Okay, now this is getting very strange. This is reminiscent of what my wife and I euphemistically referred to back in 2000 as the “election show” – the recount fiasco. Only this time the meltdown is happening before the voting begins. Holy jeebus – here we are in the midst of an economic train wreck that any fool could have seen coming from about a hundred miles away, and just as our bonehead president is about to close on a bailout deal, Admiral John McCain melodramatically “suspends his campaign” two days before the first presidential debate and declares that he is going to apply his renowned financial acumen to the negotiations. Next thing anyone knows, the congressional Republicans are bailing on their president’s plan, raising additional provisions (like their perennial favorite, another capital gains tax cut) and digging in their heals less than a day after their leadership indicated a deal was at hand. Mission accomplished, admiral!

Is it just me, or does McCain seem way too mercurial a figure to be trusted with the presidency, particularly at a time like this? I could almost see some sense in his rushing back to Washington if he served on any of the key committees (or if he had planned to even say anything at the White House meeting, which apparently he didn’t), but a knee-jerk move like this appears motivated only by political considerations. It was certainly the “you kids get off my lawn” McCain we saw at Friday night’s debate, gripping the podium like it was his fighter/bomber flight controls, grimacing hideously like a man trying to stick to his anger management strategies, and refusing to say a single good word about – or even look at – his opponent through the entire 97 minutes. His petulance made him, if anything, more vulnerable on issues that he shouldn’t own by any stretch of the imagination. If it weren’t for the sad fact that Democrats – Obama included – needlessly give ground to the Republicans on many of the most important issues of our times, there might well have been a knock-out on Friday.

But again – this is bizarro land. How could Iraq possibly be a positive issue for McCain? Even if he insists on taking credit for reducing violence in Iraq through his support of the “surge” (a crock of shit, but more on that later), he’s dodging the judgment issue on the much larger question of invading Iraq in the first place. That – not the surge – was the most important foreign policy question of the last 8 years, and he was dead wrong. McCain pushed for it, voted for it, supported it to the hilt, and the result is more than 4,000 dead Americans, hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, millions of refugees, a wrecked country, and a new ally for McCain’s despised Iranian regime. If that’s what victory looks like to you, vote McCain/Palin. Trust me, he and his Alaskan sidecar would get us into new and even more exciting military adventures, I’m sure. (She certainly appears to think war with Russia is a real option. Perhaps it’s her rapture-obsessed extremist Christianity at work, hoping to bring about blessed Armageddon.)

Foreign policy is supposed to be McCain’s “wheelhouse.” All I can say is, if this guy ends up president, they’d better give him the kind of wheelhouse Captain Wrongway Peachfuzz had in Rocky and Bullwinkle – one in which none of the controls are connected to anything. That’s the only way we would be likely to get through his administration alive.

luv u,

jp

Some mighty trees have fallen this week in the investment world. Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, two of the most recognizable names in the multi-trillion dollar gambling casino we call Wall Street, are now no more. This is a meltdown of epic proportions – something on the scale of what had been predicted in “activist” literature over the past few years. Such a large portion of the world economy rests on a foundation of speculative investment, much of which is driven by impossibly complex financial instruments that effectively obscure the very concept of ownership and liability. The problem was a long time in the making, but it gained considerable steam after Congress voted in 2000 to gut the Glass Steagall act, eliminating the fire wall that existed between commercial and investment banking and essentially deregulating large swaths of the financial services industry. This action made possible the vast market growth of mortgage-backed securities and abstruse devices like credit default swaps that proliferated in the free-for-all atmosphere legislated by the likes of Phil Gramm, former Texas Senator, now a senior economics adviser to the McCain Campaign and quite possibly the next Treasury Secretary.

So now we’re on the brink of committing trillions of dollars in taxpayer money to make the whole corrupted mess solvent again. Junior to the rescue! Clearly Wall Street was buoyed by the news – you could practically see them uncorking champagne on the trading floors. What this means for the rest of us, however, is more of what we’ve seen previously – namely, federal money that should be going into schools and bridges and health care and other public goods will be siphoned off to prop up private enterprises dedicated to enriching a privileged few. It’s hard to imagine that neo-liberal privatizers in either major party aren’t pleased by this development. This will make public investment in health coverage, infrastructure redevelopment, and even Social Security less likely if not impossible. It represents, after all, a commitment of funds twice as large as the cost (so far) of the Iraq war (which is itself about 500 times and counting as large as the administration had predicted it would cost, so I wouldn’t hold them to those numbers). So whoever wins in November, you’re likely to hear, “Sorry, folks… we’re out of money.”

