My Random Thoughts Blog:

I have found writing these blogs to be rather cathartic - I hope the experience of reading them is as well... Compost Mentis ;)

(October 2008) Its been two years since I last blogged and we've had ample time to observe the effects of the surge and General David Petraeus' principles of counter-insurgency at work. Petraeus is the man who re-wrote the US Army bible for counterinsurgency (COIN) operations and its good (I've read it). It shows that he has closely studied the lessons of history. Since he was the overall commander in Iraq, he has also had the authority to do almost anything he wanted to achieve his goals. Of course, he inherited a disaster that was probably beyond redemption.

So let's say it: the surge has dramatically reduced the violence. Iraq is still an extremely dangerous, violent place, but its a far less dangerous place than it was two years ago. Do we judge from this that John McCain and Bush were right? That if we only held firm in our resolve and "stayed the course" that it would lead ultimately to victory? I think not.

While Petraeus' strategy of forging alliances with the tribal leaders and offering reconciliation to insurgents and militants has resulted in a moderation of open conflict, the ethnic divide is as deep as ever. Much of the credit for reduced violence must go to Moqtadr al-Sadr, who agreed to a cessation of violence on the part of his Shiite militias - but that is only temporary. US forces are loathed and regarded as oppressors, and the Iraqi government under Nouri al-Maliki is working to re-write our rules of operation by years end, when the UN mandate expires. After that, the continuation of forces agreement with Iraq will require that US forces withdraw from all urban areas by June of 2009 and all forces be out of Iraq by the end of 2011, that no raids be conducted without Iraqi search warrants, no prisoners be held more than 24 hours before being rendered to Iraqi security and permits no use of force without Iraqi authorization and except when under the leadership of Iraqi forces. Basically, it will end the free hand that US forces have exercised since 2003. Despite these strictures Moqtada al-Sadr has fomented great unrest, calling the proposed agreement an illegal bargain between a puppet and an invader. We are unwelcome and that message is plain.

Beyond the beginning of next year and particularly as US forces are drawn down over the following 16 to 18 months, the political landscape of Iraq will once again reveal its deep fissures as Shia and Sunni factions vie for hegemony. The Sunni tribal groups that we armed to resist al-Qaeda will not be integrated into the police or military and will pose a serious threat to both national authority and peace. Moqtada al-Sadr, until now biding his hour when we would be gone will resume his bid for supremacy. Iran too will show its hand more prominently. For all our effort, by the time we withdraw, we will have no ally in Iraq and the violence will be growing again toward a true civil war. Iraq remains a house built of straw on a floodplain.

(November 2008) It seems that the possible ruin of America (and the world) is looming, but I harbour the belief that swift action will avert the worst of what might have happened. Assuming that we are not now entering the next Great Depression, I think it worth examining what really transpired to create this fiasco. Accusations are already flying, especially as this is election time. Let's set the record straight.

Retired Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan recently affected surprise over the meltdown, but he should have known how this all worked. He would have but he was blinded by laissez faire ideology. It took me only minutes to see why this went awry and I am convinced that insiders have sensed an inevitable day of reckoning for years now - some of the testimony surrounding the takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (aka the Federal National Mortgage Association - FNMA and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation - FHLMC) proves it.

Many actors and behaviors contributed to this. So, let's start on Main Street rather than Wall Street. When the lenders began to make their money off the creation of the loans, rather than the interest they earned, they made a paradigm shift. Now they wanted bigger loans because the fees were proportional to the loan amount. They weren't worried about collateral or down payments or job security or lifestyles because they immediately sold the loans. It was no longer their risk and so not a worry. Property appraisers were encouraged to make high appraisals of worth, which helped drive the real estate price bubble. The lenders are now saying that they knew they were taking wild unprecedented risks, but they didn't want to get left behind. They were following the Pied Piper and the piper was greed. The investment firms didn't care about the risks because they assumed that real estate is a blue chip investment; it always appreciates (a myth along the lines of water being incompressible) and they discounted the fact that new rules in the game might alter the default rate. In fact, they embraced the new rules because in their minds this was like a credit card (eternal debt at variable rate interest), only with rock solid collateral. How could it go wrong?

Nobody was at the wheel. That's how. Everybody assumed that somebody else was driving. This didn't happen because the mean old liberals forced the banks to lend foolishly to the undeserving and irresponsible poor, or simply because Wall Street is greedy (we know that). Everybody is guilty from homeowners buying more house than they could afford, to lenders telling them that they could afford it (I knew something was wrong in 2002 when I was offered twice what I knew I could afford in a mortgage) and then just throwing it over the fence to investment firms who carefully hid the bad loans and lied to investors about the quality of the investments. This isn't left-wing politics, its old-fashioned greed accelerated by a hands-off fiscal policy, which is a right-wing doctrine.

It wasn't only mortgage debt either. How many credit card applications have you received in the last 5 years? How many encouragements to use the equity in your house to take vacations, begin projects, buy a boat? The financial industry urged consumers to spend beyond their means, drawing on real estate equity as collateral (again because it supposedly always increases and is a solid investment) and Americans answered the call with enthusiasm. Of course, for many the reason was that real income in present day adjusted dollars has steadily fallen for years. They needed the cash for living expenses, especially medical costs.

Add to the above scenario the fact that a sort of insurance on debt, known as credit default swaps, went from being a bet on a nearly sure thing to a situation in which a person with $100 million would offer to "insure" $1 billion or more in order to get a 2% annual fee (i.e., a 20% return on his money) on that billion in investments with a reputable bank. Recognize that this sort of high-leverage gambit outnumbered legitimate credit default swap deals by 10-to-1 and you can quickly see why it created chaos when those reputable banks started to fail. This kind of wholly unregulated financial activity is precisely why regulation is necessary. Had it been called insurance it would have been regulated, but the investment world learned ages ago how to run circles around regulation.

Laissez faire Milton Friedman-style free market economics suffers from the same naivete' as Karl Marx' Das Kapital: it assumes that people are altruists, that they make decisions principally in the interests of the greater collective good. Were that true we'd have no need of government at all. That this notion of "the market" being self-correcting, and more especially making ethical decisions that are inherently disadvantageous from an economic standpoint, ever held sway among serious economics and policy makers boggles the mind. Its not only absurd, its demonstrably untrue, as history plainly attests. In the first place, "the market" does not exist. It is composed of millions of self-interested actors, so there is no collective decision making and all laissez faire philosophy supports and affirms the principle that economic decisions be made in one's own best self-interest. "Greed is good" was the mantra and while no longer PC, nothing has changed. Ergo, when someone offers free range chickens or vegetables not made from genetically engineered plants they have lower margins, lower yields and higher prices. No matter whether a large number of people decide to pay those higher prices for personal reasons, they will always compete less effectively. Ditto for all conservation and environmental protection laws, all laws against slave labor (in fact, all labor laws), all manufacturing in which fair prices have been paid for natural resources from developing nations, all small businesses vis-a-vis the Wal-Marts of the world, etc. On and on it goes.

As for the recovery effort, well that is business as usual; meaning that Congress and the Treasury are spending hundreds of billions of our dollars to ensure that investors on Wall Street don't suffer unduly for their greed and stupidity. Meanwhile the average American on Main Street faces financial crisis directly or indirectly, through soaring prices, job loss, evaporated home equity and foreclosure. The ready bailouts for Wall Street have had little effect on the progress of the slide toward depression, and Robert Reich commented today (26 Nov 08) on NPR that shoring up investment banks while ignoring the auto industry is exactly reverse of the necessary priority - the ripple effect from a collapse of the auto makers would be vastly more severe. The Federal Reserve is still trying to manage this crisis using old-school ideology, by simply varying a few key interest rates and offering loans to key banks. This is too weak of a lever. A more direct effort is required. Let's all hope that there is still time to avert disaster when the Obama administration comes into office.

(November 2008) The lunacy that has gripped America for the last six months is, I pray, diminishing in the wake of Barack Obama's landslide victory over John McCain. I received more inflammatory emails and outrageous crackpot circulations than ever before.

For the record, there is not a shred of evidence that Barack Obama is or ever was a muslim; let alone the dark mole of a 30-year al-Qaeda conspiracy, or better yet, the Antichrist. In fact, there is far more credible evidence to suggest that John McCain betrayed America and collaborated with the NVA than that Obama is connected with terrorism of any stripe (Weather Underground, al Qaeda, whatever). Though, while on that subject, it takes a special brand of hypocrisy to decry a radical hippie for planting a dynamite bomb in the men's room of the Pentagon at 3 AM (in order to avoid any injury), while endorsing the indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas in order to possibly kill suspected insurgents who may or may not be present and perpetuating a war that is costing hundreds of thousands of innocent lives simply to save the legacy of an arrogant power-crazed fool. Government action is not automatically legitimate by virtue of being government action, nor is insurgent action automatically illegitimate (else our own much vaunted revolutionary history needs to be trashed as the misdeeds of lawless malcontents against their rightful rulers). Everyone is accountable and I tend to agree with Bill Ayers that a comparison of his misdeeds with those of the Johnson or Bush administrations would leave him looking rather morally superior.

