I Retort, You Decide
We Still Kind of, Y'know, Like
America and, Well, Yes, Most of Its Leaders
Of course the most important question
you'll have about this website is: What's it about? The answer is easy: We
believe that America is a great place and it may seem like a radical idea or
dumb notion, but we also believe that our leaders have done a great job in
putting this country together and getting us to today.
We're independents. We criticize
both sides of the political spectrum and the middle, too. But we have respect,
not bile, to demonstrate our points of view. We're not Pollyannas, we're
pragmatists and we're not cranky and we're not curmudgeons.
Yes, we believe that Bill Clinton was a
great leader, but so is George W. Bush, and so was Lyndon Johnson, Richard
Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Eisenhower, Truman, Roosevelt. They all had something to
contribute that made us wiser as a nation.
Radical idea, huh? Disagree?
Okay, name me the leaders of another country who have done a better job in
putting together a nation of freedom, civil and economic rights, capitalism and
security.
Flat out: American leaders are flawed
and self-centered individuals. They also have placed the United States in
a rightful place of leadership to the world. Democracy is catching on
worldwide -- sometimes despite our leaders -- but here we are, and despite what
you may hear or think otherwise, America is still the strongest, most secure and
prosperous, boldest and most God-worshipping nation on earth.
I've lost you, haven't I? It's an
American pastime to criticize and vilify our leaders, especially the current
ones. Oh, we do that here, it's the American tradition and right to speak
out. But fundamentally we're believers in the system, chaotic as it is,
and yes even our leaders, those politicians. We don't believe radical,
overnight changes are needed.
Does that make us conservative?
Well, a lot of conservatives I talk to are calling for some bizarre, radical
changes in America. So are progressives and they want it NOW, but each
extreme of politics wants to bolt in a different direction, quickly.
To me, the odd thing about it is that
both the proposed progressive and conservative directions are not all that
dissimilar.
Does it truly matter anymore who
becomes president? We invest a lot of hope and fear in the presidency, but
in fact the president can't change things tomorrow or even next year, at least
not much.
Politicians promise a lot, but their
power is much more limited, I believe, than most people will recognize.
All politicians. Even the president. Could the next president get us
out of Iraq in 90 days? No. Absolutely not. Anyone who promises to
do such a thing is a liar.
The president can order troops in
relatively "quickly," but getting them out of a foreign entanglement without
putting their lives in danger is a meticulous process that can take many months.
The presidential candidates who promise a "quick" withdrawal from Iraq are
either lying or need to state their definition of "quick."
I think it's entirely possible that
whoever becomes the 44th president of the United States will be a good leader
for the nation. As both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton have demonstrated,
you can't pull the nation to extremes without pulling it apart. So what
you end up with is moderate, though not modest, changes.
The president's powers lie in emergency
actions and war, and it would take an emergency for sweeping changes. A
new Great Depression might be a cause for sweeping changes, but that remains the
province of the popular mood of Americans, not in the whim of the presidency.
One president does, the next undoes.
Then again, real sweeping changes would
take the cooperation of Congress. When Congress and the president are at
odds, then you have a real American republican democracy at work, and we like
that.
As long as one person cannot come in
and screw things up badly, then we can define our leaders as competent and the
system as functional. That's why I don't worry about who'll be the next
president, and that's one indication of the confidence I have in the American
Voter.
We do take it seriously and we're not
easily fooled, we voters. It may seem like we're focused on American
Idol and basketball, but our peripheral vision is good and focused on the
race for president, breads and circuses notwithstanding.
Is America a great place? Yes,
absolutely. Are some changes in order? Of course they always are!
Because no nation, no system, no leader, no citizen is perfect or even close to
it. We're a nation of people, not automatons, remember.
But hating Bush, hating Clinton,
Reagan, Carter, even Nixon is to miss the point of a republican democracy and to
invite cliche after cliche: We're a grand experiment, capitalism isn't perfect
but it's the best system devised so far, human beings are not and never will be
perfect and justice is a goal, not a certainty in a very unjust world. You
may hate him or her, but that The President you're talking about, show a little
respect.
The United States, through our leaders
and our citizens, has given a lot to the rest of the world in order to help
others. The justice in the way we have done it may not seem clear, but
it's there. The intentions may not seem humanitarian, but they are.
