Obama Will Triumph

 I don't subscribe to all of this, but it does provide a useful perspective
JHB

Obama Will Triumph -- So Will America

By Frank Schaeffer

Frank Schaeffer is a New York Times best selling author.

Before he'd served even one year President Obama lost the support of the easily distracted left and engendered the white hot rage of the hate-filled right. But some of us, from all walks of life and ideological backgrounds -- including this white, straight, 57-year- old, former religious right wing agitator, now progressive writer and (given my background as the son of a famous evangelical leader) this unlikely Obama supporter -- are sticking with our President. Why?-- because he is succeeding.

We faithful Obama supporters still trust our initial impression of him as a great, good and uniquely qualified man to lead us.

Obama's steady supporters will be proved right. Obama's critics will be remembered as easily panicked and prematurely discouraged at best and shriveled hate mongers at worst.

The Context of the Obama Presidency

Not since the days of the rise of fascism in Europe, the Second World War and the Depression has any president faced more adversity. Not since the Civil War has any president led a more bitterly divided country. Not since the introduction of racial integration has any president faced a more consistently short-sighted and willfully ignorant opposition - from both the right and left.

As the President's poll numbers have fallen so has his support from some on the left that were hailing him as a Messiah not long ago; all those lefty websites and commentators that were falling all over themselves on behalf of our first black president during the 2008 election.

The left's lack of faith has become a self-fulfilling "prophecy"-- snipe at the President and then watch the poll numbers fall and then pretend you didn't have anything to do with it!

Here is what Obama faced when he took office-- none of which was his fault:

# An ideologically divided country to the point that America was really two countries

# Two wars; one that was mishandled from the start, the other that was unnecessary and immoral

# The worst economic crisis since the depression

# America 's standing in the world at the lowest point in history

# A country that had been misled into accepting the use of torture of prisoners of war

# A health care system in free fall

# An educational system in free fall

# A global environmental crisis of history-altering proportions (about which the Bush administration and the Republicans had done nothing)

# An impasse between culture warriors from the right and left

# A huge financial deficit inherited from the terminally irresponsible Bush administration.

And those were only some of the problems sitting on the President's desk!

"Help" from the Right?

What did the Republicans and the religious right, libertarians and half-baked conspiracy theorists -- that is what the Republicans were reduced to by the time Obama took office -- do to "help" our new president (and our country) succeed? They claimed that he wasn't a real American, didn't have an American birth certificate, wasn't born here, was secretly a Muslim, was white-hating "racist", was secretly a communist, was actually the Anti-Christ, (!) and was a reincarnation of Hitler and wanted "death panels" to kill the elderly!

They not-so-subtly called for his assassination through the not-so-subtle use of vile signs held at their rallies and even a bumper sticker quoting Psalm 109:8. They organized "tea parties" to sound off against imagined insults and all government in general and gathered to howl at the moon. They were led by insurance industry lobbyists and deranged (but well financed) "commentators" from Glenn Beck to Rush Limbaugh.

The utterly discredited Roman Catholic bishops teamed up with the utterly discredited evangelical leaders to denounce a president who was trying to actually do something about the poor, the environment, to diminish the number of abortions through compassionate programs to help women and to care for the sick! And in Congress the Republican leadership only knew one word: "No!"

In other words the reactionary white, rube, uneducated, crazy American far right, combined with the educated but obtuse neoconservative war mongers, religious right shills for big business, libertarian Fed Reserve-hating gold bug, gun-loving crazies, child-molesting acquiescent "bishops", frontier loons, and evangelical gay-hating flakes found one thing to briefly unite them: their desire to stop an uppity black man from succeeding at all costs!

"Help" from the Left?

What did the left do to help their newly elected president? Some of them excoriated the President because they disagreed with the bad choices he was being forced to make regarding a war in Afghanistan that he'd inherited from the worst president in modern history!

Others stood up and bravely proclaimed that the President's economic policies had "failed" before the President even instituted them! Others said that since all gay rights battles had not been fully won within virtually minutes of the President taking office, they'd been "betrayed"! (Never mind that Obama's vocal support to the gay community is stronger than any other president's has been. Never mind that he signed a new hate crimes law!)