Looking back I am prompted to ask myself whether McCain or any Republican could have won against Obama, given the Bush history and particularly the collapse of the economy. I think the answer is definitely yes. McCain was the man for the occasion. No other Republican could have come close. However, he chose to run a dishonorable campaign of outright lies, and smearing innuendo that roiled the cauldron of insanity in the fringe right-wing and still more violent anarchic circles. Crazy people began to swell the ranks of the McCain campaign in response to his suggestions that Obama was personally responsible for the high gas prices or the economic meltdown or a friend of terrorists. Fortunately, this produced a revulsive reaction in the ranks of the non-aligned moderates.

Had McCain run a campaign that was as clean as that of Obama, in clear departure from the politics of the Bush administration, offered specific and sensible ideas for our nation's future, and shown that he had the sagacity to be President by not suggesting that America might not mind being mired in Iraq for 10,000 years and by not selecting a know-nothing ingenue ideologue hick for his running mate on an impulse, then I think its very likely that he would have won (for one, I might have voted for him - Palin drove the stake in that). But fighter pilots are selected for their reckless bravery and impulsive decision-making and that is what came out in this election.

(August 2009) Lest anyone think me a sycophant of President Obama, let me assert that I am opposed to the basic approach being pursued on health care reform, specifically the federal government offered alternative insurance program. There is no person in government experienced in that field, no reasonable basis for believing that anyone in government could create and administer such a scheme more efficiently than the private programs and no reason impelling us to that approach. Make no mistake, I want health care reform. I just think we can do it more effectively than that.

On July 4th of 2009 I had an appendectomy (not a recommended holiday plan - but it beat the agony I had experienced for the preceding day and a half). The story has points of interest relating to this issue, but I will get to the salient point. My medical expenses tallied to around $36,000 for a CAT scan, surgery, a few IVs and an overnight stay in the hospital. Fortunately, I work for a major aerospace corporation and I have excellent health insurance. My out of pocket expenses amounted to only $200 - which was actually my yearly deductible, since I had not had any medical expenses up to that point. The interesting thing was observed when examining my statements. It showed the charges, and then it showed the amounts that my insurer was willing to pay the hospital. Of the $36,000 charged, my insurer settled for a total of roughly $7500, or only about 20% of the total charged. Presumably, had I not been so insured or insured with one of the far less friendly individual plans, I would have been expected to pay against the full amount. If you want to take it a step further, the amount of the out of pocket expenses for someone having an individual insurance plan (as opposed to group coverage) would be roughly $7500. In other words, in that instance my insurer would have paid nothing at all.

This then is the fallacy being overlooked in all the bruhaha. The cost of health care is not a given. It, like all other prices set by a monopolistic market, is rather arbitrary. More specifically, it is greatly exaggerated. When dealing with a hard bargainer, it comes down dramatically. Such is the case for the big insurers (when compelled by the negotiators of major corporations, representing a large client base), and it is also the case for those neighboring countries like Canada and Mexico that we roundly despise for their "socialism". Neither Canada nor Mexico is any more socialistic than the US, they just have governments that play hard ball with the health care industry on behalf of their citizens, and we do not. Its really that simple.

As for my proposed approach to health care reform? Well, that is also remarkably simple. All we need of government is the sort of regulation of prices that is done with public utilties. This can be done in a number of ways, but one would be to require any health insurer to offer a defined minimal level of health care at a prescribed maximum cost, and disallow exclusion based on pre-existing conditions, development of illness, etc. This does not preclude better plans, any more than the current situation. What it basically would do is create a new class, consisting of the citizens of this nation, who could get coverage comparable to that of a corporation, instead of the miserable plans on offer to individuals at present, which are poor because individuals have no leverage with monopolistic corporations such as the handful of major insurers who own this market in the US (each generally dominating a region of the country).

One last point. People demand to know, "How are we going to pay for all this?" Well, we are already paying for it. Yet another fallacy. One of the reasons why costs are high is because we share the cost of the uninsured. Public hospitals in most states are required by law to admit patients in the emergency room, even if they have no means of payment or insurance. So, the emergency room of such hospitals is a zoo, populated with not only serious cases, but the general run of medical complaints; overworked and understaffed. We can solve that problem and it won't cost us anything that we aren't already paying. In fact, if it were done intelligently, it would cost the taxpayer less. Instead, what we are witnessing is a sort of street con shell game in which sleight of hand is being used while our attention is diverted to something else. We are being aroused about bogus fears, stirred by classic agents provocateur in town halls, and all the while the health industry is making sure that it still gets its same big cut. If we really want to roll back the rising cost of health care, we need to compel the industry to deal from a position of strength, not begging and not ham-strung by Congressional traitors who are bought men of the corporate campaign donors.

(August 2009) President Obama was right in his criticism of the Bush focus on Iraq, to the neglect of the real root of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and I applaud his "staying the course" in getting us out of that mess. But he is in danger of making essentially the same mistake as Bush in his planned escalation in Afghanistan.

Had we moved against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan immediately and forcefully in September 2001, we would have killed Osama bin Laden and destroyed the entire organization. We could also have caught and executed all of the leaders of the Taliban and if we were so inclined, remained long enough to rout and kill the majority of their despicable followers. Instead, we took our time in strategic planning and preparation. Within a couple of weeks after September 11, bin-Laden crossed into Pakistan and the Taliban leaders hunkered down. We did not act until 7 October 2001, nearly a month after the attacks on our country. A month!

Even at that, had we devoted the energy to the destruction of al-Qaeda and the Taliban that was poured into the invasion of Iraq, we likely would have succeeded by the close of 2001. Some discrete intelligence gathering in Pakistan and a couple of sniper teams or laser-guided bombs would have sufficed for Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and the other ringleaders.

But its too late for that kind of thinking now. Its been 8 years. Too much time has elapsed. The villains have succeeded in staying alive for years and in fact have blossomed. Our strategic folly that resulted in the fiasco in Iraq and the resultant failure in Afghanistan has emboldened the extremists and permitted them to flourish and sink deep roots in both places. Conventional military force cannot save Afghanistan from extremism. Indeed, the conflict now is taking on the old familiar pattern of internecine ethnic warring. We have no place in that scenario, notwithstanding the desire on the part of those in power to let us catch the heat and maintain their authority. Democracy either works or it doesn't - its a house of cards unless it can be self-supporting. You simply cannot impose democracy. If we remain, particularly if we try to apply greater amounts of force, Afghanistan will become a tar baby.

The right thing to do is wrap it up and let the Afghans solve their internal problems, for better or worse. And next time, which is likely, we don't fail to destroy the perpetrators. In the meantime, we can be vastly more effective by quietly operating in the dark. The cockroaches don't crawl out and expose themselves when all the lights are on. Let things settle. Let them get bad, turn favorable to the Taliban. Then when we can clearly see who we want to take out, we do it, neatly and quickly. And we keep doing it until they get the message. Eternal vengeance until all of al Qaeda and the Taliban are dead. But no wasted effort, no open-ended "War on Terror" and no pointless loss of life for our troops and innocent civilians in Afghanistan. There are sure ways of dealing with situations like this and we need to quit thinking Big Army and start thinking smart.

(September 2009) I have refrained from ranting about the 2nd Amendment on this site. Too much heat and not enough light is generated on that subject in cyberspace as it is. I have never felt like I had much to add. But now that has changed.

Last year (2008) the US Supreme Court ruled in favor an individual against the District of Columbia and its unreasonable restriction on firearms possession (District of Columbia v. Heller). The high court ruled, very narrowly, that Washington DC left no practical scenario in which anyone could possess even a long arm and use it in self-defense, even in their own home, and that this was therefore unconstitutional. This was a landmark decision -- however it does not necessarily imply anything regarding highly restrictive regulations in other major cities and most states. In fact, the high court and legal experts emphasized that this ruling is narrow and that it upheld the established ruling that the Second Amendment only applies to federal precincts and regions of governance (like the District of Columbia or Puerto Rico) and does not apply to or supercede state or municipal law.

