Republicans Don't Believe in Tax Cuts.

As the world’s economic crisis continues to play out there are some crucial questions that the Republicans have not been asked for reasons unknown to me, as they are some of the most obvious and most important questions they need to answer. I believe that asking these questions will so utterly stump Republicans they will shut up and go away and give us a break from all their noise so the rest of us can get to work solving our problems.

If cutting the highest tax rate from thirty nine percent to thirty six percent in 2001helped create fifty-five straight months of economic growth, as the Bush people claim, why did they cut the tax rate to just thirty six percent? Why not cut it down to thirty percent? How much deeper, broader and more stable would our economic expansion have been? Why not go all the way to a one percent tax rate? At what point does lowering tax rates stop growing the economy and increasing revenue? Didn’t the GOP have a moral imperative to find out and cut taxes to the lowest point possible?

Republicans are fond of saying the tax based grew larger under Dubya. Great! I’m thrilled! Where is all the money that is supposed to be here after eight years of tax cuts and economic growth?

Ari Fleischer and other Bushmen offer an answer. They say the Prescription Drug Benefits Bill and the Iraq War ate up all the increase in revenue. Probably so, if there ever was an increase in revenue, which has yet to be proved since The Bush Administration was incapable of honest accounting practices. But that completely avoids the most important question: why did Dubya borrow money if deeper tax cuts would have generated even more revenue? Did the Republicans not think the Iraq War was worth a nice, deep tax cut?

Early in Dubya’s awful second term it became clear to even the GOP the Federal Budget deficit was getting out of hand, providing the GOP with yet another reason to cut taxes, which invariably increases revenue, right? At the time they had the House and the Senate. They could have done anything they pleased. If cutting taxes is the defining policy of the Grand Old Party, again, why didn’t they do so to keep the deficit from spiraling out of control? But wait- isn’t cutting taxes worth doing for any reason? Obviously they didn’t turn to their Super Duper Economic Tool to handle all these challenges because it doesn’t work. If it did they would not have had to borrow trillions of dollars and add well over five trillion dollars to the deficit. If it did we would have no deficit. Did they not go lower because the spineless Democratic Party might have tried to stop them?

Whatever the answer the Republicans give, and we can be sure at this point it will be incoherent and embarrassing to all involved, Republicans did not turn to their most powerful, personally and morally definitive economic tool when the chips were down, and the chips were seriously down like never before. That tells me Republicans don’t actually believe in tax cuts and are not conservative. In that case all their posturing about cutting taxes is completely disingenuous and purely political. What does their behavior say they really stand for? Mortgaging our future so they can have what they want right now, or “Teenagerism”. If I remember correctly conservatism says nothing about being short sighted, irresponsible and utterly selfish.

Now the GOP says Obama’s tax cut is not big enough to cover his stimulus package even though a smaller tax cut was supposedly powerful enough to cover the Great Bush Spending Spree over the last eight years which far and away dwarfs the spending Obama has proposed. But why argue Obama’s tax cut is too small when they didn’t cut taxes farther when they had the most compelling circumstances to do so in our nation’s history?

Republicans are so utterly convoluted and confused and conflicted and lost they sound like the drug-addled freak I recently saw on a reality cop show that had just been caught red handed with a pound of cocaine in the trunk of his car. The cop demands an explanation and the dope says “Those ain’t my drugs, man! I stole this car!” There is just no dignity. They are so desperate they are reduced to hoping Americans can’t remember all their colossal failings? Sorry. Americans will never forget Bush’s Presidency. We will remember everything. Not to be vindictive, all though that is tempting, but so that it never happens again.

Dubya and all he stands for will have to be completely purged from the party if they ever want to win another national election. The best way I can tell to do that is to first and foremost shut up, and I mean completely shut the hell up, until they get their fiscal policies worked out. Tax cuts for the rich coupled with deregulated financial markets plus massive federal spending equals total meltdown. So throw all that out and start at the beginning: tax cuts. Before any Republican dare open his or her mouth to discuss any fiscal policy he or she needs to answer the questions I have posed here, that is, as long as they want to begin what is for them a very long road back to dignity and earn some small measure of national respect. Until these questions are answered I must view any Republican’s attempt to lead this country as impertinence, or, in other words, like Jim Cramer asking to invest my money.

Time to Take Jon Stewart to Task!

I just finished watching Jon Stewart's almost completely satisfying conversation with Jim Cramer on Hulu. Stewart chastised Cramer for taking Wall Street CEOs and others who abuse the stock market at face value and in turn for not looking behind their misleading statements to report the real story of how Wall Street turns a profit. He said rightly that knowing more about the house of cards that is Wall Street would have helped investors make better decisions. To remind Cramer of who he is supposed to be serving with his CNBC show Mad Money, Stewart told the story of his seventy-five year old mother who took Cramer and CNBC and other would be financial experts at face value and bought into his advice and information and has subsequently lost everything, even though Cramer knew the system was unstable. Stewart told Cramer he had a responsibility as a self promoted authority figure to better serve those who would trust him with their wealth by revealing his knowledge of any and all structural problems in our financial system.