Those that had stood in transfixed legions weeping with beatific emotion on election night turned into an angry mob saying how "disappointed" they were that they'd not all immediately been translated to heaven the moment Obama stepped into the White House! Where was the "change"? Contrary to their expectations they were still mere mortals!

And the legion of young new supporters was too busy texting to pay attention for longer than a nanosecond. "Governing"?! What the hell does that word, uh, like mean?"

The President's critics left and right all had one thing in common: impatience laced with little-to-no sense of history (let alone reality) thrown in for good measure. Then of course there were the white, snide know-it-all commentators/talking heads who just couldn't imagine that maybe, just maybe they weren't as smart as
they thought they were and certainly not as smart as their president. He hadn't consulted them, had he? So he must be wrong!

The Obama critics' ideological ideas defined their idea of reality rather than reality defining their ideas-say, about what is possible in one year in office after the hand that the President had been dealt by fate, or to be exact by the American idiot nation that voted Bush into office. twice!

Meanwhile back in the reality-based community - in just 12 short months -- President Obama:

#Continued to draw down the misbegotten war in Iraq (But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Thoughtfully and decisively picked the best of several bad choices regarding the war in Afghanistan
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Gave a major precedent-setting speech supporting gay rights (But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Restored America 's image around the globe (But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Banned torture of American prisoners (But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Stopped the free fall of the American economy (But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Put the USA squarely back in the bilateral international community (But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Put the USA squarely into the middle of the international effort to halt global warming (But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Stood up for educational reform (But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Won a Nobel peace prize (But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Moved the trial of terrorists back into the American judicial system of checks and balances (But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Did what had to be done to start the slow, torturous and almost impossible process of health care reform that 7 presidents had failed to even begin (But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Responded to hatred from the right and left with measured good humor and patience (But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Stopped the free fall of job losses (But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Showed immense personal courage in the face of an armed and dangerous far right opposition that included the sort of disgusting people that show up at public meetings carrying loaded weapons and carrying Timothy McVeigh-inspired signs about the "blood of tyrants" needing to "water the tree of liberty". (But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Showed that he could not only make the tough military choices but explain and defend them brilliantly (But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

Other than those "disappointing" accomplishments -- IN ONE YEAR -- President Obama "failed"! Other than that he didn't "live up to expectations"!

Who actually has failed...

...are the Americans that can't see the beginning of a miracle of national rebirth right under their jaded noses. Who failed are the smart ass ideologues of the left and right who began rooting for this President to fail so that they could be proved right in their dire and morbid predictions. Who failed are the movers and shakers behind our obscenely dumb news cycles that have turned "news" into just more stupid entertainment for an entertainment-besotted
infantile country.

Here's the good news: President Obama is succeeding without the help of his lefty "supporters" or hate-filled Republican detractors!

The Future Looks Good

After Obama has served two full terms, (and he will), after his wisdom in moving deliberately and cautiously with great subtlety on all fronts -- with a canny and calculating eye to the possible succeeds, (it will), after the economy is booming and new industries are burgeoning, (they will be), after the doomsayers are all proved not just wrong but silly: let the record show that not all Americans were panicked into thinking the sky was falling.

Just because we didn't get everything we wanted in the first short and fraught year Obama was in office not all of us gave up. Some of us stayed the course. And we will be proved right.

PS. if you agree that Obama is shaping up to be a great president, please pass this on and hang in there! Pass it on anyway to ensure that his "report card" gets the attention it deserves.

George Orwell as a social theorist

George Orwell (pen name for Eric Blair 1903-1950) is recognized as one of the great English language prose stylists of the first half of the 20th Century.  His work incorporated linguistic precision with a passion for social justice.  He was equally passionate as an opponent of Stalinism and its pretensions to represent a socialist alternative to capitalism.  This passion was displayed in his two novels, Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949) which savaged Stalinist Russia for the emergence of the new class of commissars and the repression and rewriting of history, respectively.  These books were among the largest selling of the 20th Century.  No one has (or likely ever will) matched Orwell's contempt for the abuse and distortion of language that the Stalinist regime was guilty of.

