Thoroughly Modern Marx

An Interesting Discussion Everyone Should Watch:





To see the rest of the discussion, go here:
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=33&Itemid=74&jumival=393

Sotomaynia!

Thank you, national media.

Thank you for your vigilance in protecting me and my heavily under-represented and oppressed Caucasian brethren.

Thank you for taking a stand against the day-to-day "reverse racism" of which every white male in this country suffers.

Thank you for responsibly summing up Sonia Sotomayor's 40 years of legal experience with 2 comments which, if taken completely out of context, could almost - if I turned my brain off for just a few seconds - be construed as racist.

It's important to make sure that a Supreme Court nominee, when they're a Hispanic male appointed by a white male, is not questioned about their membership in an organization that called for capping female and minority university admissions, because that's going "too far." We might hurt their feelings.

But when a Hispanic female appointed by a black male makes a comment that points out she may be able to bring fresh perspective to a court that, until now, has produced 106 white males out of 110 total Supreme Court Justices, appointed by... hrm, let's see... all white male presidents? She may be a racist; we better make it the single biggest issue concerning her candidacy. Even the New York Times agrees.

Good job, national media. Let's send a message that comments like those recently made by Gordon Liddy hoping Sotomayor doesn't make any key decisions while menstruating, and that the Supreme Court "is not designed to be and should not be a representative body" are legitimate criticisms. Or Bill O'Reilly's rants against "putting women and minorities in power" shouldn't bother us for other reasons entirely. Let's not focus on former representative Tom Tancredo's statements that Sotomayor is part of the "Latina KKK" and doesn't know whether or not Obama hates white people, per Limbaugh's suggestion.

It's important to focus on the "new racism," as Newt Gingrich so eloquently puts it, against white males. All of this concern for white males couldn't be an indication that "old racism" and blatant sexism could still be very much alive in our society, on our televisions, in our newspapers, and all over our national media outlets.

The War Unseen, Unheard & Unplanned

I remember my first introduction to Barack Obama. The man who was against invading Iraq from the start. One of the only politicians of any national recognition (as of primary season) who had voiced his opposition while it wasn't politically expedient to do so. One of the few among his newfound colleagues who hadn't fallen for fabrications and manipulations, who had ignored the lies and considered the facts (a brief montage below, for the memories):



This man, I thought, this man stands for reason. Here is someone who's studied their history, who understands the lessons Vietnam should have taught us. Here is a man of the 21st century, who is not mired in the zero-sum games of the past.

On the campaign, though it was understood he needed to look tough, Obama still reinforced this image. Debating a war veteran, he needed to emphasize he would not be afraid to use force and, to support such a position, he advocated a more aggressive plan in Afghanistan. At the same time, he continued to question our actions in Iraq and drew up timetables for a structured withdrawal. Most importantly, he placed a great emphasis on the need for diplomacy, on the necessity of being open to talks with leaders in states like Iran, North Korea and Venezuela.

We can trust this man to lead us, I thought. We can trust him because he won't commit American lives to an unnecessary war with no exit strategy. Here's someone who will exhaust all avenues of diplomacy before looking to a military solution. Here's a Commander-in-Chief who will carefully consider the human cost of war, the civilian casualties that will result, the lives that will be forever changed, before making such a commitment.

Fast forward to present.

We've committed 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan. General McKiernan, currently in command, asked for 30,000, a doubling of our presence. Just last week, a U.S. air strike killed over 100 civilians. In the midst of all this, President Obama cannot provide a plan coherent enough to even outline our goals or withdrawal strategy. Meanwhile, the Taliban strikes deeper into Pakistan - a country funneling billions in American aid meant to safeguard its nuclear weapons to build more... because 100, of course, isn't quite enough.

We now have soldiers returning for 3-4 tours of duty. That's unheard of. The strain the horrors of war place on the human mind is exacerbated by prolonged exposure. According to a recent story in Time magazine, "For the first time in history, a sizable and growing number of U.S. combat troops are taking daily doses of antidepressants to calm nerves strained by repeated and lengthy tours in Iraq and Afghanistan." Fully one-in-five of returning veterans are suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, if not more. That number's 300,000 and growing. People sacrificing their lives for our country are returning home and hanging themselves. Why are we ignoring this? What's the matter with us?

Hardly a peep can be heard from the national press corps and mainstream media. Instead, the hot topics are credit cards, Notre Dame and Ms. California's implants.

With all the press conferences he's been holding, why is Obama not focusing the discourse on this war? Where is the "support for our troops"? For the first time, there really is a threat a terrorist organization could get its hands on WMDs - actual, launchable nukes. Why is the media not seriously talking about these issues? Why are we escalating in Afghanistan and what are we planning to accomplish there, and how? How are we working with Pakistan on this? How are we working with NATO and our allies?

This war needs to be talked about. This war needs to be in the national headlines. The psychological strain being demanded of our servicemen should be on the minds of every American. We should be debating the ramifications, the consequences of war in Afghanistan. We should be discussing Pakistan's security. We should be calling for a detailed plan of action.

Why aren't we?

Our largest near future threat: US Dollar Collapse

Hold your horses, as this is an economy post.

Two years ago, however, if anyone shouted US Housing Bubble Collapse, they were a libertarian, and were labeled something akin to a conspiracy theorist.

Here is a recent video interview of Ron Paul worth watching, where some stupid-sounding TV people give him credit for what is essentially a brilliant word for word prediction of the current economic meltdown. I was impressed, and I liked Ron Paul already.