I might remind Jon Stewart that while he is asking CNBC to take a more serious, realistic approach to understanding the stock market and to provide its audience with a window into the ugly, volatile, criminal realities that are woven into the fabric of Wall Street, he might do well to not portray his grown ass mother as a victim. No one put a gun to her head and said invest in the stock market. And if she didn't know the stock market was full of crooks and liars then she sure does now. Naiveté is no excuse for losing one's retirement investments. Everyone who puts his or her future into the hands of another is taking a risk, no matter how credible and well spoken that other person is who would very much like to control other people's money.

People, in case Jon Stewart hasn't noticed, have been known, on occasion, to be unreliable. We do not have the right to expect human beings to be defect free just because we would prefer they didn't screw us over. We cannot assume people will do the right thing because they say they will do the right thing, especially when large amounts of money are involved.

Others have to earn the right to be in our lives. Since we are responsible for our lives, if we don't do the proper vetting ourselves we will be the ones we hurt. The definition of an adult is someone who no longer hurts him or herself. Jim Cramer and CNBC and Bernie Madoff are not responsible for the fact that Jon Stewart's mother no longer has money for her retirement. Jon, I hate to break the news to you, but your mother is soley responsible for her current situation. There is no "but..."

Jim Cramer pointed out that his show is designed to serve the market. Stewart responded by saying hookers serve a market and coke dealers serve a market, too, which doesn't mean the market should be served. Stewart then tells Cramer he ought to serve his mother's interests. But what is the market that is Jon Stewart's mother's interests? According to Jon Stewart she did not want to do her own vetting. She wants other people, like Jim Cramer, for example, to do it for her. She bought into him hook line and sinker and she then wants these people to whom she gave all her power to take responsibility for her retirement. That is a childish market, the kind that deserves Jim Cramer and his childish antics. CNBC can provide an adult service but it can't stay in business if an adult market does not exist. A cable network can serve hard cold reality spinach but it does not have the power to send Americans to bed without supper if they don't eat it. Americans want to believe in Wall Street at any cost because they want what they goddamn want and they want it right now. Americans did not want to know how Walls Street makes its money as long as it was making money. The "House of Cards" system that Stewart wanted Cramer to reveal had practically become financial orthodoxy. It worked for generations. I knew it was a damnable house of cards. I just couldn't believe it kept on standing up.

CNBC must serve the market that is or there is no CNBC. Stewart might as well tell CNBC to stop broadcasting. Jim Cramer served spoiled, opportunistic Americans stuck in a state of financial adolescence due to their own little Peter Pan tantrum gobs of shiny candy for dinner every night, and as a result spoiled candy fat Peter Pan Americans got financial diabetes. That's why I don't watch CNBC. The Daily Show is the only remotely adult show on television.

Am I saying Jon Stewart's mother is a spoiled, financial Peter Panma with fiduciary diabetes fat from candy-ass advice? Yyyyyyup. If she let someone else be responsible for her well being she is a spoiled, financial Peter Panma with fiduciary diabetes all fat and sick from taking candy-ass advice from the happy happy fun clowns on TV.

When Jon Stewart and his mother take responsibility for the fact that they alone are responsible for their well-being Jim Cramer will cut out the bells and whistles and clean off the white face and start providing real information. He doesn't provide viewers all the inside shenanigans that created the house of cards we are watching collapse around us not because he is lame and unethical but because Americans like Jon Stewart's mother ignored clear, visible red flags, which means they did not want to know the truth about how Wall Street works, which means Wall Street has their permission to do anything it can get away with, just like an adolescent. It is not Jim Cramer or CNBC's fault that Jon Stewart's grandma is a Peter Panma.

Stewart can't tell me his mother saw no red flags along her road to retirement ruin. She either ignored them or felt overwhelmed by what she saw, which is a pretty big, bright, red flag, or didn't have the time in her busy day to protect her retirement cuz everything else was more important -- which is a Super Bowl type cover-the-playing field sized red flag. Or she's straight lazy, another massive red flag, or she incorrectly judged herself incapable of understanding Wall Street, and if that is the case John Stewart's mother was living in Red Flag Cop Out Doormat City. She put her future in the hands of something beyond her ability to grasp??? I don't think so. If she sat there and listened to Jim Cramer and just crossed her fingers and hoped everything would be all right then she had to learn a very hard lesson in a very hard way, and that's too bad, but that is her doing. Jon Stewart is upset because CNBC promotes Jim Cramer as an expert in whom we can trust. I don't pay any attention to freakin' promos! Who pays attention to promos? Peter Frickin Pan, that's who. Do Jon Stewart and his mother have every God given right to be Peter Pan? Hell yes. And they get to not enjoy the consequences as well.

