Body Parts

US Prepares for Summer War with Iran - DEBKAfile

According to DEBKAfile, the US military is preparing to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, if, as rumored, Iran sends its proxies into war against Israel in the Summer. Most likely, the Pentagon has contingency plans for such an eventuality; but the Pentagon doesn't act without orders from the Commander in Chief. Obama would have to give the go to put the plans into action; and I don't believe for a minute that he would give the word. He doesn't have the fortitude to withstand world opprobrium for such an act, despite hints he might. Further, such action would injure his "relationship" with Russia, whom, along with China, he has just requested that Congress make exceptions to his proposed, weakened sanctions against Iran. Russia and China are special sponsors of Iran's nuclear and military development (Russia) and its petroleum development (China). There has never been a serious possibility they would permit Iran's advancement to falter, in the UN or anywhere else. To the contrary, they would be delighted to have US power in the Middle East diminished. They hold the whip; Obama winces.

How Arizona Drew The Line

One of the drafters of the Arizona law discusses its provisions in the New York Times, with commentary by JoshuaPundit in his post, Why Arizona Drew A Line.

The Dodd Financial Reform Bill

Synopsis by The Federalist Society.

Four thoughts.

1. The consumer protection provisions of the bill express the big government presumption that agglomerating smaller bureaucracies into a bigger bureaucracy increases efficiency and effectiveness. What is the evidence supporting that presumption? Every regulatory protection of consumers increases costs to lenders, which raises interest rates, and decreases consumer freedom.

2. It is hubris to believe that one can identify and manage "emerging systemic risk" in the national financial institutions without significantly diminishing the capability of prices in capital market institutions to allocate resources to their most effective economic use. A managed economy will be a less dynamic economy with slower growth, higher unemployment in the least advantaged social classes, such as the poor, minorities, and youth, and less innovation to meet competition in global markets.

3. Allowing a federal bureaucracy to step into corporate governance on behalf of shareholders will politicize corporations, decreasing their freedom to act on behalf of profit in the market. These provisions will be abused, absolutely, instantly, and continually, by the President whoever s/he is.

4. Give an inch to federal management of the economy and, as we saw and are now seeing with ObamaCare, socialism gains a mile. See (1, 2, 3) above. As socialism advances, the immediate next historical stage is something like 1930s European fascism, where large corporations and government, controlled by socialist parties, cooperated to run their economies.

IMHO.

(H/T ProfessorBainbridge.com)

Daniel Pipes Is Right: Israeli Victory Would Bring Peace to Israeli-(so-called)Palestinian Conflict

Straightforward old fashioned military victory, a hard victory in which the so-called Palestinians are psychologically defeated and accept defeat, would bring peace to the two sides, would lead quickly to the establishment of a "Palestinian" state, and relative quickly would bring economic prosperity to the so-called Palestinians. So says Daniel Pipes. A smart, sensible observation. (And for the purposes of this blog, an official state, perhaps named "Palestinianland" would make "Palestinians" the official term of art for the citizens of said "Palestinianland" and allow me the opportunity to drop the awkward disclaimer of "so-called 'Palestinians' ".)

Health Club Type Fee-Based Health Care Clinic

Interesting experiment in Seattle, discussed here.

Rain Clears for Pony League Game

Zora Neale Hurston

I read a brief biography of Zora Hurston in a book on American food and became intrigued. Probably a dozen years ago, I purchased the Library of America two-volume collection of her novels, folklore, autobiography, and articles, but I never got around to reading them. So several days ago, I launched into her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road (1942). I am gripped. An original American voice. She dives into African American idiom and dialect of the South to recover nets of language that evoke her life and circumstances with poignant clarity. She piles analogies and metaphors one upon the other until the conversation of her characters and herself spills out onto the page. Typical:

"There is something about poverty that smells like death. Dead dreams dropping off the heart like leaves in a dry season and rotting around the feet; impulses smothered too long in the fetid air of underground caves. The souls lives in a sickly air. People can be slave-ships in shoes."

"In the first place, I was a Southerner, and had the map of Dixie on my tongue. They [a theatrical group with which she was travelling] were all northerners except the orchestra leader, who came from Pensacola. It was not that my grammar was bad, it was the idioms. They did not know of the way an average southern child, white and black, is raised on simile and invective. They know how to call names. It is an every day affair to hear somebody called a mullet-headed, mule-eared, wall-eyed, hog-nosed, gater-faced, shad-mouthed, screw-necked, goat-bellied, puzzle-gutted, camel-backed, butt-sprung, battle-hammed, knock-kneed, razor-legged, box-ankled, shovel-footed, unmated so and so! Eyes looking like skint-ginny nuts, and mouth looking like a dish-pan full of broke-up crockery! They can tell you in simile exactly how you walk and smell. They can furnish a picture gallery of your ancestors, and a notion of what your children will be like. What ought to happen to you is full of images and flavor. Since that stratum of the southern population is not given to book-reading, they take their comparisons right out of the barn yard and the woods. When they get through with you, you and your whole family look like an acre of totem-poles."

