Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) BREAKING: Election prediction: McCain wins by one vote; porn star Peak Anger blamed! (h/t Miss Cellania)

2) Election Prediction #1: Actor212 will easily win his bid to be elected NotPresident. In a strong show of cross-party voting, Democrats, Republicans and Independents gave him such an huge mandate, he even won some votes in the general Presidential election!

3) Election Prediction #2: Despite Actor212's strong showing, Barack Obama won the election for US President with over 300 electoral votes.

4) You guys outside of New York (and Pittsburgh and a pale imitation in Green Bay...New York's was the original) never got Chiller Theatre, but it's BACK! For one night only, CW11 (formerly independent station WPIX, channel 11) will broadcast the groundbreaking horror film series "Chiller Theatre" with original host, Zacherle! Once you've seen this intro...

...you'll understand why kids all around the tri-state area were glued to their sets.

5) In other scary news...total consumer credit card debt in the third quarter of 2008 stood at $2.6 trillion dollars. Now that the mortgage industry is going thru it's workout phase, there's another monster in the grass: there's still ONE TRILLION DOLLARS in available, high risk unsecured credit card debt out there, just waiting to be used. This ain't over by a long shot.

6) Welcome to the party, Al!

7) This story smells funny. When even Michelle Malkin won't touch it with a ten foot pole, you know there's something weird going on. Personally, I believe she had a confrontation and probably, um, embellished the story a little, but I'll wait for the ATM camera evidence.

UPDATE: Like I said...I hate being right all the time...

8) Unusually cautiously, the Times has jumped on the Obama bandwagon.

9) Yet another smear by the right wing. This time, Gateway Pundit, who really ought to try the decaf brands, tries to paint Obama as a "whitey hater" by lifting a quote entirely (and clearly) out of context.

10) McCain family values, indeed!

11) When you lose the Goldwater family, the conservative icons from your own home state, you've fucked up royally!

12) If you had any money left in the stock markets this morning, kiss it bye bye!

13) They don't have the evidence, yet(i)!

(showing Memeorandum the luvvvvvvvvvvvv)

A Real Bailout

OK, I've given this at least as much thought as McCain did to skipping Letterman last week, and I have a bailout plan. It's not simple, it won't be easy, and it will take a few months to work itself through the system. Please consider this as part of the "NotPresident" Campaign Platform ©.

Here goes:

1) End the invasion of Iraq, immediately. In totality, this has cost us nearly $700 billion over the past five years. I don't think this is a coincidence. I sometimes wonder, late at night after that cup of cocoa that's supposed to make me sleepy for three days, if indeed we aren't paying extortion money to Al Qaeda, instead of bailing out the banks.

2) Take that $700 billion bailout and pay it to every man, woman, and child in the country. It seems to me that this is a no-brainer. It's roughly $3,300 per person. People who need it for their mortgages will help bailout their local bank. People who don't need it will either spend it or invest it, which will raise both economic activity and available investable capital. More on this in a later post. And this way, accountability is directly to the American people.

3) Cut out the middle man. There ought to be a truth-in-lending law that traces who your specific mortgage is sold to. If you need to bargain for a refinance or a repackaging, that's the person who you ought to be speaking to. They have the skin in the game (by buying the mortgage, they take the risk out of your bank's balance sheet), plus this forces them to personalize their policies regarding refinances/repackagings. Right now, they can be bloodless, heartless bastards. Let's force them back into the pool.

4) Raise taxes on the rich. Obama has already said he would do this, but he needs to be clearer, much clearer about it. If I was debating McCain, and was challenged on this, I would look straight into the camera and say the following: "My fellow Americans, Senator McCain would like you to believe that I will raise your taxes. Well, I won't, and this is a promise you can take to the bank: I will not raise your taxes. I am going to raise theirs, and that terrifies them."

5) Create government work jobs, make work if necessary. $3,300 is a good start to jump starting the economy, but our workforce will be suffering layoffs. We will need a program to absorb as much of these folks and utilize them for the good of the nation. We have infrastructure problems, we have security issues, and we can create grand programs to modernize such things as Internet access in rural communities (yes, they still have dial up in large swaths of the country!) and bring green energy technologies to everyone.

6) Impose an excess profits tax on oil companies. 40% ought to do it, above and beyond the profit earned at the $50 a barrel level. Hey, we gave them a price support when oil was hovering around $15 a barrel, they ought to be *grateful* to pay.

7) Strong incentives to communities to develop mass transit. Transportation uses about two thirds of US energy consumption each year. That's ridiculous. This could be part of my public works program. Our economic freedom will never be assured until we can get people out of their cars and into work.

8) Treat corporations as second class citizens. Finally, I would nullify the 1979 Supreme Court decision that expanded the "civil" rights of corporations to actually make them more free than you or I. It's about time to acknowledge that in this nation, speech is not free, but is priced at what the market can bear and that corporations have an enormous advantage over true human citizens. If I had to pack the SCOTUS to do this, I would, but I would simply have Congress pass new legislation, and hold a figurative gun to the head of any Congresscritter who felt even the slightest temptation to vote his re-election coffers.

There should be more done, but this is the barebones outline (as I said, I've given this only a little thought) for a bailout plan that rewards human beings for surviving this far, and not faceless corporate entities.

The Short List

During my campaign, I have have often been asked, "Who would I choose as a running mate?" Clearly, the very serious office of NotPresident requires choosing a helpmeet of similar gravity.

Much speculation has been made with regards to the choices for Senators Barack Obama and John McCain Vice Presidential candidates.

I would like to end the speculation regarding who I would choose as my running mate right now. I figure I can grab a cheap mention by Memeorandum, and perhaps some of the thunder from Messrs. Obama and McCain.

For my NotVicePresident, I have chosen Pamela Anderson.

Perhaps I should explain why. Ms Anderson clearly bring a couple of assets to the office. Yes, those (gotcha! :-D ), but I had other thoughts in mind as well.

One possible definition of the term "vice president" would be "the president of vice". This opens up fertile virgin ground on which to consider options.

Indeed, Ms. Anderson has some experience in this area. In fact, she could conceivably have more experience than yours truly, thus strengthening an already strong feature of my campaign. Part of my platform is to bring back vice into the private lives of Americans.

Too, she can reach out to voters on both sides of aisle. She has a proven track record with tree-hugging liberals like Tommy Lee, as well as staunch conservative biker-fight-bitch-slappers like the McCain supporting Kid Rock.

In addition, like me, she is of Finnish descent...what is in our water?...so that means she has at least some fluency in the evangelical church, which would attract the Southern Christian vote in droves.

Just imagine her in a robe on the altar giving a homily, after being doused with a bucket of water. Parishioners would rise in celebration! Talk about a candidate who can get Americans to come together!

Clearly, she's an amazingly intelligent woman, having started out with next to nothing as a small-town Canadian girl, and parlaying and pumping up her meager assets into a multimillion dollar empire. Intelligence of all kinds will not go unrewarded in my administration. There will never be a missed NotPresidential debriefing by ANYONE so long as Pamela is there, fresh out of the shower. The things she could elicit from my staff would be astoundingly profound.

Her background in film would serve well on the Notcampaign trail, too, as she would clearly be a walking photo op wherever she goes.

On a darker note, her past would be fertile ground for the tabloids, thus deflecting their attention from my own peccadilloes and perversions. Look, the 80s were a bit of a blur for me, OK? With Anderson as my running mate...and who wouldn't want to see that!...no one would care about my goat and dwarf episode from Studio 54...they'd just put her Tommy Lee sex tape on endless loop on Fox News!

Now, I know the Constitution has this silly law with regards to American citizenship and the office of the President, so let me point out two things: 1) I'm not running for President, and 2) I could solve the problem with one stroke, and invade and occupy Canada. Thank you George W. Bush for making it OK to violate the sovereignty of a nation!

But, as I have not formally offered the job to her, I understand she might reject me out of hand.

So to speak. So I have a back up candidate in mind: Carmen Electra.

