Party of Fiscal Restraint?

Everyone is focused on the strippers (and who can blame them), but it seems to me that the Republicans get into a serious branding issue when they try to be the party of fiscal restraint, but then blow this kind of money on private jets and five star hotels.

Insurance Companies & Children

Insurance companies have folded within 24 hours of announcing their intent to try and deny coverage to children based on the fine print within the Health Care Law. You have to wonder how they expected that interpretation to play out in the national media.

Last night the teaser for the 11 o'clock newscast was that a six year old girl was denied health insurance. What a wonderful thing to have that be suddenly newsworthy.

Throw Joe Lieberman under the Bus

Harry Reid met with Senator Joe Lieberman yesterday. Joe Lieberman, while ostensibly a democrat came out in support of John McCain. That in itself does not seem to be worthy of ridding the Senate caucus of him. But Lieberman did not let it go at a simple endorsement; he gave a keynote speech at the Republican convention. If as if that were not enough; he then took to the road with McCain, I can't count the number of times I have seen a camera shot of a McCain Campaign speech with a grinning Lieberman in the background; his feckless head bobbing up and down in agreement with McCain.

People are entitled to their political opinions, but if yours run counter to the party you belong to and you actively work against the parties interest; it seems to me that the least you can do is strip the apostate of his chair positions. If Lieberman wants to continue to caucus with the Democrats that's all well and fine, but allowing him to keep his chair after working against the Democratic party is too much; and corrosive of party discipline. Harry Reid needs to throw Joe under the Bus.

Long Knives out for Palin

The national press was unquestionably hard on Sarah Palin and Republicans were outraged. With the election of Barack Obama however, we are now treated to the spectacle of Republican operatives fighting it out over Palin; and they make the national media look like a bunch of panty-waists.

Within the McCain campaign frictions began to emerge near the campaigns end with anonymous complaints that Palin was 'going rogue'. Back then going rogue largely meant that she spoke to the media more and was mildly critical of the McCain robocalls. Within the McCain campaign, there had to be a sense that she was a strategic error; in that while she excited the base she vitiated the line of attack that Obama was inexperienced. While she had more executive experience, she was clearly wanting in foreign affairs chops. Palin was excellent at the set speeches and rallies, but was wanting in the ability to respond thoughtfully to interview questions.

In the wake of Obama's victory on Teusday; the long knives have really come out. It will be interesting to see who will come to her defense. The steady drip of anonymous leakings have said that the Palins were like 'Wasilla Hillbilly's looting Nieman Marcus from coast to coast'. This cuts away her, "I'm just a soccer mom" persona.

The other leakings slash at her intellect; suggesting that she could not distinguish Africa as a continent and is unable to figure out what countries inhabit North America. This strikes me as more than just the typical finger pointing; she is being hobbled from running in 2012. There is a real fear among the moderates that she could end up as the standard bearer in the next election and would get hammered yet again; they are sparing no feelings in taking her down now.

In 1934 Hitler purged his own Brown shirts by having them killed. We have grown more civilized, but the virtual hobbling of Palin shows that ruthlessness endures. For all their talk about the viciousness of the elite media; Republicans are clearly masters of the game. They are furiously finishing what Tina Fey began.

Signs

Political signs are an interesting social interaction. When you post a sign in your yard you make a statement that I am for this and I don't care who knows it. There are always some folks that will disagree with your sign; so it is already a little 'in your face'. In our neighborhood we put up a sign for Kerry four years ago and shortly thereafter a neighbor put up a Bush sign. When the election came and it was a nail biter; we left our sign up. Kerry lost, but I couldn't quite bare to take my sign down; defeat just stung too much. Then I noticed that my neighbor left his sign up too; I have to say, it annoyed me. I left my sign up for several weeks as I struggled with accepting that the country still wanted more of Bush. To steal a phrase, I clung to my sign in bitterness.

