Statecraft Informer

Sparxafire!

Your president has decided to change his mind and speak about the war in Iraq in comparison to other wars throughout U.S. history. I am happy the president demonstrates that is is still able to change his mind about something – anything at all. Of course, the press has dutifully scrounged up several pieces of footage where the president is shown rejecting comparisons to other wars as innappropriate or whatever.

So the jist of this new comparison idea seems to be that we abandoned Vietnam. We coulda/shoulda “won” in Vietnam and the way to prevent the Iraq war from turning into another Vietnam is to stay, stay, stay! Won what in Vietnam, exactly? Or, I might ask, what did we lose in Vietnam? Was it worth it? To this day, does anybody actually understand what the hell the Vietnam war was all about? …Besides wildly inappropriate response to someone else’s local headache?????

And whom is Bush trying to convince with this comparison? Certainly not young people, who don’t even remember Vietnam… but I guess he’s trying to evoke some kind of logic out of the baby boomers who remember Vietnam? Who advised your president that this would be a good idea? Is this what life is going to be like with Rove gone? We’re through the looking glass, people!

Sparxafire!

I have wondered more than once how Iraqi people and the government must feel about the lack of support for this war by the general population of the U.S. Of course, I also wonder how they feel about the war itself, about the shattering of their country and other things of that sort.

Finally, today, a clue. I guess we finally went too far in our criticism yesterday when your president said he was “frustrated with Iraqi leaders…” and “I think there’s a certain level of frustration with the leadership in general, inability to work – come together to get, for example, an oil revenue law passed or provincial elections.”

So today, Iraqi Prime Minister al Maliki pushes back, saying that nobody has the right to impose timetables on his elected government and that his country “can find friends elsewhere.” So there.

Isn’t this just incredible? My highest hope for the U.S. to get out of this ridiculous war is now that the Iraqis will kick us out, thoroughly, once and for all! How embarrassing would that be???

I get the feeling that in Planet Earth Junior High School, the U.S. is some big lug jock that everyone admires for his physical prowess, but who has the mentality of a titmouse and the personality of a pig. You know that guy? You know the type, reads “My Pet Goat” while holding the book upside down. I think that is us now.

Sparxafire!

What is the deal with education in this country? While your Statecraft Informer is nowhere near ready to declare in favor of any particular candidate in 2008, it is struck by Hilary Clinton’s recent observation that walking into a classroom today is no different than going into a classroom in the 1950s.

Why can’t we educate our kids? In my state, only 75 percent of high school students graduate. There are several states were the number of h.s. grads in in the 50th percentile! Whose fault is this? If I made a product, and 25 to 50 percent of my target audience bailed/abandoned/rejected it, I would take a hard look at my product.

I know there are at least four groups directly vested in education: government, teachers, parents and students. I have no doubt each group has its failings… But may I suggest it starts with government apathy and incompetence at all levels that produces mediocre schools in the first place? Within the 1950s/2000s school environment it’s difficult to locate anything resembling energy, creativity or even competence. Most children still attend school only nine months per year so they can help bring in the crops at the harvest! For crying out loud.

Are we hearing anything about education from the candidates? Not really; it’s not a particularly hot button issue with anyone. How many times have we heard anguished cries about “Education in Crisis!” Blah, blah, blah. It’s like crying “wolf!”

Is it possible that the sorry decline of education in this country — or the sorry failure to keep up — has now produced an American populace that is too ignorant to understand the origins of its own stupidity? We are a population, after all, that elected George Bush TWICE. We have zero intellectual curiosity in America.

I do not know a soul who is intellectually curious! I can say this safely, because even my best friends cannot be bothered to read Statecraft Informer! Honestly, I don’t know what gets them out of bed in the morning. It looks a lot like “American Idol,” and “Top Chef” and “Entertainment Tonight.”

Bill Gates and Eli Broad are donating $60 million to advertise the country into caring about education in the ‘08 election. Anyone? Anyone at all? I think we’ve all pretty much given up… shrug?

Sparxafire!