In fact, seeing as we're discussing vices, why not both? That ought to get me about 70% of the vote, having them both on my ticket, together...closely!

No Taxation Without Presentation

Let's talk about money for a moment.

A government is reliant on money. This generally comes in the form of taxes of some sort.

So taxes are a necessity, a necessary evil.

There's a fairly comprehensive, if anecdotal, body of evidence that suggests our current income tax system is not only ineffective, but possibly illegal.

As your NotPresident, I have a simple yet elegant solution, one that will lower taxes for most of us, yet re0jigger the tax liability so that it is more equitably distributed amongst the people who most benefit from our nation's freedoms.

After all, they have more freedoms than you or I. Look at how OJ Simpson got off!

Income is easy to tax and even easier to account for: you get a check, it gets deducted ahead of time, if you earn a salary. But that's not the problem. The problem comes from all those non-wage earnings: dividends, sales proceeds, and so on.

The disincentive of an income tax is to avoid spending money until after you've settled your debt to society. Withholdings make this bit easy, but the first time you get a lump sum from, say, the sale of a stock, you are clueless as to what to do regarding your taxes.

My tax system would avoid all this. Rather than focus on income, I would focus on wealth.

You are free to earn as much money as you can, legally, illegally, I don't care. What I DO care about is how much you keep out of the economy. And there's the difference.

Simply put, I would tax any investment that, in turn, did not create more income. No more tax shelters. No more idle rich sitting on their arses, collecting dividend checks. No more squirreling away money that you earned on the backs of the working and middle classes so that your kids can go to Choate and Harvard.

It's really very simple: the incentive in this tax system is to spend money, actual cash money, and the more you can afford, the more you should spend.

Naturally, there will be some baseline "minimum wealth" figure under which no one would be taxed. It's not fair, for example, to tax someone who owns a $100,000 home for four people, struggling by on an income of $30,000. I'd have to run the numbers a bit, but my suspicion is I would exempt anyone who owns less than $500,000 in assets.

Net of a home mortgage, to boot.

Eveerything else above that is fair game, and yes, I would tax your retirement savings. But notice something: every dollar you draw down after retirement is 100% tax free.

The tax rates would be graduated. It's not fair to ask someone who owns, say, $500,001 to pay the same rate of tax as someone who owns 500,000,001. If your hogging your wealth, you're going to get hit with a penalty, a big penalty.

Admittedly, this plan would need a lot of fleshing out (actually, it's already been fleshed out, but after Senator McCain stole my idea for a cash prize for alternative energy, I'm laying just enough cards on the table to show my hand without putting my chips in completely.

You want it, Barack? John? Come buy it off me!

I even promise to spend the check!

A New Paradigm

Now that the official campaign for President has kicked off in earnest, it is time to revisit my campaign for NotPresident once more.

There is a desperate need in this nation for solutions. It is clear from the rhetoric on both sides that confrontation will be the order of the day, despite both candidates' professed belief in inclusion and reconciliation.

After all, the hateful energy spewed during both primary campaigns could power a small city for a few years.

Democrats are saddled defending themselves against programs that were dismantled decades ago. This will be the trope John McCain will foist upon the American people and will do it often. We've already seen his attempts to link Barack Obama's solutions to the challenges facing us as "failed policies" dusted off.

Republicans are saddled with, well, defending themselves against programs that were dismantled decades ago, as well as programs thrust upon America in the past eight years and proved disastrous. Here, we see Obama link McCain closely to the Bush administration's "failures of the past" in foreign policy as well as its economic policy.

Both talk of bipartisan reforms, both talk of bipartisan solutions, and both have floated trial balloons about asking members of the opposing party to work in their administrations.

Bullshit, to be polite, in other words.

The real solutions to this country's problems lie not in the politics of the now, but in the course of the future. We need to go back to the future, and right away.

There was a time, 40 years ago, when this nation could do everything: win a war on poverty, fly men to the moon, dismantle racism in government, take on every challenge head on.

We need to get back to that future. We might need to forget ALL the policies of the past and the rampant inability of politicians to fix what's not broken, and move forward, confident that our solutions will solve those troubles jusy by being implemented.

Take the energy crisis. This is largely linked hand in hand with two other major crises: pollution and global warming. Solve the first, and you are well on the way to solving the latter two. We need a comprehensive energy policy that does away with protecting the oil companies and starts investing in the future, past peak oil, past ALL oil.

I would propose the following budgetary item be included in my first non-administration: a $1 billion dollar bounty payable to anyone, and I do mean anyone, who can demonstrate a truly renewable energy source-- solar, geothermal, wind, and so on-- that will create the same rate of BTUs as crude oil, in a form that is commercially viable.

This bounty would not be payable just once. It would be paid for each new energy resource that can be so demonstrated to the country's satisfaction. If you can develop a brand new way of harnessing wind on a commercially viable scale that is new and innovative, or takes a windmill one step farther, then you get your bounty. I figure there ought to be about ten of these that will have to be paid out.

No "cold fusion" debacles. We go for the gut this time. The reduction in cleaning up crude oil spills in the future alone ought to justify that bounty. We could lower taxes without even taking a vote, because this energy would be essentially untaxable: how do you justify taxing that which the planet provides us?

In other words, forget the political and economic infrastructure the past has foisted upon us, and move ahead with changes that will actually benefit people. Changes like this and the ones I will outline over the course of the next few months, would be the backbone of any non-campaign I might choose to not run.

Some would give people hope for change. I would offer change that matters, change that counts, change that is real change and not swapping horses in the middle of a race in the wrong direction. The time is now, the people are ready for change. We need to leave the failures of our government behind us and opt to see the world in new ways.

It will be scary, to be sure, but I also think the transition to this new nation would take place more smoothly than even I foresee. It is staggering the amount of information at our disposal that we don't even begin to comprehend, much less account for.

Bush's Final Budget

Bush's Final Budget. Sorry for repeating myself, but that sounded so delectable...

OK, so here it is: Bush's budget proposal for this final year of his circus administration:

President Bush’s final budget, a $3 trillion plan offered Monday that would continue his tax cuts and sharply reduce domestic spending, has little chance of surviving in a Democratic Congress. But the problems it lays out will survive and grow, presenting tough choices for the next administration.

How, for example, will the next president rein in the cost of retirement and health programs? What will he or she do about tax increases on Americans when Mr. Bush’s tax cuts expire at the end of 2010, or when the alternative minimum tax propels millions of taxpayers into higher brackets each year?

Beyond these familiar traps, how will a Republican president pay for further promised tax cuts or a Democratic president pay for a sweeping health care overhaul without increasing the red ink left by Mr. Bush?

Three trillion. By his own estimates, Bush projects a $470 billion deficit, which is higher than anything recorded previously, and that's before Iraq invasion spending!

This is a serious constraint that the next President will have to deal with. Even tho spending for the Iraq invasion is off-budget, so not reflected here, ending the invasion as soon as possible becomes imperative, because many of the incidental costs of that conflict are reflected in the departmental budget requests of agencies and cabinet offices as diverse as the Pentagon right down to the Department of the Interior (National Guardsmen have to be reimbursed from *somewhere* when they respond to disasters).

Fortunately, it's not as bad as Bush's budget paints. Bush has long had a reputation for being Chicken Little (if not just plain chicken) about a lot of things, trying to literally scare up support for dicey propositions and bizarre programs that conflict directly with national security, much less any rational modality of governance.

Discretionary spending, that is, non-military and non-mandated spending (which excludes Social Security) is less than three percent of the budget, which means we can't cut the education, welfare, and public works budgets any tighter than we already have. That means one of two places for the money to come from: Social Security or defense.

Assuming Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama end up president, you tell me: which gets slashed?

If you said defense, that's the right answer. And wrong answer. Wrong answer, since I have an idea that might help refresh the military, offer opportunity to working class Americans, and right a faltering economy before it's too late.

A few days ago, I off-handedly proposed as part of my NotPresident noncampaign, a real stimulus package that would help the American economy while de-militarizing our presence in the Middle East. In that package, I mentioned that we could take the savings from the Iraq invasion forces and put them to use here at home, rebuilding and mending and upgrading the infrastructure in America.

