly would be different if we had a war tax and a draft. Nobody is fighting against his or her will and nobody seems to care about the cost. We make going to war too easy- like buying a flat screen TV when you’re broke- just throw plastic at it…

I’m very disappointed in the President’s decision and I think I’ll look for another political party to put my support behind. Got any suggestions besides No-publicans? Is there a Green Party or is Ralph Nader my only other option? Maybe I’ll change to Independent. Yeah, that's what I'll do...