Stupido-Erudio americanus

by Craig J. Cantoni



A new species has been found in North America. Its scientific name is Stupido-Erudio americanus. The common name is stupid-educated Americans.

They tend to congregate along the Pacific coast, the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic coasts, and in big cities across the land, especially where neighborhoods have been gentrified, where trendy restaurants serve pretty and tiny haute cuisine, where trendy supermarkets sell organic food grown in cow manure, where factories and refineries are unwelcome and have been exported elsewhere, and where light-rail lines have been built at great expense at the urging of Stupido-Erudio americanus, who, strangely, don't use the lines, preferring instead to drive the Prius, Volvos, BMWs, Porsches, Lexus's, and Infinitis to the trendy restaurants, where they use valet parking.

They have undergraduate and graduate degrees from the best universities; they marry within their own species but believe in diversity; they think that global warming is a serious problem and man-caused; they are non-judgmental about other people, unless the other people are hunters, soldiers, working-class workers, church-goers, Sarah Palin, or Joe the Plumber; they idolize Barack Obama; they think that George W. Bush and New York Times columnist David Brooks are free-market conservatives instead of statists like themselves; they make big bucks as lawyers, regulatory experts, specialized paper pushers, and software writers; they've never set foot in a factory, refinery, mine, meat-packing plant, power plant, or Wal-Mart; and they don't know any engineers, production supervisors, production workers, or other bourgeoisie and proletariats who work in such places and produce the stuff that they and other Stupido-Erudio americanus use.

I recently attended a social gathering of the species, where I pretended to be one of them.
That meant putting on a sensitive air, holding my glass of chardonnay the correct way, talking about my trips to Europe and lamenting that the United States isn't like the Continent, nodding my head in agreement about the ignorance of Republicans, showing off my knowledge of the different varieties of arugula, and tsk-tsking about the lack of funding for public education, the arts, healthcare, green energy and public transit.

My cover was almost blown when someone asked where my kid was thinking of going to college. I responded that his top choice is the engineering school at Purdue Univ. in West Lafayette, Ind.

Looking at me as if I had tracked dog litter across the environmentally-correct floor made of bamboo wood, the stupid-educated American said, "Ugh, West Lafayette is such an awful place to live."

My first impulse was to put the pompous ass into a headlock and dunk his foliated face into a bowl of organic pate.

Instead, I smiled and agreed with him, while thinking to myself that the jerk hates West Lafayette for the very reason that my son, wife, and I like it -- that is, it doesn't have a lot of Stupido-Erudio americanus living there, which means that the students and town folk are unpretentious and down-to-earth, probably due to Purdue's roots as an engineering school. "Yeah," I said, "West Lafayette is not like Princeton, New Jersey."

The stupid-educated American took that as a sign that I was the right species after all. Actually, having lived in the Garden State for 10 years that seemed like 20, I had spent a lot of time in Princeton at business conferences and disliked it because it was overrun with as many Stupido-Erudio americanus as Berkeley, Madison, Cambridge, New Haven, and Georgetown.

When other stupid-educated Americans began talking to me about global warming, I decided to inflict pain on their half-formed brains.

"What are your favorite scientific sources and scientists on the subject?" I asked. No words came out of their mouths, but their eyes blinked, smoke was emitted from their ears, and gears could be heard grinding inside their craniums. Continuing, I said, "My favorite environmental scientist is Dr. S. Fred Singer." Pretending to know who he is, they nodded in agreement, not knowing that he is a highly-credentialed debunker of hypotheses on anthropogenic global warming.

I tortured them on many other subjects, but especially on economics, poverty, healthcare, and political philosophy. Their knowledge was so thin in these subjects that I felt as if I was speaking to chocolate-covered rocks. When their veneer of sugary, politically-correct buzzwords, platitudes, and sophistry was removed, nothing but ignorance appeared underneath.

No doubt, when the children of Stupido-Erudio americanus come home from government school and tell mommy and daddy what they learned that day from unionized teachers, their parents beam with pride. When my kid comes home from school and repeats a canard he heard during the day, I use it as a learning opportunity to tell him the facts.

My son might decide to go to college in West Lafayette, but at least he won't grow up to be a Stupido-Erudio americanus or a chocolate-covered rock.