The goals may seem selfish, but so often they are not. The actions may not
seem beneficial, but they are.
If you want to bring up Hiroshima,
Nagasaki and Dresden here, you're part of the problem.
Hey look, I'm sorry, but this nation
has done -- and is still doing! -- more for the benefit of the world in making
order and prosperity out of chaos -- of rightly or wrongly fighting evil! --
than any other, so I don't hold any animosity toward leaders who don't meet my
high standards and criteria.
I read history. I look for similarities
in epochs and civilizations. And the more I read the more humble I become in the
judgment of leaders of great powers over the millennia. The struggle of humanity
ends only in the Great Millennium. Until then, reason, progress,
sympathetic action and respect for wisdom can suffice for an open mind.
Is this nation the epitome of the lofty
ideals that our founders envisioned? Nope. It's a work in progress, as is
every other collection of people. Is your life the ideal result of the
lofty dreams you had as a child?
=========================
Prepping for The Comeback Kid II
Houston,
TX -- Just before the March Texas primary: It's up to the news media to attempt a spin on tonight's primary elections
results, but one thing you can look for: The Comeback Kid.
Just as Bill Clinton did in 1992, it's
absolutely essential that Hillary Clinton's campaign have the ability to spin
tonight's primaries as Her Comeback from nearly a dozen primary defeats by
Barack Obama. But she and her campaign will provide the cues. Her
campaign rests on it.
There are several ways she can do it.
If Hillary Clinton were to win both Ohio and Texas -- which is what she really
needs -- she can lose the race for delegates so far but claim momentum, "the Big
Mo." Then it doesn't matter that she may fall way behind in the delegate
count, because the Clintons always rely on popular belief rather than facts and
if she says she won and the numbers say so, she'll claim victory despite the
facts. After all, the Clintons have always relied heavily on the lack of
knowledge on the part of the average person to shape their political realities.
The Clintons have been lately
downplaying their abilities to make a comeback, a sure sign that their strategy
is to lower expectations so that victory can be defined in several ways.
In the past, Bill Clinton has defined victory as not losing a contest, or even
defined victory as not losing big in a contest. When people count you out
going into a match, not getting bloodied is a form of winning.
Then again, Hillary Clinton can
continue her campaign simply by winning Ohio tonight. Just one win will
seem to be the start of a new winning trend, especially after losing 11
primaries in a row. That, too, will seem to begin a new momentum,
"The New Mo," because she'll be able to claim in new resurgence in popularity.
Hence, the Comeback Kid II. It's a PR ploy aimed at getting people to
believe that those on her side are on the winning side, despite the delegate
problem.
And that's a huge problem, because the
delegates will decide who's the candidate for president, not the popular vote.
You may recall that Hillary Clinton came out after the 2000 election, speaking
against the Electoral College which determined the winner of that election (the
Supreme Court notwithstanding, and a lot of Democrats still don't believe the
high court was upstanding). She could easily decry the delegate system and
declare support for reform, with a direct-electoral system.
There have also been hints that the
Clinton campaign (and/or the Obama campaign, whichever has the most to gain)
will bring suit over the rather convoluted way that Texas Democrats designate
their delegates, with a direct vote for 2/3 of the delegates, then a written
vote in caucuses, after the polls close, for the other 1/3.
But no matter how the campaigns spin
tonight's results, it's most important how the news media spin it. Despite
her complaints of media bias against her, networks such as NBC, CNN and others
appear to me to have bent over backwards to keep her fresh in the public mind,
and I'm talking about news shows, not "Saturday Night Live." If the
networks were as bent on seeing Obama as the candidate as Mrs. Clinton would
have us believe, we wouldn't be seeing nearly as much of Mrs. Clinton as we've
seen these past few weeks and, especially, days.
Both Democrats are in Texas today.
Hillary was here in Houston this morning, shaking hands near the polls.
She's off to Austin to take in tonight's results with a number of like-minded
people who are betting the farm that she wins the presidency. It's their
lifelong wish, philosophically and policywise. It's where Hillary Clinton will
feel comfortable, though it sends no particular message to voters.
Barack Obama is scheduled to be in San
Antonio, a good political move because the city is known for his large
population of Latinos. Obama may or may not feel comfortable there, but
it's a good political move since there are so many Latino votes available in
this campaign.