My mother has a wonderful friend name Jean Sullivan. She embodies the now required value of self-responsibility in the face of authority. Jean and her late husband Joe worked their asses off creating real value, not paper value, for those invested in the company Joe ran and for its employees and customers. They did things the way they were supposed to be done. Any hardworking, adult American would have to be proud of and satisfied with what they accomplished.

Jean took responsibility for protecting and growing her family's wealth, in that order, which to this day remains considerable. While Jon Stewart's mother sat back and trusted CNBC, apparently, as well as others marketed as experts who must be cuz they play one on TV, Jean Sullivan was out there doing everything Jon Stewart is asking Jim Cramer to do and wished Jim Cramer had done for his Peter Panma. Jean Sullivan made every company and fund she invested in earn her trust and earn the privilege of handling her hard earned money. She took no one at face value. She learned how the system worked. She didn't let the promise of past results lull her into a rose-colored expectation of security. She didn't let overwhelm or a Peter Panma lack of belief in her abilities stop her from learning what she needed to learn. She went out there and found who was on solid ground and who wasn't.

She discovered on her own all the signs that Wall Street was not on solid ground and pulled her money out. She realized it was better to have cash than a worthless stock portfolio. She literally put her money under her mattress, and as a result she still has what she and her husband worked so hard to earn over their long, productive lifetimes. She did the search. She DID NOT rely on CNBC or the funny bald man with the bells and whistles with the rolled up sleeves selling candy with fart noises whom we cannot trust despite those shiny promos. Ahem. As a result she has retained the bulk of her wealth while so many others who refused to take responsibility for themselves are left shaking their fists at Bernie Madoff and Jim Cramer and all the other experts who SHOCKINGLY let them down. Jon Stewart made a point of showing how all over the map Cramer was with is predictions. Why then did his mother trust the advice of the world's Mad Money Men??? Every stock market analyst is all over the map.

Many Madoff victims like to say they had no reason to suspect any trouble. All that tells me is that giving away responsibility worked for these 'victims' up until Madoff collapsed. All it tells me is they got away with turning a blind eye and are pissed off they can't still get away with not caring how Wall Street manages to turn a profit. It does not tell me they are victims, not as long as Jean Sullivan is around.

I'd like to see Jon Stewart run his mother and those Madoff victims through an archived video gauntlet of their past statements and decisions just like the one he put Jim Cramer through. Let's see how their supposedly noble, pitiable victim hood survives the light of day.

If Jon Stewart can convince his mother and every other victim to take responsibility for him or herself the way Jean Sullivan did, CNBC will have a huge new market to serve that won't be entertained by Mad Money, and Jon Stewart would have the financial network he would then deserve.

Barack Obama and the World's Highest Hopes

Wow. How good did voting feel this year? Its always been a thrill, but never so much as this. When I submitted my ballot a chill went up my spine and joy filled my heart. I felt real. I felt in the world. I respected my country and my fellow citizens. We had a Presidential candidate in Obama, who represented a majority of the nation's hopes and dreams, and my countrymen did not turn away from him because of his race. November 4th was one of the happiest days of my life and one of the greatest days in our nation's history.

I don't feel people voted for him because he is black. Blacks voted for Obama in record numbers because Obama said what they wanted to hear. There are many black politicians who don't draw black voters at all. I don't feel people voted for McCain because he is not black or because he's white. If Obama had lost I don't think it would have been because he is black. There will always be some who care more about race than their country, but on the whole I feel Americans looked at who would best help move us forward. That's how it should be, and that's how it was. I feel as if America just took a shower. This country has never felt so clean and fresh and reinvigorated. We still need another good scrubbing or two but for the first time I believe we'll clean up our act.

I've been alive fourty-four years, and I've studied as much history as I can, certainly not as much as professional historians, but I have never felt any leader has been a world leader. Many have claimed dominion over the world, but now billions of people all over the world are claiming ownership of Obama. He is the first international President. He is the first World President. He is the first true world leader.

Obama mirrors the world's best and brightest hopes. He does not embody all our best qualities -- no one does. But it is enough that he can tell a good idea from a bad one. It's enough that he can see a problem and not make it worse. That is quality enough for a leader of humankind. And for that strength, which is not uncommon or superhuman, and precisely because it is not uncommon, and because he will be President, he is a focal point -- one of many -- for everything we hope for.

