Early Recovery. I always hesitate to predict the future, since no one can really see into the future, but I think the people who expect the current economic crisis to persist for years, perhaps even a decade, are wrong. I think that once the new President takes office, consumer and market confidence will be restored pretty quickly, especially if Obama takes decisive steps to outlaw all of the useless "derivative" financial instruments that have caused devastation to the financial markets, forbid bait-and-switch mortgages (BSM's, now called "ARM's", for "Adjustable Rate Mortgages"), demand needed changes in management personnel and policy at the auto companies, etc.
+
If Obama takes the bull by the horns and ends the days of laissez-faire, Wild West days on Wall Street, we can expect to see the stock market back to its September levels by June 2009.
+
As we have seen in the last three months, there is no such thing as "real" value — not of real estate, nor stocks, nor bonds, nor gold, nor anything. All is belief. If we believe the sky is falling, we will make it fall. If we believe that better times are ahead, we will create better times ahead. It's all a matter of confidence in the future, and a new President — practically any new President, after the disastrous Bush years, but especially a black President who ushers in a new age — should produce new confidence in the greatness and resiliency of the United States. Lest you think that to be mindlessly nationalistic, the whole world is waiting for the U.S. economy to bounce back. If it does not, no other country nor group of countries will restore prosperity to the planet. If it does, other economies will follow suit. So to "What's good for General Motors is good for the USA", let us add, "What's good for the USA is good for the world", and get on with regaining the confidence that alone will restore the economy — of Planet Earth.




- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:01 AM

 
Prescriptions No Defense. NYC local television newscasts today reported that an actor best known for a role in the odious Mafia drama The Sopranos has been found not guilty in the killing of an off-duty cop in the Bronx. The story he told on the witness stand is that he did not know that the guy he was with was armed, when they tried to break into an apartment to look for prescription drugs. Hm. Prescription drugs.
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There are naive fools who want to believe that decriminalizing and medicalizing now-illegal drugs would solve the problems of horrendous crime connected to trafficking in drugs. Now we see that there is no validity to the suggestion that medicalizing drug addiction would eliminate crime, because unless the issuance of a medical prescription were instantaneous and absolutely without preconditions, people who want drugs will get them by any means within their reach. And if a prescription is to be made automatic, without any conditions, why not sell heroin and cocaine over the counter at candy stores?
+
We have seen that prescription medications of many kinds have been misused and stolen. Kids who want to get high check out their parents and grandparents' medicine cabinets and take whatever they want. So what the "medicalize drugs" crowd really mean is just let anybody, of any age, use any drug they want, even if they don't know how dangerous it is and even if drugs end up killing hundreds of thousands or even millions of people a year. That's the price of Liberty.
+
No, it isn't. Not everyone is insane, so society will NOT "medicalize" dangerous drugs, because we know that prescription drugs can be stolen and misused, and we do NOT want kids and other foolish or careless people dying by the thousands every week in the name of Liberty. There is no safe level of liberalization for deadly-dangerous drugs. An absolute prohibition on the manufacture, sale, and distribution, even for free, of numerous dangerous chemical intoxicants (not including the relatively benign alcohol, which society knows how to deal with) must be maintained, and indeed strengthened. Drugs are NOT harmless. Some drugs kill outrite. Others steal years of people's lives. Reducing the financial cost of drugs would in no way reduce the devastation to people's lives produced by drug use. All it would do is move the profits from one set of criminals (street pushers) to another (pharmaceutical drug lords). And even if that should produce tax revenues from pharmaceutical companies' profits, decent people do not want to collect taxes on blood money.
+
(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,213 — for Israel.)




- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:32 PM

 
Taking Credit for 'Keeping Us Safe'. It would be funny, were it not so outrageous, that Dumbya wants to shape perceptions of his 'legacy' to include the notion that he kept us safe from terrorism (after 9/11). Never mind that he could have completely prevented the 9/11 attacks simply by heeding the warnings that terrorists planned to hijack airplanes and use them as flying bombs and alerting the traveling public to that fact. Had he simply done that, every single adult flying on every single plane in the United States would have been on notice that if a hijacking attempt occurs on their flite, their very life depends on the passengers and crew preventing it. We know how that would have turned out, because the passengers on Flite 93, given even late notice of what had happened in New York earlier that day, fought back against the hijackers and prevented them from using that plane as a flying bomb. Unfortunately, they were too late to prevent those hijackers from deliberately crashing the plane and killing everyone on board. But at least it wasn't used to destroy the White House, U.S. Capitol Building, or other major target on the ground.
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In short, then, it is the ACTIVE CONCEALMENT of the intent of hijackers to use planes as flying bombs that produced the 9/11 disaster, and that ACTIVE CONCEALMENT was a willful, deliberate, considered act of the Bush Administration. Everyone responsible for that concealment should be arrested, tried for co-conspiracy with Al-Qaeda in the mass murders of 9/11, and burned to death, as so many Americans were burned to death because of the inexcusable official misconduct that produced 9/11.
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'The Decider'. MSNBC will broadcast, at 5pm on Monday, December 29th, an overview of Dumbya's Presidency. The problem is that Bush decided NOTHING. He is now and always has been, from January 20, 2001, a PUPPET of a hidden cabal of Republican insiders who were the Real Presidency, just as Ronald Reagan was never President but only an actor playing President . To this day we don't know all the members of either of those secret collective Presidencies.
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Plainly Dick Cheney was, if not the single most important person in the Real Bush Presidency, at least one of the most important members. In segments of the upcoming program shown on Hardball with Chris Matthews this evening, the point is made that prior to the invasion of Iraq, the "President" (Bush) did not convene a meeting of all the legally-responsible officials and advisers to decide whether to make war against a country that never attacked us. Matthews himself is shown asking then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld if he was asked his views on whether to attack Iraq, and when Rumsfeld said he was not, Matthews followed up to ask if he was surprised by that. Rumsfeld said something like "I found it interesting." So Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Secretary of State, and other people who could be expected to offer advice in a formal setting were not asked for their input before "The Decider" fixed upon the plan to attack.
+
There is definitely a Decider in the Bush Administration. It just isn't Dumbya. Whether decisions of the cabal are made by consensus, tacit or spoken; formal vote; or the bullied consent of the many to the demands of the Alpha Male (Cheney, it would seem) is something we may never know. Certainly the open secret that Ronald Reagan was an actor playing President (which many people in media seem to understand, tho they don't say so aloud) has not been confirmed by leaks from the inner circle that was the Real President during the Reagan years. Say what you will about the Republican scumbags of the Reagan and Bush 43 Administrations, they sure can keep a secret.
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Body Language. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich today said emphatically that he was utterly innocent of legal wrongdoing in the matter of the many charges of corruption against him. Two things: first, he didn't make any such statement for 10 days. Innocent people do not wait 10 days to protest their innocence and show indignation about being maligned. Second, the guy was bouncing all over the space behind the rostrum, in behavior that was hugely suspect. It came across clearly to me that the man was lying thru his teeth.
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What do we do when criminals fite conviction for their crimes rather than simply confessing and saving society expense, time, and travail? Well, punish them more severely. In the case of Blagojevich, every count he is convicted of should carry the maximum sentence, consecutively, not concurrently. There are some societies that punish official corruption with death. Perhaps Illinois should institute such a death penalty, and make it applicable to any person whose trial commences after the passage of that law — over the veto of Blagojevich, I imagine. Perhaps then Blagojevich won't see his best interest as lying (you should pardon the expression) in delay.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 8:31 PM