Craig J. Cantoni is an author, public speaker and president of Capstone Consulting Group of Scottsdale, Arizona, a firm that specializes in developing people, teams and organizations. Mr. Cantoni is a regular contributor to the The Wall Street Journal and The American Compensation Association Journal, and has written for The Indianapolis Star, The Arizona Republic, The Arizona Business Gazette, and other publications.

A "Distinguished Military Graduate" and ex-Army Captain, Mr. Cantoni holds an MBA from St. Mary's University. His wife Kim is a human resources professional, and his son Christopher attends school in Scottsdale, where the family resides.

Mr. Cantoni can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.

This article originally appeared at Page Nine #62, published by Alan Korwin, Bloomfield Press, Scottsdale, AZ

Afghanistan South

by Patrick J Buchanan

Heeding the advice of Gen. David Petraeus, Barack Obama has committed 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan and will keep 50,000 in Iraq after U.S. combat operations end in August 2010.

But are U.S. vital interests more threatened by what happens in Anbar or Helmand than in the war raging along our southern border?

Prediction: After all U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Korea have come home, there will be a U.S. army on the Mexican border. For this is where the fate of our republic will be decided, as the fate of Europe will be decided by the millions streaming north from the Maghreb and Middle East, sub-Sahara and South Asia.

Last year, 6,000 Mexicans died in drug-related killings in a war where the tactics are massacre, murder, kidnapping and beheading.

President Felipe Calderon has ordered another 5,000 troops and 1,000 police to the border. Primary target: Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso.

Some 2,500 federal troops are already in Juarez, where in 2008 there were 1,600 drug-related murders. Gun battles occur every day. Nationally, 45,000 army troops and police are committed to this war that Mexico is not winning. For, according to the March 3 Washington Times, the Pentagon now estimates the cartels field more than 100,000 foot soldiers.

The chief of police of Juarez just resigned after a cartel threatened to kill an officer every 48 hours if he did not. To prove its seriousness, the cartel murdered four cops, including the chief's deputy. Last year, 50 police officers in Juarez were murdered.

"The decision I am taking is one of life over death," said Chief Roberto Oduna. The chief would seem to have a point. In January, his predecessor's head was found in an ice cooler outside a police station. The mayor keeps his family in El Paso, as they have been threatened with decapitation.

Friday, the State Department declared, "Corruption throughout Mexico's public institutions remains a key impediment to curtailing the power of the drug cartels." Calderon retorts that, while the murders may be committed in Mexico, the cash and guns come from the United States.

With oil revenue down since the price dropped $100 a barrel, and remittances down from Mexican workers in the United States as the U.S. economy tanks, tourism, too, has begun to die. Beheadings in and around Acapulco have not helped. Warnings have been issued to U.S. college kids to avoid Mexico on spring break, as kidnappings for ransom are rampant. Restaurants and bars in Juarez that catered to folks from El Paso and soldiers from Fort Bliss are shutting down.

In February, in the resort town of Cancun, a retired army general sent to create an elite anti-crime unit was kidnapped, tortured and shot. Mexican troops raided Cancun's police headquarters and arrested the chief and dozens of his officers in connection with the murder.

Add a collapsing global economy to a losing war with drug cartels, and Mexico is at grave risk of becoming a failed state, a narco-state, with a 2,000-mile border with the United States.

How does one win a drug war when millions of Americans who use recreational drugs are financing the cartels bribing, murdering and beheading to win the war and keep self-indulgent Americans supplied with drugs?

There are two sure ways to end this war swiftly: Milton's way and Mao's way. Mao Zedong's communists killed users and suppliers alike, as social parasites. Milton Friedman's way is to decriminalize drugs and call off the war.

When Richard Nixon declared the War on Drugs in 1972, Milton, writing in Newsweek, objected on ethical grounds: "On ethical grounds, do we have the right to use the machinery of government to prevent an individual from becoming an alcoholic or a drug addict? For children, almost everyone would answer at least a qualified yes. But for responsible adults, I, for one, would answer no. Reason with the potential addict, yes. Tell him the consequences, yes. Pray for and with him, yes. But I believe that we have no right to use force, directly or indirectly, to prevent a fellow man from committing suicide, let alone from drinking alcohol or taking drugs."

"Am I my brother's keeper?'" asked Milton, answering, "No.

