My Hero Osburn Cox

I've just watched "Burn After Reading" for the third or fourth time, and I still enjoy watching it. I identify with John Malkovich's Osburn Cox, the fired CIA analyst. I was even an analyst for a while in State's intelligence bureau, INR. I'm sure some of my old colleagues would say that my career did not even approach the success of Osburn Cox's, but I can dream. I didn't go to Princeton. I never lived in Georgetown, never had a yacht, but I did work on foreign policy. Probably at least one old boss, Richard Clark of 9/11 fame, saw me as an Osburn Cox, but because of the Foreign Service bureaucracy, he couldn't get rid of me. Amb. Nicholas Rey eliminated my job in Poland while I was still in it, although he was always very polite to me personally. Sadly he passed on recently. When I went to Rome from there, they immediately disliked me so much that from the moment I arrived, they finagled the personnel system to get rid of me and replace me with the man who had the same position I had across the hall from me in Main State years earlier. He was deputy director of the OES office of science cooperation, while I was deputy director of the OES office working on environmental conservation and health issues. We worked side by side for two years, and I really didn't think he was so much better than I. In fact, it was his office that persuaded me to take the assignment in Poland. Well, maybe they did have my number. On the other hand, his office was the one primarily responsible for the failure to fund our cooperation with Poland that led to the elimination of my position there.

I would like to think that Amb. Rey eliminated by job because the main part of it was promoting scientific cooperation between the US and Poland under a five-year agreement signed just before I got there. After two or three years, the Republicans under Newt Gingrich took over the House during the Clinton administration, and quit funding the cooperation, thus eliminating about half of my job. Then Newt shut down the entire government while I was moving from Warsaw to Rome, leaving me with no job and no place to live in either city, until Rome finally took me in. An Army Vietnam veteran with over twenty years in the Foreign Service, and the US Government put my wife and me out on the streets of Warsaw in November with no place to live! So Newt and company made me a liberal Democrat. They represented the fools that I, like Osburn Cox, have been fighting. However, I don't plan to shoot anybody or chop them into pieces. I do plan to blog about it.

Perhaps someone will someday stumble over this blog and think that it contains sensitive information that they can sell to the Russians. They must decide, however, whether it is "drivel" or "dribble." You want dribble? Listen to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and John Bolton -- absolute idiots, numskulls, and cowards (because they didn't go to Vietnam, they didn't go to New York City on 9/11, and they tortured people). They are of a piece with Newt. And Tom DeLay is dancing with the stars. Idiots on parade! But I'm the one who retired and went away. Ironically, I had relatively good efficiency reports and was in no danger of losing my position as a Foreign Service officer, although I was having trouble keeping an assignment. Well at least I have a hero: Osburn Cox.

Military-Civilian Disconnect

The New York Times has an excellent blog on Unexamined Civil-Military Relations by a serving Army captain. The blog is definitely worth reading. My comment is posted below. One of the first comments was by somebody apparently from an Ivy League school, who wrote about how few veterans there were, but interestingly he said there were several veterans of the Israeli military, perhaps more than from the American military. There's something wrong with that, although we have the example in the White House of Rahm Emanuel, who served in the Israeli military rather than the American military. My comment:

I’m afraid that there is an increasing disconnect between the military and civil society. All this talk of “Support our troops,” means support them so that I don’t have to go. The disconnect means there will be less support for the troops when they come home, whether it’s military medical care (Walter Reed), the VA’s huge backlog, or just Americans not saying thanks by not giving vets jobs. It’s partly fallout from the Vietnam War (spoken as a Vietnam veteran), because so few of the social elites served despite the existence of the draft. Having avoided military service themselves, they can’t now say it’s a good thing. The latest travesty is the Congressional hold put on the nomination of the Secretary of the Army by the senators from Kansas, Roberts and Brownback. They are forcing the Army to fight two wars without its own political leadership. When the people of Kansas turn against the military, you know it’s in trouble

No Compassion in America?

Everybody from Obama on down has criticized Scotland for releasing the man convicted of bringing down the Pan Am plane in Lockerbie, Scotland. I don’t get it. We, the US, are supposed to be the Christians, following a gospel of love and forgiveness, while the Europeans are supposed to be godless secular humanists. They are releasing this man because of their compassion, and the Americans are screaming to keep him in prison because they are so filled with hatred. I don’t get it. One explanation might be that American Christians embrace the Old Testament, but reject the New Testament, which actually would make them Jews, rather than Christians. How can you accept Jesus and reject the Sermon on the Mount?

Too Bad Obama Dumped Howard Dean

Obama needs Howard Dean's help on health care. Dean understands the issue; he is a doctor, was governor of Vermont, the best Democratic candidate for President in 2004, and former head of the DNC. This NYT article on Rahm Emanuel talks about how Sidney Blumenthal lost a job at State because he got crossed up with Emanuel, but a more serious rift is between Emanuel and Dean. Dean and Emanuel had very different visions for the Democratic Party's strategy in 2008. While Emanuel gets the credit for the sweeping Democratic victory in the House, Dean played an important role that may have surpassed Emanuel's by making the Democratic Party competitive everywhere, not just in strongly "blue" states. But because Emanuel and Dean fought during the 2008 election, Dean is persona non-grata in the While House.

Dean would probably have been a better choice for HHS Secretary than Tom Daschle, Obama's original choice. Daschle is just an old pol; he can slap backs and cajole, but he doesn't have the vision that Dean does, something that everybody says is badly lacking in the While House at the moment. Obama has just thrown his very fuzzy vision of health care into the lions' den of Congress. As a result, Obama may get something, but it may not be worth very much. Dean would have had a much more focused plan, and as former DNC chairman, would at least have had a shot at getting it approved. Emanuel has a lot of clout in the House, where many members may feel they owe him their jobs, but he doesn't have as much in the Senate, where the real problems lie at the moment.

It may be impossible for Obama to get Emanuel and Dean to work together. It's unfortunate for the country that he can't.

Fareed Zakaria Was Top Sunday News Show Again

The good and bad news from Fareed's interview with Israeli Amb. Michael Oren was that the Ambassador defended Israel's positions about as well as they can be defended.

On Iran, Fareed pressed Oren hard on the issue of whether Iran was not allowed to have a peaceful nuclear power capacity by the Non-Proliferation Treaty. They are. Oren's reply was that a normal state would be allowed to have nuclear power, but Iran's leaders have misbehaved so badly that they have forfeited their right to do so. The question is whether other countries, particularly Russia and China, would agree with Israel. Probably not, but it's a good argument. That brings up the mirror question of whether Israel should bring its nuclear program under the international monitoring of the NPT. On that issue or a related on about whether Israel has nuclear weapons, as I recall Oren begged off and did not really answer. He has some finely worded statement about Israel not being the first to introduce nuclear weapons, more or less a "no first use" statement, although I think he refused to characterize it as such.

Fareed also had a segment on the real meat of Hilary Clinton's trip to Africa, rather than just the 10 second sound-bite about not channeling Bill, or about the 2000 Florida presidential election mess. It just showed how poorly everyone else covered her trip. Poor Hilary gets no points for trying to help Africa. The news anchors could care less about people dying in Africa.

Anyway, kudos to Fareed.

Great Article on Flash Trading

Whatever it is, flash trading of stocks is pretty certainly bad, as I pointed out earlier. This article in Asia Times has the best explanation I've read. I don't understand the problem enough to know if his proposed tax solution is the best one, but I would certainly support it while we look at other options.

Sen. Coburn Approves Killing Poor Babies

Yesterday on "Meet the Press" Sen. Tom Coburn said the following:

We talk about neonatal mortality. Where’s the neonatal mortality? It’s not in the private insurance plans, it’s in Medicaid. Well, here’s the government-run program that is failing us in terms of neonatal mortality, and yet we use as an indicator neonatal mortality to say we need more government rather than less.

Rachel Maddow replied, "That is so disingenuous, that's unbelievable."

Rachel is right, although she didn't get to explain why. Medicaid is not a federal government insurance program. It's a joint state/federal program to provide last ditch assistance to people without health insurance to allow them to get treatment rather than die in the streets. Many of the 45 million people without health insurance probably benefit from Medicaid if they have a serious illness, or have a baby. So the people on Medicaid are the people targeted by the new program exactly to do things like allow them to have regular visits to a doctor while they are pregnant, rather than seeing a doctor for the first time when they go to the emergency room to give birth. If it weren't for Medicaid, many more poor babies would die, because mothers would get no medical care at all.

Coburn is basically saying that since people on Medicaid are poor, he doesn't care if their babies die. He would join Sarah Palin in calling for babies of trailer park trash to die so that Palin's Trig and other rich babies can live.