In case you have missed the irony, the US Supreme Court and many legal authorities, including the conservative variety, are making the remarkable argument that whereas every other amendment to the Constitution of the United States touching on civil liberties, including later ones than the original Bill of Rights, such as the 13th which abolished slavery, the 15th which abolished racial discrimination in suffrage, the 19th which granted female suffrage, the 24th which abolished poll taxes (aka the Civil Rights Amendment) and the 26th which established the voting age limit in all national, state and local elections as 18, should apply in full force in all possessions of the United States, superceding all state and local laws to the contrary, when it comes to the much loathed and long troublesome Second Amendment, well that's a States Rights domain. 10th Amendment and all, don't you know.

Oh, really?

Two states, Montana and Tennessee, have hurled down the gauntlet in answer to that posture and its long overdue. Other states have introduced similar bills. The Firearms Freedom Act is a state law which asserts that federal law does not apply to firearms manufactured and possessed within that state. It turns the argument of those who deny federal precedence over state law as regards the 2nd Amendment on its head. If the 2nd Amendment guarantee of an individual right to keep and bear arms is not binding on the states, then neither are federal regulations and restrictions on firearms and ammunition, which could only conceivably be enforced under the overly-stretched modern interpretation of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution - so in no way can the federal government defend its arrogated authority over things that never involve inter-state commerce.

In some respects this is an old dispute. Some contrarians have long insisted that none of the provisions of the Constitution apply to the states, and some notable rulings by the US Supreme Court have established that view. But we already settled that question in a war and the long held ruling on the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment incorporates all of the amendments comprising the Bill of Rights (at a minimum) as pertaining to all possessions and territories of the US. Anyone recall George Wallace standing in the doorway of the University of Alabama, and what happened next? Same principle.

So now we behold the naked hypocrisy of the power elite who oppose the inalienable and natural individual right to keep and bear arms. Having ruled that the 2nd Amendment does not prevent major metropolitan governments from prohibiting arms, because supposedly that would be too expansive an interpretation of Constitutional power, these same legal mavens would have us believe that all of the federal firearms regulations are justly covered by the Commerce Clause and the "Necessary and Proper Clause" - even though no such provision is an enumerated power (or even hinted at) and is in fact expressly forbidden by the 2nd Amendment itself.

So state and local governments may not suppress freedom of speech or assembly, nor discriminate on the basis of race or gender, because of the Bill of Rights and long established precedent on the 14th Amendment, but the right to keep and bear arms is fair game for any form of legislation (including, let it be remembered, federal bans and restrictions). This kind of disengenuity results ultimately in corruption and revolution. When the law, most particularly the constitution of a nation, no longer holds sway, then the people come to realize that they are ruled solely by fiat of tyrannic public officials over whom they hold little or no influence. It will be interesting to see how this is judged if it comes before the high court.

Update:The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in March 2010 on a challenge to the power of states and local muncipalities to restrict the Second Amendment and that case will be decided by summer. In all likelihood it will not be as sweeping as many fear and hope - any more than the Heller case was for DC. If a similar view is upheld, it may abolish outright bans on handguns, while permitting assault weapons bans and other "reasonable" restrictions.

(March 2010) A new Harris poll reveals the depth of ignorance and outright craziness of the right-wingers in this country. What used to be the fringe element is now front and center.

A majority (57%) believe Barack Obama is a muslim and that he wants to turn over the sovreignty of the US to a one world government (51%). That's a majority view. A near majority (45%) still believes that Obama was not born in the US and cannot legitimately serve as President. More shocking, 22% actually believe that "he wants the terrorists to win" and a solid 24% believe that he may be the Antichrist. Yes, you read that correctly. One in four. Which only proves that Republicans, especially the religious extremist varieties, don't know their Bible despite all their dogmatism.

What all this really shows is not simply the divide between urban and rural populations, coastal and heartland, old and young. It shows the total failure of our education system. Not until the respondent had post-graduate education did these numbers significantly diminish. Even at the collegiate level we are failing to eradicate entrenched ignorance and ideology. A capacity for ignorance, indeed a fervent zeal for superstition and ideology, is a trait that is inculcated by backward societies. For a time this nation rose above that kind of mentality and actively suppressed it. But no more. Now we embrace "alternative" truth and the right of individuals to be ignorant of plain facts. No one is entitled to be ignorant or to believe what is not true. People may enjoy the privilege to be so, but they do not own the right. The truth is a law unto itself and may not be refused.

Even the educated conservatives are reeling at this trend. Look at what happened this week with David Frum's abrupt dismissal from the American Enterprise Institute. He and his colleagues were silenced because they were in agreement with most of the proposals being forwarded by the Obama administration on health care reform. But that doesn't play well to the front and center extremists who now dominate the GOP. As a consequence, the enlightened and moderate elements of the GOP, once a progressive party, are fleeing for the hills in hot pursuit by the witchhunters serving Witchfinder General Limbaugh. The Republican Party is turning into an organization that would make the Inquisition proud and anyone who doesn't imagine that this kind of thing can't happen again in the good old US of A is a fool. Humanity is evil and unless naked brazen evil is resisted it will grow bold and run amok.

(April 2010) I've just been reminded why I quit participating in web forums years ago, except to ask the odd technical question. Cyber regulars are kooks with over-developed egos. I'm sure that some will aver that such a description aptly describes me as well - after all, here I am promoting my unsolicited opinion into the ether without any interest in either rebuttal or affirmation. Perhaps that is the acme of egotism. For my part I believe that I am sincerely trying to plead a case for Reason in an unreasoning age. If by that defense I seem to imagine myself as a hair-shirted eremite with a voice crying in the wilderness, let that delusion be my worry.

I've just come from a web forum in quest of technical data on a custom muzzleloading English sporting rifle that I would like to have built. Rather than being enlightened I came away incensed by the insensate vituperation heaped on the premier traditional blackpowder manufacturer in the world today, Davide Pedersoli, because the president, Pierangelo Pedersoli, had the old-fashioned and very American temerity to voice his views and take a stand for something that he devoutly believes, in the face of certain reactionary public sentiment. Pedersoli withdrew its association with a prominent individual who has taken a stand that there should be no special hunting season solely for traditional muzzleloading arms, rather that all the modern innovations and accoutrements that have arisen in the last two decades in response to special muzzleloading seasons ought to be universally permitted in all 50 states. Both he and Davide Pedersoli & Co. are entitled to their respective stances. And yet here we have users of inlines and other modern gear viciously lambasting Pedersoli as a "so-called manufacturer" (huh?) who is ignorant of muzzleloading technology (oh really?) and needs to keep his mouth shut about American hunting "rights".

Well, all you so-called Americans who think that others need to keep their mouths shut about your pet subject, get over it. If you are entitled to have an opinion, so is every other person. And while you are getting over it, quit acting like you are authorized to speak for anyone in this country apart from yourself, and telling others that they better not voice their view. You don't own that right.

Its pretty obvious to anyone who doesn't have a financial interest in the matter or an axe to grind (ie, anyone who is honest) that the special muzzleloading seasons were originally conceived and created with the same intent as the archery seasons; specifically they were created to offer a special season for the use of weapons that were traditional and technologically primitive as compared with modern arms. This is indisputable. Else why have a special season at all? There is no special season for bolt-action users as opposed to semi-auto users; its not as if each type of weapon were to receive its own season. So, to pretend that the plain intent of the special season was not to provide an opportunity for those who have accepted the limitations of primitive traditional technology is disingenuous at best. At worst its base dishonesty.

Equally plain is the indisputable fact that all of the innovation in muzzleloading technology since the advent of special muzzleloading seasons has come about solely due to the existence of the special seasons and in an attempt to exploit the additional hunting season without any of the disadvantages accruing to the use of a traditional muzzleloader. The fact that some disadvantage yet remains is entirely because it is impossible to circumvent the basic requirement of these seasons that the weapon be a muzzleloader. In all other respects the modern inline, sabot-bulleted, telescopically-sighted muzzleloader does not differ from a modern rifle. About 90% of all muzzleloader hunters use modern inline rifles with sabot bullets. This is not a compelling argument in favor of opening the special seasons to such weapons, it is an indictment. These are not the people who appealed for and won the special seasons. These are not the true muzzleloader hunters. Such weapons undeniably defeat the spirit of the regulation, if they skirt about the letter of the law. We now have smokeless powder muzzleloading rifles capable of driving their bullets well in excess of 2000 fps and advertised to deliver 500 yard hunting effectiveness - something which even the most powerful centerfire rifles do not provide in sufficient measure to make it either ethical or prudent. Need any more be said?