" Americans are never going to adopt the Maoist solution. For the users of drugs are all too often classmates, colleagues, friends, even family. Indeed, our last three presidents did not deny using drugs.

Once, a Christian America outlawed and punished homosexuality, abortion, alcohol, loan-sharking and gambling, all as criminal vice. Now, homosexuality and abortion are constitutional rights. Gambling and booze are a rich source of government revenue. And loan-sharking is done by credit-card companies, and not just the Corleones.

Will we raise the white flag in the drug war, as well? Which is the greater evil? Legalized narcotics for America's young or a failed state of 110,000 million on our southern border?

Some choice. Some country we've become.

STATES SEND WARNING TO FEDS

States say feds will not usurp powers guaranteed to them by 9th, 10th Amendments

By Pat Shannan

More than 20 states have passed recent resolutions in defiance of the central government’s intrusion into their liberties and governing powers, with all including a demand to obey the Constitution’s Ninth and Tenth Amendments. New Hampshire has issued what may be the harshest “Don’t Tread on Me” caveat of all. Citing its own state constitution, the New Hampshire Legislature has issued its recent resolution “affirming states’ rights based on Jeffersonian principles” and reminding any Washington interventionists of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments in the U.S. Constitution as well as Part 1, Article 7 of their own state document that declares “. . . that the people of this state have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign, and independent state; and do, and forever hereafter shall, exercise and enjoy every power, jurisdiction, and right, pertaining thereto . . .”

It continued: “Resolved by the House of Representatives, the Senate concurring: that the Constitution of the United States, having delegated to Congress a power to punish treason, counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States, piracies, and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations, slavery, and no other crimes whatsoever; and it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared, that ‘the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people,’ therefore all acts of Congress which assume to create, define, or punish crimes, other than those so enumerated in the Constitution are altogether void, and of no force; and that the power to create, define, and punish such other crimes is reserved, and, of right, appertains solely and exclusively to the respective States, each within its own territory; and . . .

“That any act by the Congress of the United States, executive order of the president of the United States of America or judicial order by the judicatories of the United States of America which assumes a power not delegated to the government of United States of America by the Constitution for the United States of America and which serves to diminish the liberty of the any of the several states or their citizens shall constitute a nullification of the Constitution for the United States. Acts which would cause such a nullification include, but are not limited to:

“I. Establishing martial law or a state of emergency within one of the states without the consent of the legislature of that state.

“II. Requiring involuntary servitude, or governmental service other than a draft during a declared war, or pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law.

“III. Requiring involuntary servitude or governmental service of persons under the age of 18 other than pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law.“

IV. Surrendering any power delegated or not delegated to any corporation or foreign government.

“V. Any act regarding religion; further limitations on freedom of political speech; or further limitations on freedom of the press.“

VI. Further infringements on the right to keep and bear arms including prohibitions of type or quantity of arms or ammunition; and “That should any such act of Congress become law or executive order or judicial order be put into force, all powers previously delegated to the United States of America by the Constitution for the United States shall revert to the several states individually. Any future government of the United States of America shall require ratification of three quarters of the states seeking to form a government.”

Ever since Vermont threatened secession and others of the 20-plus have issued lesser threatening notices of intentions, all have made it clear that they are not happy with the current situation, and the action of all indicates that the New World Order may have a bigger problem on its hands than it initially considered.

The 21 states so far that have either introduced resolutions declaring state sovereignty under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments or are about to do so include: Arizona, Hawaii, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Washington, Pennsylvania, Maine, Nevada, Kansas, Indiana, Idaho, Georgia, Colorado, California, Arkansas, Alabama, Alaska, and, of course, New Hampshire.

In another defiance of unconstitutional federal controls, governors are telling Washington bureaucrats that, under the 10th Amendment, they cannot dictate spending or other actions to the states. (“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”)

“We are telling the federal government that we are a sovereign state,” said Arizona state representative Judy Burges, who is leading an effort in her state to pass a resolution called “Sovereignty: the 10th Amendment.”Oklahoma state Sen. Randy Brogdon (R) introduced a resolution he said would enable his state to “reclaim the 10th Amendment right to reject any and all acts of Congress that go beyond its enumerated powers in violationof the 10th Amendment.”

Republican governors Mark Sanford of South Carolina, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Rick Perry of Texas expressed reservations about accepting stimulus funds because they are concerned that the federal government will dictate how it is spent.