I have an additional thought: energy independence. Yesterday, as a one-off, I said that a good idea for creating a new economy based on renewable energy would be to offer a billion dollar prize.

Guess what institution would be offering that prize? If you guessed the Pentagon, you'd be right. Why the Pentagon? Why not the DoEnergy?

Accountability, for one thing: the Pentagon regularly handles budgets of this size and has in place a responsibility infrastructure that would have to be built into the Department of Energy.

More important, tho, is that the first applications of renewable energy in the real world would be defense-related, so we might as well let them perfect the technology before awarding the prize. After all, is there a better testing ground for the efficiencies of scale, redundancies and safeguards than in the chaos of even test battlefields?

I doubt it.

By combining the energy prize (maybe I'd call it the Gore Award) with the defense budget, we'd pretty much ensure that no Republican might come along to gut the budget for it. The Joint Chiefs of Staff would welcome the job security, and the companies who would be applying for the competition could remain assured that politic donations and lobbying would have nearly zero influence on the outcome.

And we'd be beating plowshares into swords.

Would this solve our immediate economic problems? Probably not, but it might and it would ensure that $100 a barrel increases in the price oil would never trouble us again. People would have jobs, and those jobs would carry over to the new renewable energy companies that would spring up as this technology is leased for components, software, and engineering into new products.

Too, we'd create a viable, if not thriving, economy of companies that would be greening the infrastructure that the current energy economy has in place: reforesting mountaintop removal coal mines, cleaning up crude refinery sites, finding new uses for natural gas pipelines, and such like that.

Budget deficits represent challenges, but they also represent opportunities to change wasteful and irrational ways of the past, ways that have failed us now, and to move in a direction that makes sense for us and our children and grandchildren.

And we would hardly have to tinker with tax rates, and we'd take tax cuts off the table for decades.

Super Bowl Thoughts

I don't normally watch football.

If I want to see a bunch of sweaty men groping each other, interrupted by an authoritarian figure lecturing the audience on some illegal activity, only to watch said immorality over and over again, I'd turn on the Republican Senate caucuses on C-Span.

That said, I did tune in the fourth quarter of last night's Super Bowl after hearing on the car radio how close the game was.

Pretty exciting stuff, I must admit. The catch by David Tyree in the final scoring drive will likely go down in history with such plays as Johnny Sample's interception in SBIII as one of the greatest plays that a team didn't score on, but set them up to win.

Football bores me for several reasons, the primary of which I delineated earlier: too many penalties. It takes from whatever intrinsic beauty there is in the game when a well-executed play is nullified by a penalty that occured nowhere near the play and had nothing to do with its execution. If I was the NFL commissioner, I'd cut the number of official to three and make them focus on the play as it develops.

Too much padding, too. When I played pick up games, we played without pads, so if you "assassinated" someone, it hurt you as badly as it hurt him.

In college, I quarterbacked some divisional champions, nothing to brag about, and those were fun games. I can still toss a ball 60, maybe 70 yards with a perfect spiral.

But ten seconds of action followed by twenty minutes of beer commercials reminds me too much of sex with an ex.

American football is far too authoritarian a game, which probably explains a few things. For one thing, it explains why its so well liked in red states, whose denizens tend to be "authoritarian followers", to use Professor Robert Altmeyer's phrase. They believe in rigid logical structure and simplistic order, imposed and enforced by an authoritarian.

It also explains why football players are constantly invoking God in their interviews: the ultimate Authoritarian, from their perspective.

Republicans are the Daddy party, and now we understand why.

The lack of creativity in football also bores the hell out of me, which is why I like hockey and baseball. There's a dynamic missing in football that those two sports not only include, but demand: improvisation.

In football, you improvise only when you're in trouble (like Giants quarterback Eli Manning slipping the grasp of two tacklers before that pass to Tyree). In politics, we see the problem with waiting until it's too late, and then "ad hoc-ing" a solution: you end up with Oma bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

You'll notice that both of those are the result of the rigid short-term thinking of Republican administrations.

Me, I like creative thinking. Take the energy crisis: if I was NotPresident, I'd post a billion dollar prize to the company that could make a renewable energy source cleanly produce the same number of BTUs from the equivalent resource of one barrel of oil. Thnk the private sector would work its ass off for that? You betcha!

Like Republicans, football coaches can demand a "recount" (video review) if things don't go their way, rather than rely on the fact that people make mistakes, life is unfair, and you have to deal with the consequences when luck breaks against you.

Children stomp their feet and demand a do-over. Adults roll with the punch and move forward. Children are simple thinkers. They need authoritarians to instruct them and help them mature.

Adults learn to trust themselves and learn the value of making agreements.

Football is about measuring to some arbitrary standard (why yards? Why not meters or even feet?), specifically defined over a set period of time: it is about strict resource management. Republicans are about measuring to some arbitrary standard (money), specifically defined over a set period of time (fiscal years). Why?

It's a simple measure, yet easily manipulated, and rewards the simplistic at the expense of the sophisticated that might bring a bigger-but-more-nebulous benefit to your people, a tax cut versus a new bridge, for example.

Football is about possession, too, so there's another parallel to Republicanism. The more time you "have," the more time they are the "have-nots," and Lord knows, the Republicans are all about the "haves"! I imagine interceptions and fumbles are a liberal Robin Hood plot in football to Republicans.

Football is played in the mud and the dirt and the drab days of fall.

Perfect Republican weather: cold, blustery, dank.

Stimulate Me, Baby!

Yeesh!

After something on the order of 30 years of tax cuts having proved precisely one thing, you'd think politicians could come up with a better idea in the face of a recession:

In the long run, Americans can be confident about our economic growth. But in the short run, we can all see that that growth is slowing. So last week my administration reached agreement with Speaker Pelosi and Republican Leader Boehner on a robust growth package that includes tax relief for individuals and families, and incentives for business investment.

Apparently not. Now even the Democrats are bleating the same tired bull, albeit in a different key:

We heard last week and again tonight that Congress and the president are acting quickly on a temporary, targeted stimulus package. That’s encouraging, but you and I know that a temporary fix is only the first step toward meeting our challenges and solving our problems.

Can we talk honestly for a moment?

In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected on a platform that included tax cuts across the board for Americans, but tax cuts the primarily focused on the well-to-do. When he entered office, the annual national deficit was $80 billion dollars. When he left, he had accumulated deficits of $2 trillion with a final deficit of $ 155billion.

His tax cuts did increase tax receipts, but if you adjust for inflation, by less than twenty percent over his eight years (roughly 0.21 per working person per year). Meanwhile, Clinton's tax hikes increased tax receipts in the country by 3.1% per working person per annum.

Under his watch, unemployment skyrocketed to over 10%, finally falling back to a still-uncomfortable 5.5%. Inflation remained steady throughout his administration between 4 and 6%, something that today would have the Fed tightening interest rates to nearly-unheard of levels.

In 2001, Bush proposed the first of three tax cuts, which didn't even begin to stimulate the kind of growth that Reagan's first tax cut did, yet still hyperinflated the budget deficit AND national debt in one fell swoop. The national debt the day Bush took office was $5.7 trillion and falling.

It now stands at $9.2 trillion and skyrocketing.

OK, given all this evidence...what part of "tax cuts are bad" do we not get?

Maybe...maybe...highly targeted tax cuts that are directed at the middle and working classes in the form of immediate rebate checks would work. Maybe. But as Gov. Sebelius points out, those are really one-off, temporary hits to the family budget, and besides, an awful lot of people will use this check to pay down some of their credit cards and other indebtedness, which does nothing for the economy: that's already spent money.

Here's how I would fight this recession, already in progress, if I was NotPresident:

1) I would immediately end the invasion of Iraq, and bring half the troops home today. I would leave about half for a short time in order to ensure an orderly transition to the people of Iraq and to quell any violence that the Iraqi forces themselves cannot handle. I can't stress this next part strongly enough: ALL TROOPS WOULD BE CONFINED TO BASES (except for routine patrols around the base) UNLESS REQUESTED BY THE IRAQ COUNCILS.

