The "Muddle East"explodes

The Islamic State, formerly known as I.S.I.L., is truly terrifying and dangerous. They are so bad that what is happening in Israel and Ukraine pale by comparison. These men are religious fanatics in the worst possible sense. They literally are killing people for not being Muslims. And to say that they are killing them is to understate their treatment of their victims. 

Why?  

First, we can look to the man in charge of Iraq, Maliki. He was chosen by Bush and supported by Obama as the one Shiite who could reach out to Shia, Sunni, and Kurds alike and govern over a more or less unified Iraq. Instead, he became a Shiite dictator aligned with the Shiite Iran, suppressing and terrorizing the Sunnis.  Not surprisingly, the Sunnis are rising up against this oppression. 

Second, we can look at Maliki again, and the force behind him, Iran. They sent radical Islamist Shia into Syria and the outcome was an even larger Sunnu uprising, the battle hardened al Qaeda offshoot Islamic State of the Levant, I.S.I.L, declared itself the new caliphate to fight in Syria and, oh by the way, take over northern Iraq. 

We now have a legitimate threat of genocidal slaughter of a small religious group in Iraq, the Yazidi, and an assault on the Kurds, who have been our allies in Iraq since our invasion. 

So what?  Why do we care?

Certainly there are very legitimate humanitarian reasons to stop the Islamic State. But, perhaps more to the point, our national interests are at stake. Islamic State is in the process of taking over vast oil fields and thus becoming enormously wealthy.  And with that wealth their abilities to attach the West and America multiply exponentially. We tried to walk away from the religious Middle Eastern wars, but it looks like we can't. Imagine Osama bin Laden in charge of billions of dollars and millions of Islamist fanatics, and that is the potential future of the Islamic State.  Except the Islamic state is so extreme that even al Qaeda can't stand them. 

So, air strikes against the Islamic State on the march in order to protect the Yazidis seems necessary to me. I don't know how we stop these zealots with drones and aircraft. I think the key to it is probably in Iran and Saudi Arabia, which I think are the centers of the Shia and Sunni movements. 

Which takes us back to the start of it all, in the modern age at least, the Ayatollah Khomeini Islamist revolution in Iran. If some key Shia and Sunni religious leaders could reach out to each other and call off the dogs, things might settle down and the "Muddle East" might become less of a nightmarish muddle and be able to move toward civilization and peace. 

This is the resolution that I envision and pray for.

Syrian atrocities revealed

I have wanted the U.S. to stay out of the Religious and Civil wars in the Middle East because I have thought that all we would do was add American blood to the conflicts and we would have no way of resolving them. 

But, more and more I am appalled by the atrocities happening in the Middle East.  A defector from the Syrian military police has brought with him 55,000 photos of 11,000 corpses from Syria.  They are apparently horrendous atrocities.  The pictures were taken at the direction of the Syrian government which wanted to make sure that its orders to carry out the torture, starvation, and killing of its population were being carried out, including elderly, women, and children.  Just appalling.

Michael Gerson points out what is perhaps the worst part of it all, that the Assad and the Syrian government are keeping such meticulous records, including photos of the corpses and bureaucratic numbers identifying reports of these barbaric killings, because they are confident that they will win.  The Nazis kept meticulous records as well, assuming they were to be victorious.  They are not afraid of losing this war and being brought to trial for war crimes. 

Obama is facing some pretty tough criticism for his lack of action in Syria.  Nobody wanted or wants American blood to be added to this nightmare in the Middle East. But backing, what we can identify to the best of our ability, the responsible opposition was needed long ago, and is just now being done, as I understand it.  Too late?

The problem is not just a moral one, although the morality of standing by while mass atrocities are being carried out could be an act of immorality in itself, but rather it eventually turns into a national security issue as well.  If the slaughters in the Middle East are allowed to expand by the U.S. and the West, it is not hard to imagine that slaughters in the U.S. and the West are coming. 

So, I am torn as to what the U.S. should do.  I hate the idea of sticking our toe back into the insanity in the Middle East, but it is hard to avoid thinking that we need to get rid of Assad, and stop ISIS as well.  The nightmares are just growing.  To what degree are they accelerated by U.S. passivity?

Losing sympathy for Israelis

I am losing my sympathy for the Israelis.  It's not just the slaughter of innocents in their recent attack on Gaza (latest count is about 800 dead Arabs and about 32 dead Jews).  I have finally opened myself to the points being made by the Palestinians in this ongoing struggle.

I think who you sympathize with is a function of where you focus your attention. 

If you focus on terrorist activity of Hamas, then you sympathize with the Israelis who have rockets being launched at them.  Of course, Israel's Iron Dome seems to render them pretty ineffective, with very few actual casualties.  But, nonetheless, we in America can imagine rockets coming at us and can agree that it is right to stop the terrorists launching them.  So we see the Palestinians as filled with hate for the Jews and dedicated to killing them and driving Israel "into the sea."

But, a funny thing happens if you shift your focus from the terrorist Hamas, and focus instead on the Palestinians themselves.  An Israeli Jew and son of a famous Israeli general who established the State of Israel, Miko Peled, focuses on the treatment of the Palestinians at the hands of the True Believer Zionists in charge of the Israeli government.  It is not a pretty sight, at all.  He make a very persuasive case that the Zionists, led by Netenyahu, see no place for Arabs in Israel, see no place for Palestine at all, and have been dedicated to pushing all Palestinians out of Israel since its founding in 1948.They do this by making life as miserable as possible for Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank.  

John Judis of the New Republic makes the same claim making such points as:  Israel is essentially a colonial power occupying, ruling, and terrorizing the Palestinians; Israel builds settlements aggressively in the occupied territories taking more and more land from the Palestinians; Israeli settlers attack Palestinians with no real restraint from the Israeli government; Palestinians may not travel abroad without Israeli permission - what?; there are hundreds of roadblocks that hinder the movement of the Palestinians, but none for Jews; water supplies are cut off to Palestinians - wow!; Israel has cut back fishing rights for Gaza from 6 miles to 3 miles, severely reducing its fishing economy; I presume the list goes on and on.

It is certainly true that Hamas deliberately provokes Israel to commit barbarous atrocities as a response to Hamas's terrorism, so shame on Hamas.  But, you know, shame on Israel too.  

What to do?  Beliefs complicate it a lot.

First, right wing Israelis and right wing Americans both see the issue in a particular way, that is, it is a problem that can only be solved militarily - attack, defend, kill, punish, be Manly Men and show everyone Who's the Boss.  But, that has proven over and over to me that it does not provide a long term solution in many cases, and I don't see that as a way to do anything in Israel except create more and more misery, resistance, hatred, and terrorism in response the Israeli (backed by America) military killing and tyrannical rule.