The federal government extracts money from their taxpayers, sends a bit of it back and then dictates how it is spent, they argue.

Pat Shannan is a corresponding editor of American Free Press.

Not Copyrighted. Readers can reprint and are free to redistribute - as long as full credit is given to American Free Press - 645 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Suite 100 Washington, D.C. 20003

Obamanomics

This is your nest egg!

This is your nest egg on Obamanomics!!

Any questions????

http://therealrevo.com/blog/?p=5066

Scarier tha Frankenstein ...

More repulsive than the Creature From The Black Lagoon, it's ...
THE NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIE BANKERS

'Nationalize' the Banks
Dr. Doom says a takeover and resale is the market-friendly solution.

By TUNKU VARADARAJAN

New York

Nouriel Roubini is always dressed in black-and-white.
I have known him for nearly two years, and have seen him in a variety of situations -- en route to class at New York University's Stern Business School, where he's a professor; over a glass of wine in his boyish loft in Manhattan's Tribeca; at an academic conference, seated sagely on the dais; at a bohemian party in Greenwich Village, at . . . oh . . . 3 a.m. -- and he always, always wears a black suit with a white linen shirt.

And so, in black-and-white he was, earlier this week, when he rushed into the office of Roubini Global Economics, his consulting firm in downtown Manhattan, and offered a breathless apology to this correspondent, who'd been waiting for half an hour. "Really sorry I'm late! Charlie Rose taped for way longer than he said he would."

Mr. Roubini -- a month short of 50 -- is in huge media demand, the nearest thing to a rock-star among the economists who hold our fate in their hands these days. The peculiar thing, of course, is that he's in demand because he specializes in predictions of gloom. (He has earned himself the sobriquet of "Doctor Doom.") In person, though, he's anything but a downer.

The man has instant impact on public debate. An idea he floated only last week -- that our "zombie banks" be temporarily nationalized -- aired first on Forbes.com, where he writes a weekly column. It has evolved, in the space of just a few days, from radical solution to almost received wisdom.
Last Sunday on ABC, George Stephanopoulos asked Lindsey Graham, the conservative Republican senator, what he thought about all this talk of bank nationalization. Mr. Graham said that he wouldn't take the idea off the table. And on Wednesday, Alan Greenspan told the Financial Times that "it may be necessary to temporarily nationalize some banks in order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring."

Mr. Roubini tells me that bank nationalization "is something the partisans would have regarded as anathema a few weeks ago. But when I and others put it in the context of the Swedish approach [of the 1990s] -- i.e. you take banks over, you clean them up, and you sell them in rapid order to the private sector -- it's clear that it's temporary. No one's in favor of a permanent government takeover of the financial system."

There's another reason why the concept should appeal to (fiscal) conservatives, he explains. "The idea that government will fork out trillions of dollars to try to rescue financial institutions, and throw more money after bad dollars, is not appealing because then the fiscal cost is much larger. So rather than being seen as something Bolshevik, nationalization is seen as pragmatic. Paradoxically, the proposal is more market-friendly than the alternative of zombie banks."
In any case, Republicans must now temper their reactions, he says. "The kind of government interference in the economy that we saw in the last year of Bush was unprecedented. The central bank -- supposed to be the lender of the last resort -- became the lender of first and only resort! With our recapitalizing of financial institutions, and massive government intervention in the markets, we've already crossed a significant bridge."

So, will the highest level of government be receptive to the bank-nationalization idea? "I think it will," Mr. Roubini says, unhesitatingly. "People like Graham and Greenspan have already given their explicit blessing. This gives Obama cover." And how long will it be before the administration goes in formally for nationalization? "I think that we're going to see the policy adopted in the next few months . . . in six months or so."

That long? I ask. "Six months from now," he replies, "even firms that today look solvent are going to look insolvent. Most of the major banks -- almost all of them -- are going to look insolvent. In which case, if you take them all over all at once, you cause less damage than if you would if you took over a couple now, and created so much confusion and panic and nervousness.