It's the same selfishness expressed in the town hall meeting protests that say, "Don't mess with my Medicare." They worry that their "socialist" government provided health care would suffer if the government tried to provide similar coverage to more people. They are saying I want those other people to die rather than give up my free health care.

Decent, loving people (which should certainly include people who call themselves Christian) would frame the issue as follows: We would like to have decent health care for everybody, not just me. How can we best do that, and how much can we afford? The latter question might also be phrased, how much am I willing to give my neighbor so that he can continue to live.

People screaming, "Don't touch my Medicare," are clearly not Christians.

Will Jobs Ever Recover?

Everybody is celebrating that the number of people who lost their jobs last month was smaller than the number for previous months, and the unemployment figure fell from 9.5 to 9.4 per cent unemployed. Meanwhile the stock market is going through the roof. What this means to me is that in the competition between labor and capital, capital is winning.

The consensus is that businesses are earning more money despite lower sales because they are cutting costs, which mainly means laying off workers.

The laid-off engineers and skilled mechanics may eventually get jobs, but many of them will end up working at McDonald's, Wal-Mart, or in similar unskilled jobs that pay considerably less. This is good news for Wall Street, where executives will hire replacements for them in India or China for much less, thus cutting the bottom line as they begin rehiring at the end of the recession. The recession has been a great opportunity for American business to get rid of higher paid American workers forever, not just during the recession.

Uneven Playing Field: Flash Orders and Oil

The obscene profits and compensation at Goldman Sachs and other banks indicate that the stock and commodity markets are not level playing fields. The big firms have an unfair advantage and they use it. The only argument in favor of allowing them to use this advantage is that they continue to take such huge trading risks that if they were to fail, as many small investors do, they would once again threaten to destroy the world as we know it, as they did at the end of the Bush administration.

Two examples of their unfair advantage have come to light in th4e last few days: flash or high frequency trading orders, which is under investigation by the SEC, and manipulation of the oil futures market, which is under investigation by the CFTC. The fact that both of the matters are under investigation is a welcome change from the Bush administration Of course Goldman Sachs is in the forefront of both of these questionable practices. Matt Taibbi did an excellent job of reporting Goldman’s role in the spike of gas prices last year; now they are at it again.

Malpractice and Healthcare

I am very disappointed that there has been so little discussion of the importance of malpractice liability in the discussion of the cost of healthcare. It may be anecdotal, but my impression is that malpractice liability adds significant costs to medical care. It may be a relatively small percentage, but it’s a small percentage of a huge number. The CBO says malpractice costs are only 2% of overall healthcare costs. It’s hard to know where to go to get unbiased information because tort lawyers are such important donors to the Democratic Party.

My main anecdote is former senator and presidential candidate John Edwards, who became obscenely wealthy as a lawyer suing doctors for malpractice. There is no doubt that the doctors were at fault and that the victims should be compensated, but did the system have to pay for multiple mansions for John Edwards in addition to helping the victims? I think John Edwards is just one of many lawyers becoming rich off malpractice suits. Just watch the TV ads for lawyers trolling for clients who have been injured in various ways as a result of medical conditions.

The only people I’ve heard mention this issue, however, have been Susan Eisenhower on Bill Maher’s show and Mort Zuckerman on “Morning Joe.” I found a transcript of John McCain on Hannity’s Fox News site; so, maybe I just don’t watch enough conservative talk shows. McCain said a neurosurgeon’s liability insurance could cost $200,000 per year. I think ob-gyn insurance is about the same; they are people that John Edwards used to sue.

A 2004 Congressional Budget Office report on the malpractice tort suit issue was non-committal. Its conclusion was:

In short, the evidence available to date does not make a strong case that restricting malpractice liability would have a significant effect, either positive or negative, on economic efficiency. Thus, choices about specific proposals may hinge more on their implications for equity--in particular, on their effects on health care providers, patients injured through malpractice, and users of the health care system in general.

It also says that around the time of the 2004 report there were about annually about 5 successful malpractice claims for every 100 doctors, and the average judgment was $320,000, up from $95,000 in 1986. It further says that the evidence is not clear on defensive medicine, the practice of requiring many extra tests to confirm diagnoses. CBO believes that a greater driving factor for extra tests is the extra profit made by the doctors.

It seems to me that it would be better in a reformed healthcare system to go to a system like workmen’s compensation for malpractice claims, and to do more to drive out poor doctors. Even the CBO says it is a relatively small subset of poor doctors who really drive the costs of malpractice insurance through the roof. First, the government should do more to monitor doctors’ performance and eliminate under performing physicians. Secondly, the government could set price for the most common types of malpractice: X dollars for cutting off the wrong let; Y dollars for leaving a clamp in a patient after surgery, etc. Incidents not specifically listed could be arbitrated based on guidelines, rather than litigated by high priced lawyers for contingency fees.

Another Op-Ed on Israeli Settlements and Iran

Alan Dershowitz had an op-ed in the July 2 WSJ saying there has to be some flexibility on Israeli settlements so that people already living in them can have babies. It's a specious argument. Why don't the settlers start out in larger houses? Or why can't they move to a new town if they have lots of children? People in American do it all the time, although the housing crisis has somewhat affected Americans' propensity to move. But what really sets Dershowitz off is linking the settlement issue to Iran. If Israel were to spit in America's eye over the settlements issue, there are hints that America might be less aggressive in stopping Iran's nuclear program. He says, "If the Obama administration were to shift toward learning to live with a nuclear Iran and attempt to deny Israel the painful option of attacking its nuclear targets as a last resort, that would be troubling indeed. Thankfully, the Obama administration's point man on this issue, Dennis Ross, shows no signs of weakening American opposition to a nuclear-armed Iran." He thanks God for Dennis Ross because Dennis Ross is Jewish, and therefore not exactly unbiased on this issue. It's pretty clear reading between the lines that what Dershowitz really wants is to kill some Iranians. Dennis Ross has a long history of working on Middle East issues at the State Department under Democrats and Republicans; hopefully he will be more responsible than Dershowitz gives him credit for being.

I Don't Blame McNamara

I don't blame Robert McNamara for the US failure in Vietnam, although he certainly played an important role in it. As Secretary of Defense, he was not powerful enough to lose a war single-handedly from the Pentagon. The real culprits were the presidents -- Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon -- the Congress, and the American public. McNamara was an official under orders, and he carried them out to the best of his ability. He was more like the generals who worked for Hitler; he could have been guilty of war crimes, but not for the overall conduct of the war. That his obituaries are not claiming that he was guilty of war crimes probably speaks well of his character. Today, we have wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that the country more or less ignores, but in which they have been quicker to perceive war crimes, particularly in places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

I blame the country, the United States, rather than McNamara. Despite protests, the leadership of the country let the war go on. I think from some of the obituaries I read, more GIs died in Vietnam after McNamara left as Secretary than during his tenure. The NYT obit says "Half a million American soldiers went to war on his watch. More than 16,000 died; 42,000 more would fall in the seven years to come."

As long as the rich and connected -- Bush, Cheney, Clinton, Wall Street types -- could avoid fighting, they were content to let the war go on, but in order to cover their cowardice they reviled those who fought the war, whether McNamara in the Pentagon, or some poor private just out of high school. The criticism heaped on McNamara in his obituaries taints every soldier who fought in the war. I'd like to know more about how the Germans treated their low ranking veterans of World War II. Did the German soldiers experience more shame and hatred from their fellow citizens than Vietnam veterans did?

UK Foreign Secretary Miliband is Jewish

I was surprised while watching Fareed Zakaria's GPS on CNN to learn that British Foreign Secretary David Miliband is Jewish. About 19 minutes into the interview, he made a point of saying that he is an atheist, but that his grandparents and his parents went through the Holocaust. So, he's an ethnic Jew, if not a religious Jew. It's no big deal, except that it's another indication that Jews run a lot of the world.

It's not unusual. In the Bible, Jews were advisers to lots of gentile leaders, starting with Joseph advising the Egyptian Pharaohs on how to avoid their seven years of famine. Later, you have Daniel advising Persian King Darius, ironic in light of today's Israel/Iran tensions. My only question is whether Jews are more loyal to the countries where they live or to Israel. The only example I can think of in the Bible is Nehemiah, the king's cup bearer, who persuades the king to let him rebuild the wall around Jerusalem.