As I was walking my dog around the block I noticed another Bush sign on a street several blocks from us that was still up, but there was a note taped on it. The note said "I am a Republican and I'm embarrassed that you leave up your sign. We won the election there is no need to rub it in the faces of our neighbors who voted for another party. I am raising two children and trying to teach them to be good sports; this sign makes it harder to tell them that Republicans are good sports." The note wasn't signed. I walked off and the next day saw that the sign was gone. When I went home that afternoon I finally found myself pulling the Kerry sign up and putting it in the garage. The day after that our neighbor finally pulled down his Bush sign.

Last night I watched as Obama's electoral votes crashed through 270 and he was the President Elect. It was a joyful moment and my family whooped and cheered. I went outside and took down my Obama/Biden sign. My wife was annoyed, but four years ago I remember thinking that if I ever am on the winning side my sign would come down straight away. Some times you can learn more from people that disagree with you than you can from your friends. I don't know that anyone will notice; but that anonymous Republican left me thinking about the proper use of signs; I hope this election finds him or her well.

Subprime Mortgage Mess

The Fed very likely ignited the housing bubble by keeping interest rates abnormally low from about the middle of 2002 through 2005. In general terms the interest rate should only be very low when output of the economy is too low. From 2002, in part due to the dot com bust and in part due to 9/11 the Fed kept rates unusually low, around 1%.

Twenty percent of mortgages are now from the bottom of the credit barrel, which allows lower income folks get homes. The problem is most of those loans went out at 95% of the value in the property. If property values always go up that's fine, but property values don't do that. About half the loans were made by companies that are almost completely unregulated. Half the loans required no documentation on income.

Usually the bank takes a keen interest in a borrowers ability to pay, but now they sell off these loans, often to off balance sheet entities of banks in Europe. The risk of mortgage default was sold off to these investors bundled with good loans based on ratings by firms paid for by the very companies selling the securities. Very often the mortgage initiator would call up the ratings firms asking how many more low quality loans they could squeeze into a bundle.

Some would have you believe that greedy people on both sides deserve what they got, but if you can't see opportunities to prevent these issues in the future and that this represents an efficient market at work, you have some very clouded glasses. For an amazing in depth loook check out The Economist.

Scent of a doggy

Our dog is extremely well behaved. She just has this nasty habit of waking up. While awake and we are out the neighbors say she likes to bark. Well they don't say it so much as write it ... anonymously. We have begun to hear the ominous beat of the war drums in the distance; I believe they are marshaling their forces.

This is an extremely unusual position for us, our last dog only barked when Republicans proposed legalizing Gay marriage, or Democrats won the White House and the like. It is a difficult thing to control your dog while you are away. We purchased a citronella collar that squirts her when she barks. It does seem to have slowed her down some; but she always has a lemony fresh smell about her now. Still the neighbors seem to be stowing their pitchforks and torches for the time being; perhaps it will work.

Good Grief

In our drive to find any solution in the morass that has become Iraq, we are now arming the Sunni militants. Since they have fallen out with Al Qaeda, we are arming them for the fight. The trouble is that this cuts at the heart of a stable Iraqi government. Arming militias responsible to no controls makes no sense when the Iraqis are not able to control their own country. We are so desperate to make 'progress' we will make this Faustian compact. It will surely come back to haunt us. The full story is here.

Fred Thompson

Fred Thompson is fast becoming the latest fad in a Republican search for anybody else. The parallels to last years adoption by the Democrats of general Wesley Clark comes to mind. But the more you look the less there is, this is a candidate headed no where. George Will, the undisputed best of the Republican pundits, has a great piece on him. At the very least he seems to have no common sense, doing an ad for a credit shark, written up by the LA Times (subscription required).

Rudy's Russkies

History is a passion for me, so it bothers me when folks throw around egregiously wrong facts and nobody says boo about it. Here is a link to Rush Limbaugh where he comments on a Rudy Giuliani interview with Larry King:

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_021507/content/01125107.guest.html

Guiliani is discussing American intel failures during wartime:

"The Battle of the Bulge was the biggest intelligence failure in American military history, much bigger than any in Vietnam or now. We didn't know that the Soviets were moving three, four, 500,000 troops. We missed it."

The battle of the Bulge was between the Germans, Americans and Western Allies; no Soviet troops to miss there and even if there were, the Soviets were our allies. The Germans had at best 200,000 men, not 500,000.