The advantage today is with the Obama
campaign: in delegates, in momentum, in running an efficient campaign, in
fundraising and in popularity. The Clinton campaign has to overcome much
more than just a deficiency in delegates and money and momentum.
It's been the Clinton Way in the past
to declare victory when victory had to be most narrowly defined in order to
claim it. I fully expect the same to happen tonight. It would be the
Clinton Way to seize any advantage tonight and declare it a victory and
continue.
That's why I'll be among the more
shocked if the Clinton campaign calls it quits anytime soon. And even if
the campaign ends in a few weeks or months, she's still going to be a major
power at the convention and there will be at least some pressure for an Obama-Clinton
ticket, despite rumors to the contrary.
========================
21 Observations
Because of personal obligations, I
haven't had time to do much lately but observe the national scene, the
electioneering and the state of the economy. Here are just a few of those
observations:
1. People are comparing the United
States today to ancient Rome, for several reasons. People have been
comparing the U.S. with ancient Rome ever since I can remember. That does
not mean they're wrong.
2. Alan Greenspan sure got out of
his job at the Federal Reserve just in time.
3. The U.S. let Saddam Hussein do
what he wanted for a long time as a counterbalance to Iran. Then we went in and
booted him out because it was more important to ensure the flow of oil than to
let him continue playing dictator.
Pakistan and Iran -- to name two -- are
real threats and a few years ago so was Libya. This is nothing like Vietnam.
Our actions in Iraq are of particular importance if you understand that the
world will in our lifetimes begin to "run out" of oil. Some countries that
might surprise you are already "running out," and I'm not talking about the U.S.
4. Hillary Clinton is on the
wrong track with her campaign. When Bill Clinton ran, there was an
easy-going, slightly humorous feel to the rhetoric and bluster. Hillary
Clinton seems humorless and strident. I wish she could change that.
Even Bill is all cold, hard stares and finger-wagging these days, it seems.
Where's the outrage? Hell, where's the fun?
5. The state of the world economy is
very dicey. I've read opinion after opinion from the doomsayers (The Great
Depression -- The Sequel!) to the mods (The Economy Is Sound!) and the key seems
to be, like everything else in life, really just in how you look at it.
Are we about to descend into a
leaderless chaotic abyss? Not because of the economy alone. It'll
take something else to trigger that. Will life always be as carefree as
it's been these last few decades in the West? Nope.
6. People in America are too
greedy, too money-grubbing in general. They didn't get the memo that
productivity has been up for many years. You don't have to gouge your
employees and the public so you can get rich(er). You might just get
rich(er) anyway. Either way, put down the cell phone while you're driving,
putz, because you're putting people's lives in danger.
7. President Bush is not the
worst president in history. People who say that aren't very old or aren't
very smart.
8. The number of people in
America who can't see past their cultural and partisan proclivities is growing.
It's true that there are people who still believe we should go back to the
values of 1963 and they literally hate anyone who disagrees. I know a
number of progressives who fall into this category.
9. Gangs have been around for
many, many decades, but the latest incarnations are destroying cities.
Have you been to L.A. lately?
10. Communism, Socialism, Marxism
and other collectivist ideologies have not disappeared, but are alive and well
in various forms here in the United States and throughout the world, including
Russia.
11. Many Americans are getting
progressively lazier, and I find this to be alarming. They use any number
of excuses in order not to do what was considered to be required behavior just
one generation ago.
12. As a member of the news
media, it's incredible to see Hillary Clinton bashing "The Media" for appearing
to be partial to Barack Obama. We used to like her best! That is,
until she started to resemble the schoolteacher who smirked while she rapped you
with a ruler, made fun of you in front of the class and then sent a note home to
your parents too.
13. I consider Ralph Nader to be
an honorable man. So why does he keep running for president when he knows
he can't win?
14. Don't you wish you could get
Peggy Noonan drunk just once so she'd say how she feels without trying to be so
eloquent and reserved?
15. Liberals secretly love Ann
Coulter, the same as conservatives secretly fear Hillary Clinton. I use
the terms "love" and "fear" quite sublimely here, much as Peggy Noonan might use
them.
16. To me, Ron Paul is not a
crackpot. He's just unelectable for the presidency.
