Pocky-Klips

Let me sum up the entirety of the budget/debt ceiling issue for you, gentle reader. Bear with me, there are some twists and turns.

Congressman1: "We're broke!"

Congressman2: "Wait . . . I have an idea. We'll spend more! That should fix it!"

Congressman3,4,5,etc: "GENIUS!!"

Here's the real solution: 1 - Spend less money. 2 - Simplify the tax code, removing as many loopholes as possible. 3 - Return government to its Constitutional boundaries.

See? Was that hard?

Good, Bad, Other

Senator Robert Byrd has died. His career in Congress is highly instructive, for Byrd exemplified both the best and worst aspects of our Congress.

As both the longest serving Senator and the longest serving member of Congress, Byrd shows one of the fundamental problems with that branch of government - People who get in and essentially take root, gaming the system to make it very hard for a challenger to dislodge them. It's hard to claim with any credibility that someone who's been sitting in the same seat for fifty years can bring very many fresh ideas to the issues and problems of the day. Byrd was locked into, and epitomizes, the Washington "system".

And yet, at the same time Byrd was bringing a lot of benefits to his constituents back home in West Virginia. He was unsurpassed in the art of steering pork to his state. West Virginia saw federal benefits far out of proportion to its population or its contribution. It can be argued that West Virginia needed this level of support due to the poverty and lack of opportunity afflicting many of its residents, but one must still wonder if some of those resources might have been better expended somewhere else.

Byrd had a checkered past. In his younger days he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and supported segregationist, if not outright racist, positions and policies. Later in his career he repudiated these positions, however, and often expressed regret for his actions. One is forced to wonder how much of that regret is for the injustice of his positions and how much is for the damage it did to his political career. Because over the course of his long service, Byrd showcased the tendency of our Congressmen to regard maintaining themselves in office as their primary responsibility.

Either way, a long and varied career has now ended, and just a few days shy of the July 4th celebration of America's birth. Fare thee well, Senator.

Camelot's Last Watchman Departs

Teddy Kennedy has died. I honestly don't know how to feel about this. Ideologically, he was on the "wrong" side of a lot of issues to me, but he was a force to be reckoned with in the Senate. And some of his major accomplishments were landmark pieces of legislation, reshaping the social and political landscape of America for the better.

But Ted Kennedy was also a virtual poster boy for the "tax and spend" school of politics. And altho his record of service in the Senate is remarkable for its length and breadth, it also stands as an example of what's wrong with American politics, where people get in to Congress (either chamber) and take root. It's hard to credibly advocate for "fresh ideas" when you've been in the same office for four decades.

All other considerations aside, Ted Kennedy's passing marks the end of an amazing political saga, from his brother John F Kennedy's rise, to Bobby Kennedy's equally tragic story, to his own phenomenal career. Teddy was the last of his generation, the final sentry on the battlements of Camelot. The family scions now in public service just don't have the gravitas of the Jack/Bobby/Ted triumvirate. Somehow, the greatness of the Senate itself seems now diminished, as if a central pillar had been removed.

Fare thee well, Senator Kennedy.

Out Of The Past, It's Sarah Palin

Found this post by Teflon over at Molten Thought, which links to a post by Thomas Sowell at the National Review Online. Sowell's short piece talks about the reaction to the candidacy of Sarah Palin for vice-president last year. I don't have a lot to say about Palin that I haven't already posted here, but I found Sowell's comments interesting. I kinda liked Palin simply for her ability to cause the reality-impaired to nearly stroke out every time they thought about her. Is she a viable candidate for President in 2012 or 2016? Who knows? There's certainly more to her than the Tina Fey caricature we got from the mainstream press during the campaign. Whether that "more" includes sufficient oomph to make her a serious contender for the post-Obama period can't really be determined yet.

But gosh, it sure was fun to watch the political Left reveal their contemptible true character when she was running.

Seismic Shift

Today a fulcrum has tilted. A fulcrum which has been frozen in place for so long that it seemed it would never shift.

Since George Washington took office in April of 1789 until today, the forty-three men who have sat behind the desk of the President of the United States have been a variation on one theme - "old white guy." To be sure, a few have not been quite so old. Their politics and policies have been different, but the faces have all been of a kind.