 
Obvious Fix for Auto Industry. Why is no one talking about the obvious cure, in at least the short term, for the ills of the U.S. auto industry: simply forbidding sales in the U.S. of foreign cars, including cars made within the United States by companies with foreign owners? It is as tho holy free trade is more important than anything else in economics, more important even than the survival of the United States. I am not remotely devoted to free trade, and view with contempt the worship of free trade as a matter of nearly religious veneration. If foreigners want access to our internal market they can perfectly well do what we in the original Thirteen States did: give up our separate sovereignties and join our Union. If they value their independence more highly than access to our market, fine. Just stay the hell out of our domestic market until and unless we decide to open our market to outsiders. It's OUR internal market, and WE have the right to control, in every particular, who and what gets into it.
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Trade must work for us, or be ended. Destructive trade is not a social good, and if the economy of the United States will be destroyed if we continue this free-trade madness, then LET US END FREE TRADE.
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We are told that "protectionism" is a terrible, terrible thing that threatens world-wide Depression. Since when is "protection" a bad word? A little history here: the United States became a great power only thru protectionism. Goods from Britain and other parts of Europe would have been cheaper for Americans in the decades following our independence, but we would have been reduced to an economic appendage of Europe, a Third World-style supplier of raw materials and nothing more, had Congress not protected our economy with tariffs and favored American industry over foreign. The world has not so changed that protectionism today would be a bad thing, especially when the alternative is catastrophe.
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Are we to prefer a Depression that destroys the United States, over a widespread Depression OUTSIDE the United States but in which the U.S. does rather well? Since when is it the duty of the United States to lay down its economic life for foreigners? What have they ever done for us?
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More to the point, consenting to be destroyed economically — presumably as penance for our sins — wouldn't benefit ANYONE, because it would plunge the entire planet into the worst Depression in all of history, global in scope, catastrophic in scale. The mere recession in the U.S. today and the mortgage crisis that underlies it have already caused very, very serious displacement in large swaths of the world, from Europe to China. Workers thrown out of their jobs by the U.S. slowdown are already nearly rioting in China. Catastrophic Depression in the U.S. would produce cataclysmic, apocalyptic Depression all around this planet. In whose interest, then, is economic collapse in the U.S.?
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Congress can perfectly well forbid sales of cars inside the United States by car companies based in foreign countries, permanently or temporarily. We can give the U.S. automakers a limited window in which to change their ways, say, three years, and if they haven't eliminated gas guzzlers and created high-milage, high-reliability cars by then, throw open our borders to foreign cars again — then, if need be, nationalize American car makers, fire all managers at the highest levels, install new management, and order them to create fuel-efficient, extremely reliable cars immediately.
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Harley-Davidson was nearly destroyed by foreign competition. Congress restricted sale of foreign motorcycles for a few years; Harley-Davidson rebounded and told Congress it no longer needed protection; and then Congress let foreign motorcycles in again. It worked for Harley-Davidson. Why would it not work for General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler?
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In short, we're not really facing destruction of the U.S. auto industry unless we CONSENT to commit national suicide. Why would we lay down our national economic life on the altar of free trade? F(asteris)k free trade!
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,209 — for Israel.)

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:23 PM

 
Enriching the Rich. The Federal Reserve has once again lowered interest rates, without requiring banks to pass along the benefit to consumers. So, what have the banks done with this governmental benefit? Lent out new money? No. Lowered interest rates on credit cards, mortgages, auto loans, etc.? No. "Banks are hoarding their money" reported Trish Regan on ABC World News today. No, they are hoarding OUR money.
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In short, the only people who have benefited in any way from the Fed's lowering of interest rates are the rich who own and control the banks.
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Now the Fed intends to buy up toxic assets, as the Department of the Treasury was supposed to do but didn't. What conditions will the Fed impose on the banks and credit-card companies it aids this way? Any? Will the Fed even demand that companies so aided must lend an equivalent amount to consumers in the form of new loans at reasonable interest rates? If not, then tell the banks and credit-card companies to go f(asteris)k themselves, because this will turn out to be just another transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class taxpayers to the rich.
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Neither Congress nor the Fed has to date put any strings on the money they have doled out to the rich. Yesterday we learned that altho Congress intended to put severe restrictions on bonuses paid by corporate recipients of taxpayer money, it turns out that the bill that the Bush Administration tricked Congress into passing tied that limitation to money lent as the result of the purchase of "toxic assets" at auction — only. And then the scumbag Henry Paulson instantly changed the way money was distributed, as not to purchase anything at auction, so the rule did not literally apply.
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We are not without recourse. Courts do have the right to punish misuse of the wording of a law to sidestep the intent of the law, and the intent, if clear, can be enforced. So Congress should immediately demand that the corporations that have paid bonuses after receiving taxpayer moneys pay back every cent, either of bonuses from executives to the corporation or of taxpayer money from the corporations to the Government, and if they don't, Congress should seize the corporations, and fire and jail the executives, or force the corporations into bankruptcy, and jail the executives for fraud.
+
Congress, or the new Attorney-General at the behest of Congress and President Obama, should also prosecute Henry Paulson immediately after his successor takes office, for official misconduct; send him to PRISON; and make him pay for his own imprisonment; then ban him from any position of public trust, at any level of government or in any quasi-governmental agency or authority, for the rest of his life. Any corporate executive sent to prison should as well be fined enough to pay for all costs of his or her trial and imprisonment. We have already spent far too much taxpayer money on those con artists. Every further expense of punishing corporate scumbags should be paid by those bastards themselves.
+
(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,209 — for Israel.)