This couldn’t have worked out better if they’d planned it. The entire mission of the Bush Administration appears to have been one of crashing the U.S. government and making severe cutbacks on social programs inevitable. Because programs like Social Security and Medicare are popular, there’s no other politically feasible way to derail them than to empty the treasury of funds, then shrug and turn your pockets inside-out. Fortunately, Bush’s friends in the high-rolling investment community (fellow MBAs, many of them) have seen to it quite nicely. Now we will all underwrite their bad investment decisions, secure their bad loans, and take the hit on the defaults. And if profit is to be made in any of these enterprises, you can be sure that it will not accrue to the benefit of ordinary citizens. This is something like what used to be called “lemon socialism” – essentially privatize the profits and socialize the losses. And you can be sure Bush will be serving it up like lemonade.

Just bear in mind – these Wall Street firms are the same ones that would have managed privatized social security accounts, if Bush and friends had had their way. We don’t need that kind of socialism.

luv u,

jp

I began writing this on the anniversary of that fateful day seven years ago when all hell broke loose and that psycho Bin Laden put a loaded bazooka into the sweaty hands of a dry-drunk frat-boy named George W. Bush. God knows, the ruins of the twin towers hadn’t even stopped smoking before Dubya started blowing holes in everything pretty much at random. The war he started in Afghanistan – the “good war” as many see it – is nearing the end of its seventh year, still sowing death and destruction week after week, with no end in sight. This success story has become a dire failure, even in the eyes of military commanders, and our primary objective appears to have become one of staying there permanently. Not very different from our goal in Iraq, in essence. We allied ourselves with some of the most retrograde elements in Afghanistan, many of whom worked alongside the Taliban before our invasion (and in tandem with our own intelligence services two decades ago). These are the power brokers in that country – blood-soaked creatures like Dostum. Little wonder large areas of the country are beyond the control of the national government.

So, if Afghanistan is now a base for a resurgent Al Qaeda even with tens of thousands of U.S. troops there, how is it any less of a threat than it was before the invasion seven years ago? I’ve heard no satisfactory answer to that question, and yet there appears to be a strong bipartisan consensus to keep the meat-grinder running, even though increasing civilian casualties are bringing the predictable result of turning the nation (not to mention neighboring Pakistan) passionately against the occupation. This is what we’re sending young, battle-weary soldiers into, placing this imperial project on their necks and making them hostages to some ephemeral “victory” as a reward for helping to pacify Iraq. Only Afghanistan is not Iraq, where one confessional community can relatively easily be played off another and where a murderous civil conflict (sparked by our invasion and ham-fisted occupation) drove large components of the Sunni insurgency into an alliance of convenience with the U.S. in order to counter ascendant Shiite power and avoid a total rout.

In light of the fact that we are now embroiled in two endless wars, it is almost shocking to think that we may be on the brink of sending back to the White House the same cabal of neo-conservative fanatics that carried Ahmed Chalabi on their shoulders and drove us into the ditch that is the Iraq war. McCain’s campaign manager Charlie Black was a big Chalabi booster; the candidate’s chief foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann as well. Scheunemann is a bona-fide neo-con, member of the Iraq Liberation Council and, as noted previously, a paid lobbyist for the government of Georgia up until earlier this year… though he is still apparently representing their president in his new role of shadow national security advisor. I have to say, Georgian President Saak’ashvili certainly got his money’s worth this week, with the advent of a major party candidate for the vice presidency of the United States going on record as saying we may go to war with Russia over Georgia. Why this Alaskan creature is not considered a dangerous lunatic is a matter for Americans to sort out (and quickly), but she’s probably a big hit in Tbilisi right now.

Now George W. is frantically rooting around Waziristan, hoping to pull a turbaned rabbit out of a hat for John McCain before election day. Thus may we be granted yet another seven years bad luck… if we’re not very vigilant indeed.

luv u,

jp