Just after noon today, 20 January 2009, a new face joined the group. A face many thought would never find a spot in the mighty assemblage of Chief Executives. With a grinding of long-unused gears, the fulcrum of the American political landscape finally tilted away from the point where it had rested for centuries and found a new balance. Barack Hussein Obama II took the oath of office to become the forty-fourth President and the first black man to hold the post. Regardless of his political leanings, or what the future may hold for his administration, Obama's election to and assumption of the Presidency is one of those inflection points in history when everything changes. A long and unpleasant chapter of American history is now closed as a representative of a once-oppressed minority rises to the highest position an American can attain.

Well done, sir. Tho I disagree with some of your politics, I hope with all my being that you will prove my apprehensions wrong. The country needs a giant at her helm right now. You, sir, must grow beyond the limitations of party, of race, of politics and of expectations. You must guide our nation away from the decline and irrelevancy towards which the last several small men to hold your new office have turned her. You must be more than a steward. More than an executive. More than a Commander-in-Chief. More than a President.

You must be a leader.

Racist? Really?

This is the absurb depth to which we've sunk during this campaign. A little girl wears a Sarah Palin t-shirt to school and is branded a "racist" by some of her classmates.

I could launch into a polemic about how this came to be, what it says about the current state of American politics, and bemoan the implications for the future of our country. Instead of all that, tho, I'll just say . . . sad. Very, very sad. And utterly ridiculous.

Fannie and Freddie Fall Down Go Boom

It's been terrifying to watch the financial markets unravel these past weeks and months. Decades of bad decisions, bad policies, and bad legislation are paying off. The government is enacting a bail-out plan on a scale never before contemplated, let alone seen, with hundreds of billions of dollars in extra spending suddenly piled onto our already unbalanced budget. Debt, debt, and more debt. This money will come from where? Will be paid back how?

The bottom line is simple, gentle reader: I don't trust the buffoons in Washington to get this right. They are, in my estimation, going to make the crisis much, much worse than it needs to be with their hasty and ill-considered "rescue" plans. We are looking into an abyss. What may be on the other side is hard to determine. America could and probably will lose its preeminance in the world economic order. We're already the largest debtor nation by a huge margin. Loss of economic strength virtually ensures loss of military strength, and the Pax Americana will go the way of the Pax Britannica before it. We may be looking at several decades of world chaos.

Here's an interesting little video regarding Fannie and Freddie. While the presidential campaigns play out, the whole situation is even more politicized than it would normally be, and that's saying something. Altho there's no shortage of blame to go around for this fiasco, somehow the Republicans in general and McCain in particular are catching the worst of it. While I calculate that it's too late for anything as mundane as facts to influence the elections, I nevertheless present this for your edification. Go ahead and watch while I run out for MREs and ammunition to stock the bunker.

It's Been Such a Long Time . . . It's Been Such a Very Long Time

Quite a while since the last post. Well over a month. Much has happened.

Barack Obama is of course the presumptive Democratic nominee for President. I believe he will win. McCain has a good record of service but he feels old and tired. His moment was 2000, not 2008. Obama is putting out a message of "change" which, even tho it's not actually defined very well, is bringing people into his camp. And since he is relatively young and not fully assimilated by the Washington political culture, he may be able to deliver. We'll see in November.

Oil prices have skyrocketed. The economy, already battered by the housing industry implosion, is looking like it's headed towards a recession. President Bush announced the opening of formerly-restricted areas to oil drilling and that's having a somewhat calming effect on prices, at least for the moment. Realistically, the only long-term fix to this problem is to move off of the oil standard entirely. There are measures that can be taken, and we're seeing some stuff already happening as the market adjusts itself. The big American car manufacturers are scaling back or ceasing production of oversized, inefficient vehicles like SUVs and there are plans for more hybrids. Small cars are coming into demand again as short-sighted American consumers finally have reason to think about fuel efficiency. At least one manufacturer has announced a hydrogen-powered car for near-future production.

Of course, the more government interferes with the market, the worse things will get. One has only to look at the ethanol subisdy business to see how easily good intentions can fall victim to the Law of Unintended Consequences.

The situation in Iraq continues to improve. Only the most foaming-at-the-mouth of the reality-impaired can now deny the success of the "surge" strategy. Afghanistan, meanwhile, is not going so well. Too many resources being directed to the Iraqi theater means not enough is being done in Afghanistan. Still, the situation remains controllable. One hopes that the next President doesn't suffer an attack of extreme foolishness leading to a precipitous action like a sudden withdrawal from Iraq before things are sufficiently stable.