He can't fail because no one is asking him to be extraordinary. Expectations are not too high for this man. I strongly disagree that Obama carries an enormous burden as President elect during these troubled times. We ask only that he deal with reality, and that is what Obama does best, which was strongly reflected in his humble, sober address to a Grant Park crowd willing to be whipped into a frenzy. He did not rouse the crowd he settled the crowd.

People around the world do not project "Saint" onto Obama, or "Savior" or any other pie-in-the-sky childish fantasy. People see only a man who understands what needs to be done. We obviously need to take aggressive steps toward new energy development. Obviously Wall Street cannot be trusted to police itself. Obviously something has to be done about health care. Obviously we can't kick out thirteen million illegal immigrants even if it was the right thing to do on paper. Obama does not hold common sense hostage to insecurity or ideology. That is reason to celebrate and be happy and feel like we live in a different, better world than the world that existed on November 3rd.

I have no fear Obama will fail. He's not about a particular policy, he's about a spirit of dignity, and not just for Democrats. He wants Republicans to feel safe and honored and heard and respected, and he wants them to feel the world has room for them as well, despite the fact that so many Republicans don't want to make room for others. That is a leader. There's no way he'll get us into a stupid war. There's no way he'll allow Iraq to fall apart. There's no way he'll appoint unqualified judges and politicize the Justice Department. There's no way we'll suffer through another Katrina. There's no way he'll gut the environment. There's no way he'll let Halliburton dictate this country's energy and foreign policy. It's amazing how far basic competence and common sense will take a President and a nation and the world. If Obama simply shows up for work everyday we'll be better off than we are now -- we won't have W butchering every good thing about this country.

All Obama has to do is attempt to rebuild what W destroyed and he will be re-elected in a landslide. Unfortunately it will take him one full term to stop the ongoing damage Bush will do from beyond the grave and begin to turn things around. Most of his agenda will have to wait until 2012, sadly. The most important thing he can do in his first term he has already done. He has stopped the backsliding.

One good thing Bush did, and he did unwittingly, is expose the hidden dark forces in this country and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt they are useless. Armed with that clarity, America has learned reality does not bend to ideology and is ready to support common sense once again. Will fixing the world be like falling out of bed? Pretty much. Yeah. We were doing fine before W and we'll be back on our feet soon enough. I mean, how many billions of people around the world knew invading Iraq was a horrible idea? How many billions knew deregulating Wall Street was financial suicide? The world has all the answers. Now we have a leader who knows what the people know. And that's why he's the first world leader in history.

Sarah "Frodo" Palin and The Cancer School of Economics

Both Democrats and Republicans want America atop the world's economic food chain. After all, it's better to be the Great White Shark than the seal. They differ on what to do to keep us there, of course. Generally, Republicans want businesses operating free of taxes and government intervention, while Democrats believe certain limits on businesses and our financial markets are necessary to keep Americans safe and prosperous.

Republican economic policy is based on the Theory of Natural Law first advanced by Aristotle. Since nature doesn't make intellectual decisions intellectualism is considered artificial, or unnatural. Regulation is an intellectual act, so it's not natural and therefore doomed to fail. Therefore our economy, Conservatives believe, if free of any regulation, will naturally fall into a stable balance of permanent prosperity. Regulations and intervention, they claim, are wholly unnatural and illegitimate.

Conservatives have been working for decades to deregulate markets and businesses. In 1999 they succeeded in removing important regulations set up after the Great Depression to ensure market safety. So why did the markets crash?

Because Natural Law economic theory never existed.

Nature, in fact, places the most severe limits on animals and their behavior to make sure they stay balanced. Sharks don't have a "stop eating" mechanism in their biological blueprint. Under normal conditions sharks can't catch food fast enough to do themselves damage from over-eating. Nature has limited their ability to catch food. A shark in a feeding frenzy, however, given enough food, will eat until it quite literally bursts open like an overstuffed sausage. Its guts just explode out into the water. In some cases crazed, gut-busted sharks eat their own entrails, unable to distinguish between their innards and their kill.

A shark is just a dumb beast driven by a killer instinct. If nature's limits break down, so does the shark. The only thing keeping sharks from eating themselves to death are the physical limits nature places on all apex predators. Because nature has perfected the art of limitation, a shark eating itself to death is extremely rare, and usually occurs only when humans get involved and temporarily throw food supplies out of balance. Nature is nothing if not a series of carefully orchestrated restrictions. True Natural Law economics is not laissez faire it is structured guidance, like the rules in a football game. It's a bad idea to give 22 men pads, helmets and a football and say laissez faire, unless you want every one to get killed.

Animals have a complex system of internal and external limits to make sure they don't outgrow their eco-system either in body or population. In Aristotle's day nature had total control over human beings. His people could only move so quickly, gather and grow only so much food, and had only rudimentary tools. These and other physical limits contained human population growth for millennia. Human economic activity required minimal governmental oversight if any at all, so laissez faire seemed natural.