We have not had a Jewish President. It would be interesting to know whether Al Gore's picking Joe Lieberman to be his vice president helped or hurt his campaign. Certainly it looked odd for Lieberman to support John McCain in the last election. Some new book says that Henry Kissinger is responsible for America surviving the Watergate scandal. Kissinger certainly spent a lot of time working on Israeli issues, but, perhaps mistakenly, I think he was pretty even handed. I think he was committed to Israel's existence, but was willing to press Israel to make concessions to the rest of the world. Although Barak Obama is certainly not Jewish, he is surrounded by a lot of Jewish advisers, starting with Rahm Emanuel and Larry Summers, whom I find suspect. For some reason I have no qualms about Paul Volker or Ben Bernanke, who for some reason I consider totally American, even more trustworthy than Kissinger.

China Raises Fuel Prices

The FT reports that China has raised fuel prices across the board. Gas is now more expensive in China (about $3 per gallon) than it is in the US. What does it say about the US, when a developing country under recessionary pressures, like China, increases gas prices, while a rich country like the US keeps them low? Europe has kept gas prices high for years by adding taxes of various kinds.

Tom Friedman among many others has been calling for higher gas prices in order to promote other, greener forms of energy, but without success. When gas prices went much higher last summer, although they were still low compared to Europe, it was because of manipulation of the financial market, according to Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone, not because of any intelligent policy decision.

It looks like the US could at least pursue a policy as sensible as the Chinese, although our policies appear to be controlled by oil and gas and financial interests who are only interested in boosting their profits, not by our national interest.

Elliott Abrams as Ghost and in Person

Elliott Abrams' return to op-ed pages has given me fits. See his WSJ and NYT op-eds. Now the ghost of Iran-Contra is back, although Abrams has now moved from Latin American issues to his real love, Middle East issues, where he is lobbying hard for Israel.

I don't know how Abrams happened to start in Latin America. I'm guessing he got his job as Assistant Secretary for Latin America at the State Department through the connections of his wife's father, Norman Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary, the influential Jewish magazine. I'm guessing Abrams would rather have worked on the Middle East then, but Reagan (or maybe George Shultz) was unwilling to give him that important a job. Thus, he ended up with Latin America, where his main job was to assure that the US pursued a very conservative agenda. Those were the days when the Reagan Administration greatly feared that it was going to be invaded by El Salvador or Nicaragua.

It was Abrams' efforts to shore up right-wing governments in Central America, like the military coup that just took power in Honduras, that led to his involvement in Iran-Contra. It is ironic that Iran and a Central American coup share the top of the news cycle twenty years later. I think things are better in both places, but they still have a long way to go, especially in Iran. I'm not optimistic that significant changes are going to be implemented in Iran as a result of the recent protests. Thinking is changing there, but it will take a long time to bring any concrete changes to fruition, and there is a possibility that things could get worse. There is a lot of talk that on the authoritarian side in Iran, the leadership has moved from being dominated by clerics to being dominated by the military. And the military is back in power in Honduras. The more things change the more they stay the same.

On "Morning Joe" this morning, Mike Barnacle kept asking guests whether the withdrawal of US troops from Iraqi cities meant that a new government that is Saddam-lite might be taking over. The main response seemed to be, "Not now, but who knows what will happen in a few years." Of course, one of the main effects of the US invasion of Iraq has been the strengthening of Iranian influence there. Fareed Zakaria mentioned last Sunday that nobody was paying attention to what Iranian cleric Sistani was doing in Iraq, where he is currently living in Najaf.

Abrams' job as Israeli spokesman and lobbyist is, of course, to do all he can to get the Obama Administration to beat Iran about the head and shoulders.

Elliott Abrams Is Bank Again

Elliott Abrams has another op-ed, this time in the WSJ. It, of course, goes totally against Tony Judt's op-ed on Israeli settlements. He says the US agreed to the settlements that Obama's administration is now questioning. He's basically saying that George W. Bush was an unpatriotic, cowardly President who was afraid to stand up to the Israelis. Abrams says in effect, "I put words in Bush's mouth recognizing the settlement, and he said them." However, Abrams and Bush failed to bring anything to fruition as a result. Bush kissed Sharon's ass as instructed by Abrams, but no legal document was signed. They failed. The world has moved on. It's like Abrams is trying to enforce the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. It's dead. Get over it!

But all these articles about settlements show that the Israelis are genuinely worried. They have obviously told their Israeli agents to go all out to get the US off this settlements kick. They may succeed; Jews have lots of money and power in the US. But at least for a few shining moments the US seems to be pursuing a policy defined by US interests, rather than Israel's. Let Elliot Abrams, Bret Stevens, and the rest of the Likudniks on the WSJ editorial page stew for a little while longer.

MTCR Still Around

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists calls for a missile test ban to supplement the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). Interestingly the article puts the MTCR in the context of the Reykjavik Summit, where Richard Perle famously stopped President Reagan from agreeing to sweeping arms control limitations with the Soviets. Perle was also instrumental in limiting the MTCR, mainly by trying to get super strong controls that other countries would not agree to. It was a typical case of the best being the enemy of the good. What we got was worse than if the US had had a more flexible negotiating position.

Anyway, the good news is that the MTCR is still alive and is probably the strongest regime controlling missile proliferation. It could have been stronger, but at least we got something.

Settlements, Schmettlements

This NYT op-ed by Tony Judt, a Jew, about the illegality of all Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory illustrates the best in Jewish thinking on the Israel situation. And it's published in the NYT, which is owned by Jews. So there is open-minded thinking on this issue in the Jewish community, even in the US. (Israelis appear more open-minded on Israeli issues in general than American Jews do.) Meanwhile Paul Wolfowitz seems to be spouting a right-wing Zionist diatribe in the Washington Post calling on President Obama to take a stronger, more public stand against Iran. So, is Wolfowitz just a neo-con like many fundamentalist Americans, or does he have an Israeli agenda, since Iran is a much greater threat to Israel than to the US?

Elliott Abrams Is Back

I was unhappy to see an op-ed by Elliott Abrams in today's NYT about Lebanon and Iran. I was going to write a letter to the editor saying that they should have mentioned in his profile that he is a convicted felon; however, according to Wikipedia, he is not a convicted felon. It says that while felony charges were prepared against him for Iran-Contra, he pleaded guilty only to two misdemeanors. It doesn't sound as good to say that he is a confessed petty criminal. Plus, it says Bush I pardoned him; does that mean he's no longer guilty even of a misdemeanor?

He has gone on from success to success despite Iran-Contra, serving as a senior official in Bush II's NSC and now at the Council on Foreign Relations. My opinion of the Council on Foreign Relations just went down several notches.

With all the furor over the recent shooting at the Holocaust Museum, there's a lot of talk about anti-Semitism. But it's people like Abrams who stir up anti-Semitism. He's held high positions in government mainly because he is a Jew with strong Jewish network connections. Another example is Michael Milken, who really is a convicted felon. Now he's back in the news, hobnobbing with the rich and famous. Bernie Madoff is unlikely to follow in Milken's and Abram's footsteps of redemption, because Madoff hurt other Jews, not Gentiles, i.e., he cut his ties to the Jewish old boy network. Another member of the club -- Mark Rich, whose pardon by Bill Clinton almost cost Eric Holder his appointment as Obama's Attorney General.

Apparently it's okay (politically correct) to complain about the old boy network of white men, but it you say the same thing about Jews, it's anti-Semitic.

Diplomatic History Only Interesting If White Men in Charge

The NYT reports that traditional history is decreasing in importance at most universities. It says that while universities are giving decreasing importance to diplomatic or international history, they are giving increased importance to the history of things like women's studies, race, and cultural issues. The ironic thing is that just as history is getting away from a "great man" focus of history that until recently focused on white men, because they were at the top of the heap, women and other races are becoming more important. In tandem with the drop in diplomatic history, the leading diplomats in the US have been Madeline Albright, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, and Hillary Clinton, none of them white men.

My own concern about this is that the loss of interest in diplomatic or international history is likely to result in a lack of the expertise needed to conduct diplomacy. My experience was that diplomacy really is directed by the man (or woman) at the top. As I move up in the State Department (not particularly high), I found that the higher I went, the more likely it was that senior people would take an interest in, and control over, the issues I was working on. In fact, often the issues would be decided by the White House, not just by the Secretary of State. Historians might resent that the system works this way, but denying that it does is likely to result in an unrealistic understanding of history.

I was just listening to Obama talk about health care, and he repeated a line I've heard before when people complain about all the things he is involved in, such as the auto industry, he said he would rather not be involved in these issues, because he already has so much on his plate, and then every issue he mentioned was a foreign policy issue -- North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan.