And then we get this snarky little tidbit from Rush:

"We missed it," and King says: The Battle of the Bulge? What was the Battle of the Bulge? That was, uh, uh... Wha? What was that? "

Making fun of King while missing completely the 500,000 Soviets that weren't there (and I thought I knew intelligence failures).

His cup runneth over

My son is just starting up baseball for the season. For the first time ever he needed an athletic cup to keep those family jewels safe. First thing he starts doing after getting it on is banging on it like Ricky Ricardo playing Babaloo.

Noonan on Obama

Peggy Noonan has opined on Obama's bid for the presidency saying he hasn't the experience to run the country. That he is unburdened by hard work or accomplishment, which is to say that working in State government is somehow a bucolic lark (strange rhetoric indeed from a Reaganite). Implicit is that his accomplishments in the State legislature somehow don't count on the national stage. Where she really misses the boat methinks is when she says he does not have an issue.

Anyone who heard his speech at the Democratic convention knows his issue, the divisiveness of todays politics. He brings an even handedness that has even seized the imaginations of some conservatives like David Brooks. The polarization of the body politic is his issue and it is the ideologues wrapped in their bare knuckle infighting that are blind to it.

Noonan claims he stands for nothing, but notes he gets a 100% rating from liberal groups, an interesting trick. In fact he stood against the Iraq war at a time when few in either party were willing to. In her heart I believe what Noonan fears most is that Obama is the mirror image of Ronald Reagan who will advance liberal ideas with charisma and charm. The reality is that Obama is worse than she fears, because he is both more capable and thoughtful than Reagan.

Don't make me shoot you a whole bunch of times in the head Bob

My wife is substitute teacher. She was talking to this other teacher about kindergartners the other day. He had been passing the boys room when he heard some Kindergartners making a ruckus. He popped his head in and this little boy who was raising cain in there looks at him and says, "Is your name Bob"?

He says no, and explains to them that they really need to quiet down, conduct their business and go out on the playground. This boy looks at him again and says, "OK Bob!" After another little chat he lets them go. It's a running joke in our house now to ask somebody who is telling you something you don't want to hear, "Is your name Bob"?

Unregulated Militias

Max Weber defined government as needing a monopoly on the use of force. When viewed from this perspective, you can see what a disaster Iraq has become. Through history, governments are largely a farce unless they control the armed forces. These militias have to be disarmed and disbanded, the Washington Post in their editorial is exactly right in their Editorial, A Slipping Last Chance:

How to rescue the situation? Mr. Maliki and Mr. Bush are likely to discuss a reinforcement of U.S. and Iraqi troops in Baghdad, which might help. Those forces will have to be more aggressive in confronting Shiite as well as Sunni forces -- especially the Iranian-backed Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr, which, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, seeks to create a state within a state to fight its own wars.

Currently Iraq is suffering roughly 3,000 civilian casualties a month, thats like having one World Trade Center every single month in a country with less than 10% the population of the United States. It would be as if we lost 30,000 dead every month on a per capita basis.

These militias have a long history. In the aftermath of our own civil war, the Ku Klux Klan, Red Shirts and the like wrought a terrible vengeance on their political enemies and made a mockery of our democratic process, not to mention the 14th and 15th amendments. The Freedmen were eventually left to serve a century of what amounted to peonage. In post World War I Germany the Freikorps served the same purpose, providing a platform of chaos that the Nazi party would eventually ride to completely dominate Germany. Hezbollah too creates the chaos that provides a tilt towards extremism. The current Lebanese government is unable to control this militia, and has been thrust unwillingly into the fray. Sometimes governments use these militias as a fig leaf of deniability as with the shanghaied in Darfur.

Given all these examples you have to wonder that the Bush Administration has so frequently looked the other way, not disarming the Mehdi militia in Iraq, allowing the warlords to hold corrupt sway in the south of Afghanistan, and actually funding warlords in Somalia. At some point we need to come grips with the fact that as difficult as disarming is, the alternative is far worse.