The recent Heller decision by the Supreme Court, altho flawed, nevertheless established the Second Amendment as an individual right. Of course, this was patently obvious to anyone with more than a sixth-grade command of the english language all along, but it's nice to have it made official. The DC government, as is the habit of entrenched liberals, is trying its best to ignore or circumvent the court's decision. I forsee several more legal challenges to DC's grossly unconstitutional gun laws in the near future. Meanwhile, it seems likely that several other cities with such rubbish on their books will also see their attempts to trample the rights of their citizens challenged on the basis of Heller.

The FISA legislation was passed by Congress. This of course is damaging to our freedoms, being yet another short-sighted attempt to provide security at the cost of essential liberties, and we all know the famous quote regarding such things. I believe it's time to show Congress that We The People aren't going to tolerate their nonsense any longer and vote the lot of them out of office. However, I have no realistic expectation that this will happen. There are too many knee-jerk voters out there who would vote for Satan so long as old Scratch had the right letter in front of his name. And everyone always seems to think that, altho Congress is doing a poor job, their own guy is just fine and they keep sending him back.

No profound insights this time, I'm afraid. Just some random thoughts and observations.

Iowa Caucus Results

According to the numbers CNN is reporting it looks like Obama takes the primary for the Democrats and Huckabee for the Republicans. Edwards is in second and Clinton in third on the D side, with Romney and McCain taking those slots in the R column. And the 2008 campaign is off to a roaring start.

I find it heartening that Obama is doing so well. Think of the history being made here: a black man is a serious contender for President. If that doesn't tell you we've come a long way, baby then you're just not paying attention.

Huckabee, on the other hand, I expect to fizzle as the primaries go forward. Altho none of the Republicans are especially impressive this time around, I expect either Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani to eventually break out of the pack. We'll see.

Time Passages

Yes, now it's December and I still haven't posted anything.

When I started this blog, it was because I was dismayed at the hate and anger seen in blogs on the fringes of the political spectrum and wanted to provide some kind of counterbalance. A cool voice of moderation from the middle. And yet, since I began my modest little effort, it's become clear that what I considered the fringes are actually the dominant voices in the political blogosphere. Access to a pulpit has enabled the lunatics to take over the asylum, as it were. You can watch both sides spin up over each story that comes along, one blog feeding back into another, into another, into another in a self-reinforcing cycle of apoplexy. Lost in the madness is any semblance of reality. Everything is pushed to its absurd extreme.

What's a lone voice of restraint in the midst of all that cacaphony?

The silly season is hard upon us, gentle reader. Both major political parties are trying to sort out their presidential candidates. It's almost like watching American Idol . . . you've got the ones who have a decent shot at the office, the ones who aren't quite ready, and then the hopeless dreamers. We're missing only a political Simon, Paula and Randy to sort the wheat from the chaff. I guess that's the role of the voters, but we'll see. We're watching a crop of mediocrity bloom in a field where we desperately need a harvest of greatness. I mean, really, are Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney the best we can do?

Iraq continues to make slow progress. Things are improving with the change in strategy and the surge. You have to watch this one extremely carefully to see what's actually going on, what with the spin on every event being completely off the dial, but if you pay attention you can see it happening. As I've said before, patience is the key to success.

Afghanistan, meanwhile, remains a battlefield no-one not directly involved with seems to be looking at. Progress there is slower than it should be, with Iraq distracting us from making a better effort.

Our President convinces me more every day that he's hopeless. Run out of steam. Lacking in "the vision thing." Fortunately, he's about done. It seems like he was trying to blow Iran up into some kind of crisis, but no-one is having it. Despite what you'll read in the left-leaning blogs, there's no attack on Iran coming any time soon, and that was true even before that inexplicable National Intelligence Estimate magically found Iran to be lacking in credible nuclear menace. I worry about that one . . . it's almost as if the intelligence community is overbalancing too far in the opposite direction after the Iraqi WMD debacle. I fear the price for seeing Iran in such a nonthreatening light is going to be a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv.