Today huge groups of human beings are largely free of nature's constraints. We, as a race, can, and will, apparently, out grow our eco-system- something Aristotle did not consider in his extensive writings on natural law. Given the political freedom 21st century human beings could and would extract every fish in the ocean in a few years time. But for nature's limits sharks would, too. Soon genetic engineering breakthroughs will clear away whatever constraints nature has left over humanity. Conservative economic theory, which depends entirely on constraints provided by nature, is fantasy.

Out growing nature's restraints means nature can no longer stop us from destroying ourselves if we get off track. With nothing to contain us we have to assume nature's former corrective role in all our endeavors and provide necessary limits ourselves.

We should not be afraid of limits. Everything growing thing in nature is limited in some way except cancer. Limitless, unregulated growth is disease, not freedom. If we strip our markets of all restrictions and let the sharks go into frenzy we will create cancer not growth.

In 1999, what I call the Cancer School of Economics succeeded in removing entrenched banking regulations created after the 1929 belly burst that triggered the Great Depression. Stripped of structure, predictably, America's powerful economic killer instinct has run amok ever since. America's economic sharks have gorged on fossil fuels, unfettered financial predation, incomprehensible budget deficits and Keating/Enron style corruption. They ate more than their eco-system allows and busted open yet again. Today America is no longer an apex predator in a sustainable food chain but a cancerous tumor on the world's economy.

A few months ago as the world's economic waters began running cloudy with America's guts, Bush, McCain and Fed Chairman Bernanke said the fundamentals of our economy were sound and strong. What else would a dumb beast say with a mouth full of its own entrails? A dumb beast only knows one thing: if it is eating its happy.

And just like a simple, natural, not at all pointy-headed or intellectual shark eating its own entrails, the Republicans and hapless Democrats are incapable of stopping their self destruction. They passed a bail out/rescue package with toothless over sight provisions that ignores the causes of the meltdown and is funded by borrowed money and a massive cash infusion from the treasury created out of thin air by printing dollars. Apparently they believe self cannibalization will stop us from eating ourselves to death. How very dumb beast of them. In effect we now have a bubble propped up by a bubble, or The Weimar Republic.

Conservatives see a Democrat in the character Quint from Steven Spielberg's still excellent 1975 blockbuster Jaws. Quint was a shark hunter. He shot little steel harpoons tied to big, buoyant barrels into sharks which severely reduced their ability to swim. Conservatives see every regulation as just another barrel slowly killing American business.

The Cancer School of Economics doesn't get that forcing Detroit to make cars safer back in the 50's and 60's through Government intervention in the market place made the auto industry more profitable. They can't see that safe cars increased the market for cars and increased dependence on cars which helped create a pervasive car culture and increased sales. That kind of thinking is for pointy-headed intellectuals, not simple, natural folk. All they can see is "bigguvment" got on the backs of poor, poor businessmen and tried to choke the auto industry. They still think we'd all be better off without brake lights, seat belts and turn signals waiting for Detroit to make safe cars.

Republicans don't see health and prosperity in regulation. They see Democrats and their regulations as another kind of shark competing for living space and fish- a smaller, less aggressive, toothless kind of shark who deserves to die, who unfairly restricts stronger sharks who should be allowed to run free and rule the seas. They don't see Democrats as noble or compassionate or evolved or helpful in the least. They see them as whiny, traitorous runts who have turned themselves into un-natural parasites who leech off of their larger, stronger brethren and therefore need to be wiped off the face of the earth lest everything die.

Anyone who wants no rules at all is an adolescent. Like a bratty teenager caught up in a rebellious tantrum, Republicans can't see any limit as healthy. Conservatives point to people who truly are parasitic runts and claim they were created by healthy limits which keep our economy from bursting.

All these Cancer School of Economics financial experts swimming around with their guts hanging out argue the finance, credit, loan and banking system is already the most heavily regulated industry in the nation. Governments don't heavily regulate the greeting card industry. Everything depends on financial stability, confidence, fairness and predictability. The financial markets need intelligent, tough, strictly enforced regulation so our nation's super sharks can do what they were born to do without bursting. Obviously it is the quality of regulation not the quantity that is the issue at hand. Funny -- with all the regulations on the financial industry conservatives targeted just the ones that if removed would cause a meltdown. Weren't interested in all the others, were they?

Republicans, like troubled teenagers, are unable to understand their own behavior is the problem. Conservatives look at the deregulation disaster that is the last eight years of Republican rule and have come to the conclusion that they were corrupted by eight years of power. Power doesn't corrupt. Washington is a petri dish for all one's latent dysfunction. Power revealed who Republicans truly are. They came to Washington and did exactly what they wanted to do and they destroyed themselves. Self knowledge is a bitch.