Republicans Destroyed the CIA

Today's NYT front pages the conflict between Admiral Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, and Leon Panetta, the head of the CIA over who should be station chiefs at embassies around the world. In describing the dispute, the NYT simply says, "Mr. Blair took over an office born out of the intelligence failures before the Iraq war." In retrospect those intelligence "failures" were born out of the Bush administration's desire to have the CIA produce the intelligence that the White House wanted. Because the CIA was reluctant to produce politically motivated intelligence, the White House moved to reduce its clout by installing a new bureaucracy above it -- hence Blair vs. Panetta. But it's also the military versus the civilians. The NYT says one dispute is whether to make the head of London station an NSA officer rather than a CIA officer. Then it goes on to say the Defense Intelligence Agency might be more appropriate to head up the Iraq station, etc. However, NSA is primarily military; it's always headed by a military officer. DIA of course is military, as are most other intelligence operations. It's interesting that in the run up to the Iraq war the two small intelligence organizations that were least willing to buy Cheney's claims about Iraq's development of nuclear weapons were the State Department's and the Department of Energy's, two civilian organizations. The CIA is the other big civilian spy operation, and Bush/Cheney hated it and wanted to destroy or emasculate it. It looks like they succeeded to some extent. Hopefully the CIA will go down fighting.

Where's Volker

This article in yesterday's NYT chronicled the infighting among Obama's economic advisers, but it didn't mention Paul Volker. I find that disturbing, because Volker is the only one who has really gotten the US out of an economic mess. Greenspan looked like he did, but it turned out that he was only postponing trouble and making it worse. Larry Summers was Bob Rubin's deputy, when they looked great, but not it turns out that they led the changes that got us into this economic mess. We don't really know about Geithner, but suspicions are that at the New York Fed, he was in bed with the Wall Street wizards who got us into this mess. Bernanke gets points for taking unorthodox steps at the Fed that may have prevented the financial system from imploding, but he did it by making money easier and basically making everybody happier. I'd feel better if he had made somebody hurt. I'd prefer that the bankers hurt, but if it had to be the general population, so be it. Bernanke has done smart things, but he has not done difficult things. When you mess up by overcharging on your credit cards or by making a bad investment, it's unusual to have someone give you a billion or a trillion dollars to make it alright. Usually you have to cut back in some way. But that's because you can print money like Bernanke does. It's unlikely that zero interest rates are the answer to every problem.

So far, for the last several decades, nobody in government has inflicted pain on the US economy. Private citizens, of course, the leaders of our banking and investment establishment, have produced the savings and loan debacle, the tech stock bubble, the housing bubble, and then the financial system meltdown.

Volker actually got us out of the Nixon-Carter-Reagan stagflation quagmire by prescribing tough medicine for the US economy. Nobody else has had the foresight or the guts to do the same thing in response to our more recent problems.

Granted Volker is in his 80's, but these young whipper-snappers ought to be seeking out his advise and listening to it. The NYT article intimates that Summers doesn't have a very high opinion of anybody else's opinions. I hope Obama listens to Volker more and Summers less.

NYT Op-Eds

It may happen frequently or infrequently, but it looks like all the authors of op-eds in today's New York Times are Jewish. Actually, I'm not sure about the guy who did the cartoons of an old graduating class, but his name sounds Jewish -- for sure Krugman, Brooks, and Livni are. In theory there's nothing wrong with this, but I worry that it gives the reader a slanted perspective. The Times is owned by Jews; so, maybe it's on purpose, but the news usually seems pretty balanced, although there are probably lots of Jewish writers in the newsroom as well.

I am hoping that reading the Financial Times op-eds will give me some balance, although who knows, they may be Jewish, too. Certainly one of the most celebrated Financial Times columnists until he left to join the Obama administration was Larry Summers, who is Jewish. In addition, a lot of the bad business practices that led to the current financial debacle were carried out by Anglos, both in New York and London, (probably not WASPs, since the P for Protestant seems to be a dying breed).

I am somewhat heartened that Niall Ferguson, who I think is Scottish, has taken on Paul Krugman, at least on the issue of inflation, in the Financial Times. I think Jon Meachum, who may be Episcopalian, is also a fresh voice on these issues.

Meanwhile, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions is in the news all the time because of his role in examining Sotomayor for the Surpreme Court. He comes from my background: Alabama, U of A Law School (about the same time I graduated there, although I don't remember him), now lives in Mobile, and presumably Protestant. But I don't agree with him on much of anything. I agree with Brooks and Krugman much more often, not to mention Tom Friedman, with whom I agree most of the time.

Selig Harrison Wise on North Korea

Selig Harrison was correct to point out on Fareed Zakaria's CNN GPS show that the US and its Japanese and South Korean allies were the first to fail to honor the agreement with North Korea.  The right-wing North Korea haters may be right that North Korea would not have lived up its agreement with the US, but we'll never know, because the US abrogated the agreement first by failing to provide North Korea with the heavy fuel oil that we promised.  

After we reneged on the agreement, North Korea restarted its nuclear reactor and produced the plutonium for several more atomic bombs.  But apparently the Rush Limbaugh crowd got some kind of satisfaction from revitalizing the North Korean nuclear weapons program.  

Republican Hypocrisy on CIA

The intelligence failures to predict North Korea's nuclear test and Iran's missile test are indictments of the current CIA. Newt Gingrich has been deriding Nance Pelosi for criticizing the CIA; however, the Republicans under Bush/Cheney leadership tried to destroy the CIA. They gutted the career CIA leadership, and they imposed additional layers of intelligence bureaucratic leadership over the CIA. Until Bush, the head of the CIA was the head of the intelligence community. Now the CIA has been reduced to just one of many intelligence agencies, and a separate intelligence chief has been created to oversee the whole community, including the CIA.

Why? Because the CIA wouldn't parrot the line that Cheney and company wanted them to, saying that Iraq was an immediate danger to the US. When the CIA wouldn't provide what it believed to be lies, Cheney and Bush destroyed it. Newt Gingrich and most talking head commentators on TV have conveniently forgotten this. The intelligence failures on Iran and North Korea demonstrate that the US is clearly not safer than it was before Bush and Cheney undermined our security by destroying our most important intelligence agency.

Intelligence Failure on North Korea

The fact that today's North Korean nuclear test came without any warning indicates a serious intelligence failure regarding North Korea's military buildup. We've had long warnings about other North Korean nuclear and missile tests, which turned out to be less than successful. This test, which appears to have been successful, came without warning.

The New York Times says that it is a signal for the succession process, by which Kim Jong Il will replaced. If so, it may mean that constant messing around by conservative Republicans has lost our best chance to constrain the North Korean program. They refused to negotiate with the North, broke off the previous, Clinton agreement, and generally stuck their fingers in North Korea's eye. I'm sure they feel better and will probably say, "See, we told you negotiations were impossible." Of course they were, because the Republicans would not negotiate in good faith. And now, there is nobody in North Korea to negotiate with.

Thanks a lot, John Bolton, for putting the atomic bomb in the hands of maniacs. The Bush administration, and the Republican Congress under Newt Gingrich and Denny Hastert before them, were just monumentally stupid and incompetent.

Memorial Day

During lunch the HBO movie "Taking Chance" was on, about a Marine officer taking the remains of a dead Marine back to his parents.  I wondered why I didn't feel prouder, either of myself for serving in Vietnam, or of others who served in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere else.  

I think it's because it's not a shared experience like World War II was.  This country clearly prefers those who didn't serve.  No veteran has won the presidency since Bush I.  Bob Dole was defeated, as were Al Gore, John Kerry and John McCain.  Bush II, Cheney and Clinton were all the right age to have been drafted to serve in Vietnam, but they managed not to, like most of those who voted for them. Obama was too young, and so I give him a pass, although he could have volunteered for military service.  He did, however, choose not to go for the big bucks as a Wall Street lawyer or investment banker, although he probably could have done that.  

Iraq veterans get a lot more respect from the general population than Vietnam veterans did, but that's probably because people feel less guilt about not serving, since there is no draft.  But if people were really sincere about the importance of military service, they would serve.  They are content to leave it to a certain class, largely middle to lower class, small town Christians.  I feel that we went to war in Iraq largely because of Israeli and American Jewish urging.  Bush did have issues with his father's Iraq war, but I don't think that his personal issues alone would have let us to invade after 9/11.  Jews are prominent in politics, finance, business, but largely absent in the American military, unlike the Israeli military, where people think they are some of the best soldiers in the world.  They let Christians die for America; Jews die for Israel.  It's strange that defending America comes down to religion or ethnicity.  People should consider themselves Americans, regardless of religion, race, or wealth.  