Frankly, I have long found myself in vehement opposition to the legality of using anything more advanced than a plain iron-sighted rifle shooting ordinary full-caliber lead bullets during the special season. Almost all the adherants of the scoped inlines and the sabot loads would abandon them wholesale if they could only use them in the regular gun season. They would never accept the limitations of such technology in that context! Its not a love of the technology, not a nostalgia for the traditional methods of hunting. Far from it.

The most extreme of these types have tried to argue that no government is entitled to regulate and restrict their natural rights to use whatever technology they please. Leaving aside the utter absurdity of that argument, its obvious that we are only discussing the question of what constitutes primitive firearms technology for the purposes of a special season. No one anywhere is suggesting that you cannot use a scoped inline during the regular season. However, there is plainly no intrinsic right owned by any individual or group to have a special hunting season exclusive to their use in which they can act in any manner they please. I'll be happy when I see a ban in my home state and in every state that I hope to hunt. After that they can ban the use of the damned ATVs on public lands as well.

(April 2010) Embarassing emails are coming to light that put the lie to Goldman-Sachs' disavowal of trying to profit from the collapse of the housing market in the Great Recession. But who really is surprised? The real problem is not Wall Street greed, that is something no one will ever find a means to regulate. The problem, in practical terms, is the practice of selling short and on a more involved scale, of hedge funds developed from this betting on doom approach.

Selling short is placing a bet that a stock will perform badly in future and agreeing to buy a certain amount in future on the presumption that the price will be lower than it is today. Basically, its a sale in reverse. First you sell it and then you buy it. Hedge funds are just more complex variations on that theme. Investment pros will describe them as insurance, but its not insurance so much as gambling with a very negative slant. Insurers are betting that something bad won't happen anytime soon. Investors in shorted stocks are counting on that happening soon. So, they have a vested interest in the downturns of the market. That has led in some few notable cases to outright sabotage, wherein (for example) an anonymous tip is lodged with an investment blog about a certain stock and its undisclosed problems, resulting in a stampede to unload that stock.

Goldman-Sachs is coming under fire for not only knowingly selling fraudulent securities, but also (and in evidence of their cognizance of the riskiness of these falsely rated investments) for investing in hedge funds with the presumption that the mortgage based "securities" would inevitably have a high rate of failure and be downgraded in value when the housing market bubble burst. In essence, they were playing both ends against the middle and making money coming and going. Smart, yes. And also corrupt.

The main issue with the practice of selling short is that it gives its investors a strong interest in economic ruin and, when it works as intended, produces nothing of value (to an even greater extent than trading generally). Granted, the practice tends to favor those whose stocks do improve rather than collapse and that may work somewhat to discourage selling short, but its a weak lever. And there is always the possibility of making bad weather for your stock. If the practice were rare it would be of small concern, but that is no longer the case.

In comparison with the hazards of runaway stock speculation resulting in a bubble, shorting is more dangerous and more probable. For one thing, people are more inclined to believe bad news than good. Innate skepticism will moderate stock inflation, because no one wants to be a sap. Losing your shirt is another matter and investors will cut and run on a plausible bad rumor, with ruinous effect. Look at the everyday volatility that results from the merest suggestion.

The worst aspect of this form of trading is so-called "naked" short selling. This means that the asset being sold is neither owned nor "borrowed" for the duration of the short sale period. Additionally, the same asset may be shorted numerous times at the same moment. It would be as if I were to sell a mortgage against your house, betting that the value of the mortgage (the value of your house) will fall by the time I have to pay for buying the mortgage. Not only am I betting on a financial loss, I am betting on your financial loss, using your property. Now add to this dizzing scenario the possibility that 100 people are selling and buying mortgages against your house and you have some concept of why the financial meltdown we suffered in 2008 was an inevitability.

Some will say in retort that restricting or banning the practice of selling short will hamper investments and remove a key pillar of investment security. On the contrary, as should be evident, it will bolster market security. If investment firms cannot profit from the collapse of the securities that they sell, they will not have a conflict of interest inherent in their performance and will in fact be corporately liable for that performance, which has not been the case to nearly the same degree. The result will be more conservatism in the development and rating of investments and more scrutiny by buyers of securities. It means less risk overall. Lower yields? Certainly. But also no massive crashes.

Congress is currently weighing a revamped set of regulations for the investment world in an effort to ban, restrict and moderate the behaviors that contributed to the Great Recession. Regulation of grossly leveraged insurance investments, by whatever name they may be described, undeniably is necessary. Trading in petroleum and other energy resources of strategic significance by private investors and individuals really ought to be banned outright. That is a worthy subject for its own blog perhaps. The price paid for oil by the various countries ought to be negotiated at an international petroleum products market meeting by the respective governments on a quarterly basis. It is too destabilizing to the global economy to be left to the viscissitudes of the free marketplace and no measure of economic philosophy is adequate justification for those consequences. From my knothole, I think selling short is a practice we can live without as well.

(June 2010) What is there to say? Words fail me. How this was possible is beyond comprehension in any moral sense of the word.

It happened because our government has been owned, body and soul, by the oil industry for decades. It happened because our corrupt public officials and bueaucrats have accepted bribes in exchange for giving the oil industry a soft touch in terms of regulation and liability.

It happened also because the basic flaw in free market economics, which I have written about before, was vividly demonstrated: economic actors do not in fact invariably act in their best economic interest. Clearly it was in the interest of BP (and all other oil companies who operate offshore) to have proven effective means, in redundancy, to prevent a blowout. Clearly it was in their interest to verify that everything was functioning properly (records and witness accounts indicate this was not the case). This scenario bears an uncanny resemblance to the blowout of the Mexican oil well in 1979, replete with all the same failed missteps in trying to stop the leak. Clearly, no progress of any sort has been made in this risk area in more than 30 years. That is possible only because the executives of oil companies are looking at economic benefits and risks on a very short horizon, with flawed analyses, and have no fears of reprisal in the event of an accident.

Worse, the responsibility for oil spill clean up lies with the company who made the mess. Why would we want someone who can't do their own job properly to try and clean up the environment they have contaminated? Why would we even allow them to try? And, naturally, their first move will be to hide the mess and obfuscate the extent of the spill - because their liability is proportional to the size of the spill. So, they dump more chemicals into the water, creating even further pollution and rendering the spill impossible to clean. But it isn't only the corrupt elected officials being influenced by the money of the oil industry that is at fault here. We also have the impractical fanaticism of environmentalists to blame. These are the idiots who insisted on regulations so extreme that oil skimmers that might have removed 95% of the oil from the water were banned from even trying because they could not guarantee that they would remove 100% of the oil. Such stupidity is criminality of the very highest order.

I think Obama is handling this properly from the standpoint of in compelling BP to assume the full cost of the cleanup and damages. If that is really done (as opposed to the meagre civil liability limit currently on the law books), then there is a reasonable probability that no oil company in future will risk such a loss and will take all necessary steps to ensure that it does not happen.

However, no matter what price the lawyers and courts put on the damages years from now when its all settled, the full cost will never be paid. This disaster will destroy the environment of the Gulf of Mexico, a place near and dear to me. We may never see a recovery from this event in that ecosystem during our lifetimes. Nature is resilient, but many decades will pass before this place recovers.

(June 2010) While an arch-right wing friend of mine has already bent my ear about the "irresponsibility" of Obama in his decision to remove GEN Stanley McChrystal, how Obama wasn't listening to his field commanders and how this whole fiasco with the interview in Rolling Stone magazine was carefully orchestrated by McChrystal to "send a message to Washington" with him as the willing fall guy since he was ready to retire, somehow self-immolation on the pages of Rolling Stone seems far too oblique and implausible a means of resignation in protest by a man with the courage and directness of Stanley McChrystal.

Senators John McCain (R), Diane Feinstein (D) and Lindsey Graham (R) have laid the blame for the widely known dysfunctionality among the US leaders in Afghanistan at the feet of the civilans: Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and Special Representative Richard Holbrooke. However, I have heard the opposing viewpoint as well, and given what few facts I am privy to I am inclined to agree with the alternative view.

For one thing, both President Obama and GEN McChrystal assert that this debacle did not arise over policy. This clearly is about personality conflicts among the Afghan war leadership.

Secondly, it ought to be understood that any officer who achieves 3 or more stars is primarily a politician. Unfortunately, the armed services are as remiss as any organization in promoting personnel beyond their capability, and I think the promotion of McChrystal to the rank of General (4 star) is a case in point. His military prowess and courage under fire are not in question. He is well regarded by the troops and his background in special ops has made him an excellent operational leader. His political acumen is another matter. By all accounts he has been at odds with Ambassador Eikenberry and Special Representative Holbrooke. His creation of a notoriously uncouth and politically insensitive staff dubbed "Team America", an unconsciously ironic reference to the outrageous film by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, is exemplary of the problem. It was their remarks, not McChrystal's, which were his undoing in the pages of Rolling Stone; but it was McChrystal who created and fostered the culture of contempt, arrogance and simplemindedness.