Second, American politicians have all pretty well conceded that they cannot get elected if they don't show nearly full support for whatever the Israeli government wants to do.  What happens in Israel is not all that important to America or to American politicians, so rather than risk their careers they just go along with the flow and support Israeli tactics and strategies.  Even if those tactics and strategies fail over and over and over again.  In a sense, who in America really cares?

Third, there are about as many Jews in America as there are in Israel, and American policy is strongly influenced, and perhaps dictated, by American Jews.  And the political arm of the Jews in America seems to be pretty solidly fierce Zionists dedicated to the safety of Israel and see that as only possible by punishing the Palestinians.

Fourth, I can certainly understand that 70 years ago the world felt a terrible guilt about the Holocaust of the Jews in WWII, and wanted to give the Jews a homeland so they would have a place to be safe.  But, I think time has proven that they can only be safe if they make room for a safe and prosperous Palestine, fully empowered and prosperous side by side in the land that has been disputed for so long.  I know the common argument is that the Palestinians will not allow that and are dedicated to the destruction of Israel, but I no longer believe that.  I am starting to conclude that the attacks on Israel are a function of the Colonial and brutal rule of the brutal Zionists in charge of the Israeli government.

Fifth, the only real solution is for both sides to let go of the hatreds and cherished and nurtured grievances of the past and look only to now and to the future.  I am very hopeful that if the Israeli government shed the fierce Zionists who see their only means of survival as driving all Palestinians from Israel, and was run by a new brand of Israeli, like Miko Peled, who would treat the Palestinians with the same laws and ethos that it treats Jewish citizens, then the misery and thus the grievances of the Palestinians would fade away.

And then, people would not be mistreated and oppressed and would be able, and I think willing, to live in peace with each other.

It's all a question of who you focus on - the Israelis being attacked by the terrorists of Hamas, or the Palestinians being oppressed by the Zionists in charge of Israel.  

How about changing facts on the ground and have the Palestinians living in a state that gives them the same rights and treatment as it gives the Jews?

The Tea Party, Communists, and Utopianism

The Tea Party drove me out of the Republican Party some time ago.  They convinced me that they were right that I was a RINO (Republican in Name Only).  I have always been socially liberal, and for quite a while I was an economy and defense conservative.  But, W’s war and the financial collapse of 2008 made me rethink my politics and change my mind. The absolutism of the Tea Party sealed the deal.

I stopped believing in W’s war when I decided that we were creating more terrorists than we were killing, and that we were setting off a region wide Islamic civil and religious war that could consume the world.  I reluctantly conclude that the democratization of the Middle East by attacking it has been a big failure.

I stopped believing in Reaganomics when I had to admit that the lack of regulation, the cutting of taxes on the wealthy, the "Freeing of the Markets" by gutting the effectiveness of the government ended up gutting the prosperity of the middle class rather than unleashing a prosperity for all.  We need a new Teddy Roosevelt to restore the power of the government to crush the Oligarchs and free the markets back to competitiveness.

I believe it is no accident that one of the Tea Party’s guiding lights is Ayn Rand.  When I was 20 I read “The Fountainhead” and was totally captured by her image of a Truly "Masculine Man", Howard Roark – flawlessly self-sufficient, hard, tough, a real "manly man".  But, time passed and I grew up and that ridiculous caricature of manliness, a kind of comic book version of manhood, fell away, and I found that being a man was not about being chiseled out of stone, or being heartless, or denying any needs for other people. 

Fortunately, we are very human, flawed, and interconnected.   Indeed, the whole Survival of the Fittest notion needs to be replaced by the understanding of Survival of the Collaborative, that’s the way it is with wolves, bees, redwood forests, all of nature actually. 

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the high tech age that we live in, where all of the exponential advances come on the shoulders of last week’s exponential advances, and progress is made by collaborative teams rather than Lone Rangers riding in with Silver Bullets.  The idea of a future created by the hyper-masculine men dreamed up by Ayn Rand that so excites the imaginations of adolescent boys (of all ages) is best replaced by an idea of the future of synergistic collaborations of all the talents in the country and the world, men and women, young and old, all races, collaborative growth and change.

Back to Ayn Rand: she fled communism and started up her ideology of hyper-individualism.  But, temperamentally, she never really stopped being a communist.  That is, just as communism is based on an utopian view of a humanity that is unrealistically altruistic and caring, Ayn Rand’s hyper-individualism is based upon an utopian view of humanity that is unrealistically self-sufficient and independent.

Utopians become radicals who want to tear it all down so that their utopian notions of an ideal society populated by their utopian notions of ideal people can flourish.  Of course, the tearing down part is easy, makes the revolutionaries feel really important and powerful - they bravely would rather die than give in to compromise.  But the utopias never happen, they are always dystopias instead, and then we all have to live in the nightmares that they created. 

Communism is one failed nightmare, Tea Party’s super masculine individualism and fierce independence would be another.  But I expect that the Tea Party will destroy itself before it destroys the rest of us.  We can hope.

Now that the Supreme Court has given Corporations the status of personhood with religious beliefs, what next?

Now that the Supreme Court has given Corporations the status of personhood with religious beliefs, what next?

The Religious Right Wing of the Republican Party is very happy with the five justices that decided on the Hobby Lobby case.  They see it as a victory for religious freedom because the owners of Hobby Lobby are devout Christians who see some forms of birth control as actually being forms of abortion and thus a violation of the owners’ conscience. 

The odd part of the ruling, as I understand it, is that it grants personhood to the corporation itself, because the ruling says that the Hobby Lobby corporation cannot be forced to offer insurance coverage for birth control methods that violate its religious beliefs.  It’s not that the corporation can’t be forced to offer birth control methods that violate the beliefs of the owners, but rather the corporation can’t be forced to offer birth control methods that violate the CORPORATION’S religious beliefs. 

The Supreme Court gave the status of personhood to Corporations and endowed the newly “personhooded Corporations” with the power of having religious beliefs that cannot be violated.

This is a very big mistake, it seems to me.  When the five conservative justices made a ruling in accord with their own Christian religious beliefs, they did so in a manner that could have pretty bad future consequences.  I know they tried to limit this ruling to “only” contraception, but it’s the camel’s nose under the tent, it seems to me.

Christians are not the only religion in the United States.  There are Jews, Mormons, Native American religions, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Christian Scientists, etc. etc.