17. I've noticed that you can
apply for three dozen jobs in one month -- jobs for which you're experienced and
well-suited -- and never hear another word about them. Some of these jobs
go unfilled for years.
(It's funny when you answer a job ad
and never hear from the company, but then they re-post the ad, saying "If you've
already sent your resume, please don't send another one." Why don't they
just be honest and say, "If you've already sent your resume, you'd have already
heard from us if you were good enough, wouldn't you? But you're not.")
18. The number of people who are
getting tired of e-mail is increasing. Now this is just based on anecdotal
evidence, but I know people who just loved e-mail a few years ago who now
consider it annoying.
Maybe it's the spam, or maybe it's too
many unreturned messages, I don't know. But some people do think it's an
appropriate substitute for cards, phone calls and snail mail, and it's not.
19. The governments are out of
control in America, and they need to be put back in control. I warned
politicians at the local and state level on this very website six years ago that
they should stop complaining about how tax revenue was down so low they had to
cut services.
I told them that when the economy goes
up again they should put some savings aside for the bad times, just like us
plebeians have to do. Did they listen to me? No. Of course not.
Fools. And now the economy is starting to dip again and they're starting
to complain again. Do I have to tell you idiots again?
20. Governments cover up too
much. A perfect example is economic data. There are "money experts"
all over the Internet who say you can't believe the federal government's
inflation figures. It's not 3%, they say, it's more like 6%. Well,
maybe they make more money than people like I do, so they don't notice, but
according to my budget, inflation is running at more like 10% a year, at least
for a number of staple items. That's one reason the mortgage people are
knocking at the door.
There was a time when the feds told us
how much of a real percentage of the population was unemployed. Now they
exclude people who've been looking for work for a long time. Well, they're
still looking for work aren't they? If not, they're still unemployed,
aren't they? Tell us the truth, we can take it.
21. Many people feel more
powerless today than in the past. I know a guy who's emphatic about
supporting Barack Obama for president. I asked Why? He said Because
he'll be good for America. I ventured the idea that the president isn't
nearly as powerful as we think. Oh, he said. Yeah, that's probably
right. So who do I vote for?
M.S.
No, No, Not Again!
Hey,
look, I've got nothing against Hillary Clinton. If she wants to run for
president, that's great. Anyone who wants to run for president should be
able to. The problem is, not everyone who wants to run for president can
get all that money together and gather all those political contacts. And
running is a hard thing to do while carrying lots of baggage. Still, I think her candidacy is a good thing.
But it's upsetting to see the
photograph
that suddenly appeared on the Internet, showing Hillary and Bill Clinton
flanking Antonin "Tony" Rezko, the Syrian-born Illinois political fixer under
indictment on corruption charges, who has close ties to the Middle East.
It's just politics, you say?
Okay, it's interesting that the photo shows up just now, days after Hillary
Clinton herself brought up Rezko's name during the Democrats' debate this week,
using Rezko as a slam against Barack Obama, who also has some ties to Rezko.
But I got a terrible feeling of deja
vu when Senator Clinton said on The Today Show Friday morning that she
doesn't remember meeting Rezko. So what if there's a picture of her with
him, y'know?
It's that "don't remember" stuff that
really makes me queasy because it reminds me of ten years ago, and it reminds me
of what Bill and Hillary Clinton are and whom they represent.
See, people have been saying for years
that George W. Bush represents Big Business and Big Oil and Big Pharma. I
won't argue with that. But there should be no implication that Bill
Clinton didn't represent Big Law and Big Unions and Big Media. He did, and he
proved it many times while president.
George W. Bush used to be in the oil
business. Hell, Rezko reportedly even threw a fundraiser for Bush, but
this isn't about the lame duck president. It's about Bill and Hillary
Clinton, who are lawyers. People still like to quote Bill's deposition in
relation to perjury charges against him, that "depends on what your definition
of 'is' is" thing.
In a criminal trial, you're expected to
answer examination by answering "yes," "no" or "I don't remember." Hillary
Clinton's saying she doesn't remember ever meeting Rezko reminds me that she's a
lawyer. No one can ever prove whether she does or doesn't remember Rezko.
So what?
So Barack Obama has already admitted he
made a "mistake" in some of his dealings with Rezko. He sounded in the
debate like he honestly regretted that property entanglement he had with Rezko.