In a recent interview with National Public Radio, Richard Holbrooke gave an amazingly dry and infuriating performance, but at least he understands the fundamental realities of his job: discretion and confidentiality are essential to success. When asked about the sacking by Afghan President Hamid Karzai of his top security chiefs in the wake of the Taliban assaults on the National Consultative Peace Jirga, Holbrooke communicated his amazement without uttering a word that anyone would actually expect him to comment openly on that in a critical manner. It was infuriating because it revealed nothing, yet that is precisely the point. In ten years, when in comfortable reirement, Holbrooke may write a searing expose' of the stupidity of Karzai in eternally pursuing reconciliation with the Taliban (a gesture which they forcefully rejected both in words and in their efforts to assassinate everyone attending the jirga), but he is smart enough to hold his tongue in public until that time. [Addendum - Sadly, Ambassador Holbrooke will never pen that memoir, as he died suddenly in November 2010]

GEN McChrystal clearly is not that smart. He placed President Obama in a lose-lose position, a situation that Obama plainly never wanted to be in. No matter what course he took, it would be a black eye. On the one hand Obama could forgive the incredible gall and idiocy of the interview, but that would make him seem a weak sister and that, believe it or not, has a weightier bearing on our success with these fanatics than the presence of GEN McChrystal. On the other hand, he could compel the resignation of a fine soldier whose military recommendations for the Afghan campaign he accepted over the strenuous objections of many in his administration and in Congress, alienating some within the services in the bargain. If McChrystal were a samurai he would have performed seppuku in expiation of his sin. In our culture, in the imaginations of the hard right wing, he will become a martyr to conscience.

About the only good thing that one can say of this episode is that GEN David Petraeus has replaced McChrystal and is now leading the counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, the place where no one in history has ever been successful. If anyone can be, it is he.

(June 2010) All gun owners and anyone who comprehends the meaning of the Bill of Rights can breathe a sigh of relief that the US Supreme Court upheld the position that the 2nd Amendment is binding not merely on federal laws and jurisdictions, but also on state and local laws and jusrisdictions. Had this not been so it would have been a fatal wound to the core tenets of civil liberty protections afforded by the Constitution. Moreover, the majority view was that the 2nd Amendment protections were covered under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, in keeping with other civil liberty protections of the Bill of Rights.

What this ruling does not absolutely do is eliminate the possibility of some form of "infringement" on the right to keep and bear arms, for the same reason that the high court has long upheld that certain infringements of the 1st Amendment, such as laws against perjury, slander and libel, are not violations of protected forms of expression. Commentators are already emphasizing that the ruling says less than would be hoped for in terms of just how legislative bodies and lower courts are to apply this ruling. If gun rights are now in the same sort of vague landscape as pornography, I for one am satisfied that at the very least the Supreme Court did not rule against the rights of individuals.

Worringly, however, the minority view (which was a close 4 to 5) based all its arguments on the social consequences (in someone's judgment) rather than on the constitutional principle at issue. As Justice Alito, who wrote the majority opinion, pointed out, this argument holds no water in cases where improperly obtained but valid evidence is thrown out with the result that guilty offenders walk free - the principle must be upheld regardless of the social consequences or else the rule of law is void. This kind of emotion-based reasoning makes the likelihood of a future reversal very real.

(August 2010) The proposal to build a muslim community center and mosque near the site of the destroyed World Trade Center has aroused strong negative feeling in many Americans. However, the following quote exemplifies the sentiments of most intellectual and liberally minded citizens of this nation:

While I consider myself both intellectual and liberally minded (at least some of the time), and while I am an ardent defender of the 1st Amendment (and all of the Bill of Rights), I disagree with the reasoning behind the foregoing quote and the similar arguments being put forward on this issue. In any controversy it is important, indeed essential, to understand what is the fundamental question at issue. And here, we have gross misunderstanding. The liberal view expressed above presupposes that the issue is that of freedom of religion and that laissez faire freedom is the intent of the 1st Amendment. Neither supposition is correct.

In the first place, the question is one of a building permit, which might be denied for any number of reasons and no recourse to Consitutional law would be in order. That should be plain, but the religious nature of the construction clouds, confuses and diverts the debate. In other words, while the 1st Amendment guarantees your right to free expression, it does not provide you the right to manifest that expression in the form of a building in downtown Manhattan. The city board is well within their rights to deny a building permit at a specific location for any form of otherwise lawful free expression that they deem offensive, irresponsible or simply undesirable and there is no valid legal or constitutional challenge to that. That's as far as this really goes, insofar as this specific situation is concerned.

But beyond that is a larger question, the one which intelligent and liberal-minded folks like Michael Bloomberg and now President Obama stumble over, one which has stupefied the liberal societies of the Western world for the last three decades at least and which will reach a moral crisis very soon.

The West, as a direct consequence of its bloody history of religious violence, is hypersensitive to the idea of government oppression or assertion of religion - and rightly so. However, the key and the seminal idea behind the US Constitution's 1st Amendment language that the government "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion", is not religious freedom in the sense of freedom from suppression of one's religious expression per se; rather it is a protection against the establishment of officially sanctioned and enforced religion. This is a crucial nuance.

Our contemporary revisionist, nationalist history teaches children that the poor Pilgrims came to America to be free and worship God as their conscience led them and that it is their struggle for religious freedom that inspired our First Amendment protections. The truth is that the Puritans, their proper name, came to America because they were initially unsuccessful in establishing the kind of society that they wanted, one ruled by absolutist and severe religious authoritarians, local ministers whose private utterances were taken as the word of God and against whom there was no appeal (sound familiar?). The Puritan fanaticism eventually overwhelmed the British monarchy for a brief epoch, during which they ruled oppressively and ruthlessly, violently purging Catholics and even enslaving the Irish. They were decidedly not advocates of religious freedom and tolerance. The were the English Taliban. And we rooted them out in this country long before the American Revolution or the Constitution was penned. Yes, that phrase in the 1st Amendment was inspired by the experience of the Puritans, but in a negative sense, that we would never tolerate that kind of intolerance again.

Most of Europe shares a similar history, whether of the Protestant wars or of the horrors of the Inquisition or simply the long miserable age of ignorance and oppression resulting from the dominance of the Roman Church. But the modern West does not know what to do with Islam. The Western intelligentsia is frozen by a collective sense of guilt and a phobia against any form of infringement of religious expression. Ironically, it is the most liberal, the most free-minded countries that are having the worst time of it: the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Denmark. France, perhaps alone among Western nations, seems to have grasped the danger posed by this situation and has made a few weak attempts to avert the inevitable corrosion and dissolution of its national identity; the ban on head coverings being an example. Twenty percent of the population of France is muslim, so for the French this is not an abstract problem.

If you are a liberal intellectual and recoil from this assertion, I invite you to read the Quran in its entirety - it is not "extremist" muslims who are violent, it is devout muslims who are impelled to intimidation, coercion and violence as an act of faith by their scriptures and their mullahs. The Great Commission of Yesshu Meshaiach is to spread the good news of redemption; the great commission of Muhammad was to conquer the world by force and rule it absolutely. While I applaud the ancient Sufis and the modern muslims who, since the 19th century, have embraced the civilizing tenets of Western liberal societies (the result of Judeo-Christian values, even in their secular humanistic expressions) and interpreted the admonition to jihad in abstract, spiritual terms as a challenge to wage intellectual struggle against unrighteousness, let's face it: these people are in the vanishing minority and their fellow muslims despise them.

On the one hand we can treat this sort of religious folk, whether they be devout muslims bent on following the dictates of jihad or adherants of Japanese death cults or home-grown "christian militias", as we do other extremists: scoff, laugh and apply intellectual pressure to their arguments. While that works reasonably well with most crackpot, extremist groups simply because their numbers are miniscule, it will fail with Islam in spite of its lack of coordinated hierarchy. The American Islamic population is deceptively tiny, but globally Islam has 1.5+ billion followers. Additionally, as anyone passingly acquainted with arguing with religious adherants can attest, rational methods are useless and invariably fail. Belief trumps all argument and even plain and indisputable fact for the devout believer. That is true of all religions, because its a matter of human nature. The people who are by their nature swept up by religious zeal are not susceptible to reason. Yet, this tactic of reasoning and societal pressure has been the default approach taken by almost everyone in the West to date. This, and the self-induced delusion of believing that "true Islam" is not intrinsically hostile to Western principles of liberty and peace, and that only "radical" Islam is the problem.