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:47 PM

 
"I Don't Know What His Beef Is." Dumbya claimed, in those words, not to understand why the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at Bush at a news conference would be angry with him. How delusional is Bush 43? The United States attacked a country that never attacked us and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (perhaps 1.25 million in the present war and its aftermath, another half million or more in the period between the first and second wars against Iraq, and an unknowable number, but perhaps another couple of hundred thousand Iraqis in the first war against Iraq, but "President" Dumbya doesn't know what an Iraqi journalist's "beef" with him, both as an individual and as the representative of the United States, might be. What an a*hole.
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Blind Baby. David Paterson, the "legally" (but not actually) blind, default Governor of New York because the elected Governor was caught in a prostitution scandal, is reported to have been somewhat offended by the skit on this past weekend's Saturday Night Live in which Fred Armisen as Paterson holds a chart upside-down and wanders around the "Weekend Update" stage thereafter, oblivious to the fact that he is still on the show when his segment had finished. Ah, poor baby. It was hysterical, and harkened back to John McCain's wandering around during one of the Presidential debates, blissfully unaware of where he stood relative to the cameras, even blocking Tom Brokaw as Brokaw was trying to read the teleprompter to close out the broadcast. Disabled people have got to grow up. Sometimes disabilities can be funny. I'm partially disabled myself due to an accident that permanently ravaged one knee. Would I be upset if somebody made fun of my slite limp, or anyone's limp? No, I would not. Grow the f(asteris)k up.
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Waterboard Cheney & Co. Vice President Cheney in a recent interview raised the whole issue of waterboarding captives the U.S. military took in its War on Terror, and defended employing torture to get useful information. The end justifies the means, in his view. Well, we as a Nation have a supremely important end to advance: getting at the truth about what the Bush Administration knew about Weapons of Mass Destruction and other pretexts for their war against Iraq. The answers from Administration officials have been evasive and disingenuous at best. It's time to get at the truth. SO, since waterboarding is such a wonderful thing that the Administration defends, let's use it on Cheney, "President" Bush, and all other relevant members of the faceless cabal that is the Real Presidency to find out what they actually knew or believed about WMDs in Iraq before their attack upon a country that never attacked us.
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To hear Cheney tell it, waterboarding is a perfect way to get all the information we want, and morally unobjectionable. So let's use it on its defenders. But let's go one better, since these "people" know that waterboarding is not supposed to produce death, and, toward the end of Cheney's interrogation, actually drown him. Let Cheney be the first member of the Administration waterboarded, and let the media report to all the others, about to be waterboarded, that Cheney died during interrogation, so they too can expect to die if they don't cooperate. Even if Cheney dies of a heart attack, the message should be made clear: we will have no doctors standing by to resuscitate anyone we waterboard if they should be at the edge of death. So tell us what you know, you dirty, dirty, mass-murdering monsters.
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Jew Upon Jew Fraud. Speaking of dirty, dirty monsters, the Jewish con artist Bernard Madoff defrauded large numbers of highly placed fellow Jews, as well as decent people and, most despicably, charities. It's wonderful to see Jews who favor Jews being burned for their tribalism. You conspire among yourselves, and suffer devastating losses as a result? Good. Great. Indeed, wonderful.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,209 — for Israel.)

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 8:43 PM

 
"Happy Holidays". Bill O'Reilly and other rightwingers bitch and moan about the expression "Happy Holidays", which they insist is an insult to Christmas, for allowing other holidays, such as Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, to be included. I find this extremely odd considering how Radical Zionist rightwingers are nowadays. Why would they object to including Jews in holiday greetings?
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More to the point, however, there are TWO holidays that even Christians celebrate at this time of year, and that is what I always took "Happy Holidays" to mean, the exact equivalent of "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year". Two holidays, Mr. O'Reilly, that CHRISTIANS wish each other well on, ergo "Happy HolidayS".
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Attacking Atheism. O'Reilly & Co. have had a field day also bitching and moaning about the decision of the government of the State of Washington to allow a sign conveying an atheistic message to appear alongside a nativity scene in the State Capitol Building. According to these fanatics, forcing Christianity upon the unwilling is perfectly permissible under our Constitutional scheme, even tho it is expressly forbidden by the First Amendment (made binding on state governments by the Fourteenth Amendment) but giving atheists equal time is an outrageous offense to believers. Offending atheists, however, is fine. What about that Golden Rule from Jesus? — "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
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Mr. O'Reilly, atheists are right, religious people are wrong, and you have no right to force your superstitions upon sane people. Religion is responsible for millions of deaths, if not even hundreds of millions. Fanatical morons insist that fine points of dogma are worth killing over, such as the split between Shia and Sunni in Islam, or Catholicism and Protestantism in Christianity; and "the faithful" feel entitled to kill nonbelievers/"infidels", as of right. YOU, the religious, are responsible for Zionism and retaliatory Islamic "terrorism". WE, the nonreligious, don't care if some idiot talks to himself and thinks he's talking to some invisible guy in the sky, or avoids black cats, or believes in ghosts. None of that has anything to do with us, as long as they don't insist WE talk to an invisible guy in the sky in public professions of "faith" (such as the Pledge of Allegiance) or demand that we kill black cats or participate in séances to speak to those ghosts they are sure exist (just like what the bizarre animated program South Park called "The Biggest Douche in the World" (John Edward) does on TV for his deluded fans).
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The text of the atheistic message is gentle and benign:

At this season of THE WINTER SOLSTICE may reason prevail.