I've wanted to write about all this stuff, to post my thoughts. But the motivation to actually sit here and do it, that's been hard to come by. So much stuff going on in my real life, what with renovating a house and a trip to Europe and work and everything. Blogging comes low on the priority list. This is because I, unlike some, do not view everything thru the lens of politics and I don't interpret each setback to my particular set of beliefs as The End Of The World As We Know It. I know that it's all on a pendulum. A swing one way is eventually balanced by a swing back the other, as the great levers of society pivot on their fulcrum.

The Cut-n-Run Is Looking Ever More Likely

With our craven "re-election above all else" politicians growing ever more determined to ensure our defeat in Iraq regardless of the horrific consequences that would certainly follow, it's worth thinking about what our sudden withdrawal would actually mean. And this guy sums up the whole thing pretty well in a response to the latest surrender piece in the New York Times.

I'm getting awfully discouraged, gentle reader. The voices of defeat and surrender are louder and more reality-impaired than ever. I almost wish they'd get their way, just so that the inevitable disasters that would follow could unfold and discredit such empty ideas once and for all.

Final Jeopardy

So President Bush has commuted "Scooter" Libby's sentence.

Yes, it's within his Presidential perogatives. No, it really, really wasn't a good idea. Really.

Other Presidents have done the same sort of thing. It is not uncommon. But prior example is not justification for a maneuver so nakedly political.

As I said in an email to a friend, it seems President Bush, in the last two years of his administration, is determined to self-destruct as spectacularly as possible. The Republican Party is coming apart (not necessarily a bad thing, since political parties do not seem to be particularly good for democracy) which will make the 08 elections easy pickings for the Democrats.

All this just as what seems to be the biggest conflict of cultures since World War II looks to be shaping up. Well done, gentlemen. Well done.

Too Soon?

Yet another explosion of inexplicable violence. The campus of Virginia Tech thrown into panic and chaos by a deranged gunman. Over thirty people killed in cold blood. Said to be the worst such massacre in American history.

Take a moment, gentle reader, to pause and reflect on the lives so unfairly snuffed out. When the story first broke, did you think to yourself, if only for a moment, what if it's a terrorist attack? I did, tho it quickly became apparent that this was not Al Qaeda or some other shadowy terror group launching another assault.

Students and faculty, young and old. A survivor of the Holocaust. Innocents denied their future because one individual was wracked with a pain he could not assuage. It's sad. It requires some time to absorb. To come to grips with the awful truth of it. Our minds will spin and struggle to assign some meaning to it all, to understand why, even as we know deep inside that there is no "why", because we know that sometimes evil erupts onto our world without warning.

Sadly, tho, it seems that there was warning in this case. The killer left behind at least a year's worth of suspicious behaviour. Measures were contemplated but apparently never acted upon. And now it's too late.

Strangely, sadly, maddeningly, however, it would appear that it's not too soon for the incident to be turned into grist for the activist mills. The anti-gun crowd is already beginning to clamor about this being a reason to enact strict new gun control legislation. The pro-gun lobby is already launching countermeasures. You can read the papers, watch TV, surf the blogs, and already you can see the heat of the arguments ratcheting up.

Lost already are the human faces of those killed. Already seen not as people, not as lives cut short, but as political bargaining chips. Talking points. Banners under which to rally.

Stop it. Stop it, for the love of God. Your fellow citizens are dead. Murdered as they went about their daily affairs. Put aside your canned rhetoric and spin machines long enough to recognize what's happened and allow some dignity to attend the aftermath of this horror. Let the families and friends do their mourning, let the rest of us bow our heads in prayer or contemplation or just plain shock before you make this your latest grand crusade to change the world.

Decency compells us to allow nothing less. There will be a time for the debate, but that time is not now. For now, just remember and reflect.

Speaking Truth to Power

If only I had a dime for every time I’ve run across that phrase. So many public commentators make the claim that they’re “speaking truth to power” when in fact all that they’re doing is venting their spleens. It’s a thinly-disguised claim to informational / intellectual superiority . . . “if only you were as smart as me, you’d realize that I’m right and you’re wrong.”

Rubbish, of course. People have different opinions on various matters, but holding an opinion doesn’t mean that you’re “right” or that those who disagree with you are “wrong.” You might be right, or you might be wrong, but the automatic assumption that your view is the correct view is rooted not in logic and reason, but emotion and ego. The wise man knows that he must question his own assumptions at all times. Or, as I like to put it, cynicism keeps you alive in a hostile universe. You may hold tightly to a cherished view on a given topic, but you must always be ready to jettison that view should the weight of evidence prove it wrong. This is the difference between a realist and an ideologue, and there are entirely too many people out there who don’t appreciate that difference. The blogosphere is littered with them.