On the other hand we have the option of exercising the same measure of discrimination of the civil liberty of religious freedom as we accord to freedom of expression. Slander, libel, plagiarism, perjury, child pornography, hate speech and other forms of expression are illegal and can be severely punished by both civil and criminal penalties. We even have precedent for treating incitement to violence as a crime specifically. Why then do we shrink from banning religious expression that advocates, sanctions, blesses, admonishes, praises and endorses violence - especially violence of an ethnic, religious or otherwise intolerant nature? We acted against the Ku Klux Klan, which was essentially a cult, on this very basis in the past. We had no problem prosecuting the Manson family and even imprisoning their prophet, who had done nothing but incite his followers to their acts of violence. How is this any different?

Eventually, inexorably we must confront this moral question as a society, and the way in which we answer the question will decide our fate as a free people. Unless we find the moral grounding for defending liberty against intolerant religion, it will baffle our efforts to counter its violence and intimidation (a mechanism of political force that can be effectively applied from the opposite side of the world); it will use our own mechanisms of democracy and jurisprudence against us. Contemporary religious extremism is not like the moderate, beneficent expressions of religion prominent in the world, it shares the malevolence of historical religious expressions with predictably similar destiny, and to wink at it or treat it with kid gloves is a grave mistake.

(August 2010) I am all for keeping a close eye on the conduct of foreign policy and war, but this disclosure of documents relating to the war in Afghanistan was a poor decision and, for all of Julian Assange's pretentious intellectualism, it is indefensible. It reveals nothing that illuminates the strategic and tactical situation for those who pay even a little attention to the news. The bottom line: the lives of all of the Afghans who trusted us and aided us to purge their homeland of extremists are now at terrible risk.

(November 2010) Its staggering to think that America has come to this - that we would even consider electing a know-nothing ingenue bimbo as president. But after our quiet acquiescence to coup d'etat under LBJ, after Nixon's antics, after our despite for the last honest president until Obama, after a B-list actor proved that a career spook can manage a smiling cheerleader for the masses for two terms and then get elected himself and finally manage to replay the whole gimmick eight years later with his own son, why not? We deserve this. We are too stupid not to deserve this.

(December 2010) The arrest of Wikileaks director Julian Assange to face prosecution on two counts of rape in Sweden has clarified the character of both the man and the organization. Assange is an egomaniac narcissist, whose self-adoration does not admit submission to the rule of law or society's norms unless he privately shares them. The assertion made by his apologists that he is a modern day Robin Hood of truth, who steals from the corrupt and distributes freely to the masses, is so far removed from reality that its absurd. Notwithstanding the mission statement on the Wikileaks website and the pretentious air that Assange cultivates about his organization, Wikileaks has no moral core whatsoever. That is the only possible conclusion that one may draw from the indiscriminate, wholesale release of vast volumes of confidential information. There is not even a pattern or suggestion of a purpose to it. The only motivation is defiance of authority and indeed of society itself. The attacks by the "anonymous" army of hackers against the various financial institutions that removed support to Wikileaks constitutes terrorism and of a sort that is infinitely more threatening than the wildest imaginings of al-Qaeda. Ironically, the latest assault on the Gawker website clearly displays that this is not about freedom of speech at all, or rather it is only about freedom of speech for the enraged enfants terrible of the hacker community, who think that criticism of their actions is intolerable.

(March 2011) Its been 19 years since I made an intelligence threat assessment presentation in which I stated that "for the foreseeable future the greatest threat to US interests will be posed by extremist fundamentalist muslims" and predicted that our shifting alliances and warmaking in the Middle East would destabilize the most liberal, free and secular regimes. No one took that assessment seriously. I was ridiculed for making it. That time was immediately following the 1990 - 1991 Gulf War and the saw the emergence of the islamic extremist groups that we are so familiar with today, first in Egypt with Ga'maa al-Islamiya and later also with al-Qaeda. A year later was the first attempt to destroy the World Trade Center in New York. That was a wake-up call for some, but most took even that as an anomaly.

Fast forward almost twenty years and we see the collapse of the first of those regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. Actually, Algeria has been going through convulsions for some time now. And now Yemen, Jordan, Syria and Bahrain experience foment. Even the first tentative protests within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have occurred. Yemen's Saleh will be forced from power. Jordan has seemingly pacified its populace as did Saudi Arabia with a handout.

What emerges from this, whether it be a more liberal and democratic society that embraces Western ideals of pluralism or rather a majority rule that oppresses minorities or yet again a rule by the extremist radicals who have the will to use violence to wield power remains to be seen. Frankly, given the region's history, going back for milennia, of worshipful obedience to absolute rulers, I don't hold out much hope for anything that we would deign to grace with the name of democracy.

(April 2011) The 9+ Richter earthquake that wrecked the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant exposed the inherent weakness of the light water reactor design that has been the mainstay of US nuclear plants and (as in this case) those built on this American design. Light water plants have to be moderated by control rods and are additionally cooled by the water tank surrounding the core. Already comparsions are being made to Chernobyl and broadly sweeping criticisms of nuclear power are being made by those who lack an understanding of the technology. This is very unfortunate because the energy crisis that the world is facing will require fission nuclear power in the near term to stave off a disaster far beyond the scale of what happened in Japan as a result of the earthquake and tsunami. Uninformed people love to talk about green and renewable energy like solar and wind and water, but lacking knowledge they do not comprehend that these technologies are either already fully exploited, or too expensive or too geographically sparse to fill the demand. Only nuclear power has any prospect of satisfying current and future needs when we cease to use hydrocarbon fuels.

That said, the light water nuclear design must be abandoned now. The fuel that light water reactors use is uranium-235, an isotope which occurs in only 0.7% of the naturally ccurring uranium, so the fuel rods must be "enriched" in an extremely expensive process, both in terms of money and energy cost. Long before the enrinched fuel is fully consumed it becomes so contaminated by plutonium-240 (from neutron bombardment of U-238) that it can no longer be used safely as fuel in a light water reactor and those rods must be pulled and either discarded (where no threat of leakage can ever happen for tens of thousands of years) or else reprocessed in another extremely expensive process. increasingly, reprocessing has become so cost prohibitive that in recent years it has simply been abandoned as a viable course of action. In practical terms this fuel is often discarded. So, light water plants are inefficient, wasteful and unsafe.

In contrast, breeder reactors are moderated and cooled (typically) by heavy water containing deuterium and tritium, so they don't have an inherent tendency to run away in fission reactions or overheat. Best of all, breeder reactors are able to consume not only the 99.3% of natural uranium, but also plutonium in its several isotopes and pretty much anything else that will undergo fission. They can even be set up to work on a thorium fuel cycle, creating the opportunity to exploit another natural resource in the same way as uranium. Why we didn't adopt these in the first place is a tale in stupid Cold War politics.

And no matter how things turn out in Japan, we cannot allow the mistakes of the past to become the fatal mistakes of the future by running like superstitious primitives from all forms of nuclear power.

(27 April 2011) This morning President Barack Hussein Obama, he of the unfortunate natal christening, was obliged to publish the long form of his birth certificate in a press conference that ought to lay to rest the controversy that has raged for three or more years over the claim that he is not a natural born citizen of the United States (and a muslim...).

Of course it won't. What this birther obsession demonstrates is that no matter how much money you have accumulated (i.e., Trump) you can be certifiably deranged in your mental faculties. It also demonstrates just how prevalent and widespread is the psychosis that permits otherwise rational individuals to resist obvious truth because it conflicts with what they want the truth to be.

We get so many tonado warnings that I confess I do not take them seriously anymore. When I was a kid, a warning meant there was a real tornado on the ground. People had seen it. Now they declare a warning whenever there is rotation on radar. Its a liability issue for the weather agencies that own a Doppler radar. If they fail to issue a warning and it forms a tornado that causes loss of life they would be liable. Still, I wish that the threat levels had been updated in reflection of the technological and legal realities. At any rate, when this last prediction of dangerous storms was announced this past week I was unimpressed. Even after my fiancee called attention to the meteorologist's characterization of these storms as "benchmarks", I did not see any particular reason to believe the cry of "wolf! wolf!" this time more than all the countless times that there was nothing.

So, even after we knew that something had touched down near Cullman and it was obvious that it really was far worse than normal, we had no idea just how bad it truly was. The power went off around 5:30 pm, just as I sat down to send an email to my parents to tell them we were alright. Then the last wave of storms came through. I'm not sure, but I think this was the wave that caused the most damage and death.

