A Campaign Too Far--Far, Far Too Far

It shudders the soul to think that two years from now we Americans will flagellate ourselves with another presidential election the length of the one now on. Or worse, discover that a year from now another presidential election has begun complete with candidates good, bad and ninnies rasping our nerves with campaign gabble and shenanigans for the 2012 balloting.

We have brought the masochistic delights of the present campaign upon ourselves by not having a national primary–one primary, let’s say for argument’s sake. on the Tuesday after Labor Day.

If the candidates want to start stumping the nation two years before that, let them. Who cares, until the one and only primary pends? Some fool pounding on the doors of TV stations and newspaper editors and filling the internet with elect-me piffle 24 months ahead of time will be lucky to draw audiences of winos by serving free lunches along with the election pitches
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Further, we won’t have the yawners we have now of candidates picking the scabs of each other’s past: Your minister ain’t polite or your husband ain’t nice about skin color, and nah-nah-nah and so forth.

Candidates know the pressies cursed to follow them around under the present system are bored witless by the campaign speech or speeches. After all, what new can the news wretches write to placate their bosses about a speech they’ve heard and reported a dozen times before? That’s why candidates, generally through henchmen and women, toss bits of meat to the reporters, meat ripped from an opponent’s hide: Anything to stay in the news.

A set primary in the election-year fall would not stop candidates from dropping flapping canards, but it would at least shorten the suffering of the rest of us, who have to listen and read and kick the snivels, cavils and whispers out of our way.

It might also spare us the ennui of the modern political conventions by making them more useless than they are now. That alone justifies a national primary.

At Least the Romans Knew Caligula Was Nuts

The day after the 4,000th U.S. military death in Iraq, I listened to George W. Bush maunder about how these dead soldiers had died out of patriotism for the “honor” of the United States.

I almost pulled off the highway in disbelief. I had just realized that any politician–especially a politician who had dodged active military service-- saying something so trivial, so stupid and so callous must truly be delusional.

Then it occurred to me that’s probably the case with Bush: He's more nuts than ancient Rome’s Caligula. At least with Caligula his contemporaries could see the emperor needed to be in a looney bin.

Not so with Bush. He appears, superficially, to be just another country-club Republican jock who never evidences having read a book, never evidences empathy with the poor, never evidences having tried to think of anything but himself and his next pleasures.

Alas, in Bush’s case, that pleasure flows from pretending to be President of the United States. He actually can find profound the war advice of his vice president, Richard Cheney, who spurned wearing his country’s uniform. What do Cheney and Bush know about honor, except to mouth the word to palliate the survivors of the dead soldiers?

One grants that Bush’s acting works. The citizenry elected him twice. As the old Romans used to say, the voice of the people is the voice of God. So Bush must be deluding the Old Republican in the Sky too. By Allah, that's hard to contemplate.

Bank Robbery or What the Fed Is Helping the Banks Do to Us

Ever since big Republican bankers began writhing and howling because of all the house mortgages going belly up across the land, the great minds of the world of finance have been trying to figure how to save their asses from being fried for all the bad loans they enticed the ignorant into signing in order to finance four walls and a roof.

Their answer–or least a main one of them–is loot the U.S. Treasury, itself a vault that if it didn’t have the power to print money and government bonds would be bankrupt, thanks to the drunken spending of the Bush Administration on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

How do bankers loot? First they have to convince fellow bankers sitting on the board of the Federal Reserve that if the Fed doesn’t make money cheaper for the banks to borrow from the Treasury, then the whole economy will collapse. It’s not as if such convincing takes place in public meetings. Nay, it occurs over lunches, cocktails and dinners, where the rich among us whisper of those terrible dangers that might happen if a new Depressions starts: Reform! Revolution! And worse, or maybe the same thing, Democrats owning the White House and Congress.

Given such fears voiced by old school chums and business buddies, the Fed governors then lower the interest rates that banks can borrow at, now down about 3 percent. In the next day or two that may go lower.

Can an ordinary citizen or even a business or General Motors borrow at the Fed prime rate? No.

So the big banks borrow the money low and lend it high, usually 100 percent or more higher, for mortgages, business loans, automobiles.

But better yet these days, there are credit cards. Yes, Bank of America may borrow at 3 percent and lend it to you in a risky fashion, via credit card, for upwards of 30 percent.

Granting the spread in interest rates between what a big bank can borrow at and what it can loan at, one might think the riches pouring in the door might make major banks what they are supposed to be, conservative. Yes, their officers are conservative, but only in politics. The easy greed fostered by the Bush Administration has washed away until lately all their concerns about bad loans.

