Former Senator Alan Simpson (R) ridicules the blind, destructive demogogry of Grover Norquist and his crusade to tear down the country.

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/BudgetDeficit2

The outpouring of grief over the death of Steve Jobs shows that most of us, including much of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, are not against capitalism.  We are against the corrupt individuals and institutions that use capitalism to steal from us.

Jobs could not have been more of a capitalist, super rich with no interest in philanthropy. But, as Frank Rich quotes in this weeks New York Magazine, “Regis McKenna, a Silicon Valley marketing executive who worked with him early on—was his ability “to strip away the excess layers of business, design, and innovation until only the simple, elegant reality remained.” Read the rest of this entry »

One the Bush Technocrats that smothered our kid’s brains in standardized testing now says the focus on testing is a mistake. The present vindication does not make up for the shame and sadness over how we have turned away from who we are – creative, form-breaking individuals – to emulate the test performance of the stifled, row-sitting cultures.

The tests are supposed to indicate which teachers and schools are not performing well. Of course, they can also indicate where students need to improve but now we routinely use them as a basic for student advancement. As a result even good schools spend far too much precious time drilling out kids to pass some stupid test that won’t help them be people thinkers or people.

Use them to test the schools but DON’T use them for admission to the next level of school.

Efforts to Cut Education Funding, Expand Standardized Testing Assailed

Last week the nation witnessed a clear instance of media bias. When we all thought a Muslim religious extremist committed the heinous murders in Norway, the US media called it terrorism and the perpetrators terrorists.  As soon as it was determined that crimes were committed by a right wing Christian, the label terrorist dropped away.  He was described as a lone lunatic with no connections to other anti-immigration groups or Christian extremists.  According to our media, only Muslims are terrorists, white westerners who commit the same crimes are not.

This is a strong and clear bias against Muslims and blindness to the hate fostered in our own culture.

Glenn Greenwald: Norway Attacks Expose U.S. Media’s Double Standard on “Terrorism”

The movement just wants to elect one party over another when both are equally to blame. Voting for one over the other is a diversion that will not fix anything. Here are a couple ways to see through Tea Party falsehoods:

1. They blame Obama for our problems when we have been following the same economic approach since 1980. After 12 years of un-admitted recession, President Regan ushered in a new approach using, tax cuts, deregulation and massive federal spending to turn things around. This new CUT & SPEND economy favored financial sectors, creating the age of paper entrepreneurs and the bailouts needed to sustain them.

Remember these bailouts: Penn Central, Lockheed, Chrysler, Braniff, LTV, Storage Tech, Texaco, White Motors, the HUD scandal, the Savings and Loans scandal? How many times does the taxpayer have to pay for Republican and Democratic duplicity in these thefts?

No President since Regan has significantly altered the freedom of these adventure capitalist. And no one, not even the Tea Party, is talking about doing it now. Cut & Spent got us into this mess, yet remains our only economic idea.

We should be angry and want to do something serious about it. But blaming Obama for the bailouts that Bush started to save a faith-based financial system created thirty years ago is sure sign that the Tea Party either doesn’t understand what is going on or doesn’t want it to change.

2. They favor one party of the other. No one has any idea how to fix the system. Both Republicans and Democrats are equally responsible for creating and maintaining this thirty year dream of unregulated financial markets. Voting one party in over other will do NOTHING to address our situation. Replacing one bailout artist with another will NOT help the country. This is perhaps the most pernicious falsehood of this party; they parade as status quo as change.

3. They have no ideas and offer no ideas on how to fix the system. They very actively support some candidates over others (always R over D) but have no concrete actions or principals on how to fix the an investment system with abstracted ownership, a focus on short terms returns and dependence of ever more complex mathematic formulations. Until we have a something to replace cut & spent, some way to de-emphasize the importance of financial markets in our lives, we will remain beholden to financial slight-of-hand artists. And the Tea Party will remain a false front for the money men.

So go to your local Tea Party meeting and ask them what policies think will fix our system? And don’t take “vote Republican” as a sufficient answer.

During the Cold War the US and Russia had an “Incidents At Sea Agreement” to avoid accidentally stumbling into a war.  The US and Iran Navies patrol the Persian Gulf with not such protection. We have already had a few close calls.