2) That would free up, gee, just about $150 billion each year. I would take that money-- screw the tax cuts except maybe the rebate checks-- and plow it into infrastructure repair: fixing bridges, improving port security, paving freeways, installing better public transportation systems.

Also, I would initiate a "Greening of America" in both senses of the word. We need not only to become more energy efficient, dropping the need to get involved for national security sake in places like the hellhole that is Iraq, but also to improve and beautify America's public works and places. Each square foot of concrete is a square foot of real estate that could be used to fight climate change. I would offer tax credits for greening your roof, for example, planting grasses and wildflowers that don't require high maintenance, or, if you have a pitched roof, tax credits for installing solar panels, but tax credits that mean something when compared to the costs of installation.

We'd be creating jobs immediately. We'd be encouraging investment in America's future and research into new technologies that we could sell to the world, thus recapturing our amazing economic growth based on innovation and not obsolescence.

Energy production in this country provides roughly $35,000 per person to the US economy each year. That's an awful lot of money. And an awful lot of jobs. (For comparison, per capita, the national debt, at $9.2 trillion, is about $25,000).

Even John Edwards isn't talking about this issue in quite this way.

Yes, we need immediate relief from mortgage debt and the inability of people to keep up with their bills, and a security net for those who will lose their jobs. That's a no-brainer and here's one arena where conventional wisdom is good wisdom: extend unemployment, assist those who need the assistance to avoid default, even if it means declaring a moratorium on interest rate adjustments and mandatory renegotiation of any mortgage either in or technically in default, and so on.

But long term, we have an opportunity to do something positive not only for the nation, but for the citizens of that nation, the ones who really count.

The ones this recession is going to hurt, bad.

UPDATE: I realize I could write a book in one sitting on this one topic alone, but I don't want to bore you more than you already are.

The simple truths of recessions are these:

- Governments are the consumer of last resort, having the deepest pockets and therefore the ability to splurge.

- Governments SHOULD be creating opportunities during good times, so that recessions don't hurt as much. These opportunities SHOULD swell the tax coffers, allowing governments more of a cushion for the lean times, but also so that governments can invest more in creating more opportunities for its citizenry.

- Tax cuts, justified as "giving you your money back, because you know how best to spend it" (ed note: it's always about spending it, for these assholes), have their limits, and I think we reached ours in 1989. Guess what? The 90s and 00s show that maybe, just maybe, we don't know how best to spend our money.

Be It Hereby Resolved....

To my all my friends and readers of Simply Left Behind:

Please have a safe and healthy and happy...and most of all, DEMOCRATIC, 2008.

My resolutions this year are simple.

I want to restore my health to the level it was a few years back, meaning back in shape and to stop getting sick all the time.

I want to take Simply Left Behind to the next level, which means whoring the shit out of it.

Finally, I want to really launch my NotPresident campaign.

Have a happy, folks, and don't forget your designated driver!

Watching The Wheels Spin

This ain't rocket science, guys...

CINCINNATI (Reuters) - Every politician in the U.S. presidential race claimed to be fighting for the middle class, and it seemed a sound strategy -- until the Democratic front-runners tried to define who, exactly, was middle class.

While Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama couldn't agree during a recent debate whether someone earning $97,500 or more could be considered middle class, voters have little difficulty judging who isn't -- the presidential candidates themselves.

"None of them really represent the middle class," said Rick Fulmer, 52, who works at the YMCA as a fitness trainer. "Both parties are tied to big business. It takes millions to run for president."

This is both ridiculously easy and profoundly difficult.

The middle class is easily defined, economically. Since the average family of four earns $45,000 a year, the safest definition of the "middle class" is the 80% or so who range around that point. Let's say any family (of neaarly any size) that earns from $35,000 to $75,000, just to be on the safe side, because census data says that a third of American households earn in that range.

Simple, right? Here's where it gets tricky: people who earn more (and some who earn less) believe they are middle class, when in fact they are not.

It's the belief that matters, however. A family that earns around $200,000 (two wage earners, with two kids, say) that lives in New York City or its suburbs will assume it's middle class, because that $200,000 doesn't buy much, once you factor taxes, mortgage, heating, and health insurance into the mix. Perhaps their disposable income is more along the lines of someone earning $75,000 but lives in Texas or Florida.

See? Not middle class, yet very middle class. The family in New York can't afford private schools, even if their income says they should. So education initiatives are very important to them (indeed, they probably moved to a district with better schools because of that very fact).

Too, when firefighters and some teachers make $75,000 a year or more, the definition of middle class becomes even fuzzier. While technically these earners are upper-middle class, you'd have to agree that their jobs keep their values firmly planted in middle class terra firma.

When politicians talk about "middle class," they're talking about the values of hard work, saving a buck, trying to live the American ideal of 2.6 kids, a house, two cars in the garage and providing for the family.

The proverbial "chicken in every pot" of a few generations ago has morphed into a Nintendo in every living room (or a PC, if you buy Microsoft's mission statement), but that's the spirit of the middle class.

Which is what makes the election of George Bush all the more unlikely, since he was born on third base thinking he'd hit a triple. He shares NO middle class values. He's never worked a hard day in his life that wasn't for a photo opportunity.

Sure, he can talk a good "middle class" game, but how can someone truly understand the middle class unless he (or she) has either lived it, or gone out of his way to understand it, like the Kennedy clan has?

What makes this discussion even fuzzier when it comes to Democrats, who traditionally have been and rightly should be the party of the middle class, is this interesting tidbit from the Heritage Foundation: 2005 tax data showed Democrats represent nearly 60 percent of the wealthiest one-third of congressional districts -- those with a high number of people earning more than $100,000 per year.

Admittedly, most of those are on the coasts, which means much higher costs of living, which means, yes, these "rich people" are the very essence of the middle class. Unfortunately, the tax code is skewed towards viewing them as rich, which means they get hammered by things like the alternative minimum tax, even if like you and I, they send their kids to public schools and ride the subways.

(OK, full disclosure...I'm not middle class. I make much more money, so extract the "me" and "we" bits out, even if I do ride the subways and sent my daughter to public school.)

This might be part of the disagreement that Obama and Clinton are having over the increased Social Security tax that Obama proposes. It would hit New Yorkers hard, "middle class" New Yorkers.

Personally, I have no problem with Obama's proposal. While there is no current Social Security crisis, I've always believed that Social Security taxes should not have a ceiling and in fact, should be applied to ALL income (with the possible exclusion of bank interest earned in a savings account, but that's a different part of my NotPresident platform), and that this revenue really should be locked away and not used in return for IOUs from the general spending fund.

So what are "middle class values," anyway?

Well, here's what I believe and if I was counseling a candidate, what I would tell him or her:

1) Hard work is its own best reward, but is also a path to the American Dream. I'm aware of the naivete it takes to swallow that, but enough people do that you have to account for it. The American Dream was never about being wealthy. The Horatio Alger stories saw the hero only achieve a decent living, never wealth. He became comfortable. The "chicken in every pot" ideal. To that extent, this is an attainable value. To the extent that this value gets warped by the economic royalists into "the American Dream is a million bucks," and the concommitant tax cuts they espouse and manipulate the average American into supporting...well, that's a con game. People don't get rich through hard work for someone else, and studies show that most people who work hard for themselves can't even promise a comfortable lifestyle.

2) Since Christ championed the poor, we should help them too. This will piss off an awful lot of hard left readers, but the simple fact is, America is a Christian nation, and while that has negative connotations in some circles, it shouldn't be perceived as evil. Hell, I'm Christian, and what goes on in the Religious Right offends me, too. But Christ's teachings about "Do unto others" and the other rules he set forth for living in a state of grace hold deeper meaning to most Christians, the ones you meet everyday in stores and at the PTA. They really Do believe that the poor need our help. This message gets warped by the economic royalists as "the poor are all about handouts," which distracts attention from the real reasons middle class families can't get ahead: the profiteers and pirates of the corporate classes.