The Washington Post had an interesting little article about this the other day. The author is Shankar Vedantam and the piece is titled “Disagree About Iraq? You're Not Just Wrong--You're Evil.” You’ll need a (free) registration to read the whole article, but here’s a snippet to pique your interest:

"Partisans within ideological groups tended to view themselves as atypical vis-a-vis their group: atypical in their moderation, in their freedom from bias, and in their capacity to 'see things as they are in reality' even when that reality proves to be ideologically inconvenient or 'politically incorrect,' " Harvard Business School researcher Robert J. Robinson and his colleagues concluded.

Is that not the very essence of most political bloggers, right and left? In a way, it’s similar to what soldiers do during combat. They dehumanize their enemies in order to overcome the inhibition against killing their fellow man. The venomous bloggers out there do the same thing (tho of course without the killing part . . . I hope!), castigating all those who disagree with them with such charming names as “moonbat” and “wingnut”. Hurling invective rather than reasoned arguments. Dehumanizing, belittling, excoriating by insult and foul language. It’s not debate and it’s not even about being “right”. It’s about scoring the most points off of the other guy and self-aggrandizement. Make yourself feel better by making someone else feel bad.

This is elementary school behaviour. The pseudo-anonymity of the web empowers this sort of thing, much the same way that wrapping oneself in a couple tons of rolling steel empowers so many drivers, otherwise nice people, to act like complete jerks behind the wheel.

Some, of course, take it further than mere blogging. Witness the deranged ranting of Ann Coulter, for example, or Michael Moore. These persons are handy for keeping track of the extreme fringes or as entertainment, but should certainly not have any place in informed debate.

I’ve not been cruising the blogosphere all that long, but I have found simple civility to be sadly lacking in many of its corners.

Let’s try to do better, shall we?

Can It Be True?

According to Fox News, Rudy Giuliani has announced he's running for President.

Dare we think it?

Someone to vote for, instead of just voting against the bigger of two idiots? I think 2008 just got a whole lot more interesting.

Gerald R. Ford

Former President Gerald R. Ford, the only man who ever held the office without being elected to it, has died at the age of 93.

I remember Ford mostly from those Saturday Night Live skits with Chevy Chase. His was not an administration of Great Deeds, but it was one of quiet competence.

Fair thee well, Mister President. You go to join a mighty company.

Can America Still Win Wars?

Not a rhetorical question. Do we, as a nation, have the will to win wars any more?

Since the VietNam War ended, we have recast our military into a supremely lethal and effective force. The US Military is superbly designed and equipped for the task of shredding opposing militaries with frightening speed and efficiency. It's no exaggeration to say that our current armed forces probably constitute the most effective military in human history.

But what that describes is a force that wins battles, not one that wins wars. It's not enough to destroy opposing military formations. To win, one must seize and hold the enemy's territory, destroy the will to resist, and build some form of government in the defeated nation which can then maintain order. The classic example is what was done at the end of World War II, when massive armies of occupation garrisoned the defeated Axis powers as civil authority was restored and the nations were turned from enemies into allies.

Iraq is not working out that way. We kicked apart Saddam's armies easily enough (relatively speaking, of course . . . the victory was "easy" only by comparison to previous conflicts). But the force we sent was too small to effectively garrison the country once we'd destroyed the existing authority. As the conventional wisdom has it, mistakes were made. Assumptions were overly optimistic.

Now, the press would have you believe that the situation in Iraq is an unmitigated disaster, with chaos around every corner and failure the only sure outcome. But the commanders on the ground there report that efforts are succeeding, by and large, to contain the insurgency and restore the ability of self-governance. It's going slowly, there are setbacks, but the trend is towards success.

And yet the American public is turning against the effort. We're deciding that the cost in blood and treasure is too great, and the momentum for the cut-and-run continues to grow. What's needed is a larger number of troops to control the situation, continued infusions of aid in rebuilding civilian infrastructure, and training for Iraqi police and military units so that they can assume the normal duties of such organizations. All of this is in short supply.