For all the evil Washington has done to Republicans, they sure don't want to leave. They most definitely want to stay despite the horrible things power does to one's conservative credentials.

To convince Americans they have learned their lesson and should be given the reigns of all-corrupting power one more time, conservatives have brought forward Sarah Palin, someone they advertise as too simpleminded to be affected by Washington's irresistible evil, like some kind of Alaskan version of Frodo Baggins. Basically, Republicans are promising Americans they'll be dumb as hell if we give them another chance in 2008.

The biggest problem Conservatives face right now is that no one has faith in unfettered predation anymore. America's corporate sharks are gut busted and floating belly up. Sarah Barracuda is meant to prove conservative economic ideology is still healthy, wholesome, natural and as dumb as a big fish. Conservatives think just by letting Sarah "Frodo" Barracuda swim into the White House our nation will return to prosperity.

Republicans don't understand there is no Quint slowing them down. Market regulations are not the equivalent of a barrel tied to a shark. The life sustaining financial regulations they greedily stripped away in 1999 were a positive structural force that provided stability, scale, security and confidence. Massive exploitation of resources coupled with an unrestricted financial system is not economic freedom. It is unbalanced, unstructured and un-natural. It is cancerism, not natural law. Limits on risking other people's money is not un-Godly interference, or the life sucking evil of parasitic runts, its protecting the human eco-system, which humanity must do for itself, because, after all we're not dumb beasts. Acting like one won't help anybody, Sarah.

John Cusack, et al, Try to Slip a Big Wad of Hot, Slippery Propaganda Past Bill O'Reilly!

In a recent broadcast Bill O'Reilly called War Inc., the new film starring John Cusack, Marissa Tomei and Hillary Duff, "propaganda".

Propaganda, as we all surely remember from 8th grade, is information or ideas or rumors that are methodically spread by an organized group or government to influence people's opinions, to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc., especially by not giving all the facts or by secretly emphasizing only one way of looking at the facts.

In the solipsistic world of Fox News one is either for the Iraq debacle or he or she is not patriotic. Are we emphasizing only one way of looking at the facts, Mr. O'Reilly? To watch Fox News is to be told over and over one must either suspend Habeas Corpus or one must die in a terrorist attack. Not exactly a full spectrum, there, either. Fox News puts all the news in one context: America is infallible and deserves to have its way whenever and however it pleases. It frames those that disagree in one way only, that is, from the lunatic far lefty view that America is nothing but evil. If this isn't propaganda- methodically cherry picking information to emphasize one point of view in order to influence opinion- then propaganda does not exist in the world.

Does Fox News provide a platform for other points of view? Kindasorta. They offer some facts that don't mesh with their version of reality, but not all the facts required to elevate their broadcasts above the level of propaganda to actual journalism. For example, Fox News does not, to any significant degree, pursue a critique of the Iraq war as outlined by War, Inc., among others. Such critiques are quickly dismissed as un-patriotic or self-hating or some other kind of psychobabble. There is no room for facts or analysis.

When Scott McClellan's recent book critical of President Bush came out Fox News focused on McClellan's motivation and character and quickly side-stepped the credible allegations in the book that Bush and Cheney committed a vicious act of treason. They moved on quickly and re-focused on Rev. Wright, who, despite his gassy, ugly rhetoric has never committed treason. They routinely downplay, falsely discredit or exclude facts and other information that would contradict their entrenched world view. They clearly, easily meet the definition of an organization which dissembles at least some measure of propaganda. So much for Fox News.

Does War Inc. exclude facts in order to emphasize one point of view over another? By its very nature as a feature film, War Inc. must focus on one point of view among many, but does it omit any important facts or relevant points of view in order to support its own view of the world?

John's character is an assassin/business man poised to reap huge rewards in the aftermath of the invasion of a fictional sovereign Middle Eastern country, Turaqistan, by the fictional corporation "Tamerlane", which has strong, deep ties to the White House. In other words, John plays a neo-con. Not that all neo-cons are assassins. Many are not. But there are plenty of guys like that in the Middle East. Seems accurate to me.

Neo-cons believe in using America's considerable economic and military muscle to remake the world's trouble spots into lots of little, subordinate to Washington versions of America. That's straight from the Neo-Con handbook. That's not propaganda. That much is clearly represented in the film without exaggeration or omission.

Halliburton is a corporation with close ties to Washington that is currently slurping up huge, obscene gobs of money servicing the Iraq war. The corporation at the heart of War Inc., Tamerlane, replete with its own army and the ability to manhandle the levers of power in Washington, is a neo-con's wet dream. Tamerlane is what Halliburton wants to be when it grows up. That's not propaganda. That's true. The fact that Halliburton is so absurdly predatory it has become a satire of itself is just reality and too bad for Halliburton. Next time the country is at war show a little restraint.