There is no reason to take this risk.  If we could work with the Soviets on these issues, we can work with Iran.  If fact, instituting a similar agreement would be a first step towards improving relations between our countries.

Our forces must have a direct method of communication should an accident occur, a for a naval war in the Gulf could disrupt the flow of oil, weakening an already weak world economy.

Just Foreign Policy is and TSN! encourage you to write your Congressmen and ask them to support John Conyers’ (D-MI) and Geoff Davis’ (R-KY) Resolution 94.

Here is a site to help make it easy.

Big talk happened this week. The US said that they see Iran as an important player in Afghanistan.  Iran said it would take part in the regional conference on Afghanistan and the US pledged to bring more troops to Afghanistan to root our terrorists camps.

The slow dance of Iranian and the US negotiations is underway.  Of course, it has a long way to go with many potential stumbling blocks.  One of which is the amount of ugly noise we will have to stomach from both the American and Iranian right.  At home, the right say talking to Iran is naive and will never work. In Iran, the right crows about trust and demands measurable progress.

Both criticisms are based in valid points of view.  The only guarantee the US can expect is that Iran will act in its own interests. But it is almost impossible to figure how how they see their interests. The outcome of any conversation is far from set.

On the Iranian side, the US has a long history of working against Iran. Both countries are right to demand clear metrics of progress, as this is best way  to build trust in any wary partnership.

The problem is that neither the US right or the Iranian right offer these criticisms to be constructive. They see problems but don’t offer any solutions.  They say we can’t work together but don’t offer ideas for how we can move forward in Afghanistan or improve US – Iranian relations.

All ideas should be considered but loud mouth criticism from the easy chair offer nothing but a bit more noise.

The  tragedy is that these defeatist tomes contain important points but readers have to wade through miles of bile to extract them.  The US needs a vigorous internal opposition and we need to understand the full spectrum of obstacles in Iran.

But right now, we just get anger and hopelessness. Hopefully, both rights can figure out how work towards thier countries future.

No military solution will work in Afghanistan without economic development to reinforce the security. The country has been so poor for so long that rebuilding the economy may be more difficult than securing the peace.

There is a growing movement to focus on the economy first. We should surge our investment in the road, water, waste and electrical systems.  Why not put people to work and pay them each day so they have cash to spend in the local markets?

The military mission would shift to from hunting killers in the mountains to protecting the economic activity.  This would be safer for our soldiers, less costly for the tax payer and would fundamentally shift the situation on the ground for the people of Afghanistan.

Joe Biden said in Brussels on March 11, 2009 : “Roughly 70 percent [of Taliban] are involved because of the money, because they are getting paid.” Biden said this 70 percent of Taliban may be persuaded to lay down arms.

The Taliban pays its soldiers $8 a day.  If we double that, people will work with us.  If we simultaneously start buying the poppy plants from the farmers, as we did successfully in Turkey and India, the Taliban will not have any money to pay their fighters.  By fall, Afghanistan could be full of workers and a blossoming local economy.

Americans back home could then use organizations like Kiva.org to help Afghans create their own businesses, and the US would be deep in the business of nation building instead of fighting a war.

If we are principled enough to follow FDR’s call for self determination, this approach could damage the terrorists much more than any drone attack ever will.  Reviving Afghanistan and getting our troops home might just be the stroke capitalism needs to save itself.

The Weekly Standard just published a strong story about Afghanistan. The three authors, Max Boot, Frederick W. Kagan & Kimberly Kagan, spent 8 days traveling the country and feel hopeful that the war can conclude successfully.  They don’t define what success is, but my assumption reading the article was that we will succeed when we can pull our troops out and  leave behind a stable Afghan government that provides its own security.

The positive focus is a welcome contrast from the doom and gloom in most US reporting.  The article is also refreshingly free of partisan  bickering and is properly focused on our efforts to secure the country. Far too many articles written about Iran, Iraq or Afghanistan actually focus on local US politics. We are all in this together and we need to find ways to solve these problems – regardless of political stripe.

Well done, Weekly Standard. We need more reporting on what is actually happening on the ground.  And the three authors offer a wealth of details about many aspects of our effort. The multiple voices  also mean that the article suffers from a lack of overall direction as separate sections are loosely stitched together, but the article is well worth reading.