Hillary Clinton should take a page from Obama's playbook and find a different
answer from "I don't remember."
In admitting a mistake, Obama sounds
like you and me, we make mistakes. Hillary Clinton ends up sounding like a
tremendously rushed Big Star, someone who's too busy to admit to the people that
she makes mistakes. Maybe she wants to name her memoirs "No Time For
Scandal."
"I don't remember" is something both
Bill and Hillary Clinton said many times in 1998 during Clinton's impeachment.
They said it both to investigators and to us. And now it's suspicious when
they say that.
Because as every lawyer knows, to say
"Yes I've met Rezko" puts you on the record for having dealt with someone who's
under close investigation by the FBI. To say "No I've never met Rezko"
puts you on the record as a liar if anyone can come up with any real proof that
you knew him. So to cover yourself in case some real proof turns up, "I
don't remember" is always the best legal strategy, since no one can ever prove
you right or wrong.
All someone could do, should you say "I
don't remember meeting him," is produce a photograph of you and Rezko standing
together and wave it in front of a jury and say, "Really? Here you are
standing next to him, posed and smiling like it's an official photograph rather
than among a crowd at a fundraiser, and yet you don't remember meeting
him? A highly influential man from the state where you were born?"
To which you might reply, "I've
probably taken hundreds of thousands of pictures. I can't remember them all."
Again, no one can prove or disprove that. And it's just what Hillary
Clinton said on The Today Show. It doesn't ring true. Unlike Obama
admitting a "mistake," trying to distance himself from the whole matter.
It sounds like trial testimony.
Which reminds me, against my will, that
Hillary Clinton is, like her husband, a lawyer. Not that there's anything wrong
with that.
But it also reminds me of 1998.
Bill Clinton and his Big Unions and Big Trial Lawyers and Big Hollywood.
Skirting the truth within the letter of the law. Then George W. Bush with
his Big Pharma Karma and Big Oil. Manipulating the truth to meet an
agenda. Now Hillary Clinton, with James Carville and Paul Begala and Ann
Lewis and Sidney Blumenthal -- all the faces we saw way too much of ten years
ago, going from talk show to talk show with talking points defending Bill
Clinton during his impeachment -- turning up on TV again these days as
"consultants" and "advisors" and "observers."
And of course you can't watch a news
show this early 2008 without seeing Bill Clinton stumping for Hillary Rodham
Clinton.
I thought this election was supposed to
be about a fresh start, a new direction for America, and it was time to kick the
bums out, move on, change direction, put some outsiders inside the Beltway,
bring in some new blood, blow out the cobwebs and get some fresh ideas into
Washington. Someone who represents the people of the United States, not
Big Anything!
Instead, it sounds like 1998.
No, no, not again!
Please.
More by Mike Shiloh
==============================

What's "Upsetting" About Hillary Clinton
Winning New Hampshire? Nothing.
Some newspapers
and newscasters are saying that Hillary Clinton winning the first primary of the
election year is an "upset." Why? Because the TV pundits and polls proved that
Barack Obama would win? That's ridiculous.
This is all part of the playbook. I most admire
someone in the Clinton campaign for planting a story on Matt Drudge's popular
website saying Hillary Clinton is worried and considered dropping out of the
race after her defeat in the Iowa caucuses. Drudge bit! He placed
one of his relatively rare personally-written pages on his site saying that
Clinton might be considering dropping out. "Developing"!
Ten quick points:
1. Iowa was a caucus. Non-binding. A great tradition that
leads off the campaign season (season? It's more than a year long now) but not
much more than a measure of which way the wind blows. For now.
2. Now that the average age of the news staffers at the networks and
newspapers is getting lower and lower, I can only guess that their political
experience is increasingly shallow.
3. You judge presidential campaigns by overall wins over a number of
primaries, not by a caucus or by one or two or even three primaries. The
old political hands in the Clinton campaign and the other campaigns know this.
Do the TV pundits? They don't appear to.
4. Clinton's people knew she was bound to win one of these primaries, so
having her cry on-camera (on cue? Remember, just the day before Clinton's public
tears came a friendly columnist's call for Hillary to stop being managed and
just be herself) and planting a story saying she might be considering dropping
out rather than facing humiliation is merely a ploy, a PR setup so that when she
does win she's The Comeback Kid -- The Sequel. Bill Clinton's campaign of
1992 was arranged in a similar way, with emphasis then on the "Kid" aspect of
the nickname, a marketing ploy to distinguish the 40ish Clinton from competitors
such as Bush Sr.