3) If you leave me alone, I'll leave you alone. True dat. I think most families, apart from the gossip aspect, are happy not to know what their neighbors are up to, because it makes them fair game for intrusion themselves. This gets corrupted by the economic royalists into the pro-life logical fallacies and the pro-gun "from my cold dead hands" trope. I'm not sure why. I think it has to do with another distraction, possibly as government and the rich explore how to exploit the new technologies available for intrusion into control and economic devastation. But that's just a guess.

4) Finally, I'll have what he's having. Pretty simple, this is about not just fairness, but comparative greed. We all know this as "Keeping up with the Joneses." Naturally, as any TV watcher will tell you, this gets exploited by the economic royalists to create a need where none exists (really, if a Prius can get you from point A to point B, why would you need a Hummer?), which is the linchpin mechanism that feeds all the other exploitations I've listed above.

So this really is simple. And hard. And confusing. But once you grasp it, you can go with it.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

Don't forget to vote for Simply Left Behind in the 2007 Weblog Awards!



1) Apparently, it's not Sen. Robert Byrd...

2) I'd fly first class to Singapore just to test this rule. Of course, I'd be alone, but I've never been very quiet.

3) Here's your fucking War On Christmas, BillO! Why don't you whiiiiiiiiiiiiine about how crass and commercialized our Lord's birthday has become, instead of picking on honest people who hold different religious beliefs, you sleazy bastard?!

4) Damn! So much for my new weight-loss program: burgers, beer, and laying out on the couch watching TV!

5) Improve your sex life! With bacon????

6) Give Obama credit: it took him a while but he seems to have rattled Hillary's cage.

7) I don't think it will matter much after January, however.

8)
Clinton plays the 'woman' card
Interesting tactic. On the one hand, I'm thoroughly repulsed by this, no less than I would be if someone...say, Barack Obama...played the race card. On the other hand, you have it, throw it down. It will inoculate her for the general election.

9) Why does South Carolina hate America so?

10) I did think Stephen Colbert's run for the Presidency was a bad idea, particularly in this election with so much at stake. That's why I am running for "NotPresident". I felt the gravitas of the 2008 election was far too great for me to run a serious campaign parody. (donations accepted here)

11) I did wonder where the white lines on the court went when she played...

12) According to Rudy Giuliani, you are twice as likely to die of prostate cancer in England as you are in America. His pointed jab was at socialized medicine, naturally. However, it turns out that you are much more likely to be diagnosed prostate cancer (same study) in the US as you are in Britain. Why? Because we have in place a publicly-financed (socialized medicine isn't just about treatment) publicity campaign which causes more Americans to get tested! I should point out that prostate cancer, if your life span is long enough, is a near-100% iron-clad guarantee to hit any male human (with small exceptions that are being studied now).

13) Are you a Young Republican who supports the invasion of Iraq, but can't lift a rifle and stand a post? Now you can serve your country and not worry about accidental discharge! Except maybe propulsive diarrhea...

14) Finally, a right-winger wakes up and begins to realize what a miserable failure his life has been. Naturally, he blames liberal Hollywood.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

Special God Help Bless America edition

1) Suing God? I understand the point behind this, an attempt to expose frivilous lawsuits, but come on...suing Bush would have the same effect for most people, and be a damned lot safer!

2) On a related point: Best. Picture. Of the Week.

3) Iraq: "Oh Blackwater, Keep On Rollin'"

4) Note To Mayor Bloomberg: I happily accept donations for my run for NotPresident, and they aren't subject to campaign finance laws! altho they aren't tax deductible, either So give generously!

5) To understand how bad things are in the Bush economy, for the first time in thirty years, the Canadian dollar is worth more than the US dollar.

6) Soon, we'll have people in Burkina Faso sending us foreign aid.

7) If you want to understand why New York Democrats are licking their lips over a potential Rudy Giuliani nomination, look no further. Keep in mind that the last time they went head to head, Giuliani had to drop out rather than be embarrassed by a carpetbagger, who is now much more formidable in red-state regions.

8) Good on you, Dan. We all know those memos are not only accurate, but genuine. Payback's a bitch, but you should have sued for an amount that would make CBS think twice before becoming any administration's bitch again.

9) MEMO: To Barack Obama: you can spin this all you want, but you punked out, and we will remember.

10) Imagine the uproar from the right if Muslims had prevented Jews from praying at the Wailing Wall tonight.

11) Turning now to Obvious Sports News...

12) By the way, I'm putting the Mets on notice: I have tickets to Game Three of the LDS, and if you fuckers aren't playing by then, I will send a strongly worded letter to the New York Times.

13) Republicans! Soon, you may have to drink your martinis at room temperature.

14) And yet, they still mock "Hillarycare".

15) I may have found a new candidate for the Democrats to run. I'd vote for her on this proposal alone.

They Need A Study For This?

There seems to me to be an exceedingly simple answer to this admittedly trivial question:

The Senate Commerce Committee has approved a bill to establish a nonprofit public-private corporation to promote the United States as a tourist destination and clear up misperceptions about U.S. travel policies. It also would create a new office in the Commerce Department to work with other agencies on fixing visa policies and entry processes that discourage visits.

Visits to the United States from countries outside of Canada and Mexico totaled 21.7 million in 2006, down 17 percent from a peak of 26 million in 2000, according to Commerce Department figures. In the same period, cross-border travel around the world was up 20 percent.

"The global pie of international travel is steadily increasing, while the U.S. share has been slowly decreasing," said Roger Dow, president and CEO of the Travel Industry Association.

Visits from the six countries that provide the most tourists -- Britain, Japan, Germany, France, South Korea and Australia -- have dropped 15 percent since 2000 while travel from those six to other countries was up a robust 39 percent. There were 4.2 million arrivals from Britain, last year, down 11 percent from 2000, and 3.7 million visits from Japan, down 27 percent.

Now, a 17% drop in tourism overall may not sound like much, especially if you live in Bugtussle, Alabama, but to cities like, say, New York or Washington, it's pretty significant. New York's economy was driven by tourism these past six years since September 11, and on the face of things (particularly when it came to elbowing through crowds of gawking foreigners), the city was thriving on it. What makes this odd little statistic loom so large is, given the abject weakness of the American dollar against other currencies, we ought to be a leading destination for travellers, who like a bargain as much as the next guy.

I, of course, as a candidate for NotPresident in 2008, have both the problem figured out and a solution:

(h/t ImprisonBush.com)

D-Huh?

No precis. Let's see if you can figure out what caught my eye here:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday moved to block President George W. Bush from developing a new generation of atomic warheads, as Democratic and Republican opponents said the administration had not developed an adequate post-Cold War nuclear strategy.

A fiscal 2008 bill funding Department of Energy weapons programs that is moving through the House provided none of Bush's nearly $89 million request for continuing to develop the new warheads over the next few decades at a multibillion-dollar cost.

A vote on passing the overall bill was delayed until sometime after a July 4 holiday recess so lawmakers can review a series of unrelated projects that will be attached to the legislation.

The bill, which faces a White House veto threat because it would spend $1.1 billion more than Bush requested, still must be debated by the Senate.

Did you know that the Department of Defense owns no nuclear weapons? Not a one.

They're all loaned out by the Department of Energy!

If that isn't the single stupidest idea that mankind has ever thought up, right after inventing the A bomb in the first place, then I don't know what is.

Yes, nuclear weapons entail nuclear energy, and energy falls under the purview of the DOE.

Does this mean that all those bombs we've been dropping in Iraq and Afghanistan and back in the day, in Vietnam, the ones that contained gasoline, are also all owned by the DOE?

Apparently not.

This stop could not come at a more appropriate time, as we attempt to bully Iran into abandoning it's nuclear weapons program and as North Korea lobs ever more "test" missiles into the straits between itself and Japan.