Will Christian Scientist corporations eventually be able to deny any medical insurance because they don’t believe in medicine?  Will Jewish corporations eventually be able to insist on circumcision or keeping holy the Sabbath?  Will Muslim corporations be able to enforce Sharia law within their corporations – stoning adulterous women? Cutting off hands of thieves?  Genital mutilation of women?  Extreme examples, but it makes a point of the nonsense of granting personhood to corporations and honoring that “corporation’s religious belief.”

The whole idea of empowering corporations with personhood that includes having religious beliefs and giving that corporation the right to act on those religious beliefs seems to me to be a terrible step into a very unknown direction.  The law of unintended consequences can become pretty destructive. 

It is time for a big change in the Supreme Court.  These foolish men are hurting this country.

The Supreme Court FIVE decides to force us all to obey their personal religions

It seems to me that all the sanctions and punishments by the Religious Right Wing around the area of sex are against women (and gay men too of course, who are seen as kind of like women).  The Religious Right Wing wants to prevent women from having abortions, and, oh yes, prevent them from using birth control, or, more to the point, prevent them from having sex (except in the case of marriage, but even then no abortions or even unapproved birth control methods are permitted, I guess).  Wow.  

Do you think that we will see the Religious Right Wing decide to sanction and "punish" men for this same sex that "bad" women are having?  (I think it does take two to "tango")  Let's see, how could they do that?  They can't force the men to be pregnant, maybe forcing men to marry the women they impregnate with no chance of divorce until the child has been raised to adulthood?  You know, paying the piper for the dance, so to speak?

I think we'll never see the male sex partner gone after the way the female sex partner is being gone after by these righteous folks.

So, for some reason, the Religious Right Wing thinks it is OK to force women to be pregnant and give birth against their will.  

Bible thump, bible thump...ad infinitum.  I really do wish they would stick to trying to get people to join their religions rather than trying to force all of the nation to obey their religions.

ISIS pushes the religious war into a new stage

With I.S.I.S., the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, boldly and brutally conquering parts of northern Iraq, liberals are blaming Bush and conservatives are blaming Obama for the collapse of the Iraqi government.  Both are right, and both are wrong, as far as I can tell.

It is right to blame Bush because it was he who destroyed the Sunni Baath party as part of his invasion of Iraq. It was he who put the Shiite Maliki into the power to rule Iraq (who turned out to be an avid leader in the tyranny and oppression of the Sunnis). It was he who deluded himself into believing that a pluralistic democracy was possible in Iraq even when all the voting was along sectarian, religious lines.

It is right to blame Obama because it was he who supported Maliki and who deluded himself into believing that a pluralistic democracy was possible in Iraq - even if U.S. forces were gone.  It was he who pretended that it was OK for the U.S. to withdraw, and thus satisfy the war weary American voting public that this stupid war had come to an end.  It was he who failed to support the "moderate" forces fighting Assad in Syria, thus allowing the al Qaeda forces who had been driven from Iraq to regroup to fight in Syria, become stronger and reform themselves as I.S.I.S. and come back into Iraq to threaten Baghdad.

It is wrong to blame either Bush or Obama because the one who actually lost Iraq is Maliki, who decided to turn Iraq into a puppet state run by Shiite Iran, and to wage a "sectarian" war against the Sunnis in both Iraq and Syria.  

It is wrong to blame either Bush or Obama because people keep calling what is going on in Iraq a sectarian war, but it seems to me it is a full blown religious war, and as best I can tell religious wars are outside the scope of negotiation and compromise because both sides are doing the "Will of God" by slaughtering each other.  

So, if the U.S. is to try to negotiate a diplomatic solution, who is going to compromise?  who is going to share power?  who is going to create a state that allows both Shia and Sunni to rule together?

Or, if the U.S. is to send in planes or drones, who are they supposed to kill?  The Sunni blood thirsty jihadists or the Shiite blood thirsty jihadists?

And, if we don't use diplomatic or military tools to keep the I.S.I.S. nutcases from exploding the Middle East into a multiple nation wide slaughter, don't we put ourselves and the West in mortal danger of future 9/11 attacks?  

Maybe the old "balance of power" theory of the Cold War is the best hope - where neither side is so powerful that they can wipe out the other, so each side has no choice but to come to negotiated settlements.  When Bush and Obama empowered Maliki in their own ways, the Shiites became too powerful and just went for their centuries old lust for revenge and tyranny.  Not a good idea.

I don't understand why Iraq doesn't just split into three parts, Kurds in the north, Shiites in the south, and Sunnis in the middle.  Or maybe the middle is where the nutcases go to kill each other.

Tea Party delusions of autonomy

The recent success of Republican Tea Party candidate in Mississippi, Chris McDaniel, against more temperate incumbent, Republican Thad Cochran, in Tuesday's primary vote brings to light something odd about the far right wing Tea Party.

One of the Tea Party's main themes is to cut government spending, to take away the debilitating government teat and push people out into the cold cruel world and make them fend for themselves.  This is to make them tougher people, more Manly, more self sufficient, more like the ideological champion of hyper-masculinity, the woman Ayn Rand.  This is to force the United States to become the kind of fierce and independent place that the Tea Party imagines themselves to be, and imagines to be the future of an ideal America.

But, an odd thing happens when you look at some data.  When you look at how much money the federal government gives each state compared to how much money the federal government gets from each state, a funny things shows up.

The hard core Southern Red states are on the dole. They take much, much more money from the federal government than they give it.  

According to wallethub.com, Mississippi receives $3.07 for each $1.00 it gives.  That ranks them as no. 45 out of the 51 states as the most dependent on the federal government.  Here are the five biggest moochers of the states:

• 51.   South Carolina receives $7.87 federal dollars for every $1.00 sent to the federal government
• 50.   North Dakota receives $5.31 federal dollars for every $1.00 sent to the federal government
• 49.   Florida receives $4.57 for every $1.00 sent
• 48.   Louisiana receive $3.35 for every $1.00 sent
• 47.   Alabama receives $3.28 for every $1.00 sent

I don't think there is anything wrong with the federal government spending more in states than they receive, but to hear the Tea Party candidates talk, you would think that they think it is a major sin.

A Mississippi Democrat makes it very clear that Mississippi deeply needs the federal government:

“If Mississippi did what the tea party claims they want . . . we would become a Third World country, quickly,” said Rickey Cole, the state Democratic chairman. “We depend on the federal government to help us build our highways. We depend on the federal government to fund our hospitals, our health-care system. We depend on the federal government to help us educate our students on every level.”  Cole noted that the hospital he was born in “wasn’t built by the taxpayers of Mississippi, it was built with federal money that was collected from taxpayers in New York and Chicago and L.A. and San Francisco.”

