Renaissance

I find it worrisome that people have turned their brains off

trusting that Obama will fix things. From what I have read about his plans for the economy it is more like giving a terminal cancer patient a shot of morphine than a cure. The plan for rebuilding the infrastructure is fine but in the long run it will do nothing to bring manufacturing back to these ravaged shores. Once the bridges and roads are built or rebuilt we will be exactly where we were, nowhere. To be sure manufacturing isn’t the cure-all for every problem and it certainly is far from being a perfect system as a base for sound economics but this pile of confused and malodorous dung we are presently abiding in is better?

Obama’s plan to increase the size of the military is simply rabid dog nuts. Obama’s plans for the continuation of “nation building” are a fantasy and a fraud. Spreading democracy is not only an arrogant fool’s errand it’s just plain stupid. And it isn’t only Obama but almost every person in congress is dedicated to this mush brained scheme of dominating the world for U.S. interests which in itself is highly questionable as to just whose interests they actually are in.

Oh yeah, I woke up this morning and I had an epiphany to bring democracy to Lower Slobovia. Once the seed was planted in my mind I could think of nothing else. From now on my life will be dedicated to improving the lot of Lower Slobovian citizens. If only they could be like me, my wonderful and wondrous self. Imagine the glory of it! Maybe the Slobovians would sculpt a heroic bronze statue of me riding a rearing stallion and place it in a public square. Maybe they would name bridges and civic buildings in my honor! The Rob Payne Slobovian National Library! Yes! I’ll be immortal at last! Or at the very least once I am a homeless bum they will let me stay in their library on a cold wintery day. I’m a moron with a mission! Now if only I could find it on a map.

And now my fevered brain kicks into hyper-drive and I wonder how history will remember me. Will they recall me as Genghis Payne and his Golden Hordes? Robexander the Great? Robilliam the Conqueror? Robilla the Hun? A Robolean without a Waterloo? Ah, I can just picture it. Me, myself, striding down through the pages of history, a man for all seasons, perhaps I will be credited for bringing about a latter day renaissance where I shall be recalled as the shedder of light into those dark and dingy redoubts of non U.S. territories. Maybe I should have my head examined.

Paul Craig Roberts has a good essay that takes all the elements of the economy and the Terror Wars as well as the pinheads who lead us and weaves it into a coherent picture.

Link

Unless US corporations can be required to use American labor to produce the goods and services that they sell in American markets, there is no hope for the US economy. No one in the Obama administration has the wits to address this problem. Thus, the economy will continue to implode.

Adding to the brewing disaster, Obama has been deceived by his military and neoconservative advisers into expanding the war in Afghanistan, a large, mountainous country. Obama intends to use the draw-down of US soldiers in Iraq to send 30,000 more American troops to Afghanistan. This would bring the US forces to 60,000 -- 600,000 fewer than US Marine Corps and US Army counterinsurgency guidelines define as the minimum number of soldiers necessary to bring success in Afghanistan--and less than half as many as the army that was unable to occupy Iraq.

The Iranians had to bail out the Bush regime by restraining its Shi’ite allies and encouraging them to use the ballot box to attain power and push out the Americans. In Iraq the US troops only had to fight a small Sunni insurgency drawn from a minority of the population. Even so, the US “prevailed” by putting the insurgents on the US payroll and paying them not to fight. The withdrawal agreement was dictated by the Shi’ites. It was not what the Bush regime wanted.

One would think that the experience with the “cakewalk” in Iraq would make the US hesitant to attempt to occupy Afghanistan, an undertaking that would require the US to occupy parts of Pakistan. The US was hard pressed to maintain 150,000 troops in Iraq. Where is Obama going to get another half million soldiers to add to the 150,000 to pacify Afghanistan?

One answer is the rapidly growing massive US unemployment. Americans will sign up to go kill abroad rather than be homeless and hungry at home.

But this solves only half of the problem. Where does the money come from to support an army in the field of 650,000, an army 4.3 times larger than US forces in Iraq, a war that has cost us $3 trillion in out-of-pocket and already incurred future costs. This money would have to be raised in addition to the $3 trillion US budget deficit that is the result of Bush’s financial sector bailout, Obama’s stimulus package, and the rapidly failing economy. When economies tank, as the American one is doing, tax revenues collapse. The millions of unemployed Americans are not paying Social Security, Medicare, and income taxes. The stores and businesses that are closing are not paying federal and state income taxes. Consumers with no money or credit to spend are not paying sales taxes.

The Washington Morons, and morons they are, have given no thought as to how they are going to finance a fiscal year 2009 budget deficit of some two to three trillion dollars.

But go read the whole essay.

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