Although this new technology has been called a replacement for weapons already in our arsenal, one questions whether that move is necesssary. After all, the designs have been upgraded, which means they'll need to be tested, which would violate several treaties the US has signed.

Not that Bush has been quick to acknowledge any treaty the US has signed.

Further, there's no real reason why the existing weapons could not be maintained indefinitely with some refurbishing. The sole reason to possibly support this new program is the possibility that, in toto, the program might reduce the number of nuclear weapons in our arsenal.

Those assurances, although hinted at, have never been formally acknowledged, and to think that the Pentagon would get rid of nukes to have these is like thinking that you could suddenly stop using your left leg, unless you had to.

What this country needs, and what the Department of Energy could have been doing for decades, is a comprehensive nuclear strategy, not just involving our weaponry, but research and development in the safe use of nuclear energy, such that we can raise the safety factor of nuclear power all around. We need safety protocols that go beyond a loud claxon when a plant shuts down, and we need fewer weapons.

Another policy plank in the Actor212 NotPresident campaign platform, by the way.

Congress may be dragging the DoE into this direction, kicking and screaming, by the way:

The legislation would significantly increase nuclear nonproliferation activities, including money to secure nuclear weapons and materials in the former Soviet Union and to increase efforts to keep them from entering the United States.

Amen to that.

A Novel Approach

One thing I value in my quest to seek the office of NotPresident (see sidebar to the right to make campaign contributions) is novel ideas to solve stubborn or impopsing problems. As you are no doubt aware, I've put you to sleep bored you to tears spent many days talking about mortgage defaults and the plight of the middle and working classes who are loaded up with debt and have very shaky incomes to pay them off with.

So when the latest Democracy Journal was delivered to my inbox this week, I found an amazingly simple idea from Elizabeth Warren, the nation's premier expert on middle class bankruptcies: a Financial Products Safety Commission

I t is impossible to buy a toaster that has a one-in-five chance of bursting into flames and burning down your house. But it is possible to refinance an existing home with a mortgage that has the same one-in-five chance of putting the family out on the street–and the mortgage won’t even carry a disclosure of that fact to the homeowner. Similarly, it’s impossible to change the price on a toaster once it has been purchased. But long after the papers have been signed, it is possible to triple the price of the credit used to finance the purchase of that appliance, even if the customer meets all the credit terms, in full and on time. Why are consumers safe when they purchase tangible consumer products with cash, but when they sign up for routine financial products like mortgages and credit cards they are left at the mercy of their creditors?

The difference between the two markets is regulation. Although considered an epithet in Washington since Ronald Reagan swept into the White House, the "R-word" supports a booming market in tangible consumer goods. Nearly every product sold in America has passed basic safety regulations well in advance of reaching store shelves. Credit products, by comparison, are regulated by a tattered patchwork of federal and state laws that have failed to adapt to changing markets. Moreover, thanks to effective regulation, innovation in the market for physical products has led to more safety and cutting-edge features. By comparison, innovation in financial products has produced incomprehensible terms and sharp practices that have left families at the mercy of those who write the contracts.

Sharp practices such as raising your interest rate on one credit card because you were a day late on another one, and raising it to some usurious rate of near 25%, only because some states in the nation allow that (most do not, but it's based on the state where the card company operates. Hullo, South Dakota!).

Why do people go into debt? Basically, debt is an advance on your income, with the promise to pay it back over time. Usually, you do this when you need to buy something, like a house or a car, that will last a long time and costs a lot of money.

But credit is also a trap, more so for people who get addicted to the feeling of wealth one gets from being flush with cash and able to buy things.

Consumers can enter the market to buy physical products confident that they won’t be tricked into buying exploding toasters and other unreasonably dangerous products. They can concentrate their shopping efforts in other directions, helping to drive a competitive market that keeps costs low and encourages innovation in convenience, durability, and style. Consumers entering the market to buy financial products should enjoy the same protection. Just as the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) protects buyers of goods and supports a competitive market, we need the same for consumers of financial products – a new regulatory regime, and even a new regulatory body, to protect consumers who use credit cards, home mortgages, car loans, and a host of other products. The time has come to put scaremongering to rest and to recognize that regulation can often support and advance efficient and more dynamic markets.

Isn't my credit rating at least as important as the fact that my house might burn down from a faulty toaster?

Particularly given the recent changes to the bankruptcy law that make it less likely that a consumer will ever be discharged from his debts if he gets in too deep over his head, this proposal is now more vital than ever. Things are only going to get worse for people as banks compete harder in a tighter mortgage and credit market for consumer dollars.

Americans are drowning in debt. One in four families say they are worried about how they will pay their credit card bills this month. Nearly half of all credit card holders have missed payments in the past year, and an additional 2.1 million families missed at least one mortgage payment. Last year, 1.2 million families lost their homes in foreclosure, and another 1.5 million families are likely headed into mortgage foreclosure this year.

Families’ troubles are compounded by substantial changes in the credit market that have made debt instruments far riskier for consumers than they were a generation ago. The effective deregulation of interest rates, coupled with innovations in credit charges (e.g., teaser rates, negative amortization, increased use of fees, cross-default clauses, penalty interest rates, and two-cycle billing), have turned ordinary credit transactions into devilishly complex financial undertakings. Aggressive marketing, almost nonexistent in the 1970s, compounds the difficulty, shaping consumer demand in unexpected and costly directions. And yet consumer capacity–measured both by available time and expertise–has not expanded to meet the demands of a changing credit marketplace. Instead, consumers sign on to credit products with only a vague understanding of the terms.

Indeed. To most of us, the language in a credit card agreement may as well be Sanskrit, for all we understand of it. The Schumer box, which is supposed to summarize the rates included in the agreement in plain English, can't possibly cover all the contingencies that are spoken about in the small print in which those rates may change.

Will this proposal ever see the light of day? I doubt it, without a concerted effort on the part of consumers and advocacy groups. Banks and other financial institutions make enormous contributions to politicians of both parties, precisely to keep regulations as lax as possible.

But something needs to be done and soon. Consumer debt to the United States is as big a problem as global warming is to the planet: it could cause the entire meltdown and collapse of the US economy, which is run on the fuel of consumer spending. For sure, the economy is going to take massive hits over the next several years as the mortgage market contracts, which will create opportunities for the fleecing of Americans, both legally and fraudulently, by legitimate financial concerns and, to put it politely, shady lenders and Nigerian princes whose money is trapped in Lagos.

It currently costs the American consumer $89 billion just to make the interest payments and fees on credit card debt. That doesn't include auto loans and mortgages, you'll notice. That's money that could be spent on shoes, books, clothing and laundry. Pretty essential stuff, and I chose those because they rank only slightly higher, in toto, than credit card servicing costs to the average Amerian family.

Yet, most people can tell you who makes quality clothes and shoes, or writes books worth reading.

We need an agency, not to protect Americans from falling into bankruptcy, that would be way too hard to do, but to help Americans understand what they are getting themselves into long before they get into trouble. Loan and credit language is deliberately obtuse, and that's the equivalent of putting rat poison into a teddy bear.

And poison is precisely what this language is designed to sugar-coat, or at least obscure. Most card companies will do as they damned well please, no matter how much you beg or complain, and the legal recourses you have are usually stacked in the lenders favor. You can't take them to court, you have to go to an arbiter that they get to choose. And so on.

I could go on, but Ms. Warren states the case more plainly than I could. What troubles me most about this is, its such an obvious solution to a pressing problem that it should be getting much more attention than some backwater webjournal and blog.

Spread the word, folks. We need this. Now.

Subtraction By Addition

Chess is a game played best by conserving your resources while making your opponent waste his. Positional strategy forcing unexpected errors and moves while protecting your more vital pieces as needed.

A whiff of this strategy has begun to rise off the Democratic Iraq funding strategy:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives defied President George W. Bush on Thursday and passed an Iraq war funds bill providing only enough money to continue combat for two or three months, without a guarantee of future funding.