And, oh yes, which are the five states that pay the most to and get the least from the federal government?

• 1.  Delaware receives $0.50 for every $1.00 sent
• 2.  Minnesota receives $0.56 for every $1.00 sent
• 3.  Illinois receives $0.56 for every $1.00 sent
• 4.  Nebraska receives $0.57 for every $1.00 sent
• 5.  Ohio receive $0.66 for evey $1.00 sent

If you click through to the wallethub.com link you will see that the conservative solid South is very much on the receiving side, and the liberal states are much more on the giving side.  Well, in a way, I guess that fits the stereotypes of each - liberals think it is good to give and conservatives want to get as much as they can get.  

Looks like both sides are getting what they want.

SEC takes on High Frequency Trading (HFT)

The good news is that Mary Jo White, head of the SEC, is apparently taking on the corrupt thievery of high frequency traders, whose methods of skimming billions out of stock market were so clearly dramatized by Michael Lewis's wonderful book "Flash Boys."  

She speaks very cautiously about the way the market is being conducted, but the bottom line is that she is looking at creating rules to make fundamental changes.

"Responding to concerns about high-frequency trading, White enlisted SEC staff to prepare rules to require high-speed traders to register as dealers with the SEC and to bring more of this trading population under the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a self-regulating organization.  These steps "should significantly strengthen regulatory oversight over active proprietary trading firms and the strategies they use," White said."

The SEC will look at ways to minimize the speed advantages of the HFT folks, and to take away the lack of transparency in the Too Big To Fail big banks' "Dark Pools" where trades are made out of sight of investors, and the investors must simply take the prices given to them coming out of the Dark Pools.

The SEC will also be looking to counter the market instability that is being created by High Frequency Trading computer programs, as witnessed by a "flash crashes" in the past, in which the market dives precipitously so fast that no humans can intervene to stop the computers from grinding out their protocols at lightning speeds.

Congratulations to Mary Jo White, the SEC, Michael Lewis, and the hero of his book, Brad Katsuyama. And to the investing public. 

Wall Street's new scam that robs us all of billions

Michael Lewis is a national treasure.  I love his deeply researched and elegantly explained books.  He has written a new book, "Flash Boys" about what happens inside the computers of the stock exchanges.  Great book.

We all know by now how the financial industry set up the Great Recession by inflating the value of homes with fraudulent appraisals, creating incentives for liars loans, and using these very bad home loans to create extremely complicated and deliberately hard to understand mortgage backed securities and other derivatives, all of which ended up creating an economy built on bad credit and greed, and created an unstable situation that imploded, costing the middle class trillions of dollars and millions of jobs.  Of course, nobody responsible for the catastrophe went to jail, they made billions, and they are still out there, still doing what they do, which is focusing on the only thing which is important to them - making fortunes for themselves, and creating new ways to rob billions of dollars from the middle class.

"Flash Boys" shows us how they have created a new scam to rob us all.  This time it is High Frequency Traders who are the stealthy thieves.  They have robbed billions from pension funds, mutual funds, money market funds - the moneys that are the investments and savings of us all.  How?

I didn't realize that there is no longer a single Wall Street market where stocks are bought and sold.  Apparently there are over 40 actual places where stock transactions happen.  They are massive computer banks where the transactions take place.  They take place at computer speed, i.e. in thousandths of a second.  

Since they happen at computer speeds, they are only understood by people who create them, computer people and those that manage their activities.  So what?  Isn't it obvious that when you hit "enter" to buy a stock it creates a computer transaction?  Sure, but what happens in the few thousandths of a second between when you hit enter and you end up owning some stock?  What happens is what the book is about.  It turns out a lot happens.

As I understand it, the purchase is sent to a stock exchange somewhere, and the purchase finds a selling price and completes the transaction.  For a small investor, that is pretty much the end of the story, I guess.  

But for an institutional investor, a manager of a pension fund or a money market fund who buys 100,000 shares of a stock the story is much more complicated.  They send out an order to buy a huge amount of stock, it goes into one of the stock market computer banks, where the order is noticed by the computers of High Frequency Traders (HFTs).  Once they see what the big investor wants, they capitalize on their super fast computer processing programs to get ahead of the sale, buy stock at the lowest price available, and turn around and sell it at a penny or so more to the big buyer.  The big buyer buys it at a fraction higher than they should have had to pay because the HFT stole money out of the pocket of the institutional buyer.  And of course all of this happens in very tiny slices of seconds, microseconds, and is invisible to the buyer.  This is called "front running", getting ahead of the purchase to buy low and sell high in pennies.  

So what?  It's only a penny a stock, right?  No, it is billions of dollars stolen from mutual funds, pension funds, the portfolios of the middle class.  It is a computer generated form of "insider trading", acting on information that one has before others can know it. It is a foolproof way to suck money out of the transaction without actually making an investment and taking a risk. It's theft. 

The details are fascinating and the story is wonderfully told by Michael Lewis.  There are extra twists and turns and ways for the HFTs to steal money, and it is worth the read if you are interested.

There are a few big problems with this activity.  First, of course, it is immoral thievery from us all.  

Second, their activity adds nothing positive to the financial system.  It does nothing to help sellers and buyers get together and generate the financial system of capitalism.  Rather it games the financial system to create fool proof ways to suck billions out of the transactions of buying and selling at the heart of the financial world.  

Third, and perhaps worst of all, it becomes something that the smartest kids end up doing, making fortunes as thieves rather than going to the moon or cleaning up the environment or transforming the world in positive ways.  They end up being gamers of systems where they can very cleverly find loopholes and flaws in the systems of money, and they brilliantly find ways to suck wealth out of the financial system, rather than become those who create wealth by creating new and better goods and services.  

It is a national tragedy.  It is a continuation of the crisis of greed that created the housing bubble that popped and ruined so many lives, which we are still digging our way out of.

And, oh yes, another big problem with the HFT created stock market?  It has created an unstable market, one that is too volatile, one that periodically crashes uncontrollably, one that becomes chaotic beyond the ability of even the super smart HFT gamers and their super sophisticated incredibly complex programs to keep sane.  There have already been "flash crashes".  More to follow.

If I understand it correctly, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating HFT activity.  It will be interesting to see if that goes anywhere.  There are billions of dollars the HFT folks stand to lose if the game is up.  It won't happen easily.