There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.

The reaction of the compulsory-religion people was to remove the sign and throw it into a ditch. When it was returned to its place of honor in the State Capitol, a note was appended to remind people "Thou shalt not steal", since the very same people who constantly insist on posting the (Jewish) Ten Commandments in public buildings have no problem with violating any of them, including that pesky one about killing, to advance or, they say, "defend" their own religion from people who dare to challenge it in any regard. These people see no problem with printing "In God We Trust" on the money everyone must use, but would fly into murderous rage if the Government started printing "There Is No God" on our currency, either instead of or in addition to "In God We Trust". Equal time isn't equal, you see, and turnabout isn't fair play when doubt is more powerful than faith.
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"Archie Bunker" was right: "Faith is believing something that nobody in his right mind would believe."
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,209 — for Israel.)

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
Six Inches of Snow in the South. What will it take to snap people out of the madness of "man-made global warming"? Much of the U.S. South experienced snow today, with as much as six inches falling in some areas, giving a new meaning to "Deep South". The Northeast was 10-15 degrees colder for a large portion of November. But still Al Gore and all the mindless morons in media keep prattling away about this planet dying from heatstroke.
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Earth's temperature in the Age of Dinosaurs was substantially higher not only than it is now but also than it is expected to be 100 years from now due to "man-made global warming". Such temperatures did not destroy life but the reverse: gave rise to the largest land animals Earth has ever known.
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Moreover, the drop in temperatures of late is not a narrow phenomenon, limited to either the U.S. South or Northeast. Southern (temperate) Brazil had its coldest September in a century, this year! You didn't hear that on TV news, tho, did you?
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"Global warming" is nearly-religious dogma that finds no justification in reality. It is hubris, simple egotism on the part of a species that is absolutely insignificant to climate. Human beings occupy, in significant numbers (once you deduct areas covered by water, deserts, high mountains, tundra, forests, and ice), only about 12% of the surface of the Earth. If the average person were 6 feet tall, s/he would be only 1/55,000th the height of the atmosphere. The tallest man-made structure is less than 1/222nd the height of the atmosphere, and that's only one structure, Burj Dubai, which is expected to be 2,864 feet tall at completion. You can do your own math for other structures, using 328,000 feet as the height of the atmosphere. The idea that so trivial a dusting of biological detritus and its structures could alter the planet's atmosphere (short of "nuclear winter", if even that would happen, even if the human race should embark on mutually suicidal full-scale nuclear war — and there is no reason to think it would) is insane arrogance.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:52 PM

 
Obama and Expansionism. A man in Florida recently contacted me to express support for geographic enlargement of the United States, as to Canada, and said he favors an inducement of $3,000 to each Canadian to join the Union. I found that odd and, frankly, absurd, likely to produce indignation in Canadians who would reject it furiously: "What? You think you can BUY me with a crummy $3,000 bribe?"
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In subsequent email correspondence, I expressed hope that Obama, given his background (having been born in the last state so far annexed, Hawaii) and being part of a minority that was for generations not allowed to vote, would be interested in geographic enlargement. The gentleman from Florida wondered, however, if a President of the United States would want to raise the issue of statehood for various parts of Canada, and even how he would raise the issue. So I replied:

A $3,000 bribe is not going to get you far. Studies have shown that Canadians would benefit handsomely, economically, from annexation, in terms of lower consumer prices, lower taxes, lower debt service on the national debt, which was, at least until recently (I haven't seen any figures since Dumbya doubled the national debt here), higher per capita than the U.S. national debt.
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There are far more valid appeals to Canadians, Australians, etc. With each area, different things might appeal. For instance, Australia would assuredly see an increase in white population, which does matter to them. They would also be assured that the U.S. would not abandon them to the 'tender mercies' of the Butchers of Beijing. This is one reason I am so ANGRY at FDR, because he could have told Australia in WWII that "yes, we'd like to help you, but we are NOT going to put our people in danger for you unless you join our Union. Then we will fite to the death to protect you. If you are not willing to join our Union, then make your own best deal with Japan — and start learning Japanese — because we won't lift a finger to defend you."
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Canadians like to think of themselves as enlightened, a force for good in the world. But of course Canada is not a "force" for anything, because Canada is NOTHING in the real world. As part of the United States, however, Canada would have a HUGE impact on the world, by altering the stances of the U.S. Government, helping to pass universal healthcare (which would allow Canadian retirees to move to the Sunbelt year-round without having to spend some time in the Great White North just to keep their healthcare coverage), reverse antigay legislation, and put reactionaries permanently in the minority, a helpless minority that can't even threaten a filibuster because they couldn't even remotely get the votes to stave off cloture. And the idea that key posts in an American Administration could go to Canadians, and that anyone born a citizen of Canada could run for President of the United States -- that's the kind of thing that can appeal to Canadians' sense of their own 'rightful' place in the grand scheme of things, a scheme they can now only watch from the sidelines.
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Puerto Rico statehood always has a constituency: the Latino population that is now and will for a long time be underrepresented because most Latin American immigrants, legal or illegal, cannot vote. And the idea of a Latino President of the United States from Puerto Rico appeals to the 'orgullo' (pride) of all Latinos, who are now the Nation's largest minority. Once you get people talking about Puerto Rico statehood, you naturally have to talk about the Virgin Islands, which is predominantly black. So a black President should be favorably disposed to making more black people first-class citizens. Obama is from Hawaii, and there are a lot of Americans who do not understand why we have colonies in the Pacific, since they could obviously all be merged into Hawaii. So we could tidy up the map and end the embarrassment of colonialism on Obama's watch. Once you break the powerful round number 50 (states), and have the untidy 51, the mind will be open to rising to the next round number, either 55 or 60. Mindset matters, and once you break the 50 barrier, other things suddenly become possible, especially since you simultaneously show that the Nation is still growing!
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To say that a President of the United States would not want Canada is like suggesting that he wouldn't want trillions of dollars of resources and tens of millions more prosperous citizens with which to meet the Nation's international responsibilities. If somebody walked up to you and said, "How about a million dollars, buddy? Would you like it if I gave you a million dollars?", and he lays out perfectly reasonable conditions, such as you use it for education and healthcare (for yourself and your family) and paying off debt and donating to your favorite charities, and educational foreign vacations, but not for anything frivolous or bad for you, like drugs — would you say "No way, man! Get out of my face!"? Would you think that a million dollars would create more problems than it solves? I wouldn't.
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As for how a President would broach the subject to Canada, the Philippines, etc., there are many ways. He could just say it, aloud, which would get the whole world abuzz. Say, he receives a state visit from the Prime Minister of Canada and at the foto opp or joint press conference Obama simply says something, even casual, like, "The United States and Canada are good friends and good neighbors. But I'm not the first American to think that we could be much more. Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, the framers of the Articles of Confederation, and many other Americans have always thought that Canada and the United States belong together. Think about that, people. That's all I'm going to say about that today. But think about it, on both sides of the border." What would Harper say? How adamant could he be in saying thanks but no thanks? Would he dare to claim that no Canadian wants that? If so, Obama could say, "On the contrary, I have seen polls that show Canadians have thought about it, and, if the terms were right, a great many would welcome the reunification of what used to be a united North America during the British era, save that Britain wouldn't control, but we, together, would. Heck, I'd even welcome Britain into the Union for that matter, as a partner and integral part of the Union, of course, not as colonial overlord. We have so much to offer each other. If Europeans who used to kill each other every 20 years or so in centuries of warfare can join in a European Union, why can't we go farther?" Etc.
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Or how about this? He could avoid the possibility of being opposed by Harper or such at the same time as he mentions the issue by approaching it in a separate setting, such as a press conference. He could approach the whole idea of a larger Nation by addressing the status of Puerto Rico. He could make an announcement at a press conference:

Ladies and gentlemen, today I'd like to speak to the issue of second-class citizenship and American colonialism. I am embarrassed even to have to admit that the United States has colonies, and that there are millions of U.S. citizens who cannot vote for President and Congress. If there's one country that should never have had colonies, ever, it is the United States, which denounced colonialism, went to war over it, and freed 13 colonies in so doing. But we do have colonies, and I want that national disgrace to end. Puerto Rico has been dithering about status for decades, unable to make up its mind. Puerto Rico has been a colony of the United States since our victory in the Spanish-American War in 1898. That is much too long. Even if we could make excuses for why Puerto Rico wasn't ready for statehood or independence in the first few decades following accession, no such excuse has held water for at least 50 years. It's time to move the question. If Puerto Ricans can't make up their minds, Congress can. I can. Puerto Ricans can accept what we offer, statehood, or go their own way. And godspeed to them if they choose independence. But we have budgetary problems and need to spend American taxpayer dollars first and foremost on Americans. So if Puerto Rico becomes independent, it will be on its dime, not ours.