Because the American military now comes from a narrow cross-section of the population, it is almost like a mercenary army, unlike World War II.  Mercenary armies are typically less successful than armies that are fighting for their homes.  America's is sort of a mix of the two.  While I come from that narrow cross-section that still constitutes the army, I don't feel that it is a national army or that there is true national support for the troops.  Ironically, I think Obama is one of the most sincere supporters and defenders of the troops, unlike a lot of his politician colleagues, particularly flag-waving Republicans, illustrated most recently in their fear over allowing Guantanamo prisoners to be jailed in US prisons.  

So, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, thank you and welcome home, but this country is not really going to do much of anything for you.  

Thank God for Obama

Just to weigh in on the Obama-Cheney debate on Thursday, Obama defends the America I love, and Cheney disgraces it. From what Brooks says in this column, Cheney's views were rejected even by the Bush administration. Obama says the right things as far as I'm concerned. So what about indefinite detention and other stuff the left worries about? Obama inherited a bad situation. If decent people had been thinking about how to handle this situation, we would never have had Gitmo, rendition, torture, and all the other weird stuff that went against centuries of Western law and tradition.

Cheney says this weird stuff protected the US from another attack. That's like saying that it also protected us from an invasion by intergalactic aliens. When do we give them credit for stopping an invasion, rather than just saying that no one tried to invade? When there is no attack one day after 9/11. After one month? After seven years? There is no way to know. Certainly there were no well planned attacks against the US that were prevented. Some incompetents were caught, and some well planned attacks were carried out in other countries. I guess Cheney doesn't care if some Spaniards or some Brits died on his watch.

Obama faces a tough situation. Of course the real villains are the terrorists, and there are still terrorists out there. But the Bush administration handled its reaction to 9/11, Iraq and the "war on terror" badly. That now makes Obama's job tougher than it would have been if better people had been in charge on 9/11. Better in the sense of more competent (maybe they would have read the intelligence saying bin Laden planned to attack the US) and better in the sense of more moral (no torture, adherence to US and international laws and mores).

Obama, I'm with you. Try to do the right thing.

New Credit Card Law

The new Senate bill regulating the credit card industry no doubt owes much of its success to the financial debacle on Wall Street. People used to think that bankers were people just like the rest of us, albeit with a special job that give them community leadership positions and some wealth. Now, bankers are widely perceived as creeps, men and women who will do anything for money, including destroying the world economy, and impoverishing their neighbors. So, there's not much sympathy for bankers these days, hence the bill.

This Financial Times article compares today's bankers with the kings and queens of yesteryear (Off with his head!), and the Russian oligarchs of more recent times. Not a very pleasant comparison, but one that invites more government regulation. Hopefully this is only the start.

Scarborough & Mika Suck Up to Immelt

On yesterday's "Morning Joe" Eliot Spitzer criticized the New York Fed's decision to have GE CEO Jeff Immelt as a public member of its board. On the show and in his column, Spitzer criticized Immelt for being a public representative because GE had benefited from the US government's largess. In his column, Spitzer says that by participating in program under which the US stands behind GE debt, GE saved billions of dollars that it would otherwise have incurred in issuing that debt. In the public mind, such largess is no doubt perceived as part of the "bailout" whether or not GE actually received cash, or just government guarantees.

Today, Joe and Mika made a totally suck up apology to Immelt for Spitzer's comments that did not actually deal with Spitzer's criticisms. First they talked about how handsome Immelt is. Then they read a GE statement that said GE has received no government bailout, but rather paid money to participate in a program that help liquidity and the commercial paper market. It did not deal with the question of whether by participating in this government [bailout] program it saved billions of dollars.

I was sort of enjoying "Morning Joe," although I was already put off my Mika's frequent unabashedly fawning praise of Joe. Now, they both prostrate themselves before the wonderful, mighty, faultless Jeff Immelt. It's more than I can take. I hope they get big bonuses; they lost at least one viewer. I wonder with Mika's father thinks about what she's doing. I'm sure he's happy she's making money; he may not be proud of her integrity.

Cowardice on Parade

The Congress' refusal to accept Gitmo detainees into US prisons is cowardice at its worse. I'm guessing that most of those voting to keep them in Gitmo never served in the US military. Clearly they have no confidence in their own prisons; they represent states that have incompetent law enforcement agencies; dishonest, stupid judges; worthless state governments that probably gave a start to their careers. They know how bad it is. They know that foreigners scare them to death; the only salvation is to torture them. Most have Newt Gingrich's view of government, that it is worthless; only the private sector can do anything right. Newt knows from experience; he was once the third highest federal government official, and he knows that he was absolutely incompetent to do anything. He hates government because it's made up of cowardly fools like him.

Israel Says Ignore Palestinians, Kill Iranians

During his Washington visit, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu tried to turn the discussion from Israel and its oppression of the Palestinians to the need to invade Iran. He successfully deflected a lot of the discussion, refusing to acknowledge the possibility of a Palestinian state, for example, but hopefully he did not beat Obama into embarrassing, fawning submission the way he did Bush and Cheney. In theory his argument is that America is too stupid or too poorly informed to understand the threat that Iran poses. (This begs the question, "Poses to whom?" Israel or America.) But once Netanyahu gets Obama to accept his premise, then his point is, "Send the American military to destroy Iran, or at least important parts of it." Jews love to send Gentiles to die for them. They successfully did it in Iraq, where the predominately Jewish neo-cons sent thousands of Americans to die in Iraq for a threat that was mainly of concern to Israel. In retrospect, however, Israeli intelligence was apparently just as bad as American intelligence on Iraq, and Israel ended up calling in a lot of favors with the Bush/Cheney administration for a war that probably did little to increase the security of Israel. For sure, it did little to increase the security of the US. The self-evident bankruptcy of this policy has caused Cheney to go on a public relations blitz, but while it might change some current opinions, Bush and Cheney will go down in history as some of the worst leaders in the history of the world. They still trail Hitler and Caligula and a few others, but they are in bad company. But Netanyahu, AIPAC, and the rest of the blood-thirsty, Jewish neo-Nazis loved them. (Is this anti-Semitic? I don't think all Jews are blood-thirsty neo-Nazis. There are many wise, decent Jews, John Stewart and Tom Friedman always come to mind, but the Jewish right wing is dangerous, rejoicing the deaths of Gentiles, whether they are Muslim Palestinians or Christian Americans. Comparing Jews to Nazis is supposed to be the ultimate anti-Semitic act, but if they don't want to be compared to Nazis, Jews shouldn't act like them. Richard Perle, William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Paul Wolfowitz, AIPAC, you have a lot of Chrsitian blood on your hands, along with fellow-traveler Dick Cheney.)

Another thing is that Obama tried to get Netanyahu to talk about peace, and while he mentioned it, it seems pretty clear from the general discussion that what Israel really wants is territory, i.e. settlements, not peace.

Why is Israel so important? It's a tiny country in terms of geography and population. But Jews are rich, successful, loud and in-your-face. When I was growing up, one of the main concerns about Jews was why they didn't fight back during the Holocaust. There was the Warsaw ghetto uprising, but it was brief and unsuccessful, much less of a threat to the Germans than the main Warsaw uprising, which was also put down by the Germans, but only after a much harder fought battle. Somehow, the Jews have now finessed this question, and nobody asks it anymore. Moreover, they seem to have tried to make up for not fighting during the Holocaust, by fighting the Arabs around Israel. But by moral standards, they're fighting at the wrong time and in the wrong place, and against the wrong people. They are mainly known for killing children, although they kill a lot of adults for every child.

Fortunately, Obama seems much more reasonable than I. The compassion and understanding that he showed at Notre Dame about abortion, no doubt applies to Israel as well. And he has a pretty zealous Jew, Rahm Emanuel, as his right-hand man. I think I was petty oblivious to the whole Jewish thing until two incidents brought it home. First, my dealings over a number of years with Richard Perle and his empire at Defense, where it seemed like we were on opposite sides of any issue that came up. Second, my experience at the American Embassy in Warsaw for the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, where the ceremonies were all-Holocaust, all the time. Since my dad fought in Europe in WW II, I felt slighted that the American government did not do more to recognize what the American troops did, and basically turned the operation over to the Jewish Holocaust leadership. In particular, I was disappointed that the one rabbi in Warsaw (and I think in all of Poland), whom I worked with and who was a very nice, religious guy, was replaced shortly afterwards with a much more radical, publicity-seeking rabbi, more concerned about vilifying Polish Christians than ministering to Polish Jews.

Maybe Israeli Spies Aren't Harmless

This Sic Semper Tyrannis blog has an example of a new intelligence case, Klingberg, which Israel perpetrated against the US to gain military intelligence. It also mentions the Pollard case, but it doesn't mention the USS Liberty, which is a clear example of Israel being willing to damage the US in order to further Israeli interests.