By a vote of 221-205, the House approved the Democratic-backed bill giving Bush $42.8 billion in emergency military funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But in a Democratic drive to bring the four-year-old Iraq war to an end, the bill would withhold an additional $52.8 billion until late July, after Bush submits progress reports. Lawmakers then would decide whether to use this second batch of money to continue combat, or bring U.S. troops home.

Bush wants the nearly $100 billion up front and without conditions. "I'll veto the bill if it's this haphazard, piecemeal funding," Bush said earlier in the day.

What does this really mean?

Bush has already vetoed one Iraq spending bill that would have given him all the money he asked for and more, but tied that money to accepting a withdrawal strategy for our troops.

This bill gives Bush all the funding he's asked for over the period he asked for it, but limits his spending to a time frame, pending confirmation that the funds are being used productively. Let's call it an "allowance," for lack of a better term.

This strikes me as an interesting strategy: by pushing Bush's hand to the pieces they want him to move, the Democrats are setting a trap, I think. Ultimately, by September, no more than transitional stop-gap spending measures will have been passed (forcing Bush to fight this war à la carte, while leaving him few options to pursue the endgame he would prefer: a clean spending bill that he would only have to revisit late in an election year (thus neatly giving the Republican candidate a platform to campaign on that would sustain Bush's "legacy" while giving that candidate the option to let the war die after being sworn in or worse, allowing Bush to claim victory, and pass the mantle on).

When the Democrats won both houses of Congress in 2006, I assumed that the Bush strategy would be to run out the clock on his administration, but I didn't take into account the funding (or for that matter, rescinding the original war authorization).

Shows you why I'm running for NotPresident...and not President!

We're rounding into the summer now, and so I don't expect there will be much accomplished aside from funding the Iraq war, finally, on whatever terms the Dems can persuade the Republicans in Congress to accept on a veto-proof basis, but it's clear the Democrats are not just going to roll over, afraid of a veto-mad tinpot despot.

I've Had My Fill Of Patience!

The trope that Bush used to veto the funding bill (and deny our troops the armor and ammunition they need) was that to set a date certain would give our adversaries comfort, and allow them to withdraw until we leave. "All the terrorists would have to do is mark their calendars and gather their strength and begin plotting how to overthrow the government and take control of the country of Iraq," he said.

Possibly true, although they don't seem to care all that much. This war isn't about "us v. them" as much as it's about "them v. them" and we're just occupying space. But an article at Reuters today made me formulate something that has been bugging me for a while now:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Wearied by steady losses and few tangible signs of progress in the war in Iraq, the U.S. public is running out of one resource America's enemies appear to have in abundance -- patience.

Impatience with the war, now in its fifth year, was reflected in the elections that drove President George W. Bush's Republicans out of power in Congress in November. Since then, Bush named a new secretary of defense and new military commander in Iraq charged with implementing a new strategy.

But despite repeated appeals from Bush for patience while more troops arrive in Iraq to carry out the new strategy, opinion polls show that pessimism runs deep and most Americans favor a deadline for the withdrawal of troops.

Now, Bush has always said he doesn't govern by polls (despite the numerous flipflops that his administration has done based at least in part on, well, polling), and that might be an admirable trait for someone who has a grasp of reality.

But here's the truth: the insurgents, Al Qaeda, Iran, Syria, Sunnis and Kurds all DO read the newspapers, Mr. President, and believe it or not, they actually own calendars!

They know two things:

1) The American people stand three-quarters of the way out of the door of Iraq.

2) In 626 days, the next administration will take over. No one, despite what people are saying on the campaign trail to pander for right wing votes, will continue this war of yours much beyond that date, and that's assuming Congress hasn't figured out a way to take the widdle cap gun out of your hands and drag you home for supper, young man!

So they figure, "Eh! In 627 days, there will be another 3,000 American killed. No biggie. Then the fun begins anyway."

Judging from Islamic fundamentalist Web sites, there is no shortage of patience on the side of America's enemies. The insurgents appear confident they can draw on a seemingly endless supply of new recruits.

"Although ... we have killed some huge number of enemy combatants (perhaps 20,000+), without fail the armed insurgents, militia and Al Qaeda in Iraq apparently regenerate both leadership cadres and foot soldiers," retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey wrote in a memorandum to U.S. military leaders after a visit to Iraq in spring.

See where I'm going with this?

It doesn't matter if we set a date certain or not, the insurgents and the occupied are perfectly willing to wait us out. They know the American people won't allow you unlimited use of force, they know the army that's there already is exhausted, and worse, they know you're losing allies by the day.

My sense is that Bush is terrified. He's like the kid who got a failing grade in history, who doesn't want to show his dad the report card because he knows he'll be beaten (I should know the feeling; I was that kid...nevermind that I got the grade because some girl cheated off my test). So rather than own up to his mistakes and admit there has to be a better way, he's going to stubbornly stick to a path that can only lead to further death and destruction, hoping that some exit presents itself.

Praying the problem goes away, in other words.

There are plenty of plans on the table now that allow us to take some of the pressure off our troops, while protecting those precious few areas of Iraq that seem to be in pretty good shape, like the Kurdish north. For example, the Iraq Study Group, the Baker-Hamilton report, suggested perhaps partitioning the country into three autonomous regions, with equal shares of the national oil revenues going to all three. We could modify this to include American troops in the Kurdish north, allied troops in the Shi'a south, and the middle would effectively be labelled a "no-fight" zone, where we would enforce peace only when we had to, lightning fast strikes and back out. No more occupation.

Oops! I forgot. That was one of my "NotPresident" policies that I wasn't going to announce until I became NotPresident...

The Law Of Unintended Consequences

This old straw man is being trotted out now. You might think a complex issue being tackled by a bi-partisan government a year and a half ahead of the next national election would be a good way to gauge the next months' administration of the country, but it's not:

CRAWFORD, Texas -- President Bush returns to work Monday on the volatile issue of immigration, where his hope for a legislative breakthrough is complicated by cold relations with Congress.

Bush will be back in Yuma, Ariz., to inspect the construction of border fencing and to push for the creation of a guest worker program and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. The trip serves as a bookend to the visit Bush made to the same southwest desert city last May.

It also comes as tension rises over a new immigration proposal tied to the White House.

Bush's team is privately working hard to rally votes for what Bush calls comprehensive reform -- a mix of get-tough security with promises of fair treatment for undocumented residents.[...]

The plan would grant work visas to undocumented immigrants but require them to return home and pay hefty fines to become legal U.S. residents. They could apply for three-year work visas, dubbed "Z" visas, which would be renewable indefinitely but cost $3,500 each time.

The undocumented workers would have legal status with the visas, but to become legal permanent residents with a green card, they'd have to return to their home country, apply at a U.S. embassy or consulate to re-enter legally and pay a $10,000 fine.

Needless to say, as this is somewhat tougher than the bill passed last year, there's been a little opposition to it. Too, for me, it raises the issue of "buying your way" into America. If you take a look how how many Chinese undocumented immigrants make their way here (paying upwards of $40,000 or $50,000 just to be stuffed in a cargo hold, working off their debt at below-minimum wage unterarbeit), you can see that this proposal is fraught with unintended consequences.

We won't be getting the hard working immigrants anymore. We will be getting people who will feel they are owed something for the money they paid, and not just a certificate.

Oh, and that fence? It merely marks the Republican "solution" to a problem: pray it goes away. By putting up a fence, you aren't going to keep people out, only make them work harder to get in, and once in, make it more valuable that they earn a "living". If you're worried about cross-border criminals, well, when you make it so that only criminals would have the mind-set to cross the border...

The Democrats are obviously anxious to put a signature on this session of Congress as a shield in 2008 against the charge that they were only interested in hanging Bush and Karl Rove than in getting things done (even ONE bill of import would make them one up on the last two Congressheep). And naturally, Bush would like to take the focus off his miserable failure in prosecuting the "global war on terror". There's much at stake here, but unfortunately for Bush, there's more at stake for him. His days as an effective voice (such as he is) are dwindling, as he will get less and less air time as the 2008 campaign heats up. Given the way the primary season is being front-loaded, he has even less time than Clinton or any other President had before him.