5. There are primaries on the way in which Obama isn't campaigning or
isn't on the ballot. Unless Edwards were to pull out a strong showing,
Clinton and her campaign are just being coy by acting worried.
6. New Hampshire was only an "upset," as the network and print news people
have been saying, if you believed the polls about Obama being out front.
Polls only indicate. That's why we newspeople use that term. "The
polls indicate..." The polls don't "prove" or "show for certain" any more
than a bite of a banana proves the whole banana is edible.
7. By calling New Hampshire an "upset victory for Hillary" news media are
helping the Clinton campaign's desire for a Comeback Kid - The Sequel scenario.
And they got it.
8. A Comeback Kid scenario proves that the Clinton campaign didn't get
back on track with the New Hampshire win, it proves that the campaign was on
track all along.
9. The Clinton people know this game well. They've thought it out
with respect to Bill Clinton's campaign 15 years ago. The big difference
is, as some have pointed out, Hillary Clinton represents the establishment now,
whereas Bill Clinton was a Washington Outsider back in '92.
10. There are some surprises coming, even for the Clinton people. Voters
are not in the mood to keep the status quo, and Hillary Clinton represents the
establishment while Obama represents a new direction. There are scandals
waiting in the wings for the Clinton campaign, so the war room will go 24/7.
And the big question: Are there other possible entries into the presidential
race around the corner that will change the whole dynamic of the campaign?
More by Mike Shiloh
===============================
A SHORT STORY OF CHRISTMAS
The man was not a scrooge, he was a kind a decent a mostly
generous good man, good to his family and upright in his
dealings with other men but he just didn't believe in all that
incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at
Christmastime. It just didn't make sense and he was just too
honest to pretend otherwise.
In essence he just couldn't swallow the Jesus story about God
coming to Earth as a man.
He said, "I'm truly sorry to distress you but," he told his
wife, "I'm not going to church with you this Christmas Eve."
He said he'd feel like a hypocrite so he would much rather
stay home, but that he would wait up for the family.
So he stayed and they went to the midnight service. Shortly
after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall and
he went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier
and heavier, then he went back to his fireside chair and he
began to read his newspaper.
Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound and then
another and then another.
At first he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against
his living room window, but when he went to the front door to
investigate he found a flock of birds huddled helplessly in
the snow. They had been caught in the storm and in a desperate
search for shelter they had tried to fly through his large
landscape window.
Well, he couldn't let the poor creatures lie there and freeze
but he could not let them continue to bang themselves against
the glass window so he remembered the barn where his children
stabled their pony. That barn would provide a warm shelter if
he could direct the birds to it.
So he put on his coat and galoshes and he tramped through the
deepening show to the barn and then he opened the doors wide
and he turned on a light -- but the birds wouldn't come in.
He figured food would entice them in so he hurried back to the
house and fetched bread crumbs and sprinkled them on the snow,
making a trail to the yellow-lighted, wide-open doorway to the
stable. But to his dismay the birds ignored the bread crumbs.
They just continued to flop around helplessly in the snow.
He tried catching them. He couldn't. He tried shooing them,
chasing them into the barn by walking around waving his arms.
Instead they just scattered in every direction. Every
direction except into the warm, lighted barn.
And then he realized that they were afraid of him. To them, he
reasoned, I'm a strange, terrifying creature. If only I could
think of some way to let them know that they can trust me,
that I'm not trying to hurt them but to help them.
But how? Because any move he made tended to frighten them and
confuse them. They would not follow, they would not be led,
they would not be chased or shooed -- because they feared him.
If only I could be a bird, he thought to himself. If only I
could be a bird and mingle with them and speak their language
and tell them not to be afraid and show them the way, lead
them to the safe warm barn.
But then of course I'd have to be one of them so they could
see and hear...and understand..and...
At that moment the church bells began to ring and the sound
reached his ears above the sounds of the wind and he stood
there, listening to the bells -- Adeste Fidelis -- listening
to the bells, feeling the glad tidings of Christmas...
And he sank to his knees in the snow.