We have a second colony in the Caribbean, right nextdoor to Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands. That colony's people, almost all of them black, cannot vote for President and Congress either. That offends me. The U.S. Virgin Islands is too small to become a state to itself, so I am asking Congress, which has the absolute power to dispose of the territory of the United States, to merge the Virgin Islands into Puerto Rico; create the two present territories into one state; and, in the plebiscite needed to rafiy statehood, count the votes in both territories as a unit for purposes of accepting statehood or voting for independence, the only two options. Voting for statehood will produce statehood. Rejecting statehood will produce independence, for both territories, and the United States will have no further financial obligations toward either territory, tho individual citizens will retain such rights as they individually are entitled to, including the right to move to the United States mainland. Anyone who accepts the citizenship of an independent Puerto Rico/U.S. Virgin Islands will by that act forfeit U.S. citizenship and lose all rights to move to the mainland. It's time for the people of our territories — all our territories — to step up to first-class citizenship, with all its responsibilities as well as rights. And while we are redrawing the map, let us throw our minds open to wider annexations, to bring into our great Union other areas with which we have so much in common, and get some help in meeting our worldwide responsibilities.

The United States is a great country, but only a small portion of this planet. The problems of this planet threaten to destroy us all if we cannot get on top of them and solve them thru joint effort. We cannot do enuf at our present geographic and demographic size. So either we accept failure, and its terrible consequences, or we accept that we must grow to prevail, and take judicious steps now to secure the future of this Nation, and this planet. Today, we start the first step, erasing the stain of colonialism from our national flag. Maybe we'll add a star. Maybe we'll cut our losses and see our national territory actually shrink a tiny bit. But our conscience will be clear, and we will be ready to offer equality within our Union not just to Puerto Ricans and Virgin Islanders but to other people in other places important to us. I won't list those places right now. Everyone within the sound of my voice may have their own list. Good. Think about it, pro and con. Think about it, talk about it, and let us see what we can agree on.

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:48 PM

 
Mr. Betrayal. He hasn't even taken office yet, but Barack Obama is already looking like a disaster, a total sellout who repudiates the voters who put him in office, to fill the highest ranks of his Administration with people we don't want.
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Obama is turning an entirely female face to the world, with not only a female Secretary of State, but also a female Ambassador to the UN. We are now officially a nation of pussies that no real man in a powerful country will pay any attention to.
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Obama is keeping in office a Republican appointee for what is, in most times, the second most important Cabinet position, Secretary of Defense. Obama is also nominating for head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff a personal friend of the despicable liar and slanderer John McCain, whom the voters rejected.
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Democrats voted against the Republicans, but the new, "Democratic" President is installing Republicans anyway!
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Virtually his entire economic team in this time of crisis is Jewish. The Nation is 98% gentile, and almost all of that 98% is Christian. But Paul Volcker, Larry Summers, and probably Peter Orszag, are Jewish, as is Obama's chief of staff (Rahm Emanuel) and most senior all-issue advisor (David Axelrod).
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What's going on? The pretense that Obama wants a modern equivalent of Abraham Lincoln's "Team of Rivals", diverse voices offering counsel, doesn't explain it, because there are 300 million Americans with hugely diverse views. He doesn't have to surround himself with women, Republicans, and Jews to get strong disagreements and widely differing recommendations from an inner circle.

Is Barack Obama another "Decider" who is no such thing, but just a puppet of his betters? Is the real power of his Administration going to be held by unelected "advisors"? Is he going to be another "different kind of Democrat" like Bill Clinton: a Republican?
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I dread the news of each Obama appointment. He is filling his Administration with people of extremely dubious principles and character who do not have the best interests of this Republic at heart. Even the good people he has chosen seem peculiarly mismatched to the job assigned. Why would Obama choose Bill Richardson (a man of impeccable distinction), whose expertise is in diplomacy, as Secretary of Commerce, if Obama is concerned about protecting Americans from unfair competition? He's not supposed to be negotiating new free-trade agreements to give away every job still left in the United States, so why does he need a diplomat in Commerce?
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The Fox News Channel's odious Radical Rightwinger Sean Hannity said today that Lincoln's "Team of Rivals" was a failure, and most were out of office before Lincoln's first term expired. An opinion piece by Matthew Pinsker in the Los Angeles Times turned a similarly jaundiced eye upon the "Team of Rivals" concept on November 18th. ("Matthew Pinsker, author of 'Lincoln's Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers' Home,' teaches Civil War history at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.")