Oh, for crying out loud. Sen. Patrick Leahy tells us today that the White House has failed to deliver documents (I’ve lost track of which scandal they’re about…) after two deadline extensions, and “they’re really, really in contempt now.” Well. I’m paraphrasing. He also avowed that he did not understand what was behind these great delays. Yes, statecrafters… that’s what he said: “I don’t know why it’s taken so long, but it’s a good first step.” (The first step being the acknowledgement of the existence of the documents.)

He doesn’t know why this is taking so long. HE DOESN’T KNOW WHY….???

I don’t really understand “taking the fifth” when testifying in court. I cannot imagine what that means, other than, “Yes. I am absolutely guilty, but you’ll need to find someone else to confirm that fact.” The very same goes for “executive privilege…” which means, “Yes. I have documents that demonstrate pure, unadulterated illegal activity, therefore, I’m not going to show them to you, because then you would have no choice but to convict me of a crime, and I don’t want that.”

That’s certainly what “executive privilege” meant to Nixon, who more or less invented it… except his documents were tapes of incriminating conversations.

Who on earth doesn’t know why the White House is buttoned up? Everybody knows they routinely break the law in there without answering to anyone ever. And Congress seems determined to keep it that way for reasons that elude me entirely. They have the power to check and balance the executive branch. I just wish they would reveal why they choose not to exercise it. Is it laziness? Apathy? Fear? Fear of what?

They can’t take impeachment off the table, for crying out loud. The Founding Fathers put it on the table! If the impeachment process is too cumbersome and protracted to work to do what it’s supposed to do, change the process!

Leahy went on to say that the Senate was asking questions of the vice president a couple of years ago, but that a message came back from Cheney’s office that the senators were not permitted to subpoena the office of the vice president, “Not quite sure that’s my understanding of the separation of powers, but it seemed to work at that time,” Leahy points out matter-of-factly.

I am speechless.

Sparxafire!

We think we are pretty darn smart with all our technology and whatnot. We have trains, planes, automobiles, cell phones, Google™ and microwave ovens. But let us never, ever play complacent with Mother Nature. She can, and does continue to kick our butt all over the place – especially when we have the arrogance to mess with her.

Just this week we are enduring at least three major traumas where Mother Nature is delivering three smackdowns, casually and dispassionately swatting human life off her bosom like so many cake crumbs.

When you dig great tunnels in the dirt to mine minerals out of the earth, those tunnels are by no means guaranteed to hold. It appears that hope has faded for the Utah miners and it just makes me sick. Mom Nature insists that those who want to dig for her treasures must pay full price in terms of safe practices to get it. Shortcuts don’t pay.

Flooding in the Midwest, claiming victims to rushing/rising waters. It’s just terrible, but ask any resident of New Orleans, water will go wherever there’s an opening… no matter what. It’s strong and powerful and is only overcome by extraordinary means… like Boulder Dam, for example. From the sinking of the Titanic to the failure of the New Orleans levys, water has proved it is dead serious.

And, Hurricane Dean… another force where humans are pretty much defenseless – at this moment, tracking across the Gulf toward Mexico – has already claimed at least eight lives.

These are acts of a natural world that has no conscience. They are the result of weather, water and wind… just the living earth doing her thing. They are not acts of God.

If I should decide to descend into a tunnel under the surface of the earth, with support that is unknown to me, you won’t find me praying for God to suspend the laws of gravity while I’m down there.

I further assure you, if a hurricane is headed my direction, you will find me nailing up up plywood, you won’t find me on my knees praying. Neither will you find me trying to pray away rising floodwaters.

I hope no one lost his or her life this week praying in the face of a natural emergency. And it’s not about, “God helps those who help themselves…” It’s about nature and gravity, buoyancy, force, the laws of physics and getting the hell out of harm’s way! And it’s not about “intelligent design” either. Frankly, what is intelligent about hurricanes? Or floods? Earthquakes? Volcanoes? I call that “poor design,” frankly.

I urge and encourage all loyal statecraft informistas out there to get up off their stupid knees and keep themselves safe.

Sparxafire!

I’m growing more than a tad weary of Rudy Guiliani’s one-note campaign: “Remember how great I was at 9/11?”