With the power out for what officials were predicting to be at least 4 or 5 days, we headed out of town. It was only then that we realized the scale of the destruction. All along Interstate 65 the trees were shattered. As we neared Birmingham we picked up radio stations describing the aftermath in Tuscaloosa. It may be some time before the final death toll is recognized, but it may well prove the most deadly day of tornadoes in US history with 345 confirmed dead already and hundreds still missing. Experts are estimating that six to ten F4 or F5 class tornadoes struck Alabama alone. Its a rare year that a single F4 or F5 tornado is recorded. Several of these were up to a mile wide, so vast that it was not obvious that it was a tornado, as opposed to a wall of dark thunderstorm approaching.

Without question, it has changed our posture with regard to tornado preparedness. None of the classic responses would have been the least bit effective. The only thing that might have saved us, had it come here, would have been to flee. Our next house will have a storm shelter below ground.

(1 May 2011) This is a great day. After years of careful, quiet intelligence collection and analysis, SEAL Team 6, a disavowed element of US Joint Special Operations Command that is dedicated to counter-terrorism, was able to raid a palacial fortified residence in an affluent suburb of the capital of Pakistan and kill Osama bin Laden, as well as his adult son and two trusted henchmen. The operation was a classic old school strike, exactly the way that I have been arguing that we should prosecute our counter-terrorism for almost ten years now. It was quick, thorough and produced no collateral damage. As a last touch, they took away the body and dumped it at sea in an undisclosed location. President Obama proved that he had the sand to take direct action in the heart of Pakistan, without prior coordination or asking permission, and get the job done, finishing W's (and Clinton's) unfinished business.

It would be naive to overestimate the impact of killing Osama bin Laden at this late date. He evaded us for years prior to 9/11 and almost ten years after. Nevertheless, it will make a statement. Our vengeance may be slow in coming, but it will be relentless and there is no safe haven anywhere on this Earth.

Incidentally, that this gigantic and very conspicuous compound existed in a neighborhood surrounded by retired Pakistani military officials is all the evidence anyone needs that our doubtful ally was openly sympathetic to bin Laden and al Qaeda all along.

(Updated 4 May 2011) To all the feckless European lawmakers and leaders who are disturbed that we simply shot him dead, get over it. You may lack the moral constitution to deal out justice appropriately for mass murder, but we do not. No trial was necessary. His guilt was not in question. And yes, it was justice. Osama bin Laden's death should be viewed in precisely the same terms as the destruction of a rabid animal. There are plenty of evildoers in this world who deserve the same fate and it really is OK. If bin Laden had wanted a trial, he should have surrendered to law enforcement sometime in the last 12 or more years.

And to all the muslim mullahs and imams out there who are disturbed about the burial and whether it was disrespectful or conformed to Islamic practice, first you are a pack of godless infidels without a particle of decency or conscience and we don't care what you think - you miss the point of this entirely; secondly, when one is a mass-murdering savage and you actually receive a burial when you are killed for your heinous crimes, then you are getting far more than you deserve. In times past we hanged the bodies of men like bin Laden in an iron cage for the crows to peck at until the bones fell through the bars and nothing was ever given burial. Its a practice that frankly needs reinstatement. No, we did not respect Osama bin Laden. He was unworthy of respect. He was a coward and a self-righteous hypocrite. Nor do we respect you for honoring him in his death as a great "martyr". Bin Laden was evil and everyone who honors him has no understanding of God at all.

And just so that everyone knows where I stand on this and that its not a xenophobic Us versus Them argument, the unjustifiable war fought in Iraq was a crime far, far worse than anything that Osama bin Laden ever did and George W. Bush and his immediate coterie are far, far worse criminals for waging it for personal motives. America has the blood of countless innocents on its hands now. Had we not invaded Iraq without cause in 2003 we could be standing here now on the moral high ground with a sense of triumph. As it is, we have meager consolation in bin Laden's death. Any American who bristles at that statement needs to recalibrate and comprehend that God does not give America any special license. We are equally accountable.

(22 June 2011) When film critic Roger Ebert crossed over to pop culture criticism and tweeted, "Friends don't let jackasses drive drunk" on the news of Jackass co-creator Ryan Dunn's death in an automobile crash, his observation provoked a firestorm of repudiation from (presumably) the show's fan base and Dunn's friend and Jackass co-creator Bam Margera. So much so that Ebert, like many a twitterer before, recanted. While Twitter has become the go to means of public self-immolation for celebrities, I have to say that Ebert called it right and had nothing for which to apologize.

Ryan Dunn's chosen means of self-immolation took the life of his passenger and might easily have claimed several others. Respondents to Ebert's tweet flamed on about a rush to judgment on Dunn's presumed drunkeness, as well as the "lack of respect" for someone barely dead, but it was beyond dispute that he had just left a bar at which he had at least "a couple of beers" and the police have now confirmed that Dunn's blood alcohol level was over twice the legal limit. Regardless of his state of sobriety, Dunn was traveling at approximately 140 mph in a 55 mph zone when he crashed -- nearly three times the posted limit. So, drunk or not, he earned his death. No respect is due.

And is anyone really shocked by this news? Jackass was a show and film franchise that celebrated stupid acts of deliberate personal bodily harm -- highly dangerous stunts intended to inflict injury. What a shock that someone whose calling in life was to persistently tease death and dismemberment would inevitably make a non-recoverable mistake. Sure, many of us did fool stunts of a certain age. Most of us escaped through a fortuitous combination of youthful agility and resilience -- and divine Providence. Most of us also knew when to quit. Dunn was 34.

I had the same reaction when Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray wound to the upper thorax (meaning that he had to have been swimming right over the ray at very close range, since the spines are at the base of the tail, not the tip end). Irwin's death was an inevitability. He persistently took needless, life threatening risks. If it hadn't been the stingray it would have been a tiger snake that got him as he reached into a hole up to his shoulder to blindly grab it while hours from a medical facility or that crocodile that he continually infuriated with his lawnmower at the park. Tragic yes, as is Dunn's, but also 100% preventable and 100% self-inflicted. Therein lies the tragedy -- not simply in their deaths. These were not accidents.

So, when you feel ire over Dunn's violent demise, don't direct it at Ebert -- direct it at Dunn and thank God that he only killed one other person who volunteered to ride with him. Maybe someone will learn from this before they kill themselves, or more importantly, others. And maybe we, as a society of jaded and cynical entertainment consumers, will lose our taste for watching other people humiliate, punish and injure themselves for our amusement.

(22 June 2011) Sometime prior to August 2 the US Congress will be compelled to once again address the question of the debt ceiling. Unless it is raised, the US Treasury will automatically default on payments for some portion of the debts that it owes on oustanding Treasury bonds. Even missing payment for a few days will establish a shocking precedent. It would at one stroke erase over two centuries of adamantine credit history and abolish the one absolute guaranteed sure thing in the economic world, which is that the US Government is good for its debts.

The immediate impact of this would be dire. It would precipitate a simultaneous crash in both stocks and bonds -- something which normally doesn't happen. Ordinarily, if stocks crash then bonds improve, and vice versa. But in this case the bonds would plummet as well because the bonds are the very instruments on which the defaults would be occurring. Investors who had sought to balance and buffer their portfolios against unexpected downturns would lose in both directions.

Secondly, the lending rate on long-term debt (i.e., our Federal Government's debt) would jump at least 0.5%. That may not sound like much, but when you owe trillions its a big deal. Over 40% of our Federal budget is devoted to interest on debt payments as it is (interest, not principal). An increase in the interest rate by 0.5% might push that to more than 50%.

So, clearly we cannot afford to miss even a single payment on schedule. That ought to be unthinkable. However, an entirely different scenario presents itself if the US reneges on all of its debt.

If the US defaults on its debt, completely, then probably all of the bad things previously described will happen to the markets. Additionally, we will have a hard time ever again coaxing investors into buying US treasury bonds. Read there: never again. At best we would be able to curry enough investment for some long term domestic construction projects (think highway infrastructure). But is that such a bad thing? Or, I should say, is it as bad as the inevitable collapse of the economy from crushing debt?

It means we would have no alternative but to have a balanced Federal budget and pay our obligations annually as we go. On the plus side, it also means that instantly our Federal budget would be reduced by roughly half -- putting us back in the black immediately. Try any other means of reducing the budget that would arrive at even a fraction of that result.

Now, this would not be without its casualties. Significantly, one of the principal sources of security in retirement funds is long term US Treasury bonds. If we defaulted on the whole of our debt, then all of the retirement accounts based on these investments would be destroyed, with devastating effects on the retirees. So, I am not advocating this course of action. But if Congress does not take their responsibility seriously and act, then on the 2nd of August we will incur most of the penalties of default without any of the advantages.