Gettysburg

July 1, 1863, the first day of the watershed battle unfolded. Robert E. Lee had moved his army up into Pennsylvania. He was feeding off the land and so it was dispersed when word came that the Army of the Potomac under the newly promoted general Meade was concentrating to his rear. He ordered his army to concentrate drawing it together like the clenching of a fist, each had instructions not to bring on a general battle. Lee found himself without his great cavalry commander, the flamboyant Jeb Stuart. Although he had several brigades of cavalry at his disposal, he missed Stuart's ability to sow chaos and see opportunities in Union positions.

The Union cavalry had been used piece meal and ineffectively was newly inspired by reorganization, refitting as well as tactical improvements. Two brigades of Northern cavalry were posted in front of the small town of Gettysburg. Commanded by General Buford he saw the strategic town was a crossroads and determined that the Union should take the best ground there.

Lee's army short on supplies as always had heard that shoes were in Gettysburg and General Hill determined to take them. As he came up the road he ran right into Buford's men with their breech loaded carbines, a dramatic improvement over muzzle loaders. The cavalry put up a ferocious defense dismounted, outnumbered three to one. Worse than that one in four was holding the horses. Just as things began to look dire, up came General Reynolds with his Union corps, including the hard fighting 'Iron brigade' that never backed down.

Troops from both sides were now marching to the sound of the guns, Lee's request not to have a general battle had long since been abandoned. Four Southern divisions launched themselves against the Union positions that included Howard's 11th corps. The 11th corps made a sad career of being overrun in virtually every engagement, most recently at Chancellorsville. Today was no exception, and yet the Southern army came up somewhat short at Cemetery hill. Lee gave orders to take it 'if practicable' but Ewell, recently promoted to take Stonewall Jackson's place demurred. Both sides spent the night bringing up as many reinforcements as they could muster.

The War on Terror

Sometimes you find folks that say what you think, but say it better and then have the audacity to add perspectives that never occur to you. I hate those people. I stumbled across the blog of Mark Grimsley, who wrote a book on Sherman's March (Hard Hand of War) many moons ago. He has some thoughtful insights on the War on Terror and Rumsfeld's reign as Secretary of Defense. It's well worth a look and can be found at http://warhistorian.org/blog/, I'm going to add it to my permanent list of links as well.

The New York Times, Bush and Everything

It's a funny thing about the visceral reaction the New York Times gets. If there is no such thing as bad press, the right wing bloggers and Bush have done more for the beleaguered Grey Lady than anything since social security. I can't help but feel there is a certain false passion to the issue, not unlike the gay marriage and flag burning amendments brought up for votes recently. The New York Times is sort of like the weather, everyone likes to talk about it, but nobody does anything. The really interesting part is that three papers went with the story, The LA Times, The Wall Street Journal and the NY Times; granted the NY Times was first.

Why are 95% of the comments on just the NYTs, many will also mention the LA Times, another left leaning rag, but virtually nobody mentions the stately WSJ which is somehow steeled against the storm of protests. I can't help that in this instance folks don't really hate the sin, but the sinner.

Despite all that, you have to wonder why the papers published. The NY Times does seem to have an edge since it swallowed so many fairy tales in the lead up to the Iraq War. In some cases this has led to proper exposure of questionable practices including illegal wire tapping and invasion of privacy. Since the Bush administration has gone back on the Geneva conventions and made use of secret jails and due process for 'illegal combatants' a certain skepticism seems healthy. Certainly the Republican Congress has been a dutiful mushroom, content to wallow in the dark feasting on manure (with apologies to Arlen Specter and John McCain). The Congress was only properly informed when it became clear that the Times had the story, had it a better record of veracity another outcome might have been possible.

But for all that the papers have gone one toke over the line here. While there has been a disturbing pattern of reckless hubris on the part of the President, this program has been productive. The Times may argue that it will still be effective, but certainly it is less likely given the fire-storm of publicity. Certainly tracking financial details was known to be occurring, but the scale and process may prompt them to better cover their tracks. Ultimately the motives for the paper were good, but misguided. The thing that fairly drips with irony is that pretty much sums up Bush's presidency as well; perhaps the reflection of himself is what really angers this President so.

Testing

Just checking out blogging in general. Not sure I will have much to say or much time to say it in.