At the time of the disaster, I recall watching Guiliani’s appearances on television as being trite and ineffectual. I don’t want to listen to him, I want to see more recovery or hear more about who is behind this attack, etc. He just did what ANY HUMAN would do in his position. Nothing more, nothing less. He walked down there and looked around and even got himself trapped in some tunnel or something. He told the cameras that this was really bad, and that the resources of New York would certainly be brought to bear. Well. Yeah. OK. He watched thousands of New Yorkers walk out of the area… didn’t rally any buses or anything to help the evacuation… just let folks flee the area on foot. Well. OK. I understand that. As any human would, he continued to tell the cameras that the city was doing everything it could. Shrug. I never understood the “WoW” factor for his behavior.

Did he calm and reassure his city? Only to the extent that any human would. Did he restore confidence? Rally the spirit of New Yorkers? I don’t see it. I saw the New Yorkers themselves bouncing back and regaining their own confidence independent of anything the mayor did or did not say or do.

Props to him for going to so many of the funerals of police and firefighters… but again, I think any human would have done that.

This whole “Guiliani as Hero 9/11 Mayor” syndrome is lost on me. I feel a little like I do with the “OJ’s Glove” syndrome. While I watched him put the glove on, everyone else saw it not fitting. He held up his hand, with the glove ON and turned his hand to show us that the glove ON his hand didn’t fit? It was ON his hand! But I’m the only one who noticed.”

The mayor just happened to be there, and reacted as any human normally would. That doesn’t quite fill the bill for the presidency. We need a president who is a preventer of disaster, not a good mopper-upper.

Sparxafire!

Who is the cat that ate the canary in the coal mine?

So, Dick Stickler, your president’s choice to oversee mine safety in the U.S. is the equivalent of that ole horse show manager, David (”you’re doin’ a heckuva job, Brownie”) Brown, who was in charge of FEMA during the Katrina disaster. Now we have Stickler, with a dubious career of mediocre mine management presiding over worker safety in our mines. This is tantamount to appointing Lindsey Lohan as a driving instructor. Same ole story, sneaky, slimy recess appointment, against the will of a number of senators and victims of Stick’s management who protested that a mining industry insider was not a good choice to police mine safety. (Victims being family members of those who were killed in mines Stick managed!)

Your Statecraft Informer could just stamp her foot and burst into tears. And she would if it would do any good. But very little of what the SI does is worth a damn. So, we only get to ferret out Bush’s incompetents as disasters happen on their watch? I swear, I’ll bet at the very basis of the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis is some level of incompetence at the federal level, by some bush appointee whose expertise is opera or canned goods or driving instruction.

Sparxafire!

I hope none of you in the vast statecraft informerhood has been clenching for Gen. Petraeus’ mid-September status report about the war in Iraq. At first, it seemed intriguing… a deadline of sorts! A benchmark, if you will, that will dictate some change in policy! Something’s gonna happen!

But after some thought, we all realized that all it did was give them more time, still more… more, more, and yet more time for our soldiers to be killed. Then, it became clear what Petraeus is going to say in his report, “Yup, doing better on the ground, but without political progress, we have to hold our positions until the newly-returned-from-vacation Iraqi government has a chance to consider some politically progressive krap.”

By the way, as a parent of any soldier killed in Iraq during everybody’s (U.S. Congress / Iraqi Parliament) vacation, there is no sympathy deep enough to offer to you.

In short, the conclusion of Petraeus’ report will be some version of, “we need more time.”

Oh. And today, we learn Petraeus’ report to Congress will actually be a report to the White House, where it will be analyzed and executive-ly summarized in an executive privilege kind of way for eventual consumption by Congress and the citizenry. And how long will the rewrite take? Until Halloween perhaps?

So any statecraft informers are eagerly anticipating this report, naively expecting something to happen as a result of it, I say to you, eliminate your expectations. Not gonna happen. Better for you to cinch up now than be somehow blind-sided with disappointment in the middle of September.

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So, Karl Rove resigns. Ha! Never believe a word that comes out of Rove’s mouth. Just watch, quicker than a bunny, he will be teamed with some warped, nefarious Republican presidential candidate. I just wish I could predict who… Romney? Guiliani? I dunno. I see him more with Fred Thompson or even Newt.