"Between guarantees, liquidity support, and capitalization, the government has provided between $7 trillion to $9 trillion of help to the financial system. De facto, the government is already controlling a good chunk of the banking system. The question is: Do you want to move to the de jure step."
Yet another reason why bank nationalization is a good idea, Mr. Roubini continues, is that "we started with banks that were too big to fail, but what has happened, in the process, is that these banks have become even-bigger-to-fail. J.P. Morgan took over Bear Stearns and WaMu. BofA took over Countrywide and then Merrill. Wells Fargo took over Wachovia. It doesn't work! You can't take two zombie banks, put them together, and make a strong bank. It's like having two drunks trying to keep each other standing.

"So if you took over a big bank, and you split the assets in three or four pieces, maybe you create three or four regional or national banks, and they're stronger! Nationalization -- or 'temporary receivership,' if you like, if the N-word is a political liability -- is an occasion to undo the sort of consolidation that has created an even bigger systemic problem. And the only way to do it is by essentially taking them over and breaking them up."

Here, I ask Mr. Roubini whether he has been more right -- more prescient -- in his reading of the economic downturn than all the other famous bears in America. After all, judging by the attention paid to him in the press, it is hard not to conclude that he is the leading guru of the current recession, or "near-depression," as he often calls it. My question, remarkably, induces in him some diffidence. "I don't want to personalize the analysis, you know . . . because, first of all, there were many people who got many of the elements right.

"People like [Robert] Shiller were very worried about the housing bubble. People like Steve Roach were worried about an economy based on asset bubbles leading to consumption bubbles that were unsustainable. People like Ken Rogoff talked about global imbalances in the current account deficit not being sustainable. Nassim Taleb has been worrying for a while about 'fat tail' events . . . . So lots of people signaled concern about things. I was one of those who put the dots together and thus gave a more fleshed-out picture."

To Mr. Roubini, the most interesting question isn't the one of who got it right. Instead, he asks why we "over and over again, get into these periods of irrational exuberance, when not only is there an asset bubble and a credit bubble, but people believe these are sustainable over a long time -- Wall Street, policy makers, rating agencies, academics, journalists . . . ."

What exactly is Nouriel Roubini's economic philosophy? "I believe in market economics," he says, with some emphasis. "But to paraphrase Churchill -- who said this about democracy and political regimes -- a market economy might be the worst economic regime available, apart from the alternatives.

"I believe that people react to incentives, that incentives matter, and that prices reflect the way things should be allocated. But I also believe that market economies sometimes have market failures, and when these occur, there's a role for prudential -- not excessive -- regulation of the financial system. The two things that Greenspan got totally wrong were his beliefs that, one, markets self-regulate, and two, that there's no market failure."

How could Mr. Greenspan have been so naïve, I ask, hoping to get a rise. "Well," says Mr. Roubini, "at some level it's good to have a framework to think about the world, in which you emphasize the role of incentives and market economics . . . fair enough! But I think it led to an excessive ideological belief that there are no market failures, and no issues of distortions on incentives. Also, central banks were created to provide financial stability. Greenspan forgot this, and that was a mistake. I think there were ideological blinders, taking Ayn Rand's view of the world to an extreme.
"Again, I don't want to personalize things, but the last decade was one of self-regulation. But in the financial markets, without proper institutional rules, there's the law of the jungle -- because there's greed! There's nothing wrong with greed, per se. It's not that people are more greedy now than they were 20 years ago. But greed has to be tempered, first, by fear of losses. So if you bail people out, there's less fear. And second, by prudential regulation and supervision to avoid certain excesses."
How does Mr. Roubini think the media has covered the financial crisis? "The problem," he says -- after first stating to me that he intends "no offense!" -- "is that in the bubble years, everyone becomes a cheerleader, including the media. This is the time when journalists should be asking tough questions, and I think there was a failure there. The Masters of the Universe were always on the cover, or the front page -- the hedge-fund guys, the imperial CEO, private equity. I wish there had been more financial and business journalists, in the good years, who'd said, 'Wait a moment, if this man, or this firm, is making a 100% return a year, how do they do it? Is it because they're smarter than everybody else . . . or because they're taking so much risk they'll be bankrupt two years down the line?'

"And I think, in the bubble years, no one asked the hard questions. A good journalist has to be one who, in good times, challenges the conventional wisdom. If you don't do that, you fail in one of your duties."

Mr. Varadarajan, a professor at NYU's Stern School and a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, is executive editor for Opinions at Forbes.

FDR or Ronald Reagan - Which way will Obama go?

