On Hating President Obama

Precedents for Hating Barack

Feeling overworked, I decided to relax today with a copy I unearthed of United States Diplomatic History, Volume I, edited by Gerard Clarfield

Any history book is bound to have revealing details about the past. For instance, in the Chapter on the Jay Treaty with the British Empire (or Treaty of London of 1794), I learned that John Jay (who was already the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court), lacking instructions otherwise, decide to not demand payment to American slavers for their slaves that were freed by the British Army during the Revolutionary War.

But what struck me most was the hatred unleashed on President George Washington because of the treaty. The background is complex, but at that time the two major political factions in the U.S. were pro-French (and the French Revolution) or pro-British (and more conservative). The problem was the U.S. really needed a new treaty with the Empire because of unresolved issues from the Revolutionary War. President Washington did not particularly like the new treaty, but he needed it to keep the young nation out of war and with some chance to prosper economically.

One more detail before the main point: the U.S. Senate discussed the treaty in secret, and agreed that it would not be published. But anti-British Senators eventually made it available to the press.

How vitriolic was the hatred for Washington? There were riots against the treaty in Boston. The pro-French press said the President "had completed the destruction of American freedom." A series of articles accusing George Washington of theft was published. A common toast was "A speedy death to George Washington."

I certainly don't condone hatred of President Barack Obama. But I am not shocked that it exists. He is not my favorite President, but I would not slip from criticism (with occasional agreement or even praise) to hatred. But for many Americans, the vitriol of the 2008 campaign just rolled on into hatred of the man in office.

I think there is a racial component to Obama hating, but I don't think it is the main issue. Every President before Obama inspired hatred, at times, among certain people. The more famous an American President is now, the easier it is to find out why he was hated. Jefferson was hated for being pro-French and an atheist. Jackson was hated by the East Coast establishment. Lincoln was hated by the South, and so on down the line. Liberals have hated Conservative Presidents, and Conservatives have hated Liberal Presidents.

Several Presidents have been hated to the point of being assassinated, and attempts have been made on many more.

The political parties, of course, have been responsible for the whipping up of hatred. The Democrats hated Reagan and Bush. The fury unleashed by Republicans at Bill and Hillary Clinton was probably not unprecedented, but odd given that liberal Democrats considered them to be too conservative. Nor was Hillary the first First Lady to be hated. Many prior first ladies had their detractors (notably Eleanor Roosevelt). It probably started with Martha Washington, but that I have not read about, so far.

The President I hated the most was Richard Nixon. He was the President of my teen years, when I started rebelling against authority. I volunteered to campaign for George McGovern in 1972 (something Hillary and I have in common). My college roommate and I clipped pictures of Nixon and recaptioned them in nasty ways and attached them to our dorm door.

Now I see Nixon differently. He was a war criminal, sure, but I doubt he would have committed war crimes if Lyndon Johnson hadn't started the Vietnamese War. He was conservative, sure, but he accepted most of the New Deal. By today's standards he was to the left of Bernie Sanders. As Vice-President in the 1950s he had done much to advance civil rights. I could criticize him all day long, but I can no longer hate him.

Some people are just filled with hate, a few may not hate at all, but most of us live in the gray zone. We learn, over time, that most people are complicated. We can hate one thing they do, and love another. We can even disagree, or strongly disagree, without hating.

I hope Hillary becomes President, but I expect her to be the most hated President ... since Obama. I don't think she hates anyone, though I suspect she is not fond of Republicans or right-wing radio. She is the only candidate still standing who thrives on understanding complexity. And it's a complex world, so we want a President who can make decisions, understanding that the results can be complicated and even unexpected.

The Double Coup of 1952

Coup. 2 a sudden, successful move or action 3 coup d'etat
— Webster's New World Dictionary, Third College Edition

1952 was a relatively calm year in the USA. The postwar prosperity was just 7 years old, as most other nations had not yet been able to rebuild their bombed-out factories enough to make a dent in U.S. global economic dominance. The Korean War had settled down, for the most part, even if an armistice had not been signed. China's communist party was well-entrenched, so that only right-wing crazies any longer believed Chiang Kai-shek could ever return to the mainland. Jazz was still hot, and so was Frank Sinatra; rock and roll had not quite been born yet.

It was an election year, and as usual a number of men (it was before women aspired to be nominees of the two main political parties) wanted to be President.

There were primaries held in many states in 1952, but many state parties still chose the party delegations to the national conventions by other methods. These typically amounted to appointments by party bosses.

The two main contenders in the Republican Party were Senator Robert Taft and General Dwight David Eisenhower, most recently the Commander of NATO. Eisenhower, at least at first, did not so much run for the office as allow others to create a campaign using his name. Outgoing President Truman had once asked him to run as a Democrat. But "Not only had Eisenhower no politics; he had no religion, no conspicuous guiding principles, and few known views on most of the great issues of his time." But, it turned out, he was a Republican. [Manchester, The Glory and the Dream, p. 745]

Senator Estes Kefauver

President Truman was eligible for another term (his first term as President came from the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt), and he was on the primary ballots, but he was low in the polls. Estes Kefauver, Senator from Tennessee, was the front runner. He had led an investigation into organized crime and its control of political machines, which turned out to be mostly Democratic Party political machines. He vowed to clean up America.

Truman could not let that happen. While most historians have been unable to prove that Truman was personally corrupt, it is hard to argue with his lifetime tendency to run with corrupt men, starting with the Pendergast Machine in his native Missouri, and ending with men he appointed to high office when the President's appointed cronies, among them Donald Dawson, Merle Young, and William Boyle Jr., were caught demanding bribes to facilitate government grants to businesses. Truman did not think Kefauver was cleaning up the Democratic Party, he thought Kefauver was destroying it.

Truman needed a white knight, someone with a good reputation, but who would let the Democrats continue corruption as usual. After considerable effort he convinced the Governor of Illinois, Adlai E. Stevenson, to run against Kefauver.

Stevenson's run may have been the model for Barack Obama's primary run in 2008. Adlai was articulate, a great speaker who could galvanize the Democrats' liberals and intellectuals. Meanwhile the party bosses, hand in hand with organized crime, were happy to get behind Stevenson, who was a true son of the Chicago political machine, no matter his surface gloss.

In the first primary, New Hampshire, Kefauver crushed Truman; Stevenson was not on the ballot. Eisenhower beat Taft 44,497 to 35,820, which is also a large margin of victory.

But Taft was not so easily put off. His father, William Howard Taft, had served both as President and as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Robert had first been elected to office in 1920 and had served in the U.S. Senate since 1939. He had led the conservative opposition to Roosevelt and Truman for almost two decades. He had a strong campaign organization left over from two prior runs for the nomination.

Robert Taft beat Eisenhower in the next Republican primary, Nebraska; then in Wisconsin. In Illinois Eisenhower came in third. But "Ike" won the New Jersey and Pennsylvania primaries. Earl Warren won California and Taft won South Dakota, the last 2 primaries. With delegates from states not holding primaries Taft was way ahead. He had 588 committed delegates, with only 604 needed to get the nomination. He just needed 16 more uncommitted delegates to win.

Meanwhile Kefauver won every state Democratic primary except Minnesota (won by Hubert Humphrey), Florida (Richard Russell) and West Virginia (which elected an unpledged delegation).

So who was elected President in 1952? Did the people elect Estes Kefauver or Robert Taft?

Trick question. Don't feel bad, few Americans can name all the Presidents. There were a lot of them, and many are now quite obscure.

There were two political coups in 1952, one in the Democratic Party and one in the Republican Party.

Back in 1952 African-Americans could not vote in the former Confederate states, the South (and were discouraged from voting in many other states as well). The Democratic Party, in the South, was the party of segregation, a white-people's party. There were few Republicans in the southern states, but they sent delegates to the Republican National Convention, convened on July 7 in Chicago, anyway. Keynotes were given by Joe McCarthy and General Douglas MacArthur. Then business was conducted.

Taft appeared to be able to win the nomination on the first ballot. He now had 607 committed delegates. But Thomas Dewey and other supporters of Eisenhower had other ideas. They challenged the credentials of the southern state delegates, most of whom supported Taft. Meanwhile polls showed Eisenhower would do better with the general public than Taft, the darling of conservatives. Back room deals were made in secret. Individual delegates began to desert Taft.

On the first ballot Eisenhower got 595 votes, Taft 500, Warren 81, Harold Stassen 20, and MacArthur 10. Before a second ballot could be held, the Minnesota delegation changed over to Ike, giving him the nomination. Taft, ever the team player, allowed a motion to make the nomination unanimous.