Marissa Tomei's character is a liberal journalist who seeks to expose the gruesome reality of the hideously botched invasion and paint Tamerlane as a greedy, murderous criminal enterprise in the untrained eyes of the world. That is her character's point of view. The blogosphere is filled with people who see things that way. Seems accurate to me. Nothing left out there. Most people more or less fall in to some version of either character -- Iraq was a good idea and good will come of it or its a disaster.

What about the facts on the ground? In Turaqistan the streets are dangerous and in some places hellish. Just like Iraq. In Turaqistan many people are torn between survival and personal loyalties. Just like Iraq. Turaqi Government officials believe they are puppets and fear for their lives. Just like Iraq. The Americans are hunkered down and under constant threat of attack. Just like Iraq. The list of similarities goes on and on.

Is anything egregiously omitted that if otherwise present would alter the conclusions reached in the film? Does War Inc. show Tamerlane soldiers painting schools and kissing babies? No. You got me there. But it does show a business convention where Turaqi phone rights are sold off to the highest bidder. That's supposed to be what neo-cons call stabilizing the Middle East, right? That's the whole point- give Iraqis a better life. That's supposed to be a good thing. Seems fair and balanced to me.

The crucial facts are all represented in War Inc.'s satire, Mr. O'Reilly; they're just presented in a way that reveals a side of reality not commonly seen in other media outlets, most especially yours. The fact that War Inc. does not shine a flattering light on some of the real world results of neo-con ideology does not make it propaganda. It makes it opinionated if not entirely objective. And personal. That's allowed.

The purpose of the film is not to fully articulate all points of view, which it cannot possibly do, but to frame neo-con ideology in light of the Iraq war. That in and of itself is a whole lot to cram into a feature length film, perhaps too much. Yet, despite its limitations, War Inc. is far more ideologically inclusive and far reaching than anything presented by Fox News, which sees the world and everyone in it as either loving or hating America, or roughly through the eyes of an especially dull child.

Bill O'Reilly is free to be proud of the mess in Iraq and see in it proof of America's unfailing nobility, just as others see grievous but correctable mistakes. Dissenting opinion, however, is not propaganda, and some times, all personal bias aside, as in the case of War Inc., it's richly satisfying.

How To Tell If Your Surge Is Working

If the surge were a success, Mc Cain and Bush would be bringing home the troops. The fact that McCain and Bush want to keep the surge in place means the surge is a failure. The need to keep the surge means there is a need to keep Iraq from falling apart. If Iraq will fall apart without the surge, then the surge has failed. Until the surge is not needed the surge is failing. If a surge in troops does not stabilize Iraq enough for the surge troops to go home, then there is no point in keeping them in Iraq.

If there were the possibility of the disparate forces in Iraq coming together, these forces would be taking advantage of the presence of American troops. That is not happening. Sharing power is not on the agenda for any of the players in Iraqi politics. All sides are planning to wage war on each other once the Americans go home. The surge is only wasting lives, money and resources by suppressing an inevitably violent struggle for control of Iraq. Let the Iraqis create their own future. And let Bush get the credit for whatever results.

Reality and Iraq

A person becomes an adult when they reach the point where they stop hurting themselves. As a nation we will have reached adulthood when we are able to stop doing things that hurt our country.

Immaturity justifies self destruction by blaming others. For example, the immature teenager says "life is confusing and school sucks so I'm going to use drugs." Getting high won't help make life less confusing, nor will it make school suck less. It will, however, decrease one's ability to deal with those realities. Addicts are known for justifying behavior that's clearly self destructive and sticking with it no matter what the cost.

The war in Iraq was created by America's power elite for perfectly logical, even idealistic reasons: to protect ourselves, to spread our noble way of life, to foster peace and security, to liberate an oppressed people and to bring justice to a madman. Not much there to argue against. That is the problem. The fact is our logical underpinnings don't matter. Even if there were WMD in Iraq, we don't have enough of anything required - expertise, money, equipment, expendable lives, allies, time or patience - to invade, control and re-organize a Middle Eastern country. Period. There is no "But..." If America was a mature, sober country we would have said to Bush - "your rationale is all well and good- but we don't have the ways and means. Let's figure out another way to protect ourselves." It doesn't matter if invading Iraq made logical or ideological sense. Reality said it wasn't possible.