Commentary: From my perspective, it's already perfectly clear. BHO will do whatever his puppet masters - Kissinger, Rockefeller, Bryszinski, James A. Johnson (Perseus Capital)
( http://www.muckety.com/Perseus-LLC/5001487.muckety?big=true ) want him to do!
AB


By Patrick J. Buchanan.


Barack Obama, it is said, will inherit the worst times since the Great Depression. Not to minimize the crisis we are in, but we need a little perspective here.

The Great Depression began with the Great Crash of 1929. By 1931, unemployment had reached 16 percent.

By 1933, 89 percent of stock value had been wiped out, the economy had shrunk by one-third, thousands of banks had closed, a third of the money supply had vanished, and unemployment had reached 25 percent — among heads of households. And in those days, there was no unemployment insurance, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no Social Security, no welfare.

FDR’s answer: vast federal spending, tough new regulations on business and higher taxes — like Herbert Hoover before him, only more so.

The Depression lasted until war orders from the Allies brought U.S. industry back to life. Before 1940, not once did unemployment fall below 14 percent. In May 1939, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau testified:

“We are spending more money than we have ever spent before, and it does not work. … I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started … and an enormous debt, to boot.”
Politically, the New Deal was a smashing success, with FDR’s landslides in 1932, 1934 and 1936 virtually wiping out the GOP.

Yet, economically, the New Deal was a bust, failing utterly to restore prosperity. Despite the indoctrination of generations of schoolchildren in New Deal propaganda, that is the hard truth.
Consider, now, how Ronald Reagan responded to the economic crisis of 1980, the worst since the Depression. In the “stagflation” of that Jimmy Carter era, interest rates had reached 21 percent and inflation 13 percent.

Reagan’s answer was the tight money policy of Fed Chairman Paul Volcker and across-the-board tax cuts of 25 percent, while slashing the highest rates from 70 percent to 28 percent.
While unemployment hit 10 percent in 1982 and Reagan lost 26 House seats, in 1983 the tax cuts kicked in.

From there on out, it was boom times until Reagan rode off into the sunset, having created 20 million new jobs. “The Seven Fat Years,” author Robert Bartley called them.
Reagan had followed the lead of Warren Harding and Cal Coolidge, who had cut Woodrow Wilson’s wartime tax rates of near 70 percent to 25 percent, resulting in “The Roaring ’20s,” a time of unrivaled prosperity.

The JFK tax cuts of the 1960s, also a Reagan model, were equally successful.

Harding, Coolidge, JFK and Reagan all bet on the private sector as the engine of prosperity. All succeeded. Franklin Roosevelt bet on government. And the New Deal failed. It was World War II that pulled the United States out of the Depression ditch of the 1930s.

Comes now the financial collapse and economic crisis of 2008, inherited by Obama, with 40 percent of all stock values wiped out in a year, foreclosures pandemic, and unemployment near 7 percent and surging.

In crafting his solutions, Obama seems to be brushing aside the Reagan, JFK and Harding-Coolidge models, and channeling FDR and the New Deal Democrats.

Already staring at a $1.2 trillion dollar deficit for the year ending Sept. 30, about 8 percent of the entire U.S. economy, Obama intends to add a stimulus package of $700 billion to $1 trillion, yet another 5 percent to 7 percent of gross domestic product. The resulting deficit would be twice as large as Reagan’s largest, 6 percent of GDP, which was the largest since World War II.

And how is this Niagara of money to be spent?

Hundreds of billions will go out in checks of $500 to $1,000 to wage-earners and individuals who do not even pay taxes. This is much like the George McGovern “demogrant” program of 1972, where every man, woman and child, if memory serves, was to get a $1,000 check from the U.S. government.

Other hundreds of billions will go to shore up state and municipal spending. Other hundreds of billions will go for “infrastructure” projects, another name for earmarks, which is a synonym for pork.
Now, as Obama does not intend to raise taxes, at least now, he is going to have to borrow this near $2 trillion from foreigners or U.S. taxpayers, or the Fed will have to create the money. Undeniably, this will have an impact upon the economy. But what will that impact be?

Where in history, other than World War II, is there evidence that such a mass infusion of spending restored prosperity?

Obama and the Democrats are taking a historic gamble, not only with their careers but with the country. If this monstrous stimulus package, plus the trillions in hot money, do not work; if the two ignite rampant inflation, rather than real growth, we are all out of options. The toolbox is empty.