The Democrats also met in Chicago, about a week after the Republicans left. Adlai Stevenson had taken himself out of the race on April 16. Kefauver had the popularly elected delegates, but crooks ran the party in that era. The anybody-but-a-reformer crowd considered Vice President Alben Barkley, but labor union leaders refused to back him. Stevenson made a speech welcoming the convention, and by all accounts, it was a great speech, recapitulating the achievements of the New Deal. Soon after Stevenson allowed he would accept the nomination, if offered.

It took three ballots for organized crime to prevent Estes Kefauver from becoming President. Kefauver led Stevenson in the first ballot with 340 votes to Stevenson's 273, Richard Russell's 268, Averall Harriman's 123 and 1/2, and a scattering for others. In the second ballot Kefauver again led with 362.5 votes, Stevenson had 324.5, Russell 294, and Harriman 121. But on the third ballot some delegates (probably bribed) defected from Kefauver, and Harriman's switched to Stevenson in a block. So Stevenson was nominated on the third ballot with 617.5 votes, or 50.2% of the delegates.

The party bosses did let the American people (excepting southrern non-whites) vote in November of 1952. The American people went with the General, who was pretty close to the center of the political spectrum. To appease the right wing of the Republican Party, Richard Nixon was Ike's running mate and became the Vice President of the United States. Dwight David Eisenhower became the first Republican Party President of the United States since Herbert Hoover.

Mitt Romney, Mormon, and Islam

Last night I was at a dinner party where three of the five attendees were former Latter Day Saints, better known as the Mormons. I am a former Catholic. I am not sure about the fifth person's childhood faith. In any case we had a good time talking about the Mormon faith and Mitt Romney.

Two of the Mormons had been mainstream, Utah Mormons. One had been in the much smaller Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS). That is the one that did not follow Brigham Young to Utah, and instead stayed loyal to the family of the founder, Joseph Smith. And I just leaned something new (from Wikipedia) that the ex-member did not know: this sect changed their name in 2001 to the Community of Christ, and now allows women to be priests.

We had a discussion of where Mitt Romney and the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints fits into the theological spectrum. The Mormons, according to their former members, do not believe Jesus is God in the sense that most believing Christians do. They believe Jesus is a sort of planetary god. They believe that if they (the men, anyway) have enough wives and children and are holy enough they will reincarnate on planets of their own, which they will rule over as (small g) gods.

This strange combination of science fiction and primitive Christianity makes a lot of sense if you understand the culture of the United States of America in the 1820s, when Joseph Smith pieced his cult together. Science had discovered that planets were not just mobile stars, but bodies like earth, big enough to live on, perhaps. The large number of stars indicated that there might be large numbers of planets beyond the solar system. The Bible did not mention this (or foresee steamboats and railroads and other development), so either the Bible was not written by a omniscient God or it was only a partial revelation. Times were changing, and religion clearly needed a major update. Joseph Smith was the most successful of the updaters of that era.

Which brings us round to Islam. There can be no doubt that Mohammed, the Prophet, was the Joseph Smith of his day (570 - 632 A.D.). He too was born a nobody. He became a trader and capitalist (just like Mitt) and in the course of business visited much of the Middle East. He came in contact with people of many different religions. Most importantly, in addition to meeting orthodox Christians, he met both gnostic Christians and the original Christians. The original Christians were still Jews and thought Jesus was a prophet, not a god. Their historical records told them that Jesus had died on the Cross, but had not been resurrected.

Eventually Mohammed founded a new religion. He did not pretend to be a god, and his followers have been very strict about that issue. His religion must have met a lot of people's needs because it became wildly popular far faster than any prior religion. It is still popular today.

Just like the Latter Day Saints, early on Islam split into two sects. One, the main Sunni branch, was started by the powerful elders, mostly military leaders, who had known Mohammed. The other, Shia, was formed by the direct bloodline descendants of Mohammed. They have been fighting ever since.

Mitt Romney does not want potential voters to know what Mormons really believe. He does not want them to know that despite its name, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints could be categorized as Islamic. Joseph Smith certainly knew some of what was then modern science. He also clearly was influenced by ancient Egyptian precepts and Islam. Many passages of Smith's writtings are paraphrased from the Koran. The polygamy thing is obvious: Mohammed practiced polygamy. The concept of Heaven in the Mormon Church is right out of the Koran, with some 19th century science updates.

Of course Joseph Smith gave no credit to the Koran, which would have been impolitic. He was a new Prophet and according to his theology, was headed to being a god on his own planet when he died on this earth.

Like most small starter religions, Smith's new Church advocated religious tolerance. "We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our conscience, and allow all men the same privilege." [Pearl of Great Price] Thus they advocated for a non-Christian America where their version of Islam could be part of the cultural mix.

Why then, since he belongs to a branch of Islam, is Mitt Romney currently siding with Israel so strongly?
Mitt Romney has always been skilled at the art of deception and willing to do whatever lying it takes to get what he wants. He went to Harvard Law School to brush up on that skill. What else would you expect from a man who grew up in France, who speaks French better than English, and yet want to be the first Latter Day Saint President of the United States of America?

Romney needs to win in Florida to be President and establish Joseph Smith's vision of a Mormon Kingdom on the American continent. "We believe in being subject to kings," [Pearl of Great Price].

Mitt Romney needs a few hundred thousand Jewish votes in Florida to become President. Those of you who support the human rights of Palestinians don't need to worry about Romney's pro-Israel, zionist rhetoric. Mormons know the True Zion is on the American continent. Their leadership is very pro-Islam, and has already made deals with the Saudis to gain total economic control of the globe and its women. The Jews and Christians just need to be fooled for a few more months.

Professors Barack Obama, Newt Gingrich, and Woodrow Wilson

This week Newton Gingrich has become the Republican Party Presidential primary candidate best positioned to beat front-runner Mitt Romney. Before he was a politician Newt was a History Professor. President Obama was a Law Professor before he became a politician. When you look at the history of American Presidents, college professor is not a very common occupation. The other exception was Woodrow Wilson, who was a professor of Political Economy at Princeton.

While Newt has not been, and may not be President, he did hold what I believe should be a more important office, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (from 1995 to 1999).

There is a saying that if you can't do, teach, but teaching is an important human activity. College professors also usually do some research and writing. How good is that as preparation to be President of the United States of America?

Woodrow Wilson served as President of the United States from 1913 until the beginning of 1921. Before that he served as governor of New Jersey from 1911. He is typically portrayed as a progressive President who also showed his spine by siding with the British Empire and the French Empire against Germany in World War I.

While Wilson did support some needed reforms like women's right to vote, on the whole he was a romantic reactionary. Most notably, he was a racist. When he ran for President in 1912, as a Democrat he could depend on the "Solid" racist, south, where Negroes (a respectful term then) were not allowed to vote. He made campaign promises to Negro voters in northern states, gaining many of their votes. Then he presided over segregation of the federal government, even instructing Post Offices to set up racially segregated windows to serve customers. He also fired most black federal employees and appointed white southerners in the places.

In other words, although Wilson was able to break with the past on some issues, his mind was not unusually far ranging. He lectured the nation and Congress, but all too often his lectures had no basis in human experience. I would argue that Wilson was a disaster, and that disaster echoed through the 20th century, adversely affecting not just Americans, but people around the globe.

For instance Woodrow Wilson thought no one should drink alcohol. Is that progressive or conservative? He refused to serve it at the White House, and on January 16, 1919, the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified, making "intoxicating liquors" illegal throughout the United States. Certainly consumption of alcohol has some bad effects. But Prohibition did not stop the flow of alcohol. Instead it created black markets and attendant crime and political corruption. Just like Barack Obama's attacks on medical marijuana clinics are doing today.

Imperialism was a big issue in the 1912 elections. The United States had become an imperialist system in the late 1800's. Both Democratic Party farmers (the nation was not yet mainly urban) and reformers were against imperialism, and candidate Wilson said anti-imperialistic things, just as Barack Obama would hint he was an anti-war, anti-defense spending candidate in 2008. But Wilson invaded more nations that any other President, not even counting World War I. He invaded Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Mexico. For good measure he bought the Virgin Islands. In the super-hypocrisy department he signed the Jones Act in 1916, which promised independence to the Philippines. The Philippines did not get independence until the Japanese granted it to them during World War II.