Blogging will resume soon.

My Prediction: How the US Will Solve It's Deficit, Debt, and Pension Crises

For the public debts, the deficits, entitlement and welfare debts, and pension obligation debts will be solved by (1) imposing a Value Added Tax of at least 10% on all commercial transactions, (2) rationing government (i.e., taxpayer) funded medical care (and all medical care will be wholly or partially, directly or indirectly, government funded, and (3) means testing for all medical, welfare, Social Security, and pensions.

The income taxes will not be fundamentally changed, except perhaps to be increased.

Those draconian measures will however make worse the private debt crisis. The private debt crisis includes the money the private citizen needs to pay for the means-test shortfall in government (remember, tax payer) funded welfare, medical care, and pensions, and also the money the private citizen needs as income for retirement-age life. There is really only one source of such income--owning a small business. Older employees, at what-would-have-been retirement age, will be shoved out to make way for new, younger employees at lower salaries and benefits. The only way these shoved-out employees will survive will be by starting small businesses they will own. Only ownership will permit them to work and control at last some of the working conditions.

I don't see how the small-producer, small-government movement with the aid of the GOP can fundamentally alter this onrushing mess; at least, I haven't heard any ideas on how to do it. It's okay to talk replace-and-reform, but we've got to have some notion of how and what to reform. I believe the motivation to reform will be strong as the authoritarianism, essentially the dictatorship of the executive branch, in medicine becomes apparent to everyone; but we still need ideas.

So, in an unlucky age (VAT on top of other taxes), we will be lucky if our social old age produces a renaissance of small business.

How Would Greater Fed Regulation Prevent Another Securities Bubble?

I don't know nothing about finance. I don't know nothing about regulation. Those are virtually lyrics for a song. Anyway. The end result of analysis and regulation of a market boom is shutting the boom off. How would regulators know when to shut it off? What clairvoyance do they have to divine when a boom has transformed into a bubble? Certainly, they can look at the underlying assets backing securities, they can require minimum capital reserves, they can look at historic trends. But suppose a boom starts on the basis of new kinds of securities, or a boom starts on the stock market in the shares of a class of companies, say, like Google, or on the basis of the rising price of tulips. In the arc of investment and risk and reward, at what point should the boom be shut down by regulators? Are they going to assume every boom will become a bubble on the pattern of the crash of 2008? Are they going to say that only early investors have the right to make money in a boom? Are they going to say that investment  will carry no risk? Any effort to shut down a boom early would become a political issue. It would take weeks for the Fed to decide to dampen investment. How could the Fed prevent insider trading, as Fed study of the boom and its analyses, based on acquiring records of securities and trades would be widely known? And if the Fed holds all trading to a narrow range around historic trend lines, what will happen to ownership of shares as a savings, investment, and wealth building vehicle? For surely, such action would mean that wealth would not accumulate above a gray median. It would be the end of one kind of capitalism, that's for sure.

Revised. April 27, 2010.

China's Naval Policy Channels Alfred Thayer Mahan

China's policy to build a deep sea navy, capable of projecting Chinese national power, fighting a war in which the US Navy is held at bay, and protecting China's ocean-borne commerce is a 19th century naval strategy. It was utilized by Britain and Germany. The theory of it was developed by the American naval officer, Alfred Thayer Mahan. Mahan's work was a major influence on Theodore Roosevelt and the decision to build and project a large American battle fleet. This strategy is something with which we have long experience and much historical knowledge. It shouldn't be news to us. China's policy is, as I have written before, perfectly sensible and a realistic policy in terms of China's national interest. It is a policy absolutely in opposition to Obama's fantasy internationalism and his policy of drawing down American military strength, particularly the navy and the air force, which are the military branches with the job of forward projection of American power to keep the peace. The story in the New York Times about China's naval policy should, hopefully, have political impact, in that Obama cannot ignore it and the media interest it will spark. In all ways, nuclear policy, Middle East policies, Far East policy, military policy, Obama is making war nearly inevitable. When and where war comes, it will be intense and ugly. Many people will die. Curses of Obama should be on their lips.

Update. April 27, 2010. More information on China's strategic goals with the buildup of its navy. Notice the Chinese Admiral's notion that, in my words, Asia belongs to China. Even if the US were out of the picture, that's a notion that presumes conflict. No one should assume that it is in the interests of South Korea, Japan, Australia, and India to accept Chinese hegemony in Asia. Without the complete rearmament of Japan, the US is the only nation capable of providing international peace for the development of the booming economics of Asia.