Our leaders didn't fail us ideologically- they failed to get real. America supported removing weapons of mass destruction - that's not an ideological motive - but only a country detached from reality - or an addict - could think invading Iraq would make everything all right and stop the world from sucking. Just as addicts must give up the self destructive notion that drugs will make it all better we must give up our national self delusion that believes we can ignore reality because we are America. America can't make it all better. Liberals, neo-cons, libertarians, conservatives, progressives - we all want to use America to make the world stop sucking so much.

Our national America Will Make It All Better ideology has become a lethal drug- and our politicians are our dealers. Our dealers tell us we are far and away the richest, most powerful country on earth, unmatched by any other. Liberals, progressives, conservatives- Americans of all stripes - are found of saying "the richest country on earth ought to be able to..." We Americans have rationalized self destructive behavior and our ability to withstand damage, and, like drug addicts, we have clung to our self justifications in the face of a reality that says we are being hurt and hurt badly.

Iraq has shown us reality and reality says we are not as strong and rich as some of us thought: and now we wretch and moan as we go through ideological withdrawal: increasingly our resources are needed here at home, and there is less and less available for outside problems no matter how pressing. we have just enough strength to defend ourselves against an attack on our own shores - but that's it, just ask anyone from New Orleans - we cannot project meaningful military power around the globe beyond cruise missiles and air strikes. The good news is that should be enough. We should be careful to notice that defeating our real enemy - Osama Bin Laden - was well within our means. As soon as we left reality and looked to Iraq we came up short. We can handle reality just fine. If we stay in reality we will be able to handle whatever comes our way.

Reality also tells us that our government is incapable of creating foreign policy dependent upon understanding cultures not rooted in our own, and, most importantly, despite our sincerity, that it is not at all impressed with our idealism. Bush once said that God told him to invade Iraq. Yes, George, reality trumps even God. I'd rather go fifteen rounds with Bush's God than cross reality any day.

Depending on who you talk to Iraq was a bad idea to begin with or it was a good idea which failed because Bush was incompetent, or it was a good idea but Iraq, a country of enemies forced to live together for centuries, was not ready for democracy - which means invading was a bad idea - unless you wanted to replace Hussein with another Hussein, which is a really, really bad idea.

The fact is nobody knows whether or not invading Iraq was a good idea. Hillary Clinton seems to think we could have succeeded if not for Bush. Certainly Dubya made things horrible. Disbanding the Iraqi army created huge problems, for example, but keeping it together would have created huge problems, too. Incompetence is not an attribute exclusive to the Bush Administration. The boys over at Fox News are delighted to point out past presidential war time blunders-especially Lincoln's. All wars suffer from incompetence and bad planning.

But even if Bush got everything right, as Hillary hoped, it's clear that a higher standard of administrative competence could not have prevented Iraq's long dormant civil war from igniting once Hussein was removed. The question is would 500,000 troops have kept a lid on things? Many say yes. Nobody who says putting 250,000 to 500,000 troops on the ground after toppling Hussein mentions we could never afford to keep such troop levels in Iraq long enough to keep civil war from breaking out somewhere down the road. We couldn't afford any invasion scenario. That was abundantly clear four years ago whether or not we could somehow protect ourselves by saving the Middle East. We didn't grasp this on a national level because we are addicts out of touch with reality.

The addict says driving the car drunk and crashing was basically a good idea mishandled, gets in a cab and vows to drink less when driving in the future. Fat chance. The about to die addict gets back in the car he's just wrecked and says "once more into the breach!" - and tries to make it home. The sober man stopped drinking altogether, rebuilt his life and made amends for the damage he caused while driving drunk. He admits it was never possible to continue to drink and avoid crashing his car. What are our dealers doing? Hillary's gonna keep drinking and driving and vow to be more careful. Bush is back in the car ripped off his ass, bleeding from head to toe whimpering "once more into the breach." That guy is a nightmare. If we are to sober up from this horrible four year bender we must admit it was never possible for an invasion of Iraq to succeed regardless of how much sense it makes, and that no amount of effort and resources can change reality.

Nobody has the foggiest idea how to make Iraq all better, and reality doesn't give a rat's ass whether we figure it out or not. Reality isn't interested in what we'd like to do. The debate over Bush's plan is wasted energy. It doesn't matter what we think we ought to be able to do to protect ourselves. We will just have to deal with Post-Bush Iraq after we leave as best we can, keeping in mind reality rarely if ever overwhelms our ability to protect ourselves. The war in Iraq is doing more to harm us than any attack terrorists could muster at this point. We cannot afford any idea, any mission, any use of force - any strategy in Iraq. We don't get to use Iraq to effect regional security in the Middle East. We don't get to help spread democracy or keep Al Qaeda from gaining a foothold in Iraq. We must stop our national tantrum. We cannot afford to fight the war. End of story. If America stays, America dies. We need to get the hell out, sober up, deal with reality, and learn to stop justifying behavior that hurts our country.