==============================
UH OH: MORGAN STANLEY
ISSUES FULL RECESSION ALERT
Morgan
Stanley has issued a full recession alert for the US economy,
warning of a sharp slowdown in business investment and a
"perfect storm" for consumers as the housing slump spreads.
| |

|
|
Fed chairman Ben Bernanke will be hoping he can keep the
US economy from recession
|
In a
report "Recession Coming" released today, the bank's US team
said the credit crunch had started to inflict serious damage on
US companies.
More.
THE NEW S&L CRISIS
The Wall Street Journal: The mortgage crisis now rivals the S&L crisis. "Wall Street built a market for more than $2 trillion in securities sold globally and backed by loans to U.S. homeowners on two long-accepted beliefs and one newer one.
The prevailing logic: The value of the American home would never fall nationwide, and people would almost always make their mortgage payments. The more recent twist: Packaging mortgage loans and turning them into securities would make the global economy more resilient if anything went wrong."
That, however, has
proven to be a mirage. As house prices fall and homeowners default on mortgages at troubling rates, the pain has spread far and wide."
Read more.
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I Retort, You Decide:
LOOKING BACK:
This month in
1999: In the waning days of the Clinton administration,
the State Department's North Korea team announced a "breakthrough"
that North Korea had offered assurances -- unwritten -- that it
would agree to a halt to it's nuclear weapons and missile
development programs.
The U.S. negotiating team
celebrated. A few days later, the administration suspended
some U.S. economic sanctions against North Korea. One of them
had been in place since the Korean War. The U.S. side said it
had won a major concession from the North Koreans.
In retrospect, it was just
as some analysts figured: Pyongyang was using the agreement as an
attempt to get aid in the form of cash from the U.S. The
weapons program continued anyway. Aid was forthcoming, both in
cash and in technical advice in the building of nuclear reactors,
which were supposed to be for peaceful nuclear energy production.
In the end, who was the
beneficiary of the negotiations? Israel bombed a Syrian
facility last month. Rumors continue that it was a nuclear
facility and that North Korean (and Iranian) nuclear technical
advisors were killed in the bombing.
Also in 1999: Legal
immigration reached its lowest level in ten years, not because of
quotas but because the White House shifted personnel, according to
AP, from servicing green cards to servicing naturalization. With nearly 2 million
immigrant applications pending, INS personnel were swamped with
paperwork.
The effort to clear the
paperwork backlog resulted in 180,000 immigrants being granted
citizenship without "mandatory" criminal background checks.
The other result: A huge backlog of green card applications resulted
in a long waiting list for legal immigration. That ended in
frustration on the part of immigrant applicants, who then resorted
to illegal immigration.
The political theory at the
time, by the way, was that immigrants usually vote for Democrats, so
the Democratic administration was doing its best to get as many new
voters as possible by opening up the legal-immigrant floodgates at
the expense of green card seekers.
J.B.
==============================
WHAT'S GOING ON WITH THE
ECONOMY?
We're seeing a broad
restructuring of investments and it's painful. Money has been
quickly disappearing from some parts of the U.S. and world economy
and is reappearing in others. It's all cyclical, but it is
hurting people. More and more as each day of the past three
months goes by.
HOW DO YOU KNOW?
I'm just talking in
generalities here. I'm a reporter and analyst, so I'm
reporting what I see and hear. There's talk "out there" that
we're going into a recession, even a depression like the 1930s.
That seems unlikely at this point only because there's little panic,
but there is a big restructuring going on. The average person
only sees part of it. Money moving in huge quantities from one
market to another. It's a very tricky time, if you're an
investor.
SO WHAT YOU SEE AND HEAR IS
THAT THINGS ARE GENERALLY OKAY?
No. There were predictions
two years ago that the real estate markets were getting as bloated
as a market hog. Anyone who's been watching the markets these
last two years saw the bottom drooping in the real estate market.
But it's like a cliche: You don't know about the tire until the
rubber meets the road. So many little things could go wrong
while the bottom drops out of the real estate market that you have
to watch closely. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is watching it
closely. So are Congress and the White House. So is
(former Fed Chairman Alan) Greenspan, I guarantee you.
WHAT'S HE GOT TO DO WITH
IT?
As Fed chairman, he helped
enormously in getting us here with his manipulation of interest
rates as a way to control investments and the economy.