At the end of the Cold War in the early 90s, we made the classic post-war mistake of democracies: we drew down our military too far and too fast. The result is a force that is relatively small given the size of our country and the missions we ask it to perform. As I noted above, it's an astonishingly capable force, but for the job of capturing whole countries, it's simply too small. We can destroy enemy militaries, but we can't impose order on the nations we have defeated. We have a force that wins battles and loses wars.

This is a perfectly fine arrangement so long as the missions undertaken are things like the Gulf War, or defeating a North Korean invasion of South Korea. However, when you engage in what amounts to wholesale conquest (and let's not be coy, that's what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan) you need a very large number of foot soldiers so that you can effectively police the country you've conquered. Previous empires have done this by co-opting the conquered into becoming members of the empire and policing themselves. The US, which despite the claims of the reality-impaired is in no way an empire, prefers to simply destroy or otherwise mitigate threats and then engage other nations with primarily economic means. Basically, we want to sell them our stuff and we want to buy their stuff. We tie our "empire" together with trade and mutual profit, not with armies of occupation.

Then there's our media. In the last fifty years, the world has gone from a model in which a newspaper account a day or more after the fact was the primary source of news to a model of the instantaneous communication of multimedia presentations that's omnipresent and always on. If General Patton slapped a soldier today, it would be on CNN and Fox News by lunchtime at the latest, with a variety of talking heads second-guessing every aspect of the incident and telling the rest of us what to think about it.

There's a telling statistic out there - something over eighty percent of the American press supposedly votes Democrat every election. It's therefore difficult to believe that they can be "fair and balanced" when reporting on a Republican-dominated government. However, the main game for the press is "Gotcha!" This supercedes even the most virulent partisan impulses. Witness, for example, the unprecedented feeding frenzy surrounding the Bill Clinton / Monica Lewinski story. This seems to stem from the Watergate era, when the Washington Post led the way in bringing down President Nixon. The reporters directly involved (most famously Woodward and Bernstein) viewed this not only as an extraordinary bit of journalism but as a demonstration of the power of the press. If the press collectively decides it doesn't like a politician, the press feels not just allowed, but obliged to destroy that politician. Journalists have assumed a position of tremendous arrogance, deciding that they know what's best.

The twenty-four-hour news cycle is also destructive in that it presents instant, or nearly instant, feedback on all government actions, both civilian and military. Witness the cries during the invasion of Iraq that the whole thing was a failure when a sandstorm held up the coalition advance for a few hours. Quality of reporting is sublimated to speed of reporting - it's more important to report it right now than to report it right. Fox doesn't want CNN to beat them to a report, after all, so accuracy is sacrificed to immediacy. Corrections may appear after more information comes in, or more experts are able to provide analysis, but often the first impression is the lasting one.

Military personnel in Iraq are reportedly developing an extreme dislike of the press. This is due to the perception that the press is only reporting the bad news, exaggerating it at that, and not reporting positive developments. Indeed, in some cases (the "six Sunnis burned to death" story leaps to mind) the press is actually manufacturing stories from whole cloth. There was, and is, a huge controversy around the Associated Press publishing falsified photographs of incidents that either happened differently than alleged or didn't happen at all.

This is poison to the informed debate needed to sustain a democratic government.

Then there's the blogosphere. While on one hand offering an entirely new means of reporting and commentary, blogs also allow anyone, no matter how biased or deranged, to put forth their version of an event. One has only to consider the insane conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks to see the horrific potential of this. A non-trivial segment of the American populace supposedly believes that our own government is responsible for 9/11. This is madness.

Blogs on the left have been beating the anti-war drums loudly and continuously since it became apparent that President Bush was going to take military action in Iraq. Although it now seems clear enough that the war was launched on false pretenses, the left is not satisfied with this and campaigns tirelessly for a cut-and-run strategy that would have disastrous long-term consequences. In opposition, you have blogs on the right that seem willing to support or excuse any action on the part of the administration in the name of "patriotism." The long-term consequences of blind obedience, although different from those of the cut-and-run, are no less disastrous to western liberal democracy.