For Wilson the idea was more important than the deed. Because he thought the South should have won the Civil War, he supported the idea of what we would now call national autonomy. Back then it was called national self-determination. But, after World War I, when the Japanese asked that Asia be de-colonized, Wilson vetoed that idea. Self-determination, he made clear, was for white people, not subhumans, which is how he regarded non-white ethnic groups. This insult to the Japanese and the people of Asia would result in the disintegration of China, a number of colonial wars, World War II, and then more colonial wars, ending only when the British Empire, a bastion of autocratic governance unparalleled in history, ceded Hong Kong back to the nation of China.

Barack Obama, too, is better at speaking than at getting things done. That is probably a good thing, considering the blow back the U.S. is getting from his attempts to boss around Islamic people. If Barack does not get a second term, at least his acts are unlikely to cause as much damage in the 21st century as President Wilson did in the 20th.

Which brings us to Newt Gingrich. If you compare Newt to Wilson or Obama, he is clearly the more competent guy. Even though I disagree with his policies, his strategy and tactics in the 1990's were brilliant.

The problem with Newt is not that he does not know history. I grant him a knowledge of history. His problem is that his mind filters out all the facts that do not match his pre-determined conclusions about how America and the world should be governed.

He has not even learned the lesson of the Great Depression, and a whole string of forgotten depressions earlier in U.S. and world history: capitalism destroys itself, left unchecked. Another lesson: too much concentration of wealth leads to poorly performing national economies. Another lesson: empires that spend too much on their militaries suffer economic collapse.

I am forced to conclude that electing former professors to be President is not, in general, a good idea. There could be exceptions, of course, but neither Mr. Gingrich nor President Obama is one of them.

Herman Cain's Twisted Politics

In the Republican presidential hopeful field, in which candidates rise and fall like so many prairie dogs, Herman Cain has recently risen to number two status. A business guy with no prior experience in political office (though he ran for Senator of Georgia in 2004), it is impressive that he has done so well. In fact, his entire life is impressive, if you don't think about it too much.

Mr. Cain can genuinely claim to be a rags to riches story. In contrast to President Obama, he came from a working class black family, growing up when being black was a serious disadvantage (he was born in 1945). Also unlike Obama, he was good at math, and so he received a B.A. in mathematics in 1967 and a M.S. in computer science in 1971. Thus he somehow avoided the typical fate of men of his age bracket: killing or being killed in the jungles and cities of Vietnam. He did work a bit for the Navy as a civilian before going to work as an analyst for Coca Cola.

So Mr. Cain is a smart guy, he dodged the draft and used his smarts to get ahead in business. Nothing wrong with that in so far as it goes. Any prol doing well in business is alright with me. He was no entrepreneur, to be sure; he was a corporate man. He was given increasing levels of responsibility at Pillsbury. They eventually made him President of their Godfather's Pizza subsidiary.

That is when Herman learned the lesson that he'd like to teach the entire nation. He took the over 900 stores of the money losing division and he made the division profitable. Did he do that by improving employee spirit, a clever advertising campaign, or inventing a better pizza? No. He made two lists: profitable stores and unprofitable stores. He closed almost 500 unprofitable stores. All the employees had to find new jobs. Herman's economic conservatism in largely colored by that success. He bought Godfather's from Pillsbury, using borrowed money. He was a king, the head of his own 400 store empire. The paupers who were his ex-employees should have taken more time with their math lessons; they deserved whatever fate awaited them.

Meet Herman Cain, the man who proved that hard work and business acumen and permission to swing an ax can make anyone a CEO multi-millionaire. The man who believes welfare and the laziness it inspires are what is keeping poor people down. The man who does not like government handouts, except when they are military jobs and contracts.

Get ready for a caining, or a caning, if you are among the irresponsibly unemployed. Herman Cain is the True Conservative who will cut, cut, cut government programs the way he cut Godfather's Pizza. He'll cut taxes too, those terrible taxes that slow the rise of bright fellows like himself up the social ladder.

Strangely, Herman Cain served on the board of the Federal reserve Bank of Kansas City from 1992 until 1996. How did he, with no banking experience, get appointed to a such a post? I suppose we'll have to read his new book, "Magical Me," to find out.

You would think that at least a slight understanding of macroeconomics would be required to be a Federal Reserve board member. Things that seem to work out on a small scale, say for an individual business, can become a disaster if done on a large scale. You may have noticed this in 2008, during the CEO panic. CEO's began laying off workers, even before demand dropped, even at corporations that were very profitable. Surprise, when enough CEO's had fired enough workers, we were in a severe recession.

While each individual termite benefits from eating the house, and the whole colony benefits for a while, eventually the house falls down.

When Herman takes away people's food stamps, he may think that will force them to go out and earn a living. Instead the corporate supermarket chains and mom & pop corner stores alike will go under. When he cuts back on funding for education, he thinks parents will pay for private schooling, but instead the streets will fill up with delinquents. When he takes away Medicare Social Security, he thinks seniors will quietly curl up in the streets and die. They might, but most of the nations doctors and nurses and biotechnology CEO's will be joining them in the streets.

After 4 years with Herman Cain, he'll probably just close up America, because the entire nation will be unprofitable.

I wish I could endorse a math guy for President, but it isn't how good you are with math, it's what you do with it. If you close your mind to the bigger realities of the world, and just use it to count and hoard beans as Herman Cain has, then math has been wasted on you.

Still interested? Herman Cain for President

Andrew Jackson, The Fundamentalist Constitution, and the Balanced Budget Amendment

The idea of the Fundamentalist Constitution predates the Tea Party. In fact, it was one of the streams that swelled into the Tea Party a few years back. The basic idea is that the U.S. Constitution was written by God, is a continuation of the Hebrew Ten Commandments, and should be interpreted in a manner consistent with 18th century American religious thought. Those who subscribe to this view are also related to or known as "originalists" for the Original Constitution, or "tenthers" because they love the 10th Amendment, which of course was not even part of the original Constitution.

That view is easy to critique, yet is becoming increasingly popular because it fits well with the latter day fundamentalist Christian, free-market Money worshipping, God pits every woman against all approach to society beloved by Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and other patriarchs of the anti-federal movement.

I already wrote in The Fundamentalist Constitution, The Tea Party, and Federalist 62, that documentation from that era provides no support for the fundamentalist viewpoint. If anything, originalism in its current state makes a mockery of strict construction of the Constitution, which has always had its advocates and is supported, somewhat, in both the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers.

Reading President Andrew Jackson's first State of the Union address to Congress of December 1829, I found some compelling commentary. I am not a fan of Andrew Jackson.

I am writing my Internet Biography of Andrew Jackson mainly to show how unethical the man was, and how that lack of basic human decency has always been at the core of the Democratic Party. Yet politics makes strange bedfellows. Given enough political issues, I am sure to agree with almost everyone on a thing or two. Jackson told Congress:

"I consider it one of the most urgent of my duties to bring to your attention the propriety of amending that part of the Constitution which relates to the election of President and Vice-President. Our system of government was by its framers deemed an experiment, and they therefore consistently provided a mode of remedying its defects."

God, we are told by Creationists, always gets things right the first time. One creation, no experimenting with evolution. If President Jackson was correct that the framers deemed the Constitution, the blueprint for our system of government, an experiment, then the Fundamentalists have two choices. They can say that God foresaw the need for Amendments, as that would give politicians something wholesome to do. Or they could back off the God Wrote It stuff and argue from the traditional, conservative Strict Construction viewpoint, and so not reveal themselves to be lunatics.

Or they could argue that Jackson was wrong. But then they would have to explain why God let Jackson win the Battle of New Orleans and go on to become President.

While I frequently argue that Jackson was wrong on many issues (and a murderer, adulterer, thief, and yes, a man who made money pitting dogs in fights against one another), I would like to point out that, as a child soldier, Jackson fought in the American Revolution. It is what bent him so out of shape as a youth. When the Constitution was ratified in September 1788, young Andrew Jackson was twenty-one years old. He heard the controversy about whether or not to replace the Articles of Confederation with the new Constitution. He became a lawyer, and he came to know several of the Founding Fathers. Unless he had some reason for lying about it, he genuinely believed that Our system of government was by its framers deemed an experiment.

The experimental method has led to some improvements over time. I certainly don't agree with everything the federal government has done or is doing, but I think that abolishing slavery and giving women the vote were experiments that have gone well. As Jackson wished, after President for Life Franklin D. Roosevelt made a mockery of precedent, now Presidents are limited in how long they can hold office.

So I'm not against amendments. I am against a Balanced Budget amendment. Strangely, the originalists in the Tea Party, and most Republican politicians in the House of Representatives, don't like the fact that the Original Constitution does not call for a balanced budget. I guess God forgot to send a Hebrew accountant to the Constitutional Convention to explain the issue.