More on Rahm Emanuel and Israel

The blog "Just World News" has more info on Rahm Emanuel's position on Israel. It says Emanuel has warned AIPAC that failure to make progress on the Palestinian issue will hurt Israel's chances for progress on restraining Iran's nuclear program, although it doesn't explain exactly why. It does say that most American Jews are Democrats who support Obama and thus would be loathe to buck him on this issue. In that case, who does AIPAC speak for? Presumably a lot of Jews with a lot of money, but maybe not George Soros or Rahm Emanuel. So, what are Bibi Netanyahu and Israel's other right wing leaders going to do? Like Nixon's opening to China, they could probably get away with a genuine opening to the Palestinians.

AIPAC Still a Problem

This posting from Sic Semper Tyrannis raises my hopes that this administration may not roll over and play dead in negotiating with Israel, like the last one did. Maybe they will consider Israel to be a separate country from the US and deny a visa to an Israeli who spied on America using the AIPAC employees against whom criminal charges were recently dropped, and who apparently "ran" Pentagon employee Franklin. If they deny the visa, they will get tremendous pressure from Jewish Americans like Senator Joe Lieberman and Congresswoman Jane Harmon, who consistently put Israel's interests ahead of America's. If push comes to shove, it will be interesting to see whose side Lieberman, Harmon and company come down on.

What about Rahm Emanuel as a Jewish-American; as Obama's chief of staff won't he look out Israel's interests? His family is very pro-Israel. It sounds like he actually served time in the Israeli Army, although not in uniform so as not to mess up his American citizenship. I don't know. Perhaps he is Israeli enough not to be subject to the wildly right-wing attitudes that characterize AIPAC and other American Jewish organizations, except perhaps J-Street. There is much healthier debate and much more difference of opinion in Israel than among American Jews. Or, perhaps because of the potential conflict of interest, Emanuel and Obama have an agreement that Emanuel will keep hands off Middle East policy. Obama has shown himself to be concerned about maintaining a high middle ground on most issues, and it's conceivable that he's done this or something like it with Emanuel.

Why Change US Commander in Afghanistan

Firing Gen. McKiernan and replacing him with Gen. McChrystal in Afghanistan has been described as the first such command change during wartime since Gen. MacArthur was fired during the Korean War. I don't know if that's media hype, or whether the Pentagon is pushing that interpretation to emphasize a change in policy. If it's meant to be something big, as the press is saying, then as this blog asks, what does it mean?

To me the main difference is between sort of an old-fashioned, big Army fight, and a new style, guerrilla, counter-insurgency fight. I'm not a military expert, but I think the former strategy wins wars, while the latter one wins battles. That raises the question, what is our end-game in Afghanistan? If it's something less than a tradition victory, which we probably haven't won since World War II, then this change makes sense. The Russians tried for an old-style victory in Afghanistan, and it didn't work out too well.

Israel Objects to Truth about Its Nuclear Capacity

Israel is in a tizzy because the US has stated publicly that Israel has nuclear weapons and has called on Israel to join the NPT. This FT report is just factual, while this JTA report is more alarmist. The Israelis appear worried that the US will try to make Israel adhere to the same treaty requirements that it is trying to make Iran adhere to, in order to reign in Iran's nuclear program. Israel does not believe it should be subject to the same regime as most other nations in the world. There are only a few holdout who refuse to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty, including North Korea, Pakistan, and India, as well as Israel.

Maybe the US was preparing for this by releasing information earlier about Israel's nuclear capability.

AIPAC Should Register as a Foreign Agent

This blog makes a good argument that AIPAC should register as a foreign agent. I suppose that American Jews believe that Israel's interests and America's interests are identical, and therefore AIPAC is not working for a "foreign" state. But not everyone accepts the hypothesis that Israel is a 51st state. If AIPAC did what it does for Russia or Iran, for example, rather than Israel, there would be a huge outcry about what it does. Maybe the Iranians will start their own AIPAC, but their "I" will stand for Iran. I presume the US government would give it even-handed, "fair and balanced" treatment vis-a-vis the Israeli AIPAC, let it do the same things.

Why Did US Drop AIPAC Case?

The US will not prosecute the two AIPAC employees who were accused of spying on behalf of Israel. This was the case that sucked in Rep. Jane Harmon recently for promising some "Israeli agent" that she would try to protect them from prosecution.

It was always a strange case and a surprise that the US would actually treat Israel as a foreign country that spied on the US, despite the experience of the Israel attack on the NSA spy ship Liberty in 1967. So, it's not really a surprise that the US is dropping the case, but the question is why?

Is it because AIPAC and the Jews control the US? Probably not, but Jane Harmon, Joe Lieberman, Raum Emanuel, Larry Summers, and various other powerful Jewish interests no doubt played a role. Maybe dropping the case is better than pursuing it and losing, but if the case had been pursued, some really bad things might have come out about AIPAC and Israel even though they would have won the case. This way it all stays covered up.

US Army Confirms Israeli Nukes

I'm including this report that Israel has nuclear weapons just for the record, since everybody knows it, but maybe Israel's game of plausible deniability is wearing thin.

A Kindred Spirit on Jane Harmon

This post on Sic Semper Tryannis is more outspoken than I.  As it says about Rep. Jane Harmon, "From the Israeli perspective, she would have been their spy....  She agreed to help an agent of a foreign government and was to be rewarded with advancement...."  She would have been paid to some extent by Haim Saban, the dual national Israeli-American billionaire who already controls the Brookings Institution's Center for Middle East Policy, which bears his name.  Saban's funding has basically turned the Center into an Israeli lobby headed by Martin Indyk, an Australian who worked for AIPAC, the premier Israeli lobby, before he became US Ambassador to Israel.  

Can the Fed Manage the Economy?

I have been a big fan of Ben Bernanke, who along with Hank Paulson jumped into the fray to rescue the economy from it's meltdown last fall. I think it is great that he is a student of the Great Depression and is using his knowledge to try to avoid another one. Things seem to be looking up, but there seems to be some question about whether the green shoots that are springing up will be viable.

In a way, however, despite the fact that Bernanke has done things the Fed has never done before, what he is doing now is the easy part. In general, people are not going to complain too much when you are handing out free money. There will be complaints from the people who are not getting it, which we are seeing now, but it's not like sucking money out and making life harder for people, not just making some people comparatively poorer by handing out money to others. Although their Wall Street neighbors are rich and getting government handouts, regular people are better off than they would be if the Fed had done nothing. It's just that maybe they get to keep most of their jobs, while Wall Street not only gets to keep its jobs, it gets huge bonuses to boot.

Although this course of action seems correct, you have to wonder why the solution to the current meltdown is the same medicine that caused the meltdown -- low interest rates, more consumer spending, freely available mortgages, etc. Doesn't this encourage the same bad risk borrowers to borrow more? They say that refinancing is way up because mortgage rates are at their lowest rates ever. Are these just people turning their homes into ATM machines who missed the last go-round? Instead of more profligate spending, don't we want to encourage more responsible conduct? Ridiculously low interest rates do not do so. People are saving more, but if the interest paid on their savings is virtually nothing, that's not encouraging them to save. If people genuinely expected deflation, that would encourage them to save, because even zero interest is valuable if each dollar buys more at a later date. Yet, the Fed has said it doesn't want deflation either.

The future is more of a problem. If the Fed doesn't turn off the money spigot at the right time, perhaps at exactly the right time (which is hard to determine in real time), then inflation may take off. When it turns off the money spigot, people will experience real financial pain, not just envy. The one person who's done this is Paul Volker. Under him a 14% mortgage was a good interest rate. Will Bernanke be willing to do this? How much political pressure will he come under not to do it? Will he know when to do it?

Who Is To Blame for the Financial Crisis?

Who is to blame for the world financial crisis -- Jews, WASPs, others? Brazilian President Lula said that it was caused by white people with blue eyes.

Jews have come in for a pretty good drubbing because of their traditional involvement in the financial markets and the major role they play on Wall Street. But there also seem to be a lot of WASPs, or at least people of Anglo ancestry; I'm not so sure about the Protestant part. You don't hear much about WASPs anymore, perhaps in part because of the decline of the old line Protestant churches -- Episcopalians, Methodists, etc. In the old days you could count on the Rockefellers, Fords, Morgans, Vanderbilts, etc., to be WASPs.

I would guess that in general the WASPs on Wall Street are more politically conservative than the Jews, e.g., George Soros. But it's not so clear. I don't know who has been more reckless in taking on too much financial risk.