But the upshot of all these matters is the fostering of a climate which is corrosive to the sort of sustained national unity necessary to win a major war. There must naturally be debate about the course of the effort and what constitutes victory. This is so obvious that it shouldn't need to be said. But the ultimate long-term goal, that of the survival of liberal democracy, must not be lost in the short-term struggle for political position. The essential civil liberties that make America what it is must not be sacrificed on the altar of expediency. This is what makes things like the so-called Patriot Act so unpalatable to so many people. We suffer certain tactical disadvantages from having a society as open as ours is, but closing things up takes away our national soul one little piece at a time.

Fulcrum Ruminations does not pretend to be a news blog. This blog is not about reporting specific events. This blog is nothing more than the opinions of one person, reflecting on the issues of the day. And what I see emerging from the chaos of Iraq, gentle reader, is a future in which America can destroy an enemy with devastating speed but is unable to address the longer, much more difficult issue of preventing new enemies from gaining a toe-hold. We can bulldoze entire nations but we cannot stop the next generation from going right back to the same behaviours that led to the bulldozing. We know how to win battles. We do not have the patience to win wars. Not when half of our population is more interested in portraying the other half as evil or stupid than they are in assuring the long-term survival of the social order which makes the debate possible at all.

Remembering Pearl Harbor

Sixty five years ago today, the United States was thrust violently and spectacularly into the Second World War by the sneak attack on the Pacific Fleet at Pearl harbor. Casualties were heavy. Outrage was total. Victory was demanded.

We remember.

And the Results

Hmmm. My predictions seem to have been of the "close but no cigar" variety.

Voter turnout seems to have been very heavy, for one thing. Many of the tight races remained tight right up until the last votes were counted. The Democrats did indeed take the House, but by a somewhat wider margin than I thought. The Senate is still in contention as I write this, with only the Virginia race still undecided, but it looks from here as tho the Dems will take a two-seat majority in the Senate.

This of course means disaster for the Bush administration, as the subpoenas will no doubt begin flowing shortly after the reins are handed over in January. Don Rumsfeld has already resigned/been fired, probably in an attempt to head off some of the venom.

Meanwhile, Joe Leiberman handily won reelection as an independent, nicely embarassing the reality-impaired lefties who forced him out of the Democratic party. The lesson there is, once again, that the mainstream of the country is nowhere near as liberal as some like to believe.

What lies ahead? Well, if I were the boss of the Republicans, I'd say that for the next two years they should let the Dems do whatever they want. Let them raise taxes, pile on the spending, pull us out of Iraq, enact whatever goofy legislation they want. Just smile and say "You got it!" Then, in 2008, the choice between the two parties should be nice and clear. Plus, there would be no charges of obstructionism or gridlock to be leveled. The Repubs could just say "Okay America, you've had two years of unrepressed Democratic leadership. How's that workin' out for ya?"

I have every confidence that the rush back to conservative principles would be seismic in its proportions. But meanwhile, I'm just going to say congratulations to the Dems. They somewhat clumsily seized the moment and are ascendent once again. Probably just the shock the Republicans needed at this point, since some twelve years after the "Republican Revolution" they have quite clearly lost their way. Time to refocus, reexamine, do some belly-button contemplation, all that good stuff.

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In other news, Bill Whittle has a nice piece up on his blog that everyone should take a look at. Some good analysis there.

Day of Decision

Very quickly, as we all know, tomorrow is Election Day. Many heated races, much sturm und drang, talking heads on television about to melt down from the sheer excitement. So I want to go on record with my official predictions.

The Democrats will take a slim majority in the House - maybe ten seats, maybe fifteen, but probably not more than that. They will also take a razor-thin majority in the Senate - one or two seats.

Many races will end very closely, and the lawyers will be working overtime to sue their favorite candidate into office.

Allegations of voter fraud will be rampant. No matter who wins, the other side will scream about cheating.

Dems win, taxes go up, economy slows down, investigations into/possible impeachment of the President.

Now along about Wednesday or so, we'll see how I did.

I'm also interested in seeing if any of the super-tight races (according to current polling) wind up being blow-outs for one side or the other. See, as much as we talk about the big national issues and party implications, Congressional elections tend to be very local affairs. Everyone agrees that Congress is doing a bad job . . . except for my guy, of course. So we'll see if the power of incumbency makes any sort of difference this time around.

Still, I sense a mood of profound disgust out there among the public. They don't like what's been going on, they're tired of the partisan nonsense, they want things to change. Which leads me to my final prediction: fairly low voter turn-out, even by mid-term election standards.

We'll see.