Instead, Alexander Hamilton got his foot in the door. The man understood high finance the way Ms. Palin understands sled dogs. The way the Bachmann family understands how to shake down the government for money to house orphans. He actually studied how the British banking system and government finance worked. Imagine that. He engineered a starting off national debt by getting the Revolutionary War debts of the States assumed by the Federal Government. They (the States, or at least their politicians) were happy not to have to pay those debts. They were happy to let the Federal Government impose customs duties and taxes on alcohol and tobacco to pay off those debts.

Nevertheless, Andrew Jackson wanted to pay off the national debt that existed when he assumed the Presidency, which was largely a legacy of the War of 1812 and the intervening recession. Fortunately, an earlier Congress had passed a tariff or duty on imports, providing plenty of tax revenue. The debt was under $50 million (that's right, not billion or trillion) at the time, and about $12 million was paid off in 1829.

When the economy is strong, the federal government should spend less than it takes in and pay down the national debt. During recessions the government should spend more than it collects in taxes. That helps balance the business cycles that result from free market capitalism, and yes, it provides pensions for old people and aid to the sick and disabled. Make that into an amendment, and you can have my support.

Michele Bachmann's Bad Divorce

I had not paid any attention to Michele Bachmann, a Republican Congressperson, until I started seeing her mentioned as a potential nominee for President of the United States. Apparently that is because I don't watch TV. She has become quite a star for the Tea Party movement, although she began her political career long before the Tea Party was organized.

Turning to Wikipedia, I found that Congresswoman Bachmann is very close to me in age, just a little over a year younger, born April 6, 1956. I always wonder with ultra-conservative people in my age cohort how they missed the basic lessons of their childhood, of the 1960s, of peace, love, and understanding. What jumped out at me in her mini-biography is that her parents were divorced and her father moved to California; she stayed with her mother. My parents did not get divorced. Perhaps because they were Catholic and the Bachmann's were Lutheran.

Divorce is still controversial in some circles. It is another of life's double edged swords. For women, without divorce there can be the pain of being stuck in an unloving, perhaps even brutal, marriage. On the other side of the blade is that with divorce a man can make promises, have children, and then, on a whim, go off cavorting with another woman. Leaving a lonely, angry woman to raise children, and like as not trying to instill in those women a hatred for their fathers and anything to do with them. David Amble, Michele's father, moved to California (where I now live).

Michele grew up in tiny Anoka, Minnesota, essentially a suburb of Minneapolis. I grew up in the suburbs of a big, but much more conservative, city: Jacksonville, Florida. If geography means anything, I should have turned out conservative and she liberal.

Another reason for the different directions was that we were on a cusp. When we graduated from high school, I in 1972 and she in 1974, the sixties were over. Some of the energy of the sixties was still present in radical politics, in music, and in art. Feminism was really just starting to get going. I felt repressed by my parents and schools, so I wanted to taste the counterculture even if it was already in decline. By 1974, combined with hating her father and divorce, probably Michele was willing to take the opportunities now afforded women, but rejected the broader implications of ideals like freedom, equality, and mutual cooperation. After graduating from a state college she headed off to Oral Roberts University, where the miraculous is real and real problems are sins.

Finally, it would be foolish to neglect my struggles with the idea of being drafted in the U.S. military and being sent off to kill the good people of Vietnam. Michele did not have to worry about that.

Obviously Michele is smart, hard working, ambitious, and loving in her own way. On the other hand, how smart can you be and pretend that there is a God, he is male, he had only one son, he crucified his own son, and he has had writer's block since he finished penning out the New Testament? Of course, religion these days is just a fantasy-role playing game. Most people who aren't insane know that it is just make-believe.

It is too bad that the political principles of the right wing of the Republican Party and especially the Tea Party are not examined rationally, but instead are colored with religious emotionalism. Unlike my mostly lefty friends I agree about some of the economic symptoms. I see the causes differently, however. We, Americans, are in a post-imperialist decline, much like England between World War I and World War II. We benefited, from about 1938 to about 1970, from national prosperity based partly on hard work and creativity, but juiced by the super-profitability of imperialism. Our industries did great because we had the whole world for a market: every other industrial nation's factories had been extensively bombed in World War II. The economic pie was growing so fast that the rich did not fight all that hard to prevent the middle class, working class, and the poor to share in the feast.

Now we waste our money on the military aspects of imperialism, but it is an economic drag on the homeland. Our capitalists wanted and got Free Trade, which was not really about trade, but about moving American factories to Mexico and China and Central American dictatorships. Now American workers are global citizens, and they don't like it.

The pyramids of business have gotten taller. A business owner with 10 employees seldom can pay himself more than 10 times what he pays an individual employee. A global corporation with 100,000 employees can easily pay its top management 1000 times what it pays basic employees, and the stockholders can still pocket plenty of loot. For Americans in the global elite, Free Trade has been a shower of gold.

We could try, again, to divide up the pie more fairly. The easiest way to do that is to increase taxes on people with high incomes, and on capital gains and dividends. Then use that money for infrastructure (including education) that benefits everyone. It could even be used for infrastructure that would make building new factories in the United States attractive to the greed-heads who control international capital. But just dividing the pie more fairly is not going to be enough [pay attention, lazy socialist friends]. Even cutting back our military establishment 90% won't be enough. IF we are going to keep a pleasant standard of living for most Americans we need to be competitive with China and India, Brazil and Peru, Europe and Arab Emirates. That means we have to upgrade our work skills and habits, especially at the low end. The idea that the state can guarantee (what would be in the developing world) a middle-class lifestyle, is not going to be viable. With the trends coming down the road the state will be lucky if it can guarantee that if you don't work you won't starve or freeze.

I certainly think we can do better than Michele Bachmann for President. But whoever is elected, the trend lines won't change unless concerted efforts are made to change them. President Obama has increased military spending at a time it needed to be cut back by 90%. He approved an extension of the rich-ride-tax-free program of his predecessor. Except for rhetoric (aimed at voting bases) and fringe issues, I see little substantial difference between Bachman and Obama. I'm not excited about either. I hope some more exciting candidates enter the race.

Presidents Day, Remembering Their War Crimes

In my theory of democracy, Presidents of the United States are executive officers. Congress writes the law; Presidents are not supposed to be policy makers.

In looking at history, however, it is easier to remember the relatively limited number of Presidents of the United States of America than to remember all the Speakers of the House, Senate Majority leaders and committee chairs, much less the other members of congress. In reality, too, Presidents have been makers of policy.

When I remember the Presidents of the United States, what I mostly recall is that almost every one of them started at least one war against another nation. I include Native American Indian nations among the nations.

The pattern of the Indian wars became the pattern for later wars. Every war had its pretext, but in every case the U.S. was in the wrong. Indians nations engaged in self-defense against the depredations of white settlers. That self-defense was labeled aggression, and used in every case for the United States to expand at the expense of the Indian nation or nations involved.

We have a modern term for this, which is war crimes. It is a war crime to start a war of aggression. There are other war crimes besides, likely engaging in war where civilians are in harms way, killing soldiers who surrender, etc. Legalistic minds would argue that early American Presidents did not commit war crimes because they had not been established in the 1700s or 1800s. That is a deceptive argument, since both religious and secular reasoning about the criminal nature of aggressive war goes back at least as far as the ancient Greeks.

Codifying war crimes at the beginning of the 20th century did not stop U.S. Presidents from committing them. Wars of aggression continued to be characterized as wars of defense. For the smaller wars, the U.S. could always find some South American or Asian puppet to pretend to be a national government and then have that puppet invite in U.S. troops.

Most Americans don't know about most of the small wars the U.S. engaged in. Despite reading extensively about them, I can't remember details of most the the wars to steal real estate from native Americans. U.S. invasions of nations in the Western Hemisphere have happened so often that, again, it is difficult for me to connect individual wars to individual Presidents. I keep meaning to make a cheat sheet.

Americans usually know enough history to recall a few big wars: the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War (actually, there were several), the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq I and II, Afghanistan. These big wars are all blamed on the other party, even though it takes minimal research to find that the U.S. either started them, if they were bilateral, or joined in without good cause, if they were general wars.

I would suggest we rename Presidents Day. Let us call it Apology Day. Let us apologize to the remnants of the native american nations. Let us apologize to the Canadians (the War of 1812 was actually declared explicitly to conquer Canada), the Mexicans, Spanish, the Latin American nations, the Hawaiians, the Philippines, the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Laotians, Cambodians, Vietnamese, Palestinians, Iraqis, and Afghans.