(6 July 2011) If this blog page seems excessively negative it is because this is my therapy session. Venting all of this keeps me sane. My apologies. With that thought in mind, I have to say something about the Casey Anthony verdict announced yesterday.

Like most Americans, I was stunned and appalled by the jury's decision. It was incredible. When the last felony charge was read I simply couldn't believe what I was hearing. I've looked at numerous polls around the country and they all run about 4-to-1 against the jury's verdict. So, if those statistics are that consistent, how do we explain 12 people entering a room and within a day and a half unanimously reaching such an incomprehensible decision?

Plainly, they have been screened and filtered so that the 80% of common sensical folks have been strained out, leaving only barking idiots. The quotes coming from the jurors prove it. "I didn't say she was innocent," according to one. Really? Actually, I think that is exactly what you said. It made you sick to your stomach? Really? Then why did you find her not guilty?

Plainly, these fools cannot comprehend the obvious, cannot listen when someone explains their instructions and do not understand the English language spoken in simple terms. That is evident by their confusion over the principles of juridical proof and reasonable doubt. It is manifest by their mistaken impression that they were tasked with assigning a punishment. Juries do not decide such matters, even if they sometimes make recommendations. Juries decide innocence or guilt. How did they miss that part?

I am equally dumbfounded by the plethora of commentary to the effect that the jury would have found her guilty if the charge had not been First Degree Murder. Excuse me? The jury was instructed -- three times -- on the charges and how they might decide guilt in a descending order from First Degree Murder (in two forms) to Second Degree Murder, Third Degree Murder and Manslaughter. Failing all of that they could have found her guilty of Child Abuse. Its absurd to contend that the prosecution sabotaged this trial from the get go by charging her with Murder 1. There are no other alternative charges that could have been filed. They did not tie the hands of the jury. The only mistake was in assuming that a group of adults could think with any measure of basic clarity.

My father suspects that the popularity of the recent criminal dramas, particularly the CSI series, has fostered the idea that murders are routinely solved by incontrovertable physical evidence from a high tech crime lab. In reality, almost every murder case ever tried was judged on the basis of circumstantial evidence.

Nothing remained of poor Caylee but bones. It was no lack of effort on the part of the prosecution that failed to find additional physical evidence. Just how much DNA do you reckon is left behind in a car trunk by a body wrapped in three plastic bags and a canvas laundry bag? Or how much DNA remains on a piece of duct tape when even the cotton threads have totally disintegrated? So what? We just don't convict when the body is reduced to bones because someone wants more scientific excitement? Of course not!

Yet how more obvious could it be?

Oh, you have doubts about the chloroform odor or the web searches or the testimony of the meter reader? Fine. Discount all of it. None of that is necessary in order to clearly see the responsible party.

The prosecution established beyond any possibility of contravention that the child's body was disposed of by someone in that family. Her body was wrapped in a blanket from the house and placed in a laundry bag from the house. Not even the defense was willing to tender the supposition that some stranger entered the house and abducted the child. No one believes that. Casey Anthony claimed abduction, but in both versions of the lie she named the person (who does not exist) and alleged that she was present when it happened. Undeniably, there was no third party involved and the child was not taken when no one was aware.

That leaves only four people in all humanity, one or more of whom is responsible for that death of that child. This is not a difficult problem to solve.

In order to accept the accidental drowning theory put forward you must also accept that:

Accidental drowning is an idiotic argument. It fits none of the facts. It doesn't pass the reasonable doubt test. It is far beyond reasonable to accept this theory. If it was not an accident, then it was deliberate.

Casey Anthony was the sole person in custody of her child. All of her family members were imploring her to produce the child. Casey is the only person who persisted in lies about little Caylee's whereabouts, even asserting that she was still alive until the body was discovered. If she was an "amazing mother" wouldn't she have at least mentioned that the child was missing? Casey is the only person who felt the necessity to abandon a car beside a reeking dumpster to cover its odor. She is the only person in her family who profited from the death of Caylee and very evidently the only one unaffected emotionally by her "disappearance".

Her own family is persuaded of her guilt. So, why do the jurors and others persist in their disingenuous argument that there was insufficient evidence to reach a verdict of guilt? The only possible explanation is stupidity. Mind-boggling stupidity. I had never heard of the idea of professional juries until this verdict, but I am now very much in favor of that suggestion. We can't leave important matters of jurisprudence in the hands of the imprudent. And while we are at it maybe we need to revisit why the Founding Fathers doubted the wisdom of allowing suffrage for the entirety of the populace. Or perhaps the solution is a competency test for public service, whether it be a jury or elected office...

(August 2011) Economists have been worrying out loud about the possibility of a double dip in our recession. News Flash: It already happened. It occurred immediately after the debt ceiling crisis was averted by the deal struck between the White House and Congressional leaders. It happened because the whole world was treated to the naked staring fact that our political system is entirely broken. That in fact this deal was only barely passed in Congress and in a real sense it only forestalls the actual hard work of solving the budget excesses. That the Tea Party activists who took their seats in the House in 2010 wanted to sandbag the deal and many of them actively tried to cause us to default on our obligations. These single-issue crusaders evince no comprehension of the consequences of the solutions that they propose.

Americans seem ignorant of recent history, so a little review is in order. We are in debt $14 Trillion, a figure greater than our Gross Domestic Product - the sum of all annual economic activity by government, corporations and individuals. There are three reasons for this.

When George W. Bush assumed the presidency, we had been living with a balanced budget with expectations of budget surpluses for the next decade and our national debt was being reduced for the first time since Reagan took office. After September 11, the Bush administration embarked on a spending campaign that has accumulated the bills due today. That is reason number one: the Republicans, not the Democrats, have been the principal sinners in terms of spending. Contrary to the tiresome mantra that Democrats are "tax and spend" zombies, it is in fact the Republicans who have amassed the majority of the national debt, which was flat from 1945 to 1981 in constant year dollars. Their game is to spend all the money and leave the incoming Democratic administration or Congress with the bills. That creates the impression on a disinterested and intellectually lazy populace that good times happen with the GOP and hard times come with Democrats. Very clever - and very wicked.

The second reason is the laissez faire policy with respect to the financial markets. This hands off, look the other way approach to regulation encouraged the corruption and risk assumptive behaviors that caused the financial meltdown in 2008 that ruined the global economy. Had the Republican administrations not been so corrupted by their greed infused ideology, none of that would have happened. Its no accident that the wealth of the country has sharply concentrated with the ultra-rich over this time frame and that the culprits of this debacle have been universally protected and supported. A significant part of the debt we now owe is due to the TARP and other bailout or stimulus measures, and make no mistake you reactionary Obama haters, the TARP was a Bush creation. Go back and review the facts if you doubt that. It was initiated by the Treasury Secretary and only later codified by Congress. They really had no choice, we had already lent the money.

The final reason for our debt is the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy. Effective income and capital gains taxes on those making over $500,000 a year are the lowest that they have been in decades. The wealthiest derive relatively little income from salaries; most comes from capital gains. In real terms, the ultra-rich pay far less in taxes as a percentage of their income than I do. I don't insist that they pay dramatically more than I do, but I do require that anyone with more wealth than me carry at least as heavy a tax burden as I carry - especially when they are the ones reaping the primary benefits from the governance of this country (and don't be naive enough to imagine that some welfare mother derives more benefit from our government than a millionaire).

No matter how you slice it, there is no possibility of reducing the national debt without tax increases. That is the inescapable stark reality of the unrestrained spending of the Republican party. At the same time, we must invest in rebuilding this nation. Nor can we abandon our social welfare programs, even if undoubtedly they could all be streamlined and made far more efficient (no, not with private enterprise). The Tea Party and other extremists think that Social Security can be abolished but that the defense budget is inviolate. In no way is that acceptable when more than half of our budget is devoted to defense spending, including spending on debt incurred from past defense deficits. We don't need half our federal budget devoted to defense. Yet even allowing that inclusion, there is not enough room in the discretionary budget to make the cuts necessary to accomplish the deficit elimination and debt reduction, let alone the reinvestment in America needed in infrastructure, education and energy.

Increased taxation, hideous though it feels, is the only possible means of paying it down. When your credit card bills exceed your annual income it is insane to suppose that you can get out of the mess simply by eating out less, cutting out the tithe at church and neglecting Grandma. American politicians need to cease their cultish cant of empty ideology and take on the mantle of statesmen. They need to refocus from the self-serving object of re-election and do their job. We, indeed the entire world, cannot afford the kind of selfish stupidity that we witnessed this month.

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All of the remarks in this blog are my opinion and judgment, based on openly published information. Don't take my word for it. Do your own research. Form your own judgments.