Democracy is in the middle road between communism and fascism

I hate to cite Robert F Kennedy Jr as a source of a good speech because I have long thought of him as a dangerous extremist crank, especially for his crusade against vaccinations with the dangerously false and discredited claim that there is a connection between vaccinations and autism.  In years past, massive deaths were the result of contagious diseases, which can come again if people turn against vaccinations preventing contagious diseases.

That being said, RFK Jr made a pretty interesting speech to the 2014 Goldman Award ceremony (environmental prizes).  It's 12 minutes long, and more combative and extreme than my tastes, but interesting none the less.

I would summarize his main point as being that the destruction of the environment is kind of like the canary in the coalmine when it comes to democracy.  That is, when corporations have so much control that they can pollute with impunity, the loss of democracy is already happening and democracy itself will perish.  

He warns against the forming of an oligarchy in America, and it seems to me to be a good warning to pay attention to.  Citizen's United has allowed unlimited money to be pumped into the political system by the super wealthy, and the result is big business, big finance, big agriculture running amok. The politicians dance to big money's tune, regulators are captured and neutered by big money, and democracy is endangered.

The best line of his speech is where he says that the domination of business by government power is Communism, and the domination of governance by corporate power is fascism.  Freedom, indeed true free market capitalism, and democracy itself are in the middle road between Communism and fascism, between domination by government and domination by Corporations.  

As to environmentalism itself, I believe the worst thing that ever happened to the environmental movement was when environmentalists decided to focus on predictions of catastrophic global warming rather than simply focus on reduction of pollution.  I think it was a tactical decision based upon the assumption that the general public would only be moved to action if they were terrified of catastrophe.  But, pollution itself has been opposed by both liberal and conservative people for decades (except for those who are in the thrall of the polluting corporations, of course).  But when rivers burn, water tables become toxic, air pollution stinks and becomes visible, seas stop supporting life, etc. those are motivation enough to incite environmental protections.  

There is large opposition to the hypothesis of man made catastrophic global warming that will have devastating effects in the future, but finding real, individual examples of pollution and calling for specific action seems to me to be a much more effective way of cleaning up the planet.  

Iraq elections April 30 - a Sunni Saddam in the making?

When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 a friend of mine asked the question - was Iraq Iraq because Saddam was Saddam, or was Saddam Saddam because Iraq was Iraq.  In other words, was it necessary to be a vicious tyrant to rule Iraq, or would Iraq be able to be run by a more moderate, more democratic, more pluralistic leader after Saddam Hussein was removed.  It was the key question, of course.  George W thought Saddam was the problem.  My friend thought Iraq was the problem.  It's looking like my friend was closer to the truth than George W was.

Dexter Filkins might be the best reporter on Iraq.  He's been there since the beginning.  He is on the ground, knows everybody, fearlessly puts himself in ridiculously dangerous situations, and tells us what is going on.  He wrote a very interesting article in The New Yorker: "What We Left Behind." It's about 25 pages, but it is a fascinating history that reveals where Iraq is now, and who Maliki has been, and is becoming.  Hint - tyrannical Shiite crushing Sunnis.

His main point is that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is becoming more and more dictatorial, less and less pluralistic, and has turned Iraq into a Shiite tyranny fully dedicated to the persecution, destruction, and oppression of the Sunni minority.  Or, he is becoming the mirror image of Saddam Hussein, not as bad - yet - but perhaps on his way.  Filkins doesn't say it that directly, but that's how it looks to me.

Maliki is looking to be re-elected April 30.  Some fear that if he wins, he will never leave, rule for his lifetime, and pass the throne to his brutal son, Ahmed Maliki.
    
It was always a tough thing to do to establish a new government after Saddam.  The CIA helped identify and raise Maliki to power.  They thought he would be a Shiite who would be tough enough to defy Iran.  He said all the right things about bringing Iraq together, but he had a lifelong history of being a Shiite soldier fighting Sunnis. In a nation of "super-duper" bad guys, he seems to be a more reasonable choice.  Filkins says that Maliki fears that at any moment the Sunni Baath tyrants could return and once again crush the Shiites.  Could be true, I suppose, but that mindset certainly doesn't lead toward a unified Iraq.  

American officials in Iraq were apparently appalled at the low class hanging of Saddam, and saw it as a portent of an Iraq divided in religious wars going forward.  It was Maliki's doing.  

Plus the doings of Iran, of course, who are Shiite brothers pulling some powerful strings in Iraq.  Iran's goals, according to Filkins were to bleed Americans and support the Shia in Iraq.  Successful goals, it appears.

Obama also comes in for some serious criticism by Filkins and American diplomats for supporting Maliki at a point where we could have supported Alawi, the leader of Iraquya, a pro-western secular coalition.  He writes:

"In parliamentary elections the previous March, Maliki's Shiite Islamist alliance, the State of Law, suffered an ebarrassing loss.  The greatest share of the votes went to a secular, pro-Western coalition called Iraquya, led by Ayad Allawi, the persistent enemy of the Iranians.  "These were election results we could only have dreamed of" a former American diplomat told me (Filkins).  "The surge had worked.  The war was winding down.  And, for the first time in the history of the Arab world, a secular, Western-leaning alliance won a free and fair election.""

Obama didn't support Allawi because he thought the Shiites and the Iranians would oppose him.  The deal that America brokered was to dump Allawi, get Sunni radical Sadr to back Maliki by giving Sadr control of "several government agencies", and take Jalal Talbabani as president, a man who is pro-Iranian, and to neutralize Iraqi intelligence.  And, oh yes, America was to leave entirely after 2011.  I suppose Obama thought that getting America out fast was a higher priority than worrying about Shiite oppression and Iranian control over Iraq. Campaign promises, you know.

The trouble with a complete withdrawal of American troops from Iraq is that it leaves Iraq with nobody to act as brokers to conflicts, nobody is there for factions to talk to, nobody there to act as a brake on Maliki's war on the Sunnis.  Diplomats in Iraq dissented from the deal and predicted that America was creating a dictator to fill the gap after they left.  

One of the first things Maliki did after the American withdrawal was create a new office of Commander in Chief, giving him personal control over the military and police, according to Filkins.  

Then Maliki purged the National Intelligence Service of Sunnis.  

Amazingly, Maliki got their high court to give Maliki "exclusive right to draft legislation."  No more pesky politicians getting in his way with dumb things like laws.  Also, it is against the law to criticize the head of government, an old Sunni Saddam law resurrected for the new Shiite ruler.  