Before setting up Apology Day, we should also stop our current war and reduce the U.S. to a peaceable military posture. We should turn our current crop of war criminals over to fair and impartial international tribunals to be condemned and hung until dead.

With Apology in place, I think I could start to emphasize some of the good things U.S. Presidents have done. George Washington established that Presidents in a democracy should only serve two terms. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. Grover Cleveland refused to annex Hawaii. The nation did indeed prosper under Harding and Coolidge. Lyndon Johnson did put his prestige on the line to give all Americans full civil rights. Richard Nixon did create the Environmental Protection Agency and recognized the legitimate government of China.

But not yet. First we need to know our true past, admit it was immoral, and change our institutions so that the people of the United States can stay on the moral high road, the road of peace, in the future.

Barack Obama, Vietnam, and Afghanistan

Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961. President John F. Kennedy (Democratic Party) had been in office only a few months, but he had already shown that his liberal domestic policy posture was for getting votes. On foreign policy he was not going to be out-anti-communism ed by anyone. His predecessor, President Dwight David Eisenhower, as a former military commander, had not been someone the generals at the Pentagon could easily push around. But Kennedy was the son of a billionaire who had been a mere lieutenant before entering politics.

Eisenhower, who had been on General MacArthur's staff in Asia before becoming Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II, had no desire to waste U.S. troops in Vietnam. But Kennedy allowed himself to be talked into escalating American troop presence in what was essentially a civil war, and one that was not even really about communism.

An awful lot of dead people later, Vietnam was united and the imperialist powers France and the United States and their local allies were fully expelled. That was 1975. Barack Obama was 14 years old, attending a private prep school. It can hardly be doubted that growing up during the Vietnam War must have had some impact on the young Obama.

Yet Barack would not have worried about being drafted into the military because conscription ended in 1973, when he was 12 years old. He did not need to make a choice that would have real consequences for himself.

Despite getting a B. A. in political science from Columbia University in 1983, Barack failed to learn the basic lessons of the Vietnam War. Not the ethical lessons, not the political lessons, not the economic or military lessons. And since he did not learn those lessons, the Marines and the Taliban will continue to duke it out. America may even win the war, that is unlikely but not impossible, but it does not matter. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was ethically, politically, tactically and strategically wrong; the U.S. has already lost so much, a mere victory, however defined, cannot make up for the losses.

Eisenhower was a general; Kennedy a lieutenant; Barack was never even a private. If he had been a war resister, that might have given him some backbone to resist pressure from the military-industrial complex and its hawkish political friends.

President Lyndon B. Johnson (a Democrat) was responsible for almost all the escalation of the Vietnam War. President Richard M. Nixon (a Republican) was responsible for getting the U.S. out of the war. I don't think parties matter much in this kind of situation. Timing matters. If Kennedy had not been assassinated, if Johnson had lost to Goldwater in the 1964 election, or if Humphrey had won in 1968 instead of Nixon, the trajectory would have been about the same.

Afghanistan, like Vietnam, has its various ethnic groupings, but none of them really want to be ruled by the United States. The allies of the U.S. in Afghanistan today are mainly the same people who allied with Russia (aka the USSR) in the prior war, and they are allies for mostly the same reasons. If there are six Taliban left in the country when the U.S. finally does declare a victory, within five years of the withdrawal of U.S. troops the Taliban, or their rough equivalent, will have regained control of most of the country.

The only way to keep Afghanistan under U.S. control is to keep U.S. soldiers there permanently. And even that may not work. As with Vietnam, the U.S. will probably end up controlling only its own military bases.

It was not just propaganda, leaders in the U.S. were genuinely worried that if they did not defeat the Vietnamese communists (who were really nationalists), the entire globe would be thrust into darkness. In reality once they kicked the U.S. out, the "Communists" behaved pretty much like everyone else. They did intervene in Cambodia, but they had good reason, and they withdrew as soon as they could. The Vietnamese have proven to be a peaceful, productive people. They did not cooperate much with the Chinese or Russian communists. They liked communism for its own sake, not because they wanted to be subordinate to China or Russia.

The people of Afghanistan are not the enemies of the United States. And in a large way, the people of Afghanistan are the Taliban. Leave them alone, and they will leave us alone. Al-Qaeda extremists should have been dealt with by other methods than invading an entire enormous country.

Instead of doing the right thing, President Obama succumbed to pressure from the Pentagon. Like Kennedy and Johnson and even Nixon, he will go down in global history as a war criminal. If the histories are written by honest people.

Democrats Are

I keep being forced to the conclusion that ordinary, rank-and-file Democratic Party members, or voters are scum. By scum I mean every and any bad word you can think of.

Given that there are tens of millions of these so-called "people," you would think there would be a few Good Democrats out there among the pimps, whores, faux-greens and moral vacuum heads that constitute the Democratic Party. But there aren't, because a good person would simply leave the party. A good person could not stand to be stewed in the corrupt muck of the party.

I knew, during the Bush era, that this was the truth. Yet under President George W. Bush many Democrats, sometimes even Democratic Party politicians, said things that made them sound human, even humane. Democrats in Congress criticized Bush and the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. They criticized the health care system. I knew the Congressmen and Senators were lying, thieving sons of hyenas, but I thought maybe some of the ordinary people who voted for them really wanted peace and justice. I thought they might abandon the Democratic Party when it failed to deliver on its promises.

I heard them myself, the two-faced personifications of dishonesty, here in coastal California, saying they would elect Democrats, they just needed a few more seats in the House and Senate, and a good President, and then we would see that they were good people, with good hearts, in a good party.

I knew they were deluding themselves, but I deluded myself too. I thought when the Bush Administration policies, which after all are just ruling class policies, continued under a Democratic administration, they would turn against their sacred Democratic Party.

But no. While I have seen former Green Party members who made the mistake of voting for Kucinich and then Obama come back to the Green Party, I have not seen a single long-term Democrat stand by what, only a year ago, they professed to be their principals. I have yet to see a Democrat around here leave the party. They aren't even acting disgusted. They are still acting like teenagers drunk on beer and a local football game victory.

I have seen the lot of them start talking the way Republicans talked just two years ago. They support Obama's war crimes against the people of Afghanistan. They do it by flipping some neural circuit, I guess. Now that the war in Afghanistan is led by a Democratic Party President, and in particular a black one who talks like a member of the intelligentsia, they think it is a good thing to spend billions of dollars in Afghanistan imposing Western culture on a people that don't want it. Now they seem to really hate the Taliban. A year ago, they might not have liked the Taliban, but at least they had common enemies, George W. Bush and the Republicans. Today yesterday's Peace Democrat would roast a Taliban baby on a spit if Barack Obama hinted he wanted a nice meal to go along with this Peace Prize.

A few Democrats I know, a very few, are still saying things like "but what I really support is Single Payer (health insurance)." But for the most part they will eat whatever donkey manure Obama feeds them, and whiney "just as good as single payer."

Did the Democrats hold hand with the Republicans to make the most massive transfer of public funds to the super-rich since the founding of this Republic? If the Republicans had done that alone the Democrats would be screaming. Since the leading Democrats were at the table, gobbling campaign donations and tips from hedge fund managers, the following Democrats can only hope that their homeless encampments, Obama-villes, aren't too cold this winter.

It is way past time to admit that the electoral process in the United States of America is a sham. The two parties just take turns shoveling whatever the ruling class decides onto the backs, and into the brains, of the American people.

I feel like I am in a zombie movie, only zombies come in two types. Democrat and Republican.

Memento, History, and Political Tattooes

First, a couple of iiipublishing.com new articles not given blog entries: Catholic Inquisition of U.S. Nuns and review of Zonet 16-Port Ethernet Switch.

In the movie Memento the main character, Leonard, has lost his short term memory. The movie runs back through time, showing how how Leonard uses a system of notes, some tattooed to his body, to try to track down the killer of his wife. The problem is that other people realize Leonard has not only lost his short term memory, but that his long-term memory has deficits as well. So they use him for their own ends.

I doubt the writer or director intended it, but this is a nearly perfect metaphor for American politics. It is an even scarier notion than George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which a totalitarian government manipulates people by actually re-writing history as needed. The governance (here I include both the government and corporate decision making) of America is not totalitarian. If you don't like Vista, you can buy OSX or Linux. But it does encourage forgetfulness, History Channel not withstanding.