The next immediate threat, and it also appears briefly in the above video is the possibility of the collapse of the US Dollar. This is too big a topic to explain thoroughly, but I will try to summarize. We have been on an unsustainable path for quite some time. By being the largest country, and with the US dollar being the major reserve currency of the world, we were allowed special status in the world. As a country, we have been running a trade deficit for decades. As individuals, in 2006, our country's savings rate was -0.6%. Our historical savings rate had been in the teens, and East Asian savings rates loiter as high as 30-50%. This means that as a country, we spent more money than we created. This is essentially unprecedented, and has been very much unsustainable. Our federal deficit, while a sore topic for discussion, is similarly contributing to our woes.

The thing is, all of this is only really possible because the US dollar is so important in the world. Had Russia engaged in activities similar to ours, the rouble would have been devalued many times over and Russia's external investment would have dried up.

The US dollar is a essentially a made up piece of paper. It has no inherent value. Owning a dollar is almost like owning a share of the US Government, and it is sustained by the belief that the Government will make good on its debts, that it will not continue borrowing indefinitely, and, very importantly, as a result of all the previous factors, that it will not have to resort to printing currency to make up the budget difference.

The collapse will happen the moment that foreign countries decided our government won't pay back the debts. The US government will have to start printing trillions of dollars to balance our overspending, and the poor dollar will fall in value, exacerbating its status as the world's reserve currency forever.

More recent evidence involves strong words from China and a shift in foreign currency reserves. The scariest evidence I have seen, though, was a decrease in our credit worthiness as determined by insurance companies. The US still maintains its AAA credit rating, but we had a brief moment where insurance rates backing US debt had a higher cost than that of MacDonalds. MacDonalds briefly had a higher credit worthiness than our whole country. Crazy - no?

Even Obama's on board, though he has to use softer words about the dangers, or his statements alone could cause a US dollar collapse.

In some ways, a weaker dollar is already hitting me personally. My current foreign trip is costing me 10% more than it would have a few months ago.

For more evidence, just read any of the dozens of posts that come up when you google US Dollar Collapse. This one has a good step by step explanation of possible causes of a dollar collapse.

More Torture

This issue seems to be a resilient one and is getting harder to follow on different threads so I figured I'd bring it back up...

To answer Sal:

Popularity is only useful insofar as it produces a useful outcome. I could care less about Obama's popularity and his agenda if it means the powerful are above the law. To me that would undermine any other supposed "gains." If this administration has to suffer a blow to its popularity because it applies the law and seeks a just outcome, then it'd be a happy day.

I suspect this isn't happening, and that investigations are not taking place, not because Democrats are afraid of being seen as partisan, but because key Democrats are complicit. See Nancy Pelosi:

The China Problem

In contrast to Sal's approach, I'd like to look at the 'man/nature' question at the collective level - through a particular case of increasing controversy. Krugman's Op-Ed piece today discusses an growing source of worry for climate scientists: China's exponentially expanding environment endangering emissions (how's that for some alliteration?).


China's cumulative carbon consumption - chiefly (cheap) coal - has doubled in a decade and shows no signs of slowing down. Just this January, the government announced its plans to increase coal production by 30 percent over the next 6 years. And they already lead the world in CO2. However, when confronted with critisms of its policies, largely from American and European environmentalist groups, China simply shrugs and says, "Really? Look who's talking."

The majority of global warming can still be attributed to Western nations - who themselves never had to deal with any type of environmental restrictions while going through their own phases of industrial development. And in the U.S., for all the administration's talk about renewable energy and taking the lead on proactively confronting climate change (through such Congressionally unpopular measures as cap-and-trade) Americans still have the highest global levels of per-capita emissions. This is, of course, the very same United States that distinguished itself as almost the only country in the world to thumb its nose at the Kyoto Protocol.

But is Western hypocrisy at all relevant to the issue at hand? Can the world sustain China's development in this manner without suffering severe environmental repercussions? And India's? And Brazil's? If the answer is no, then how do industrialized nations incentivize eco-friendly economic development? Do they even have the ability to do so when countries like the United States have yet to even implement such policies themselves?

Is it even possible to cooperate on this issue or must some short-term/long-term interest threshold first be met? And will we hit such a threshold before we lose the ability to effectively reverse the environmental consequences?

Drunk monkeys attack humans

April 17, 2005 was a day of mourning. Baralapokhari, a village 142 km from Bhadrak town was attacked by an army of monkeys drunk on some perverted type of weed booze. The injured had to be hospitalized.

You can find the whole (sorrowful) story here.

Humanity and nature have a unique path together. Sometimes we work together, sometimes we fight when we could have worked together, but sometimes there is no choice but for humanity and nature to clash. In the Indian jungle, you kill the tiger, or the tiger eats you. A stranded hiker may have to choose between starvation, and eating an endangered cute koala bear. On a more familiar front, we choose to build roads, destroying what plants/animals/minerals lived upon that sacred ground. I am not even talking about the Amazon forest, but more about small patches of woods all along the American east coast where beautiful trees and squirrels are cut down to make room for human civilization.

My question is... if we have to choose between man and nature, where do we choose? Where is the fine line? If Mozambique could cut down all of its forests to save its country from starvation, should it? If Brazil's destruction of the jungle sent it to 1st world rich no-starvation status, should they cut it down? And I want no bull about cooperation, as I am only talking about scenarios where there is no possible cooperation.

Personally, I say we cut down as many koalas as we need to move into the future.