Plus plenty of personal ties to Iran, proven by Iraqi support of Iranian flights into the Syrian civil war in support of the Shiites in that war.  Maliki's defense of his actions in Syria is to say that this is what he must do to fight Al Qaeda.  


And, of course, scores of billions of petro-dollars are corruptly going to Maliki and the new Shiite rulers.

Filkins makes a fundamental point about Maliki, Iraq, and the Middle East.  

"When Maliki and the other exiles returned to Iraq in 2003, they quickly concluded that they couldn't establish an Islamic state, because the two sects had fundamental differences over the nature of Islam...faced with two options.  One was to build a state that united the country's sects and religions around a democratic idea."  But this was a forbidden idea in the minds of the fanatics.  "The Islamists were left with only one option that would keep them as Iraq's leaders: to step away from the Islamist project, and go for the sectarian project".  

So, the Americans leave and the Shiites take over, Saddam part two, this time a Shiite.

His final observation, from a diplomat, is: 

"The whole point (in the Middle East) is that the leaders need to do political deals.  We make them so strong that they no longer need to do political deals.  So we undermine any chance at stability.  It's destroying Iraq.  We're strengthening the guy who is creating the problem." And without an American presence, America created a country that can't work without American presence to help them make deals. The only trusted middle man was us, according to Ambassador Crocker, and we aren't there anymore.

Why do we care?  Why did we ever care?  It was supposed to keep America and the West safe, but it looks to me like all our invasion really did was kill Saddam and put the formerly oppressed Shia in a place where they could oppress the Sunni. And, oh yes, ignite a Sunni/Shia civil and religious war that is engulfing the entire Middle East.

W started it, Americans got sick of it, Obama abandoned it.  And I think all we seem to be learning is what my friend said in the beginning - Saddam was Saddam because Iraq is Iraq, and now Maliki is becoming Saddam-2?  

I hope not.

The road to serfdom, part 2

In the '40s Frederich von Hayak wrote the Libertarian's clarion call for smaller government, "The Road to Serfdom."  His basic point was that tyranny was the natural consequence of a government that was too powerful and controlled too much of people's lives.  With a tyrannical government the people become modern day serfs serving at the pleasure of monolithic Socialist or Communist government rulers.  Indeed, the Soviet Union was a prime example of a helpless populace under the foot of a tyrannical centralized government.

Today, the Robert's Supreme Court seems to be sending the United States on a different path to serfdom - a tyranny that will be the natural consequence of a plutocracy that is too powerful and will control too much of people's lives. They infamously passed "Citizens United" by a 5-4 vote, and today they now pass McCutcheon 5-4 to extend even further the reach of the billionaire class to influence elections, policies, regulations, and laws of our country.  

The reasoning on the part of the conservatives is that money is speech and free speech is protected by the first amendment.  That is the problem with ideologues - they become absolutists.  Free speech is certainly protected, but not absolutely.  The most famous limit of free speech is the notion that nobody has the right to yell "fire" in a crowded theater because the resulting panic and stampede will kill people.

I believe it is the same in this case.  Backing candidates with contributions is a fine and democratic principle.  But when the upper tenth of a percent of the population is given unlimited ability to buy politicians and buy elections and buy regulations and buy laws, we the people are robbed of our democracy.

I don't think you have to look too much further than billionaire Sheldon Adelson, casino magnate and Republican donor, to see the problem.  He apparently is pushing to kill online gambling.  No secret as to why a casino owner wants to ban online gambling.  It certainly has nothing to do with the benefit of the country, and it has everything to do with the benefit of Mr. Adelson.  

Right now, Republicans are celebrating these billionaire empowering Supreme Court decisions because they are getting most of the campaign financial backing from the plutocrats.  The worm may turn, of course, and hard core lefty billionaires may predominate in future times.  But none of that is really the point.  

The point is that the Supreme Court is turning our democracy (rule by the people) into a plutocracy (rule by the rich).  

Serfdom under plutocracy or serfdom under communism is about the same either way.

The odd thing is they are turning us into serfs in the name of freedom. 

Putin, just another Krushchev?

I wrote earlier that I could understand, at least a little, Putin's thinking in Ukraine - he wants the old USSR border countries under his control as a military protective border zone, and he sees himself as an important historical figure setting the course of history between east and west.  

But really?  Didn't the collapse of the USSR mean anything to him?  If we were to observe just Putin we would think that authoritarian rule is an intrinsic part of Russia.  Following in the footsteps of the old USSR he is closing down the free press, imprisoning and killing political opponents, and invading neighboring countries.  I guess he misses the good old Cold War where Russia, or more importantly Russia's leader, was really, really important.

The idea when the Soviet communist empire collapsed was that the world was no longer under the threat of crushing totalitarian Communist tyranny.  So, now, Putin wants the world to be under the the threat of crushing Putinist tyranny.

I just finished the book "Ike's Bluff", a history of Eisenhower's foreign policy in the '50s.  It was clear that his Russian adversary, Krushchev, was a weak man in charge of a weak country who used bullying and threats to dominate.  All Krushchev really had was nukes and a lot of military, but the rest of his empire was unsound and weak.  Indeed, Krushchev did everything he could to keep scrutiny out of the USSR because the weakness of his hand would be exposed.  

I think it is much the same for Putin.  He is a weak man ruling a weak country who has to strut around with his shirt off and frighten people.  He doesn't want anyone to look behind the curtain to see how vulnerable and disfunctional Russia is.  

I've got an idea.  Why doesn't Putin decide to live in peaceful harmony with his neighbors?  Then he wouldn't have to assert control over the former USSR border countries as protection from attack.  

And who knows?  That would make him a really important historical figure.

A nihilist discovers that love and light runs the universe

The TV series "True Detective" had its season finale last night. It has been a very fascinating series, highlighted by wonderful performances by Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, written by Nic Pizzilatto.  It drew me along for the ride, but it was primarily the performance of McConaughey that kept me going.  In the end, I want to say thank you to the writer for the journey.

Read no further if you haven't seen the series, spoilers ahead.

McConaughey's character was a burnt out, alcoholic drug addicted philosophically inclined detective who was nihilistic and profoundly depressed.  He was also a very good detective.  Harrelson's character was much less self aware but also self destructive in his own ways who destroyed his marriage along the 17 year arc of the story.  He was also a very good detective.  The story was about these two solving the ritualistic murders of children performed by deranged satan worshipers in Louisiana.  