And what will follow may truly resemble the 1930s.

Obama's War

by Patrick J Buchanan

Just two months after the twin towers fell, the armies of the Northern Alliance marched into Kabul. The Taliban fled.

The triumph was total in the "splendid little war" that had cost one U.S. casualty. Or so it seemed. Yet, last month, the war against the Taliban entered its eighth year, the second longest war in our history, and America and NATO have never been nearer to strategic defeat.

So critical is the situation that Defense Secretary Robert Gates,in Kandahar last week, promised rapid deployment, before anyTaliban spring offensive, of two and perhaps three combat brigades of the 20,000 troops requested by Gen. David McKiernan. The first 4,000, from the 10th Mountain, are expected in January.

With 34,000 U.S. soldiers already in country, half under NATO command, the 20,000 will increase U.S. forces there to 54,000, a 60 percent ratcheting up. Shades of LBJ, 1964-65. Afghanistan is going to be Obama's War. And upon its outcome will hang the fate of his presidency. Has he thought this through?

How do we win this war, if by winning we mean establishing a pro-Western democratic government in control of the country that has the support of the people and loyalty of an Afghan army strong enough to defend the nation from a resurgent Taliban?

We are further from that goal going into 2009 than we were fiveyears ago.

What are the long-term prospects for any such success?

Each year, the supply of opium out of Afghanistan, from which most of the world's heroin comes, sets a new record. Payoffs by narcotics traffickers are corrupting the government. The fanatically devout Taliban had eradicated the drug trade, but is now abetting the drug lords in return for money for weapons to kill the Americans.

Militarily, the Taliban forces are stronger than they have been since 2001, moving out of the south and east and infesting half the country. They have sanctuaries in Pakistan and virtually ring Kabul.

U.S. air strikes have killed so many Afghan civilians that President Karzai, who controls little more than Kabul, has begun to condemn the U.S. attacks. Predator attacks on Taliban and al-Qaidain Pakistan have inflamed the population there.

And can pinprick air strikes win a war of this magnitude?

The supply line for our troops in Afghanistan, which runs from Karachi up to Peshawar through the Khyber Pass to Kabul, is now a perilous passage. Four times this month, U.S. transport depots in Pakistan have been attacked, with hundred of vehicles destroyed.

Before arriving in Kandahar, Gates spoke grimly of a "sustained commitment for some protracted period of time. How many years that is, and how many troops that is ... nobody knows."

Gen. McKiernan says it will be at least three or four years before the Afghan army and police can handle the Taliban

.But why does it take a dozen years to get an Afghan army up to where it can defend the people and regime against a Taliban return? Why do our Afghans seem less disposed to fight and die for democracy than the Taliban are to fight and die for theocracy? Does their God, Allah, command a deeper love and loyalty than our god,democracy?

McKiernan says the situation may get worse before it gets better.Gates compares Afghanistan to the Cold War. "(W)e are in many respects in an ideological conflict with violent extremists. ...The last ideological conflict we were in lasted about 45 years.

"That would truly be, in Donald Rumsfeld's phrase, "a long, hard slog."

America, without debate, is about to invest blood and treasure,indefinitely, in a war to which no end seems remotely in sight, if the commanding general is talking about four years at least and the now-and-future war minister is talking about four decades.

What is there to win in Afghanistan to justify doubling down our investment? If our vital interest is to deny a sanctuary there to al-Qaida, do we have to build a new Afghanistan to accomplish that? Did not al-Qaida depart years ago for a new sanctuary in Pakistan?

What hope is there of creating in this tribal land a democracy committed to freedom, equality and human rights that Afghans have never known? What is the expectation that 54,000 or 75,000 U.S.troops can crush an insurgency that enjoys a privileged sanctuary to which it can return, to rest, recuperate and recruit for next year's offensive?

Of all the lands of the earth, Afghanistan has been among the least hospitable to foreigners who come to rule, or to teach them how they should rule themselves.

Would Dwight D. Eisenhower -- who settled for the status quo ante in Korea, an armistice at the line of scrimmage -- commit his country to such an open-ended war?

Would Richard Nixon? WouldRonald Reagan?

Hard to believe. George W. Bush would. But did not America vote against Bush? Why is America getting seamless continuity when it voted for significant change?

Source: www.buchanan.org