However, I want to emphasize a different aspect of Orwell's work in 1984, in particular.  When I first read the novel in the late 1960s, I was impressed by the geopolitical analysis it contains.   For those who have never read the book (Highly recommended) in 1984 the world is divided into three power blocks, Oceana, Eurasia, and Eastasia.  These are respectively, the Western Hemisphere (plus Great Britain as Airstrip One and some of the then British Commonwealth), roughly the Soviet Union (plus the satellites and Western Europe), and what is now the Peoples Republic of China.  In the novel, these powers were continually at war with each other (the better to justify their continuing repression of their peoples) in shifting alliances.  However, the warfare did not usually impact any of their main territories.  Instead, the fighting occurred in Africa, the Near East, and South Asia.  This is actually a brilliant description of the mid-Cold War geopolitical situation (although South America was definitely in play.)  Remember though, this was written twenty years before the actual situation on the ground developed.

Did Orwell offer other prescient insights?  I believe so, the great villain of the Party in the novel is Emmanuel Goldstein (a rather transparent stand-in for Trotsky.)  His book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchic Collectivism, explains the structure of the party as a new class.  This new class will be "...a boot stamping on a human face—forever."  Oligarchic collectivism does not discriminate on the basis of race, or other irrelevant criteria.  The Party as new class has a privileged, and much higher consumption level than the Proles who constitute the rest of society.

Now my leap forward, doesn't this sound a bit like the social system that has evolved in the US recently?  We have an oligarchy that can depend on government bailouts whenever its economic interests are threatened.  The rest of of us, not so much.  In fact, our living standards are under constant downward pressure.  We have a condition of permanent and unwinnable warfare.  And if we don't approach the levels of repression shown in 1984, there is certainly disquieting movement in that direction.

Please: Somebody reassure me that we are not on the road to Oligarchical Collectivism.

The Death Throes of the Grand Old Party.

Gentlebeings we are watching the death throes of a great political party.  Among my other youthful peccadillos was being a Young Republican.  The great sin of the modern Republican party is allowing the tin-foil hat brigade of unbalanced conspiracy theorists (Birthers, Tenthers,etc) not just to take over, but the dominate policy discussions.

The Republican party has three ideas 1) Cut taxes 2) Scare white people, 3) Repeal the New Deal/Social Democratic settlement.  1) is nearly universally popular, so much so that it has become a talismanic formula for Republican politicians.  2) is very much in evidence in the southern United States. However, as a strategy is demographically suicidal.  Look at how they have alienated the Hispanic vote to appeal to the Nativist sentiments. 3) is the third rail of American politics, but they are too obsessed to understand.

All in all very sad.

Karl Marx's grave

On a recent trip to England, I made pilgrimage to Karl Marx's grave.  Two things struck me as incredibly ironic about the gravesite.  The first is that Marx is buried in Highgate Cemetery.  Highgate Village is a very posh, to use the British term, area in the London Metropolitan district.  The great and good have been buried there for about a century and a half.  In fact, they provide a guide to all of the famous graves there.  Of course, for the man whose epitaph shouts, Workers of all land unite, to be buried in such upper class surroundings in ironic.

The second irony, is as you can see, there are flowers and notes strewn about Marx grave.  I used the term pilgrimage above in a very loose sense.  However, his grave is literally a pilgrimage site.  For someone who was a militant atheist to be accorded such posthumous devotion is odd.




A final irony, this is the grave directly across the pathway from Marx:

 Herbert Spencer was about as distant from Marx philosophically as it is possible to imagine.  Death truly is the only equal opportunity institution.

The Efficient Krugman Hypothesis, Part II

 Last Sunday Brad Delong commented on his blog,

" Yet another demonstration of the fact that sometime in 2000 we entered a strange world in which Paul Krugman is always right. If we are going to live in such a world, I really, really wish that he had a sunnier and more optimistic disposition. It would make things much better...

 I've written previously on this phenomena.  In the discussion that followed there was much discussion of time-warps and other science fiction inspired explanations for the Efficient Krugman Hypothesis.
In the comments (late to the game) I wrote:

Occam's razor requires me to suggest that no time warp or other supernatural mechanism is needed to explain the Efficient Krugman Hypothesis. (I.e. Paul is always right.) He is always right for four distinct and simple reasons:
1) He is flat incredibly intelligent. (See Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics 2008.)
2) He is unbelievably well informed. (I continue to read Paul's and Brad's blogs because I regularly learn something that I did not know previously.)
3) He is truly disinterested (He has absolutely no axe to grind, no interests to either represent or pander to.)
4) He is amazingly brave, in the manner that only a tenured full professor at an elite school can be. 