But, what counted to me was the arc of the McConaughey's character in the end.  He is almost killed by the psychopath.  When he recovers he tells his partner, Harrelson, about his near death experience, where he dropped down into the darkness until his definitions of himself dissolved and the only thing that was left was the experience of the love of his deceased daughter and there was no separation between them and everything.  He awoke back into this life and didn't know why he had come back.  

Harrelson's character tries to comfort him by reminding him that when he was younger, living in Alaska, he used to look up at stars at night and make up stories about them.  McConaughey's character said all the stories came down to one eternal story, light versus dark.  Harrelson's character looked up at the night sky and said there was a lot more dark than light.  

But then, we finally get to the heart of the story that Pizzolatto told: 

 But then he reconsiders—and this is Pizzolatto's only twist. In the last seconds of the season, the nihilism and misanthropy that have characterized Rust's worldview soften, however briefly, as he realizes that maybe he is here for a reason.

"You're looking at it wrong," Rust mutters. "The sky thing."

"How's that?" Marty replies.

"Well, once there was only dark," Rust says. "You ask me, the light's winning."

And the story comes to a completion wherein a nihilistic man who saw the world as hopelessly twisted and dark found that love and light were at the heart of the universe.  I thought it was a spectacular ending to a fascinating story.  I look forward to the next season and a new story with new actors.  This one will be hard to top.

What Russia needs in Ukraine

It is easy to look at Putin’s actions in Ukraine and see it as the strange actions of a power mad tyrant.  But, why is Putin threatening Ukraine?

George Friedman of Statfor predicted Russian show of force in Ukraine a few years back in one of his insightful books connecting geography to world history.  His basic point is that Russia has long unprotected borders and has always needed to find some way to protect itself from attack across its borders.  Since there are no physical barriers between Europe and Russia, like difficult mountains to traverse, their only alternative is to annex countries on its borders so that if countries try to invade they have to go through other countries first.  Napoleon and Hitler came across open plains into Russia so the Russians have historical reasoning on their side for the necessity of buffer countries to protect it.  Ukraine is one of those buffer countries.  Indeed, the ideal map from a Russian military safety point of view is the old USSR where Russia is surrounded by buffer countries under its control.

Plus, of course, Ukraine is the portal to the Black Sea which is the only way Russia has access to the sea for its navy during the winters.

Another view is expressed by David Brooks who writes of a sense of destiny that Putin has expressed that dates back to Russian philosophical writers.  That view is that Russia is the link between the east and the west, and it has a destiny to counter the corrupt materialism and moral weakness of the west, and to bring the east and west together with Russia being the midwife of that union.  In that light, the anti-gay laws of Russia and Putin make sense in that they see acceptance of gay sex as a subset of the overt and corrupt moral weakness of promiscuity and immorality of the west. 

So, Putin’s actions can be seen as both rational and moral from a Russian point of view.  That is perhaps why he is doing what he is doing.

The idea that Putin is just on the "wrong side of history", as Obama said, assumes that this is about Putin stomping on the necks of people wanting to be free to rule themselves, and looks like it is a tragic misreading of Russia's actual motivations.

I would hope that negotiations can be successfully undertaken that guarantees Russian access to the Black Sea as a minimum.  And it seems pretty clear that Putin sees European economic incursions into the “border” countries as an incursion of the west into Russia’s security and culture and makes it vulnerable. That fear needs to be addressed as well.

I don’t know how to convince Russia that it has nothing to fear from Europe, which has almost no military at all at this time, but the arc of history is long, and memories of Napoleon and Hitler are long too.

Middle class values are swayed by middle class gay rights

Jan Brewer, conservative governor of red state Arizona, has vetoed an anti-gay bill that would have permitted discrimination against gays on religious grounds.  Good for her.  But, more to the point, good for the middle class of America.

Once the gay movement became a movement of people trying to get married to people they loved, the mainstream of the country started to be persuaded to let go and let them do it.

In the '70s, the gay movement exploded in anger and focused on gay sexuality in very overt and blatant ways as a declaration to the world that they were free to express themselves sexually, and as an expression to themselves that their sexual attractions were not shameful.  There was a lot of defying of the sanctions of the mainstream.  It was a kind of adolescent rebellion.

But, it didn't necessarily help their cause to have the primary images of gay sexuality to be erotic parading of gay men in overtly sexual images focused on leather, bondage, s&m, etc. - outliers of promiscuous behavior - crystalized in bath houses and San Francisco exotic erotic parades.  It was not unexpected that the mainstream middle class would be repulsed and dismayed. 

But, in the last few years, the images and reality of the gay rights movement have moved and matured.  Today's images are of middle aged and elderly gay couples tearfully joyful at being able to be married after years or decades of stable relationships.  The consciences of the middle class was and is being moved to accept people who are wanting nothing more than to live normal lives married to those they love.  It is a very different sales pitch than prideful promiscuity of thirty years ago. 

There is a long way to go, still, for gay rights, but the arc is clearly in the direction of acceptance.  The elderly and the South are behind, but when Jan Brewer bows to tolerance, the rest are fighting a losing war.

I fight, therefore I am

The philosopher Descartes famously wrote "I think, therefore I am."  He was trying to prove that he existed, philosophically, and he decided that the very fact that he was thinking about whether or not he existed was proof that he existed.  Another way of understanding Descartes' statement might be that he thought he was a really smart guy, and he identified himself with his brain and he was saying that the basis of his existence, or rather the basis of his value, was his ability to think.  (This is kind of a pop-psychological explanation of Descartes' statement)

Today's Tea Party Republicans seem to have a different way of identifying themselves.  Their motto seems to be "I fight, therefore I am."  They seem to identify themselves as fighters, as really tough Real Men, and get their value and meaning from their pugnacity.  

Ted Cruz is apparently thinking that he will filibuster the raising of the debt ceiling that was just passed cleanly by the House of Representatives.  This is pretty silly, it seems to me, for a few reasons.

First, if he doesn't filibuster, the Senate can cleanly pass a raising of the debt limit with a simple majority vote - that is, one that needs only Democratic votes.  If Cruz filibusters, then 60 votes rather than 51 are needed, and some Republicans will have to vote for the bill - which they will, but I doubt that they will thank the pugnacious Cruz for the situation he put them in.

Second, this is just another campaign stunt by Cruz which is symbolic only. This bill will pass, no question about it, and the filibuster will have no effect except give Cruz a headline he can use for his 2016 presidential campaign.  Always nice to waste the time of the Senate for your own campaign stunts.  I doubt many in the Senate will thank him for that either.