BUT HE GOT OUT AT THE RIGHT
TIME?
If you mean he retired on
top, it looks like it -- at least on top of his game, if not a top
economy. Greenspan is a visionary, but the practicality of his
tactics is yet to be seen. He was
doing a little monetary experimenting with the U.S. (and therefore
the world) economy. It's been interesting to see money
"migrate" from industry to industry over the past decade or so.
But right now, there aren't any trendy places like Dot Coms or Real
Estate to put money, so money is running to safety.
SO THAT'S THE PROBLEM?
Well, actually it appears
that the problem is the packaging of virtually worthless real estate
mortgages and selling the paper representing those mortgages to
foreign investors, to put it simply. Those investors seem to
think they've been duped, and maybe they have been.
But then you'd have to say
that those packaging the mortgages as notes were being deceptive and
I'm not convinced that's true. Either way, though, you have
some pissed off people worried about where their money really is --
and I'm talking big international investors.
So they move their money to
protect it. They move it in huge amounts on a worldwide basis.
They don't have allegiance to any one country necessarily, they just
want to protect their investments and who can blame them?
But with all that money
going quickly from one place to another, it's like an earthquake.
Some things are scratched when they fall off the shelf, but entire
structures also collapse.
ARE WE SEEING THAT NOW?
Yes. But that's nothing
all that unusual.
Some people like to call this kind of thing a "correction," meaning
things were out of whack and now they're, well, getting into whack, y'know? But like I said, it's painful, at least for some
people and companies and even entire businesses. But cyclical.
SO YOU THINK ALL THE
TURMOIL IS JUST NORMAL AND YOU'RE NOT WORRIED?
Just like many people, I'm
worried. Mostly about the potential for disaster, not about
what I find happening today. In an earthquake you become most
worried about whatever building you're in. Will it hold up or
should you go running into the streets? Or you worry about
your own home.
What you don't want to witness, though, is the
collapse of a skyscraper. The people standing around the
streets of New York on September 11th, 2001 saw two of those.
Since the beginning of the so-called modern era we haven't seen the
collapse of a skyscraper during an earthquake.
Speaking about our economy,
both in the U.S. and worldwide, we don't want to see that today.
Yes, the economic changes have hit
Alcoa and Countrywide and many other smaller companies. We're
seeing the effects today on CitiGroup, where profits are hurting
badly.
But we saw endless numbers of Dot Coms
disappear overnight early in this decade. We saw whole
companies and careers collapse in the '87 stock market collapse.
There are procedures in place now to protect against such things on
such a massive scale as in the past.
But we don't want to see
this bring down GM or Ford. Or something unimagined as yet.
M.S.
===============================
A TERRORIST "ATTACK ON U.S. SOIL" PREDICTED
....Meanwhile, maybe its time to start thinking about who should be
our next president. And why......
The
terrorist network Al-Qaida will likely leverage its contacts and
capabilities in Iraq to mount an
attack on U.S. soil,
according to a new National Intelligence Estimate on threats to
the American homeland
The report lays out a range of dangers—from al-Qaida to Lebanese
Hezbollah to non-Muslim radical groups—that pose a "persistent and
evolving threat" to the country over the next three years. As expected,
however, the findings focus most of their attention on the gravest
terror problem: Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.
(continued below)
=====================

I like to throw this photo in every now and then. Bill and
Hillary before all the innocence died. The once and future (?)
presidents. Aren't they cute?
================================
The report makes clear that
al-Qaida in Iraq, which has not yet posed a direct threat to U.S.
soil, could become a problem here.
"Of note," the analysts said, "we
assess that al-Qaida will probably seek to leverage the contacts and
capabilities of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI), its most visible and capable
affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack
the homeland."

Besides
Hillary, here's another candidate for president: Fred Thompson. As one blogger said,
what a first lady she'd make! Men would be
reading the paper every day to see what's she's been up to! This will polarize women's
votes if Thompson goes against Clinton. How many women want a Hollywood starlet-type in the White House? Younger women may
relate to Fred's wife, though. Don't let her looks fool you, she's a professional.
Her name is Jeri Kehn. Google her.
She is in effect
managing her husband's White House bid and has hiring and firing authority
over staff, according to the The
Telegraph.
Shalom Out,
M.S.
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