Lack of long-term memory is at least comprehensible as a human fault. There is a lot of history. Just to survey it takes a huge commitment. For example, there are quite a few nations in the world that I have not read a single history book about. Even if you focus on American history, and just try to get a sense of what really happened in each decade of our history, you have a lot of reading to do. Once you realize how carefully edited most history books are, how they lie by omission, you have a lot of work to do finding books that have critical views. Usually to find a critique of any given nation you must look to histories written about it by other nations.

There is no easy way around the long-term memory problem. We can't all be history majors.

You would think, however, that people would remember what happened in their own lifetime, and learn from their experiences.

If the Democratic Party members over the age of 55 in this rural area of northern California are any indication, we might as well save ourselves the ritual of voting. Sadly, many Green Party members (but not all) have been just as forgetful. We are reliving 1965. I was ten back in that bygone year. I paid minimal attention to news and politics, but I knew Lyndon Johnson had beat Barry Goldwater in the November 1964 presidential election largely by implying that Senator Goldwater would get us into a nuclear war with Russia.

We did not have a war of any kind with Russia, but Johnson bombed North Vietnam and then invaded South Vietnam on the flimsiest of excuses. Not that President Johnson was all bad. He was the first Democratic Party president to break with the racist past of the party in deeds as well as words.

Now we have a black President (but not one whose ancestors were slaves in the United States), and the excitement over that caused otherwise cynical voters to forget everything else. Like that politicians tell you what you want to hear, then deliver unto their major donors.

So now what was the Bush war on terror is wider than ever before. Fighting in Iraq has cooled for the moment because we are happy with our puppet government there. But fighting has intensified in Afghanistan and we are regularly bombing Pakistan. Shades of President Johnson, shades of President Nixon.

And let's not forget about the economy. I predict there will be no real economic reform. The crisis is past, and for a while bankers and investors will be cautious. With no reform, however, the conditions will be in place for another massive round of thievery, with working class Americans, again, as the ultimate victims.

Nor are we getting real reform on environmental issues. The Democrats figure that by being slightly more green than the Bush administration, they can keep their corporate sponsors and trap voters in the old the-Republicans-are-worse recycling bin.

So, ask yourself, what should you tattoo to your body politic?

Obama's Asian War

I recently posted my Japan notes on the book China, Japan, and the Powers. I chose my notes to support the thesis that the United States of America started a war against Asia and Asians in the 1850s that had gone on intermittently and continues to this day. [See also Asian War]

President Barack Obama's planned escalation of the war against Afghanistan makes sense as part of this long-established historic pattern.

The simplistic analysis applied to the President's decision is that the U.S. military pushed for a major buildup in Afghanistan, but the Vice President said Democrats in Congress would not like that. Somehow only escalating troop levels a little (if 7000 soldiers rampaging about someone else's countryside can be called a little) is deemed a compromise. Taking 7000 troops out could have been a compromise too. The fact is the basic decision was to expand the use of force to obtain U.S. policy objectives in the region. Leaving an open door to further escalation if the Afghan people continue to resist.

In my Japan notes I run against the grain of the book itself. Like almost all America-centric history texts, Powers implied that Japan was, until the end of World War II, an aggressor nation and the U.S. was just playing defense. Because we are the Good Guys.

But you can't write a detailed book about America's history with Asia without mentioning a few things that tend to run against the standard theory. And if you can sit down and analyze the data, and take into account that it is biased to begin with, you can see history in a whole new light. You can see Japan as a country that did not want to be preyed upon by the U.S. and the European imperialists the way they saw the rest of Asia preyed upon. They did not want to become part of the British, Spanish, French, Dutch, Russian, or American empires. They took logical steps to prevent that. I don't condone their over-the-top militarism, but it does not compare to U.S. militarism. Going into World War II the U.S. had a bigger Navy than Japan. They had troops in China. We called that aggression, even though they had puppets invite them to wage war there. We had our puppet in China, so our military support for his militarist regime (his title was Generalissimo) was not qualitatively different.

Japan lost World War II, but they liberated Asia, or most of it, in the process. I doubt the Communist Party could have liberated China if Japan had not tossed out the Europeans and defeated the American puppet Chiang Kai-shek during the war. The people in Indonesia, then called the Dutch East Indies, refused to allow the Dutch to re-establish a colony. Gandhi may have been a pacifist, but it was the Japanese violence freaks who largely made British occupation of India untenable.

The U.S. War Against Asia has paused at times, but never halted. Most famously we tried to stop the nationalist movement of Vietnam from establishing a free and independent nation. Whenever possible we (our ruling class and its government, and whoever goes along with them) have tried to make the leaders of Asian nations into puppets.

And so when a socialist regime was set up in Afghanistan back around 1978, U.S. strategists took note. We were not pleased that the socialists were modernizers, not Islamists. They were clients of the U.S.S.R., a rival empire. And so our CIA armed the Islamists and embroiled Afghanistan in a civil war. When the Russians left in 1989, war lords and clan-based local governments took over most of the country. [See History of Afghanistan for details]

A man very different from Barack Obama decided to do something for his country. He did not have two parents with graduate school educations; he did not go to the finest private colleges in the world. His family was very poor. He fought against the Soviets, losing an eye in the process, and he studied in religious schools (Madrasahs). His only goal was to bring peace and justice to Afghanistan. Mullah Omar, as he became known, gathered a small group of other students of justice (Taliban). His first known act with this group, at that time numbering 30 soldiers (with only 16 rifles between them) was to rescue two girls who had been kidnapped and raped by local war lords. As their reputation for just governance grew, so did the Taliban. By 1996 the Taliban were in effective control of Afghanistan. Which was fine with the CIA and the few other U.S. policy makers who paid attention to such things. The Taliban were not communists, did not like the Iranians (they were in a different branch of Islam), and were not likely to ally with the Chinese. They brought peace to a land that had been at war for 20 years.

It is hard to imagine Barack Obama risking his own life, or even his political career, to save anyone else. But he is perfectly willing to kill Students in Afghanistan if that furthers the interests of the U.S. ruling class that he so happily serves (tea with your billions of federal aid? Perhaps some marmalade with your crumpets, fellows?).

Perhaps some day Americans will stop trying to rule the world. But apparently not under the administration of Barack Obama.

Can we produce millions of rounds of ammunition to kill people in Afghanistan, even when we seem to be unable to build houses or automobiles or schools in America any more?

Yes, We Can!

Theodore Roosevelt, Obama and Afghanistan

I've been meaning to write more about Theodore Roosevelt for some time, given the central role he plays in the history of United States imperialism, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Today the New York Times published an article [From a Carrier, Another View of America's Air War in Afghanistan by Elisabeth Bumiller] that allows me to make some connections to our current era.

According to the article, there is a weapon of mass destruction, an aircraft carrier named the, yes, U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, parked in the sea off Pakistan. Every day, weather permitting, jet bombers take off from the carrier and bomb the people of Afghanistan. They try to bomb Taliban, soldiers. The Taliban were the ruling "party" until the U.S. installed a puppet government in 2002. I am not at all fond of the Taliban, but I recognize that they are the only group in Afghanistan that is fighting against foreign domination. They are, largely, the same group that the CIA once armed in order to drive the former Soviet Union out of the country.

It is very safe on the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt. Accidents are the greatest danger to the sailors and combat pilots. It is not so safe on the ground for American troops, given how much they are hated and how many Afghanis have armed themselves. But mostly a battle in Afghanistan goes like this: the Afghans attack the Americans (or their NATO henchmen). The Americans hunker down in fear and scream into their communications gear that they are under attack. The nearest fighter-bomber screams in and unleashes bombs. The Afghan (Taliban) soldiers are mostly killed; those who are not dead, retreat. What is amazing is that given that this scenario is repeated daily, the Afghans are brave enough and motivated enough to fight the invaders.

The left opposition in the United States of America largely blames the war in Afghanistan on former President Bush, forgetting that the Democratic Party leadership were frothing at the mouth to go into Afghanistan too. "Progressive" Democrats hoped that the election of President Barack Obama would bring an end to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but instead Obama has broadened the war to include Pakistan and is sending another 17,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. He is escalating the war. Since the war is against the Afghan people, it cannot be won without essentially exterminating those people. Barack Obama has quickly joined the long list of American presidents, starting with George Washington, who have participated in genocide.

Theodore Roosevelt, in contrast to Obama, was an honest man. A miserable, twisted, psychotic murdering honest man, to be sure, but everyone knew that. He began calling for war at an early age. He was among a cabal that pushed Spain into a war with the U.S. that it did not want, the Spanish American War. He gloried in fighting the war himself. Unlike Obama, who has never been in the U.S. military or in the militant opposition to U.S. imperialism. Elected Vice-President and assuming office in 1901, "T. R." quickly became President when Leon Czolgosz successfully assassinated President William McKinley. As such, he presided over the genocide against the Philippine people, usually known as the Philippine War, in which 2 million islanders, mostly non-combatants, were murdered by U.S. troops.