President Lincoln's Cabinet was far more dysfunctional than Doris Kearns Goodwin's book would have us believe. * * * the impact of repeated disloyalty and unnecessary backroom drama from him and several other Cabinet officers was a significant factor in the early failures of the Union war effort. * * *

Goodwin suggests that Lincoln's quiet confidence and impressive emotional intelligence enabled him to survive and ultimately forge an effective team out of his former rivals, but that's more wishful thinking than serious analysis. * * *

Consider this inconvenient truth: Out of the four leading vote-getters for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination whom Lincoln placed on his original team, three left during his first term -- one in disgrace, one in defiance and one in disgust.

Lincoln's Cabinet was no team. His rivals proved to be uneven as subordinates. Some were capable despite their personal disloyalty, yet others were simply disastrous.

Lincoln was a political genius, but his model for Cabinet-building should stand more as a cautionary tale than as a leadership manual.

I have never understood the adoration of Abraham Lincoln. As I read American history, Lincoln very near lost the Civil War. He appointed one incompetent after another to lead the war effort, and the war dragged on so long that public support started to wane. Had it gone on even a year longer, the electorate might have said "To hell with it. Let the bastards go. They'll never make it on their own. And good riddance." We really did come very close to losing the Civil War, all because Lincoln was a very bad judge of character and competence. And that's what Obama wants to bring to his Administration? More bad advice from women, in this case, the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.
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Lincoln is called "The Great Emancipator", but realists have pointed out that the Emancipation Proclamation was a practical nullity, in that it applied only to areas in insurrection, where U.S. law did not hold sway, and slaves in areas not in insurrection were NOT freed.
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Lincoln was so busy simply trying desperately, and incompetently, to hold the Union together that he failed to achieve anything positive at all that anyone can remember. He preserved the Union. He did not enlarge it. He did not make it better. He did not free the slaves in areas that did not attempt to secede. He favored 'repatriating' freed slaves to Africa, because he felt they were not fit to function in an advanced civilization, for reasons of racial inferiority. So why is he endlessly praised?

Perhaps it is because of Lincoln's sublime rhetoric. That would explain Obama's admiration. Obama is very good with rhetoric too. But the Presidency is about a lot more than rhetoric.
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George Washington had trouble winning his war too, but he was working with a ragtag bunch of volunteers from a ragtag semi-union of mutually suspicious colonies-in-revolt. George Washington welded together the newly independent states — independent of each other as much as from Britain — into a new Nation, something no one else could have done, and everybody in his day knew it. George Washington warned us against entanglements in the quarrels of others, and established the two-term precedent that we had to write into the Constitution when FDR violated it. Perhaps Obama should be looking to Washington as mentor and guide for his new Administration, despite Washington's having owned slaves (which he emancipated in his will). Leave Lincoln to the statues all over this country, like the one shown in my pix in today's entry to this blog, a seated, 1½-lifesize bronze in my city, Newark, NJ, by Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore. We also have a park named for Lincoln, which used to be South Park (no joke) but was renamed shortly after Lincoln's death because he spoke very briefly on the steps of a church near that park.

Newark has a park named for George Washington too, in which stands this other fine bronze, by another major sculptor, J. Massey Rhind. Obama should come to Newark and sit on the bench where the little girls sat, then stand in front of the Washington statue, then read the plaque on Trinity & St. Philip's Episcopal Cathedral not far from there that speaks to Washington's having passed under the shadow of that church's steeple. We have a sycamore tree called Washington's Tree, that was alive when Washington marched down Broad Street mere feet from that tree. It's in very bad shape, but it survives.

Lincoln is not the model for an Obama Administration. Lincoln nearly lost the war, and was shot by someone he wanted us to embrace. "Hold your friends close and your enemies closer" is the way Cassius got near enuf to stab Caesar.

Many people have wanted to compare Obama to Kennedy. Obama himself seems to want to compare himself to Lincoln. Need we really point out that both were assassinated? (And yes, Newark has a statue (bust) of JFK too. Newark has all kinds of things that might surprise people.)

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 4:44 AM