It’s been come in suckers, sign here on this dandy mortgage that will double your monthly payments in three years. And then we’ll bundle this risky paper under some fancy name and sells of it to your betters.

Read the upcoming news stories. Read about how the Fed will tell the bankers to back semis up to the Treasury doors to load up with $1,000 bills. Read a few days later how the bankers will cry, it’s not enough! Lower interest rates again! Sell more federal bonds to the stupid Chinese and give us the dough! We’ll love you for it! And so will the children yet unborn who will be paying off those bonds 50 years hence. What do you care? You’ll be dead!

The American Way: When You Can't Swindle, Bitch

When Boeing discovered that it couldn’t swindle its way into receiving the Air Force’s $100 billion contract to build the Air Force a new fleet of aerial refueling tankers, Boeing then offered a plane clearly deficient in size and capacity (but not price) to the Airbus-based plane that Northrop-Grumman-EADS tendered in bidding that became open to that company only after Boeing’s efforts to suborn Air Force officials withered under public scrutiny and punishment.

Now Boeing, its unions and Washington State members of Congress squawk with surprise that Air Force generals could see that the Airbus ship offers a better deal to the service and to U.S. taxpayers.

Though Northrop-Grumman-EADS will assemble the tankers in a plant yet to be built in Mobile, AL, the howls of surprise come wrapped in Old Glory, with plaints that a U.S. military plane should be built in the U.S. and not in perfidious France.

Boeing never has voiced such qualms about civilian airliners. Big chunks of Boeing’s airliners are built overseas by foreign companies, then airlifted to the U.S. for assembly here.

Northrop-Grumman-EADS is only flying the same construction route Boeing pioneered. No wonder Boeing feels euchred.

Worst of all are the hero speeches still echoing in Congress about the need to investigate the Air Force’s decision–speeches that ignore that the contract, finally, was up for bid, that there were two bidders and one of them won. What’s the surprise here, except to raise false clamor?

Boeing yelps that Airbus is subsidized. Well, Boeing is subsidized. It hardly pays any taxes in Washington and Kansas, where it assembles planes, it hardly pays any federal taxes, it gets exceedingly cheap loans, pollutes hell out of the land and streams with hardly an official soul offering a mew, and until lately was subsidized by getting favorable treatment on winning contracts.

For me it would be pleasant if someday the manufacturers who hymn most loudly about the virtues of capitalism and free trade might get brave enough to practice same.

Henry the 5th at Agincourt He Ain't

Major media in the U.S. and the U.K. have been sniffing each other’s arm pits about the ethics of sitting on the story that Prince Hal was on duty with British forces in Afghanistan.

While so distracted about the morality of not telling the world the prince was there waiting to be kidnaped by the Taliban, newsies have missed the bigger story: That the prince’s withdrawal appeared on its face to be a great, staged propaganda coup for the British government, army and royal family.

What did the world see? We saw the prince as a second lieutenant (A) commanding a tank, (B) firing a heavy machine gun from a bunker, ( C) being jolly with the troops, (D) eating bully beef from a mess cup, (E) talking about how he would rather stay with his troops but. . ., (F) turning in his battle gear, (G) boarding a big transport and (H) arriving back in dear old England to be met by his grandpa while his father, the Prince of Wales, yachts in the Caribbean.

So what’s wrong with all that?

Well, if you’re not a trained tank commander, you don’t command a tank, and just sitting in one with battle gear on doesn’t make you qualified to order a tank hither and yon. If you’re an officer, you don’t hunker into a bunker or anywhere else except under extreme duress to fire a heavy machine gun. That’s work for experts too.

As it happens the prince’s military speciality so far is battlefield communications, not a bad thing, but nothing much heroic about it.

So all the TV coverage–allowed once the prince was back rattling around his home castle–to my eye seemed set up, to garner good press. And good press it was. Excellent press, though it had little to do with reality. It showed the prince as a brave soul, it showed Americans that Brits, even the most noble, are doing their part in Afghanistan, which for several hundred years has thrown the English out on their duffs. And for the British it made their army and their government look good. Nothing to complain about.

As for sitting on the story of the prince’s presence where he might get bumped off or beheaded, no one has ever said the British press can’t lick spittle with the best of them, especially for the best of them (by rank). As for the American press, shame on those who knew and kept quiet and yea for whoever leaked the story to the net. And yippee for the British Army press officers: Now there are warriors who know how to do their job.