This is the reason why second rate (OK I'm being generous to myself, third rate) academic leftists go into the battle against economic ignorance and misinformation chanting, "There is no economist but Krugman, and Delong is his prophet."


The real time warp victims were the "fresh water economists" for whom elegance in theoretical formulations became more important than empirical relevance. I really did think that economics represents more than mathematical masturbation. Silly me.

Gulf Oil Spill

In Die Welt,  a German newspaper there was a story about a new variety of concrete which is seeded with microorganisms that will actually remove organic waste from water.  Time to place an order?

  Below is my (very rough) translation of the piece linked to above:


It stinks like rotten cheese, and besides Japan, the Germans first cultivated Natto during the Second World War, on their submarines.  Natto is a slimy mixture of fermented soybeans that the Japanese for centuries have polished off for breakfast.  With the help of the hungry but resistant Natto bacteria, Japanese reseachers have now developed a concrete which sustainably converts smelly sewers and stinking streams into clear water.

Foto: Marubeni/Kölling Beton aus Japan verwandelt stinkende Flüsse in klare Gewässer

• |schließen

Foto: Marubeni/Kölling Beton aus Japan verwandelt stinkende Flüsse in klare Gewässer

The firm Koyoh has now employed this development in Yanagawa, a city with a dead, black, stinking creek. Now in just two weeks the bacteria saturated concrete disapateed the smell and in two months the water was again clear and good enough for carp. This piece of technology was produced by nature over the ages, and through cultivation yields high capacity bacteria which can consume or even produce oil.  However, the Natto-bacteria have long served as a living water filter. Fish farmers and aquarium owners shake them in as a powder to reduce turbidity.

The new discovery of the researchers from Koyoh consists of this, the Natto-bacteria can be processed with a variety fo concrete, which for years, if not decades has served as a breeding site.   No one will need to sprinkle the Natto powder.

"A method which also works in flowing water," according to Sachiko Kobayashi, the manager of the petrochemical division of Japan's second largest trading company, Marubeni whose duties include the international operations.
The capability of nature through the bacterialy charged concrete to assist in the repurification of a source, should not be underrated.  Almost all attempts failed, since most bacteria lose their appetite in the alkaline environment of concrete.  In the Koyoh patent application, the bacteria of the eco-cement, that is Bacillus subtilis (Hay bacteria), Bacillus thuringiensis, and bacillus sphaeris, survive both the alkaline conditions and heat very well.  Thus they are well suited to working into concrete.
 For a label for the bacterial water filter the Japanese reached deep into Greek mythology: Gaia Healing Project, appears in the sales catalog, named for the goddess Gaia, who in antiquity embodied the earth.
 The bacterialy infused concrete is marketed by Marubeni as "EcoBio-Block" in diverse porous large grained concrete forms, cylindrical for aquariums and fishtanks, stonelike for lakes and water tanks, or as rippled tiles for canals and streams.

It works this way: on contact with water, the hungry bacteria search out food.  In doing so, the ferment organic matter, and convert ammonia into nitrite and then nitrate.  This nitrification is an important part of the purification of water.  And even better, a shortage of nitrate is an environmental risk.  The unicellular creatures are nearly indestructible, surviving both freezing and boiling water.  If the water tempurature is below 10 degrees Celsius, they become inactive. 
In application, certain conditions must be observed, that not too much mud or leaves cover the tiles , says Kobayashi.  The bacteria require oxygen.  In light of the water pollution in Russia, and also in Asia's ecologically challenged developing countries, Marubeni expects good business.  In standing water, Kobayashi the manager recommends putting three blocks per cubic meter of water.  In canals or streams, once piece of Natto-concrete every ten meters.

My $0.02 on Financial markets reform.

New financial instruments should be subjected to the same sort of prerelease screening as new pharmaceutical compounds and for the same reason, possibly fatal side effects.  I..e. the Consumer Regulatory language of current bill.


Strongest possible presumption in favor of market, as opposed to OTC trading.  Liquid markets provide much better possibilities for price discovery.  Investment banks love OTC for the monopoly rents that they can yield.