If the U.S. ruling class were running the Philippine War today, they'd call the anti-U.S. opposition terrorists. Regardless of whether they were Islamic or Communist or just Nationalists or Vegitarians, and regardless of the tactics they used.

Theodore Roosevelt, like most humans, had his good side. He was a nature lover of sorts. He loved to kill wild animals with a rifle, being too slow-footed and chicken shit to try to kill them with his bare hands. He enlarged the national park system. Given the complexity of the legislative process, he probably signed some laws you would approve of, and some you would oppose. Such is the nature of the Presidency.

Theodore Roosevelt particularly liked to slaughter bears. Strangely, that brought us the beloved stuffed animal toys known as Teddy Bears.

So the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt is named appropriately. From it, at no risk to himself, Barack Obama can kill Afganis.

President Obama Does Afghanistan

Do you remember the patriotic frenzy after the destruction of the World Trade Center? It was not just Republicans who were frothing at the mouth. We - Americans - the good guys - had been attacked. And unprovoked. By some guys who did not even have atomic weapons. They did not even have cruise missiles. They didn't even have artillery. True, they had once had surface-to-air missiles, but the CIA gave them those and they had been used up fighting the Russians. They attacked us with nothing but courage and skill. Outrageous.

Only a couple of Democrats in Congress voted against attacking Afghanistan. No matter that the government and people of Afghanistan had nothing to do with the attack. True, the "criminal" or "religious" organization that actually carried out the World Trade Center attacks had bases in Afghanistan, but all kinds of war criminals are trained or based in the United States, and we Americans don't think that means anyone else should invade our country and overthrow our government.

The tiny remnants of the American left, mostly veterans of the Vietnam War or of the protests against it, dragged themselves out of hiding, started protesting and demonstrating, and eventually, especially after Iraq was invaded, managed to start influencing broader public opinion.

The politicians of the Democratic Party then supported the illegal war crime that was the invasion of Iraq. Still, at protest marches, a large segment of the demonstrators focused their hate on a man they were sure had worse grammar aptitude than they had, President George W. Bush.

Then as the country soured on the war, as people began to understand the history and players better, some Democratic Party politicians wet their fingers, felt the wind shift, and came out against President Bush's poor management of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In 2006 the Democratic Party won the House of Representatives largely because they pretended to be a party of peace. They now claimed had been tricked into rushing into war by that evil Bush. It never occurred to a bunch of politicians that another politician might occasionally tell a little lie.

They could have cut off appropriations for the wars (the House can do that) but they did not. They wanted the war to be an issue to help them in the 2008 elections.

The economy turned sour, and the Democrats now own the House, the Senate, and the Executive Branch.

And the war goes on. The only change: now Democratic Party politicians blame their failure in Afghanistan and Pakistan on the ineptitude of the puppets the CIA installed in those countries.

Can Barack Obama get the CIA to change the American puppets running Afghanistan and Pakistan?

Yes he can!

Same as the Old Boss: Barack Obama Bombs Pakistan

Will the administration of President Barack Obama be characterized by imperialism light? Just enough kindler, gentler crusading to keep peace-loving Americans trapped in the Democratic Party?

It is hard to predict the actions of someone whose election campaign was characterized by unprecedented massive spending, vagueness on policy issues, and emotional manipulation. But in the opening days of his presidency we have seen two early indicators of how things are going to work. The prison at Guantanamo is supposed to be closed within a year (but we'll keep the base we stole from Cuba). That is good. It really is not much, but it is good.

The bombing of Pakistan this week, allegedly using unmanned drones operated by the CIA, is bound to please the security people. Barack has shown he can order people to be murdered in foreign countries. As far as I can tell, we (I am a citizen of the United States of America, and must accept some collective responsibility) invaded Afghanistan without any reasonable pretext for war. We overthrew the government of Afghanistan and installed a puppet government that has been characterized by the usual ineptness and corruption, and which exists mainly to profit from the poppies to heroin trade. Anyone who fights against the American occupation is in the right; every American bullet just does further wrong. It does not matter if I like the American way of life better than I like the radical Islam way of life. America has no military business in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

What will imperialism light look like? Most likely it will simply mean a more economical application of resources. Regimes that don't march to U.S. orders will get the usual carrot and stick treatment. There will be greater reliance on the CIA and Air Force, as opposed to use of ground troops. Regimes we don't like will be destabilized. Regimes we like will be propped up no matter how undemocratic or intolerant they are.

The Taliban's big mistake was not understanding how the game is played. They should have become a pro-U.S. band of Islamic fanatics, like the Saudis. That's fine. The U.S. does not care if women are oppressed, as long as the government that oppresses them caters to U.S. military and economic interests.

Or maybe the Taliban understood perfectly well how the game is played, and unlike "moderate" Islamic leaders, decided it was wrong to play that way. Just as there are always a few U.S. citizens, very few usually, who show some spine and actually do their best to prevent our government from committing crimes against humanity and war crimes. The way you get ahead in the U.S. in politics is you join one of the two major parties and work hard for the capitalist class. When that class screws up badly, as they did in 2008, you help a section of the class to make slight policy changes that will insure the survival, political and economic, of the class.

Nature Marvels at Obama Inauguration

Let it be recorded by good and faithful scribes that the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as President of the United States was accompanied by many natural marvels. Let this confirm that a new era of peace and justice is dawning on the world.

In California, south of San Jose, three small earthquakes the night before the inauguration heralded the coming of the new day.

In Point Arena, California, at the break of day, a hiker found that two Point Arena Mountain Beaver had constructed an eight-foot tall pyramid of wood and gravel. The pyramid was perfectly aligned on east to west lines.

In the war-torn region of the eastern Congo, the Sun flashed green before rising for the day.

Texas, not to be outdone, reported that thousands of rattlesnakes near Houston gathered and shook their rattles in time while a mockingbird chorus sang "Midnight Special."

At a toxic waste site near Birmingham, being cleaned up at tax-payer expense, for the first time in 20 years a flower bloomed.

In Pittsburgh an entire neighborhood reported that they heard no noise when the garbage was collected, and so got a full nights sleep.

In Bulgaria a stream changed its course, revealing a pure gold, probably pre-roman statue of Venus with the face of Hillary Clinton.

In the remote village of Tlaxiaco, Mexico, a tortilla being prepared for breakfast was discovered to have browning marks that suggested Barack Obama's profile.

Two scientists surveying coral bleaching in the reefs of Micronesia reported that living coral was found to have resurrected itself.

Scientists at NASA, studying automated satellite data, reported that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere began to fall at precisely noon, Eastern Standard Time.

Other natural marvels have been reported, but not yet confirmed.

Let any person in the future who refuses to believe these eye witness testimonies be thrown into the dark halls of despair and hopelessness.

Is America A Democracy?

Is America a democracy? Is it a republic? As I explained in America: Republic or Democracy?, a nation can be both. In broad terms I think it is fair to say the the United States of America is a republic that is also a democracy. Call it a democratic-republic (but also recall that some 20th century nations that styled themselves "The Democratic Republic of ..." looked suspiciously like dictatorships).

Here I want to go a bit deeper into the idea of whether the United States of America is a democracy. The long-term historical trend has been to give more groups of people the right to vote in elections. In the 20th century women and people not of European descent gained the right to vote. The voting age was also lowered to 18. This would strengthen the democratic element of our republic. However, this broadening of the right to vote does not insure that the majority view on a particular issue becomes law.

It might be fair to call America a careful, conservative democracy. Suppose a minority position becomes a majority position, as determined by polls. It may take a long time for the majority's view to become policy or law. It is possible that elected officials may realize public sentiment has changed and make appropriate changes quickly, but that seldom happens. Representatives tend to remain loyal to the groups of people that got them elected. So those who oppose the change, or at least some of them, must be voted out of office.

Elections are held every year, but most terms of office have a two year minimum. Let's focus on the national level. The House of Representatives is re-elected every even-numbered year. To get a new majority, in tune with changed public opinion, could take up to two years, depending on where in the election cycle the change of opinion took place.

But only one-third of the members of the U.S. Senate are elected every two years. Each Senator is elected for six years. So it could conceivable take six years for the new majority to emerge in the Senate. And the President can veto the work of a mere majority, so a sympathetic President would be needed, which could take four years.