And here is why: Rove has never hit the wall when it comes to the gullibility, selfishness and indifference of the U.S. population! So far, he has gotten away with every single slimy thing he’s ever done – culminating with his outing of Valerie Plame and firing of federal attorneys for purely political reasons!

Rove started his political career in 1970 at the age of 19 by using a false identity to sneak into Democrat Alan Dixon’s campaign office and steal letterhead stationery. Dixon was running for State Treasurer of Illinois. Rove used the paper to print up a false “free food, beer, lots of girls” party to ruin an actual Dixon rally. While Dixon won the election, Rove’s sociopathic personality was hooked on thievery, dirty tricks, lies and other harmful activity. Rove later referred to the Dixon trick as “a youthful prank.” Tee hee. Sociopaths will be sociopaths.

For the past 37 years he has been blithely dixoning the country free as a bird.

Be very alert. Make no mistake. Rove is off to rescue/steal the 2008 election. “More time with family…” Puh-leese. His one kid is away at college…. can you imagine Mrs. Rove’s horror???? The Republicant Party IS his family.

Sparxafire!
Inevitibly, as technology progresses, surveillance cameras are popping up everywhere to protect public safety. And inevitibly, we have to listen to the finger-shaking ire of conservative people who just don’t like it, by cracky! They try to make the case that, as one moves around and about town, one is anonymous, and a video record of one’s movements to the grocery store and the bank and the beauty shop is a severe invasion of privacy. Sigh.

These are, of course, the same people who found the invention of electricity to be suspect and unnatural.

Of course, I think the main value of camera-ing up will be that we will always have footage to run endlessly on TV when a crisis occurs. We even have accidental footage of the I-35W bridge collapsing in Minneapolis, thanks to somebody’s nearby surveillance camera. And, I think the video captures will be a big help to law enforcement to catch perpetrators of crimes after the fact… many of these systems can zoom in on faces and license plate numbers.

But prevention? Not so much. I don’t know how many cameras are in my neighborhood, but the probability of being tracked on camera on my way to the beauty shop has caused me to change my behavior. I no longer dare to pick my nose at stoplights.

Sparxafire!
OK. The subprime crisis officially has my attention, now that its stench is starting to curl up the nostrils of foreign markets. (Most of my investments are in foreign business, and I lost a couple hundred dollars this week. As a greedy American, that gets my attention.) This may seem like a post unrelated to statecraft, but it is exactly about statecraft – or the lack thereof in the home mortgage arena.

Your president and his administration have been dozing through all the recent upheavals in the home mortgage market and now it’s collapsing around our ankles. It all started around 2000 when the nature of mortgage lending got out of the banks’ hands and into the mortgage broker world. Crazy things happened, and millions of Americans took out Adjustable Rate Mortgages at attractive starter rates. Well, now it’s time for those “rate adjustments” to kick in and, guess what? Millions will no longer be able to afford their monthly payments! Yes, I said millions.

Buh-bye once and for all to the middle class as defined by homeownership. It’s the fast-buck greed, people, and it ain’t gonna be pretty.

Sparxafire!

I swear. Your president’s approval ratings are going up! Supposedly, the reason is that the White House is doing a better job communicating progress and success in the Iraq war. Really?

Painful as it may be, I must point out that informed statecrafters do not approve of the war… let alone a battle here or there, or some ghoulish, meaningless measure of “success.” So how can a thinking person decide, “Hm, they say the war is going better; doin’ a helluva job, Bushy.” I feel sorry when I see Republican statespersons trying to have a conversation about the Iraq war. Just having the conversation serves to legitimize the war when, in fact, it would never occurred to that statesperson to launch such a war.

I’m afraid this bump in your president’s approval rating is systemic of the same kind of thought processing that got us into the war in the first place… that is, no thought at all! No memory. No critical thinking. No reflection about the balance between oil and human life… on and on.

I’m further afraid it is this type of non-thinking that will skate us through next year’s election cycle. The sad part, you see, is that a thoughtless populace gets what it deserves…. Sigh..

Sparxafire!