The authors are not free of politics but they make a few excellent points that could really enlighten our national debate:

• The term Taliban is all but meaningless. There are so many factions with layered, shifting allegiances that it is ridiculous to speak of them as a single, cohesive resistance.
  
• Extra troops could secure and hold more areas of the country. But we do will not have enough troops to secure the entire country. The Afghan forces are performing well but there is not nearly enough of them.
  
• The NATO structure needs overhaul as short assignments, too many players with different missions are leading to inefficiency and waste

I do have some questions for the authors.

There is no money, political will or plans to train enough Afghan forces to secure the country.  How can we succeed without finding a way to dramatically increase the size and capabilities of the local forces?

The authors rightfully point out that increased US troop strength could push some of the insurgent further west, close to Iran.  The authors says this is a problem because we don’t have troops there and won’t anytime soon.

Why do we need troops near Iran?

Iran has long been involved in that area of Afghanistan and shares language, custom and history with the Tajiks Western Afghanistan (25% of Afghanistan is Tajik). Iran helped us immensely during the 2001 war.  Iran doesn’t want to see radical Pashtuns in power and they want to curb the flow of drugs. They would be glad to secure this area; why don’t we work with them?

They are naturally allies here.  Why would we send in more Americans to fight in that god-forsaken terrain when it will antagonize a country that would love to do that fighting for us?

Economic development is crucial to a successive conclusion of the war. Security has to come first, but economic development needs to follow hard on its heels. A working economy will be the best way to maintain stability and the lack of one will quickly erode all our hard fought gains.

We need to start thinking about how to rebuild the country. Solving this may prove as difficult as creating security and we need to get it moving now.

Perhaps the American people can help.  We are sick of letting our soldiers do all the work. Poverty is caused  by a lack of money and there are new ways for those with resource to connect with those you don’t. If there are ways that we can help foster economic activity that will solidify the Afghanistan and bring our people home – count me in.

Let us all pick up on what this article started and continue to imagine how the US can succeed in Afghanistan, what peace will look like and how it will work.

National Intelligence Director Blair had his first meeting with the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he was much more reasonable than most of the Senators. Both NID Blair and Defense Intelligence Agency head Lt. Gen. Michael Maples presented clear thinking and rational goals regarding Iran.  The senators were  the ones out for blood.

A welcome change from the last 8 years.

NID Blair said that many Arabic countries want to help prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. But the continuing conflict between Israel and Palestine makes it hard for them “to defend their ties to the US.”

In other words, our one-sided approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict undermines our ability to reach peaceful solutions on other issues. The analysis is not new, but hearing the words from intelligence experts is.

The obvious follow up is ask if the US could use progress with Iran’s nuclear program as a means to opening Israel’s stance towards Palestine? Isn’t keeping nukes out of Iran worth peace with Palestinians?

It is an obvious question and opens a new line of thinking in our foreign policy. Yet in three hours of questioning, not one Senator asked.

The Senators were much more concerned about how much uranium Iran has.  NID Blair said that Iran does not have any highly enriched uranium (bomb grade) and has not yet decided to produce any.  Senator Wicker (R) Mississippi was not happy with this and spent his time having Blair and Maples repeat themselves.  Iran does not have the material to make a bomb and is not trying to make it.

Senator McCain (R) Arizona was particularly whacky. After having his leading question shot down (doesn’t Iran missile programs mean they are developing nuclear weapons? No, those missiles have numerous, valid defensive applications), Senator McCain scolded NID Blair for not knowing the precise number and schedule draw down of troops in Iraq.

NID Blair explained that is not his area of responsibility and he will provide his advice of security implications when the Pentagon asks him. But the Pentagon makes those decisions.  Senator McCain blew right over that straight talk and continued his lecture.  He has to know how the system works, so he was either grandstanding or lost.

Senator Lieberman (I) Connecticut questioned the thinking of NID Blair and heard that the Israeli – Palestine conflict fuels the way people think across the entire region, including Afghanistan and Pakistan.

These two intelligence professionals were handing the Senate a clear way to improve our standing the Middle East.  We need to help solve the Israel-Palestine conflicts and we can use Iranian Nuclear threat to do it.

How many of the Senators followed the lead?  How many Senators were looking for new solutions to our challenges? How many Senators were fighting for change? Zero.