Even then, as we have seen in U.S. history, the Supreme Court could find reasons to block change. Since the Supreme Court is not elected, but members are given life time appointments by the President, it can easily take a decade for a change to take place if the Supreme Court opposes it. On the other hand, on some occasions the Supreme Court, in deciding a law case brought before it, has made sweeping changes in the laws by a single ruling. These rulings may or may not reflect the sentiments of the majority of citizens.

Even the above scenario assumes an issue is important enough to be the deciding factor in elections. But issues are bundled together so that the voters cannot always get what they want. You can vote for only one person in the House of Representatives. Generally, the set up is that the choice is between a Republican Party candidate and a Democratic Party candidate. Perhaps neither candidate is willing to work for the majority opinion on a particular issue. Or voters, and those seeking their votes, prioritize a different issue (taxes, abortion rights, immigration, etc.) over the one where opinion has changed.

In fact, because of the necessity of bundling issues when voting for candidates, even when there is a clear majority on a particular issue, there may never be appropriate legislation passed on that issue.

Does that mean that the process is not democratic? I think that would be too harsh of a criticism. To a large extent it is an unintended consequence of the republican (that is, representative) structure of our government. Some states get around this problem by allowing for referenda (votes on a particular issue by all of the voters). But there is no mechanism for a national popular vote on a single issue.

Knowing that bundling is part of the mechanics of government in the United States, special interests have every reason to thwart the will of the majority by affecting how issues are bundled. Take "wasteful government spending." One person's wasteful spending is another person's job or profits. If you ask Americans if they want to "eliminate wasteful spending at the Pentagon," they will almost all say yes. But no defense contractor thinks his profit centers are wasting the taxpayers' money. You can't run for Congress with eliminating Pentagon waste as your main issue. The other candidate will just say she's against waste too. There is no election advantage in it. So it never rises to the top of the agenda of elected officials. The same is true, most of the time, of waste at other agencies. It is true that public interest groups are sometimes successful at exposing waste. Before he became President, Harry Truman is reputed to have done a good job with his Senate committee to investigate and eliminate wasteful military spending. But generally speaking, waste is part of the package.

The U.S. Supreme Court is the least democratic, most conservative of our institutions. Of course the Supreme Court couches its decisions based on its interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, which is quite difficult to amend. In reality the Supreme Court has a long record of interpreting the Constitution to suit itself. That is why the appointment of a new Supreme Court judge or two can have greater affects on American law than almost any other event. But it is important to remember that the U.S. Constitution can be amended. In the past, amending it has often had a greater affect on government than electing whole new Congresses, Presidents, or even Supreme Courts. It is surprising that so little effort is put into amending the Constitution. There are many reasons for this, but mainly it is not a priority for the major political parties. It requires a lot of hard work to get a Constitutional amendment passed, and most attempts to amend the Constitution fail.

After the Supreme Court, the national institution that most resembles an undemocratic Republic rather than a Democracy is the U.S. Senate. There are two major problems with the U.S. Senate, if the goal is democracy. One is that there are so few Senators and so many Americans. At the time I am writing the population of the United States is about 305 million, so on average each Senator could be said to represent 3 million people. In California two Senators represent 36.5 million people. When you represent that many people, who do you listen to? At the other end of the spectrum is the state of Wyoming, with a population of just over one-half million people. That means that the Senators from Wyoming can be in closer contact with their constituencies. It also means that special interests operating at the national level can put unduly significant amounts of money into the election of Senators from states with small populations. Even without interference by special interests, small-population states tend to be rural. In the U.S. Senate rural populations have far better representation per voter than urban populations. This violates the basic rule of democracy: each citizen's vote should count the same.

Finally, there is the question of money. Citizens may know very little about the citizens who are seeking public office beyond what the campaigns choose to tell them. Usually, but not always, in the United States the candidate with the most money wins. Therefore campaign donors may influence policy more than voters. Both nationally and in some states there have been attempts, broadly called campaign finance reform, to lessen this distortion of democracy. Some have been relatively successful, for instance limiting how much money any one person can give to a campaign for Congress. Others have failed, in particular the idea of publicly financing campaigns. Special interest groups try to kill or maim these laws, and if they are passed set to work to do end-runs around them. The ability of some candidates to raise more money than the other candidates could get from public financing also tend to make these laws irrelevant.

Democracy in itself accomplishes nothing. In a democracy we may have eliminated political violence, but in the struggle for control of government there can be the equivalent of an ongoing, but very civil, war. Those who work the hardest, or have the money to hire the hardest election workers and lobbyists, have an advantage over those who merely have an opinion.

There are specific structural reforms that might make America even more democratic, such as electing the Supreme Court, or recasting the Senate so that each Senator represents the same number of voters. However, already democracy is a big playing field. Individuals and groups of people have many opportunities to push for what they want. If you feel you are in a majority and yet not getting your way, the thing to do is to push harder. If you are in a minority, but feel you are in the right, you need to work harder to bring your views to others.

If you find that a wealthy minority is bribing (perhaps legally, with campaign donations or perks from lobbyists) your representatives, you should probably get yourself another representative. If a wealthy minority is bribing both major parties, help elect independent third party candidates that share your views of the problem.

Democracy is a big notion. No one institution or marker determines whether a nation has a democratic form of government, or the reality of democratic self-rule. Even in a democracy there may be widespread injustice, environmental destruction, bad cultural values, violence, economic disarray, and just plain bad decision making by fully democratic institutions. But compared to dictatorships and other forms of minority rule, democracy puts people in the best position to reform their society and governance in a peaceful way.

2008 Made History

I think 2008 made history. You think 2008 was historic. But it is hard to tell which years mark major changes in our civilization until decades, perhaps centuries later. Events that seem historic to us now may not even get a sentence in the history books of 2200, yet events we did not hear of yet may seem earth-shaking in retrospect.

When American war ships "opened" Japan in 1854 [See U.S. Bullies Japan], newspapers noted the event. No one in the U.S. and Europe, however, expected Japan to become anything other than another subjugated Asian nation.

This year Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, and George W. Bush became the most unpopular American President since Abraham Lincoln. [Honest Abe won the 1860 election with only 40% of the popular vote, and in 1864, even with the Confederacy not voting, he won the election with only 55% of the vote.]. Conversely Herbert Hoover won 59% of the vote in 1928; no one foresaw the economic unraveling of 1929-1933.

This week, to cap off what most consider to be the worst year in American history since maybe 1932, Israel launched a large scale air attack against Palestinians confined to the Gaza Strip. This because Hamas occasionally was lobbing a mortar or crude missile into occupied Palestine as an act of defiance. Why should the Palestinians not be able to use the land that has been stolen from them for target practice? Especially since their aim is so bad?

I doubt the timing had anything to do with the cease fire ending or Hamas missiles. It probably had the secret blessing of President Bush in advance. Bush will claim he can't, as a lame duck, do anything, and Barack Obama will be able to treat it as an accomplished fact. Those who hope Barack will stand for justice for the Palestinians are truly deluded. It's a brilliant strategy for Israel: enrage 1 billion Moslems, most of whom will find it easier to take out their anger on the U.S. than on Zion. Then, attacked by Moslem patriots, the U.S. will feel an even closer emotional bond to Israel.

But what is on everyone's mind is the economy. Negative overall economic growth is treated as a far greater disaster than global warming, the U.S. engineered famine in Somalia, or even the disintegration of support in Afghanistan for the U.S. puppet government.

I don't expect Barack Obama to straighten out these problems. The economy is likely to right itself during 2009 as long as the banking system is restored to soundness. Like any President, he will take credit for anything good that happens on his watch, and will be blamed by the other party for anything bad that happens. I believe Obama will turn out to be the first black imperialist U.S. President. Part of my plan for 2009 is to point this out, constantly, to the Democrats who should be in the Green Party but continue to drink Democratic Party kool-aid. But if I am wrong, I will admit it, even cheer as he withdraws all U.S. troops stationed outside our own territories.

On a positive note, the Internet continues to bind the world together. Whether that is good or bad is anybody's guess. Iranian mullahs can eye American cam girls, and American teenagers can read Al-Qaeda propaganda. We can all read what individuals think now, not just the news (or misinformation) their governments or corporate news networks want us to read.

While the U.S. wastes its soldiers' lives and what is left of its industry on subduing its colonies, China and India are making great economic, political, and cultural strides. More importantly, most trends worth watching are transnational. Even the localization, anti-globalization folk are now a global phenomena. Imagine a world in which peace, protecting the environment, and knowledge of the real world are the dominant paradigms. That would be history worth making. And that is what this Natural Liberation blog is about.