Jewish Goldman Sachs alumnus Robert Rubin was Treasury Secretary in the Democratic Clinton administration, but he and his Jewish colleague Larry Summers oversaw the elimination of banking regulations that eventually led to the financial meltdown, a move favored by the political right wing.

Later, WASP Goldman Sachs alumnus Hank Paulson was Treasury Secretary in the Republican Bush administration, but he oversaw the massive government intrusion into the financial industry to rescue it from the results of the liberalization initiated by Rubin, a move that horrified the political right wing.

But in most cases the characters are white, and maybe blue-eyed. Former Citigroup CEO Richard Parsons, who is black, is an exception, and I'm sure there are many others.

Jews Need to Fix Israel

Jews claim that Israel is unjustly criticized, that it is much more moral than other countries who are not criticized to the same degree. See for example this op-ed by Brent Stevens in the Wall Street Journal.

But like it or not, Jews are held to a higher standard. First, it is a religious state, the Judeo part of the Judeo-Christian faith. Russia makes no claim to such religiosity. Italy conveniently stuck the Vatican in its own, separate country. Saudi Arabia as the keeper of Mecca does make a somewhat similar claim, and it is increasingly caught between its Islamic leadership status and its desire to be just one of the guys when it comes to dealing with the West. But because of its religious character, Israel will always be held to a higher standard than most other countries, and it should be. The US, as the "city on a hill" that Reagan loved faces a similar problem, which is currently illustrated by our debate about torture. Russians don't get criticized for killing kids in Chechnya like the Israelis do for killing kids in Palestine, and they don't get criticized for using torture like the US does. If the Jews renounced their God and accepted all the Arabs in Israel (including the West Bank and Gaza) as equals, they would get a lot less criticism. They would be more like an ordinary run of the mill country.

A second issue, however, is the fact that Israel was created by the United Nations. It's not as if the state of Israel had occupied the land of Palestine for the last 4,000 years. They were missing for the last 1,000 years or so. What Israel has done is not unlike what the US did in slaughtering the Indians and occupying the American West, but this is a different time, and attitudes have changed. What was more or less acceptable in the 1800s is no longer acceptable in the 21st century. It might be unfair, but it's a fact. So the Israelis and the beneficiaries of this largess of the world through the UN, should seem more grateful and should try to live at peace with their neighbors. Granted the neighbors are unhappy, that's a challenge for Israel; make them happy.

Finally, the main reason the world gave Palestine to Israel was because of Jewish suffering int he Holocaust during World War II. The idea that the Jews in Israel should then turn around and do the same sorts of things to the Palestinians just is off the charts in terms of human decency. Jews should be models of compassion and understanding. When they turn out to be anything less, the world is horrified, not because what they do is so terrible on the scale of oppression, but because it shouldn't even be on the scale at all.

American Jews should be demanding that Israel behave better, not defending Israel's failures more vocally than the Israelis themselves. There are many wonderful Jews in American, but at the moment, they are all damned by the Jews who defend any reprehensible action that Israel takes.

Loyal Jewish Americans?

The story in the NYT and other media about Congresswoman Jane Harmon's involvement with AIPAC, Haim Saban, and perhaps an "Israeli agent," raises questions about the loyalty of American Jews. Harmon, a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee, is Jewish and apparently put Israel's interests ahead of America's. From the hazy reporting on the matter, the "Israeli agent" may simply be someone from AIPAC, not a Mossad spook. On the other hand, NSA is not supposed to wiretap conversations between Americans. If a conversation does not involve somebody overseas, then an agency other than NSA should be doing it.

In any case, the report does raise questions about the loyalty of American Jews vis-a-vis Israel, starting with Harmon, including billionaire Saban (a dual US-Israeli national), and certainly AIPAC, which claims it is not an Israeli lobby, despite the fact that the case that Harmon was talking about involved the transfer of classified information to Israel by employees of AIPAC.

I don't think all Jews are disloyal Americans. One of the most loyal Americans we have at the moment is Jon Stewart (nee Jonathan Liebowitz), along with Tom Friedman, and many others like Ben Bernanke and Paul Volker. But on the other hand, you've got Joe Lieberman, who represents Israel much more forcefully than he represents Connecticut.

Meanwhile, today you have the furor over criticism of Israel by the UN Human Rights Commission. No doubt Ahmadinejad's criticism of Israel was way off the mark, but you would think that a country founded as a result of the suffering of the Jews in the Holocaust would be more concerned about the suffering of the Arabs displaced by the creation of Israel. Palestine may have been a Jewish country 2,000 years ago, but it wasn't Jewish in 1945. The US has become an apologist for Israeli acts that many Westerners find horrifying. It's a shame that so many decent Jews are tarred by what Israel does. The crushing embrace in which many American Jews hold Israel does a disservice to more conscientious, moral, thinking Jews.

This episode with Jane Harmon is only the most recent. The US Congress marches in lockstep with AIPAC, just as it does with the NRA, now the defender of supplying Mexican drug gangs with powerful guns used to kill everyone from children to law enforcement officers. To look at the US Congress is to see cowards on parade. They are following in the footsteps of the Roman senate, described as follows by Wikipedia: "... [U]nlike the senate of the republic, the senate of the empire was not politically independent. With the loss of its independence to the emperor, it lost its prestige and eventually much of its power."

Goldman Cashes In

Goldman Sachs is taking maximum advantage of government freebies, while at the same time poormouthing them. It's possible that Goldman didn't really need or want bailout money, but was forced to take it to mask other banks who desperately needed it. Once it got it, however, it didn't wait to profit from the taxpayer largess.

One of its biggest benefits was indirect. Goldman was owed money by AIG; exactly for what is not clear to me, but AIG paid Goldman about $12 billion. Goldman knew it was making a bad bet on whatever trade it made with AIG as a counterparty, but the government bailed it out at 100 cents on the dollar. Shouldn't it pay some penalty for making a bad bet, say making only 80 cents on the dollar? That would have whiped out its $1 billion profit for last quarter, although Goldman argues that it would not. There are even more questions about Goldman's tax year accounting. But in any case it came out smelling like a rose thanks to the taxpayers.

Today's NYT reveals that Goldman is cashing in on another taxpayer subsidy that guarantees its debt for free, even as it touts its withdrawal from the TARP. This program apparently helped it raise the capital that it says it will use to replace the TARP money. The NYT points out that this program could bankrupt the FDIC, but we'll all hope that it won't.

Prof. Mearsheimer on Amb. Freeman

For the record, here's an article by John Mearsheimer on Chas Freeman's being blackballed by the Israel lobby.  

Republicans, Back Off on Christopher Hill

While I'm on the subject of destroying America by being obstructionist on every issue, what about the Republicans blocking the confirmation of Christopher Hill to be Ambassador to Iraq? The opposition is being led by John McCain and Lindsey Graham, two men who claim to be military patriots. This article in Foreign Affairs says that they are seriously upsetting the US military that wants an ambassador in place to take some of the burden for running Iraq off of the military.

Hill was a loyal diplomat for Bush, but because he worked on North Korea, the Republicans want his head. It's the same kind of McCarthyism directed at the State Department that destroyed career diplomat Chas Freeman's nomination to head of the CIA's NIC. Republicans are just not happy unless their killing children, or getting the Israelis to do it for them. I thought John McCain was supposed to be some kind of moderate. I don't think so. He must be extremely bitter about his loss in the Presidential election and has just decided to destroy America, since it didn't vote for him.

Republicans, Back Off on Geithner!

The Republicans need to back off on calling for Treas Sec Geithner's head. As this FT editorial says, he deserves to be given a chance. Geithner didn't cause this crisis, the Republicans did, with all their pro-business legislation (or lack thereof) during the last eight years. Geithner may not have covered himself with glory, but he's working hard, and he has little help, because all the Wall Street tycoons who should be helping him in senior Treasury positions can't or won't because of their criminal conduct working on Wall Street.

By calling for his ouster or even by screaming criticism at him, Republicans are trying to get rid of or immobilize the captain of a ship while it is caught in a hurricane. Even it he's not the best captain, he understands the situation, and he's all we've got. We're in a situation where we don't even have a first mate. Calling for Geithner's ouster is tantamount to calling for the destruction of the American economy. It's grossly irresponsible.

Immoral Elites and Obama's Cabinet

The talking heads are decrying Obama's difficulty in filling cabinet and sub-cabinet positions. I don't think it's mainly Obama's fault. The problem is the immorality and greed of the elite leaders who would normally take such positions. We see potential nominees dropping like flies because they didn't pay their taxes. I agree with Joe Biden that paying taxes is a patriotic duty. So, if these people didn't pay their taxes, then we know what they think of the United States. It's me first, country second (or third or fourth or whatever).