I don’t know whether this is good or bad for my mental health… but I like to look down the road and scan for things that are going to upset me in the future. My hope is that by predicting a bad thing will happen in advance will take some of the sting out when it does happen.

In this case, I’m talking about the mechanics of voting, November 2008, AND the silly role of the Electoral College.

IF we can’t seem to figure out how to count the votes in 2008, I will be positively outraged. There was NO excuse for voting anomilies in 2004, and less for the upcoming election. I shall be throwing a bedroom slipper at the screen if my television shows me footage of poll workers squinting at hanging chads… or malfunctioning voting machinery of any kind. I mean it!

Furthermore, if by some vagary, the election is close and not the Democratic landslide we expect, there better be no guff from the Electoral College. The EC is insignificant, benign and meaningless as long as it confirms the popular vote. But when its screwy machinations defy the popular vote, then, it’s allllll over. Why on earth this thing does not get dissolved, de-fanged or whatever is beyond me. It is an antiquated agrarian relic left over to protect us from threats that no longer exist. All right already.

We are still more than a year away from the election. I’m picking up little rumblings here and there that some jurisdictions still don’t have a foolproof voting system in place. I’m here to tell you right now, we can’t go through another horse hockey game like we suffered in 2004. It’s more than just a disgrace, it’s a big, fat, public display of stupidity and incompetence. If you can’t get it done, I swear, we’ll turn it over Mrs. Connelly’s fifth grade civics class. Just give them two-weeks notice. Again. I mean business, here!

Sparxafire!

I’ll be danged if I didn’t lose my car keys about a month ago. It’s not a big deal, I have spares, and have replaced the lost keys… But still, it nags at me. I hate to lose things. So, I know how the Pentagon feels, as they are patting their pockets looking for 190,000 lost AK-47 assault rifles and pistols handed out to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005. Darn! I hate when that happens!

Actually, this is something I’ve been wondering about – all the hardware and lumber and goods and products and hammers and supplies that we pour into that country. Where does it go? Who gets it? What do they do with it? I just always felt it would be futile to even ask… It didn’t occur to me that anyone in our government would bother to keep track. After all, it’s just our tax dollars, or, more accurately, our children’s tax dollars.

But now look! Lo and behold! Someone is trying to keep track of all the stuff, bless their hearts. I forget about the GAO – the Government Accountability Office.

It is not my intention to alarm my loyal Statecraft Informer readership with this. It’s like my car keys… they’re SOMEWHERE. Assault weapons don’t just vanish, they just are in unknown places. Gee. I just hope all the people who now have them are doing the right thing with them, don’t you?

Sparxafire!

I remember now why I disentangle myself from politics. It’s just too frustrating! I reel at the greed and the outright stupidity. I grow faint with despair when your president mangles our language. I fling my head into my hands when Nancy Pelosi basically says, (and I’m paraphrasing) “OK, America, even though you are paying me to do this job, I’m not gonna do it. Impeachment is off the table. Knee deep in high crimes, misdemeanors and lies…. there’s nothing, but nothing you can do or say to make me step up and do my job. Besides, there’s nothing you can do about it anyway. So, shrug.”

My eyes sting with hot tears of frustration when I learn that Bush is determined to “restore” the presidency to the powers it had before Nixon “screwed it up.” Whaaaaa? Setting up the Nixon presidency as some ideal??? Executive privilege, exECutive PRIVilege, dammit! What does that mean, exactly? Here’s my multiple choice test, see if you can get the right answer:

Executive privilege is invoked when:
A. We have broken laws that could send us to jail.
B. We have done things for the good of the country that would scare you to death you if you knew.
C. We have done shameful, greedy, sneaky things that are unlawful.
D. We have done things that are really so complicated, you just wouldn’t understand.
E. We have done things that are really against your best interests and you’d be really upset if you knew.
F. All the above.

So. When they invoke executive privilege, who could possibly respect the notion, and who could possibly think anything but that there are crimes and slimes going on??? Who invented executive privilege and signing statements, anyway??? Certainly not the founding fathers. I’m pretty sure I know the position they would take on these arrogant and royal throne-like notions.

I wish I could just close my eyes and it would all go away.
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