Third, it seems that most Republicans understand that they are hurting themselves by refusing to pay our country's debts by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.  Except for the Tea Party mix of libertarians and social conservatives who seem to think that refusing to pay our debts is a noble way to blackmail the rest of the country into cutting as many humanitarian programs as possible and thus forcing everybody to become as rough and tough and independent as they imagine themselves to be.  

Perhaps Cruz will relent and just wanted a headline to endear him to the hard right base.  But, the underlying question remains why does the Tea Party deliberately pick fights it can't win?

I believe it is because, as I have written often, the hard right wing of the Republican Party see themselves as hyper-masculine, super tough, Real Men, who Take No Prisoners, never give an inch, and fight, fight, fight to the bitter, and oh so brave end.  

In other words. They get their value from being tough.  Or, they get their value from fighting, and at least on a subconscious level they say to themselves "I fight, therefore I am."

They could use a little brains to mix with their pugnacity, it seems to me.  Mr. Cruz gets a lot of credit for brains, but all of his brainpower seems to be directed toward fighting, not governing, which demands cooperation and compromise - anathemas to the I Fight Therefore I am crowd.

The Coke Superbowl ad and the specter of America's future

I no longer follow football because when I watch a game I no longer see a noble game played by superb athletes, but rather I see poor deluded fools in the process of inflicting brain damage on each other and consigning themselves to to the possibility of decades of emotional and mental illnesses. So, I didn't watch the Super Bowl. 

But apparently, the most interesting thing about this particular Super Bowl was a one minute ad for Coke. I watched the ad on YouTube and thought it was quite lovely. It was many Americans of different cultures signing "America the Beautiful" - some in english with an accent, some in their native language.  

But I guess some on the extreme right wing of the political spectrum were offended. Dean Obeidallah of The Daily Beast quotes a few of their reactions.  

"This tweet summed up the sentiments of many on the right: "Fuck that bullshit.  This is America speak fucking English #ThanksObama#fuckcoke"  Others labeled Coke as communists while others claimed that a woman in a hijab was featured in the commercial (who actually is a friend of mine), that Coke was supporting terrorism."

An especially choice quote is from Fox News:

"And there was Todd Starnes - host of a Fox News radio show - who tweeted, "Coca Cola is the official soft drink of illegals crossing the border.#amiricais beuatiful."

This is obvious wingnut bigotry, but what is the anger, and what is the fear under the anger?

I have written before that the hard core right wing is lost in a fantasy of hyper-masculine self image, one that is white, of course, and one that ties into an imagined past of a Real America of noble, brave, independent, self sufficient, Real Men, men who need no help from anyone, men who Made This Country Great, men who are very, very, very Strong.

But, woe is they.  They are shrinking.  They are losing America.  They are just one of many cultures in what really is a wonderful country - America.  A country where the Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin, created the Great Seal of the United States in 1782 and gave it the official motto of the United States - "E Pluribus Unum" - from many, one.

The country is continuing on its destiny of welcoming all cultures from every part of the world and joining us in our great experiment of democracy.  Only in America can you become an American by becoming a citizen.  Germans, Frenchmen, Dutch, etc. are only so if they are born there and speak their languages.  Americans, like my grandparents on my father's side, came from Italy, or Germany, or Portugal, or wherever, and became American by choice.  And, oh yes, my grandmother spoke some Italian, but she was most definitely an American.  And if she wanted to sing an Italian version of America the Beautiful, well that would have been fine, who on earth cared?

The point I am trying to make was summed up nicely by Mr Obeidallah"

"I get why these people are mad.  In essence, the Coke commercial was the Ghost of Christmas Future providing them with a glimpse of an America that features even more people speaking languages other than English, practicing other faiths than their own and celebrating cutures they don't understand.  That scares the crap out of them.

 You know, just like their forefathers and foremothers scared the crap out of the Americans who were here before they came, from Germany, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, Portugal, Italy, France ...

Character counts

Clinton was a brilliant politician.  But his character was low.  It was a big problem. 

Nixon won re-election by a landslide.  But his character was even lower.  It was an even bigger problem.

Chris Christie looks like he’s a charismatic, talented politician.  But, his character is definitely in question.  The Bridge-gate incident reveals a bullying, vengeful, punishing man.  If he didn’t order the bridge closing, his people certainly did, and they were picked by him and they worked in the environment created by him.  He created the culture in his government that gave these people the notion that abuse of others was sanctioned.  It’s all a kind of a New Jersey caricature – the mob boss style governor. 

2016 is a long way off, but I think his presidential hopes may be over, especially as more of the story comes out, as it must, as the investigations go forward.  I don’t think he will end up looking good, and this will all go toward branding the Christie name, especially if it tracks with other high handed or abusive behaviors in the past, and the future.

We don’t need a president that thinks he can abuse his enemies.  We had one, his name was Richard Nixon. 

One was enough.  The Reps need to do better than him.

 er

Underneath conservative's unwillingness to help the poor

Brian Buetler of Salon.com, liberal editorialist, wrote that underneath everything that conservatives stand for is the refusal to do anything to help the poor.  It is a pretty good article.  But I think that conservatives' unwillingness to help the poor is an effect rather than the bottom line cause.  

I have written often that I think that the top value for liberals is caring, so it is no surprise that Mr Beutler would see conservatives' actions as being essentially rooted in uncaring.  

But, I think that to the extent that conservatives refuse to help the poor they do so because they have a different value system.  The top value for conservatives is freedom, it seems to me.  But, what about the rabid Tea Party wing of conservatives?  I think they are manifesting a distortion of conservatism.

I think underneath the extreme Tea Party conservatism is a belief in a fantasy version of manliness - fiercely independent, boldly opportunistic, bravely logical, awesomely courageous, etc. - best written about by the most masculine writer of modern times, the woman Ayn Rand.  It is a fantasy self image that aging white men and adolescents carry inside themselves of who they really are: heroically hyper-masculine paragons of strength.  And they think that anything that weakens people, like giving to the poor, is seen as a kind of sacrilege, and a violation of this hyper-manly code, by weakening people and allowing them to fall into the sins of being dependent and needing help.   

Eric Fromm's "Escape from Freedom" from the '40s analyzed the authoritarian personality and how Nazism, Fascism, and Communism all were the outflows of that distorted orientation.  Totalitarianism is the natural consequence of political systems designed on idealistic visions of human beings that are essentially not human.  The Communists idealized human was one who was truly altruistic and giving.  The fascist and Nazi idealized human was a man of purity of will and strength.

I remain encouraged that the radical wing of the Republican Party seems to be losing its death grip on the party and the nation.  

Let a little kindness flow.