My guess is that Congress will give him until the summer recess to come up with substantive proposalss for legislation and if he fails to do so, will come back after Labor Day with a full slate of quick-to-pass bills (possibly including the vaunted timetable for withdrawal). By this fall, the GOP Congressheep will have realized their backs are to the wall, and if no progress has been made in Iraq, the issue will fester in their home districts.

We already see this in the positions that moderate Republican senators who are up for re-election in 2008, like Olympia Snowe, are taking: while remaining cautiously behind Bush, you hear a subtext of "move it or lose it, pal".

“I opposed this particular measure because it sets an arbitrary “date certain” for withdrawal of our troops, which presents the terrorists and the insurgents the opportunity to target and jeopardize the security of those troops that remain. If the 120 days referred to a time period that the Iraqi government would have to complete significant work on national reconciliation benchmarks, that is a different matter. In that instance, I would have been more inclined to support this resolution as it would have actually required the Iraqi government to produce measurable results on such key political issues as oil revenue sharing, the fair consideration of constitutional amendments, and the de-Baathification process – all of which go to the root cause of violence in Iraq,” said Senator.

That's from Snowe's Senate website (interesting they don't attribute it to her in that quote...sounds almost like boilerplate). Nothing there that overtly undermines Bush's position, but you'll also notice she makes no mention of "stated American policy", the usual signal phraseology for full-throated support for the administration. Particularly in obvious boilerplate statements.

So for Bush, this really is more of a final exam than a midterm to determine if he can work with Congress. Already, hard feelings on both sides have been uncovered, and if the Democrats cannot override his veto on the Iraq timetable (not impossible, just bloody unlikely), they may be forced to submit a funding bill on his terms (mostly) or be accused of palying chicken with the lives of soldiers.

You might remember the last time a Congress palyed chicken with a president. Newt Gingrich shut down the government for nearly a week, and ended up with egg on his face as Clinton grabbed the bully pulpit and laid the blame squarely on Gingrich's shoulders.

For my part, I would accept Bush's veto and "play chicken," but I'd have already laid the groundwork of placing blame with him for any vetoes.

But that's just me, and I'm only running for (not)President

Bush
Iraq
2008 presidential election
Immigration
NotPresident

My Non-Announcement

My friends, I see a lot of challenges in the world today, some that we know, some that we don't know, and some that we don't know we don't know.

I have solutions for many of these, and can find solutions for the rest, if I'm not given the chance to sit in the Oval Office for four years by you, the people. I can do this, and help move this great country forward.

I am announcing today that I am not running and will not seek the nomination of either party for President of the United States. The President's job is vastly underpaid and while I have all these answers, I want more than a million and a half spread out over four years for them.

The challenges ahead are vast and profound, and I'd prefer someone else took the responsibility if my plans fail. For example, recent history tells us that our armed forces are in dire need of overhaul, to go from a mass fighting force that can level a nation to a grouping of smaller tactical deployments that can be dropped on a terror cell in an instant and then redeployed someplace before any witnesses can observe them.

So my first non-act as NotPresident would be to appoint a former head of the CIA as Defense Secretary, perhaps R. James Woolsey, who so admirably served this nation during the early Clinton administration and may have singlehandedly prevented more terror attacks on our shores than any man alive.

I would not task him to not change the military over from a large fighting horde to an emphasis on smaller strike teams with complete tactical support from roving home offices...I was tempted to say "satellite offices", but that had an uncomfortable connotation to me...on the sea, in the air and on the ground.

My second non-act as NotPresident would be to instruct the FCC to overturn the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine and to insist that, as a gift back to the American people for making a huge sum of money off our free airwaves, the radio and TV networks would now gladly donate an hour of prime time television every night from September to November (thus skirting two "sweeps") to either in-depth analysis of issues by the news department, or debating infomercials from responsible spokespeople on all sides of an issue.

Which do you think they'd opt for?

My third non-act as NotPresident would be to order most of the American troops out of Iraq. As I outlined not last week, I would leave a small force, say 40,000, in the Kurdish north to repay a debt to the Kurds that Bush the Elder reneged on, to the detriment and genocide of the Kurdish people. The Kurds seem to be getting their act together and we ought to be protecting that small ember that might one day become a large bonfire of freedom. Hand-in-hand with this act, I would accept a million Iraqi refugees, and barracks them in PNAC headquarters, the Excellence In Broadcasting studios, and Ann Coulter's apartments in New York City and Palm Beach. And fuck the Third Amendment, they aren't troops. Get over it.

My fourth non-act would be lunch that January 20. I figure this would carry me to 1:30 or so. I would have a light Caesar salad with poached salmon (fresh from the Pacific Northwest). At which point I would turn my massive manly brain to the environment.

Secretary of Energy Al Gore and I would not create a sustainable growth plan for development of alternative energy programs that would encourage cross-border participation by Mexico and Canada, including biodiesel, particularly ethanol, as well as developing finally solar and wind economies as feasible. We would also add to the mix current-powered turbines for river- and seaside communities. We would not bring the not grid to a more diversified and localized energy production capacity, which would not not avoid the terrible blackouts entire regions of this country have suffered since the '60s.

I figure at this point, it might be tea time. Note to all you fancy pants, plus-four wearing lobbyists out there. I spelled that "T-E-A." There will be no golf outings where you can try to rip off the American taxpayers any longer. Golf is a silly game that ruins a man's day and makes him addicted to his balls and shaft.

You want to talk shop? Learn a real man's sport, learn to scuba dive and try talking to me while 75 feet down.

That ought to also open up some positions on K Street.

OK, back to tea...Earl Grey, hot, two sugars. Oh, and I'd introduce America to a wonderful Finnish delicacy, pulla (you folks in the UP, stop your emails. I know you know about it already.) Its at this time I would not not read the PDB from the CIA.

My next non-act would be to place a call to Pakistani president Musharaff, and give him an ultimatum: either I have Osama bin Laden in custody on American soil by that Saturday, or I will go after the people truly responsible for 9/11: the Pakistani ISI and the Saudi Wahhabists (remember, Al Gore and I already came up with an energy policy to wean our oil dependence. For all I care, KSA can melt away in a sandstorm...oh, except for my kindergarten pal, Mohammad...he and his family are welcome to stay at Blair House).

The American people would be behind me on this, I have no doubt.

My final non-act in my first day as President would be to submit a budget to Congress in which I would fix the tax code to be fairer to working Americans, while tearing new assholes into anyone who thinks their lifestyle is predicated on the hard work of other Americans.

I figure this first day would give me enough momentum to get to day number two.

My first non-act that day would be to sign the Kyoto Accords, and then to place calls to Hu Jintao and President Dr. Kalam of India, and tell them if they don't sign off on Kyoto, they're going to be hard pressed to find the American-made technology they so desperately need for their coal-powered plants as well as their nuclear reactors. I would also not not offer the services of Secretary Gore, as well as Interior Secretary Robert Redford to help them come up with an environmentally sensitive alternative energy program, and help them find the funding to do it in the form of low cost loans and greater access to American markets that matter.

I'll say one thing: I'd have the goddamned handsomest administration in the history of the world.

Next, I'd not place a call to Vladimir Putin and invite him to lunch, say, Friday. I'd want to look into his eyes and see what bamboozled Bush the Immature. Then I'd tell Vladi I'd leave him alone on Chechnya, but he has to agree to let Iran come under my sole jurisdiction.

Yes, I know China is going to be upset with that, but remember their energy plan? Guess what that includes.

Then I'd take a vacation for two years. Presnidenting is hard work!

I'd probably invade Bonaire and claim it for America, so I could create the Bonairean White House and take my vacation.

Bet I'd have the happiest press corps in the world!

Over the coming weeks, I'll not be expanding on this, including opening up a not-website, making several not-speeches, and not hiring a not-staff to assist me. In the meantime....

Come not visit my campaign store to pick up your valuable piece of non-history! Just click on the image below, or click here.


Oh....happy April Fool's Day.