The other problem is pay. Government salaries are peanuts to the elites who should be government leaders. This just shows how out of whack the class and pay system is in the US. Almost all the nominees have to make enormous financial sacrifices to take jobs that would pay well for the great mass of Americans. Decent men would be willing to serve their country, but today, while greed is endemic, men who hold high positions in private life are unwilling to enter public service.

More on Chas Freeman's Withdrawal

The Chas Freeman scandal of character assassination by the Jewish “Israeli lobby” will probably end soon. There may be one last gasp; I heard that Freeman is supposed to appear on Fareed Zakaria’s CNN show. Meanwhile, there has been some outcry in the mass media, most notably David Broder’s column in the Washington Post, “The Country’s Loss,” and Stephen Walt and Paul Pillar in Foreign Policy. The defense of Freeman has been small in comparison to the Jewish onslaught, including Jonathan Chait of the New Republic, Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard, Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, Gabriel Schoenfeld (writing on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal), Jonah Goldberg of National Review, Marty Peretz on his New Republic blog, and former AIPAC official Steve Rosen.

Walt’s Foreign Policy comment makes all the important points. For me the most important is the dire implication for intellectual honesty in intelligence analysis. All analysis affecting Israel is guaranteed to be characterized by self-censorship and political correctness. As Walt points out, it indicates that Israel’s supporters do not believe that Israel’s relationship with the US can survive honest scrutiny.

I thought the New York Times report of Freeman's withdrawal was pretty straightforward, although it managed to have a tone that said, "We love Israel," even if it didn't say it in so many words. After all, the Jewish-owned, usually intellectually honest NYT doesn't want to suffer the same fate at the hands of the Israel lobby that Freeman and the CIA did.

Chas Freeman's Statement on Withdrawing from NIC Appointment

Charles W. "Chas" Freeman Jr.'s statement:

To all who supported me or gave me words of encouragement during the controversy of the past two weeks, you have my gratitude and respect.

You will by now have seen the statement by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair reporting that I have withdrawn my previous acceptance of his invitation to chair the National Intelligence Council.

I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country. I agreed to chair the NIC to strengthen it and protect it against politicization, not to introduce it to efforts by a special interest group to assert control over it through a protracted political campaign.

As those who know me are well aware, I have greatly enjoyed life since retiring from government. Nothing was further from my mind than a return to public service. When Admiral Blair asked me to chair the NIC I responded that I understood he was “asking me to give my freedom of speech, my leisure, the greater part of my income, subject myself to the mental colonoscopy of a polygraph, and resume a daily commute to a job with long working hours and a daily ration of political abuse.” I added that I wondered “whether there wasn’t some sort of downside to this offer.” I was mindful that no one is indispensable; I am not an exception. It took weeks of reflection for me to conclude that, given the unprecedentedly challenging circumstances in which our country now finds itself abroad and at home, I had no choice but accept the call to return to public service. I thereupon resigned from all positions that I had held and all activities in which I was engaged. I now look forward to returning to private life, freed of all previous obligations.

I am not so immodest as to believe that this controversy was about me rather than issues of public policy. These issues had little to do with the NIC and were not at the heart of what I hoped to contribute to the quality of analysis available to President Obama and his administration. Still, I am saddened by what the controversy and the manner in which the public vitriol of those who devoted themselves to sustaining it have revealed about the state of our civil society. It is apparent that we Americans cannot any longer conduct a serious public discussion or exercise independent judgment about matters of great importance to our country as well as to our allies and friends.

The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East. The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.

There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government – in this case, the government of Israel. I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States.

The outrageous agitation that followed the leak of my pending appointment will be seen by many to raise serious questions about whether the Obama administration will be able to make its own decisions about the Middle East and related issues. I regret that my willingness to serve the new administration has ended by casting doubt on its ability to consider, let alone decide what policies might best serve the interests of the United States rather than those of a Lobby intent on enforcing the will and interests of a foreign government.

In the court of public opinion, unlike a court of law, one is guilty until proven innocent. The speeches from which quotations have been lifted from their context are available for anyone interested in the truth to read. The injustice of the accusations made against me has been obvious to those with open minds. Those who have sought to impugn my character are uninterested in any rebuttal that I or anyone else might make.

Still, for the record: I have never sought to be paid or accepted payment from any foreign government, including Saudi Arabia or China, for any service, nor have I ever spoken on behalf of a foreign government, its interests, or its policies. I have never lobbied any branch of our government for any cause, foreign or domestic. I am my own man, no one else’s, and with my return to private life, I will once again – to my pleasure – serve no master other than myself. I will continue to speak out as I choose on issues of concern to me and other Americans.

I retain my respect and confidence in President Obama and DNI Blair. Our country now faces terrible challenges abroad as well as at home. Like all patriotic Americans, I continue to pray that our president can successfully lead us in surmounting them.

Obama and the Markets

Obama is not responsible for the stock market’s daily ups and downs. Before this week, the pundits were blaming Obama for the stock market going down. This week they should be praising him because it went up, but the financial community is responsible for its own fate. Obama inherited a huge mess. He’s working to get out of it, but it’s going to take a while to dig out of the hole that the Republicans left for him. The financial executives just don’t want to take responsibility for their own failures.

Who knows why the market goes up or down. They claim it went up this week because big banks, starting with Citi, announced that they were making a profit so far this year. But what about all those toxic assets? They are still out there. Plus, as Jay Leno or somebody said, “Wow, we gave CitiBank $40 billion, and they made $8 billion profit.”

Plus, what’s going on in the rest of the world? If something goes wrong in some unexpected place, it may well affect the US market. On Fareed Zakaria, Niall Ferguson warned that the next problem might be the disintegration of Ukraine and some other eastern European countries that will allow Russia to reclaim some of its “near abroad.” Meanwhile, today China expressed concern about its investment in the US. To some extent we and China are tied together in a form of Mutually Assured Destruction because of the enormous amount we owe China. China can’t sell off its holdings without driving down prices and hurting itself, but it is certainly in a position to wreak havoc if it wants to.

The Jews Got Chas Freeman

This WSJ op-ed by Bret Stevens, formerly of the Jerusalem Post, is just one example of the Jewish attack on Amb. Chas Freemen, who was nominated to be head of the CIA National Intelligence Council. Freeman is a good, decent man who was maliciously maligned by the Jewish lobby. He's not bigoted, but even if he were, what do the Jews fear so much? Was it just to show their power? Do they know that Israel is involved in such dastardly activities that truthful intelligence about it would be greatly damaging in the world's eyes? I don't know, but I do know that the Jews screamed for blood and they got it. Freeman has withdrawn his name.

The following is more or less the text of an email I sent to my Colorado senators and my congressman:

I have just heard on CNN that Chas Freeman has withdrawn his name to be head of the CIA National Intelligence Council.

I served with Amb. Freeman at the US Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand, before I retired from the Foreign Service. I believe that he is a good man. I think it is terrible that he has been so viciously attacked by Jewish interests because he served as US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and might be somewhat evenhanded in his consideration of the Arab-Jewish/Israel-Palestine-Iran-Syria-Egypt-Iraq-Jordan... issue. In essence, he was damned by the United States of America because he was not a Jew.

This is not why I fought in the Army in Vietnam or why I served almost 25 years as a Foreign Service officer. This was a witch hunt, just like the ones carried out by Sen. Joe McCarthy years ago. I am outraged!

The WSJ also earlier printed a letter from several ambassadors, one of whom I worked with, Amb. Tom Pickering. They supported the choice of Amb. Freeman.

Raise Income Tax on the Rich

Obama said that he will limit CEO salaries. It's going to be hard to do. They get money so many different ways -- straight salary, stock options, bonuses, retirement largess, golden parachutes, etc. It's not only the bank CEOs that we are worried about anyway. It's all those obscenely compensated CEOs.

Plus, America has not in the past liked hereditary, moneyed royalty like the Rockefellers, Kennedys, Hiltons, etc. So, tax them when they make obscene amounts of money. A year ago some hedge fund guy named Paulson (not the Treasury Secretary) made over a billion dollars. Nobody needs to make more than say $50 million per year. After $50 million, increase the tax rate to 75% or more. From $10 million annual income the tax rate could be 50%, which is still less than it would have been 50 years ago. If most of the income goes to Uncle Sam, maybe CEO's won't work quite as hard to soak their shareholders, customers and employees. Another test would be the difference between CEO salaries and employee salaries. If a CEO makes more than 100 times what an average worker in his company makes, tax the overage at 100%.