Currents

My friend and colleague posted an except from Bob Baer’s ‘The Devil We Know: Dealing With The New Iranian Superpower”. The prologue provides an interesting, and frankly a little scary, overview of the rise of Iran. Here is a little piece that kinda wierded me out.

Scratch away the veneer of Islam, and what you find in an Iranian is old-fashioned nationalism-a deep, abiding defiance of colonialism. Keep scratching and what you find at the bottom of Iran’s soul is a newfound taste for empire. It runs through Iranian society, even among more secular Iranians. But Iran isn’t a new Rome, intent on naked conquest, cultural diffusion, settlements, and religious conversion.

What drives Iran to empire is something different. Call it destiny, entitlement, or even manifest destiny: what’s critical to understand is that Iran today has an unshakable belief in its right to empire. It means to achieve this through proxy warfare and control over oil supplies.

It’s not hard to understand where Iran got the confidence, misplaced or not, that it can beat the West. In Lebanon, from 1982 to 2000, Iran’s proxy Hezbollah beat the Israelis on the field of battle, the first time Israel’s army had lost since the country’s founding in 1948. Israel claims it wasn’t defeated militarily in the conflict, that they lost only the will to fight and not the war. But in the 34-day Lebanon war in 2006, the Israeli army was in fact beaten. It retreated from Lebanon with heavy losses and without obtaining a single objective.

Iran’s star is rising. And now with a friendly Shia government in Baghdad, it will rise a lot faster. On the other hand, the old Sunni order-the foundation of American interests in the Middle East-is edging toward collapse. How long can Pakistan and Saudi Arabia hold on? For the first time in the history of Islam, Shia domination of Mecca is not unthinkable. Nor is an Iranian empire in the Middle East. Was Khomeini right after all, that Iran would ultimately defeat America, the Great Satan?

It definitely makes me believe that Obama’s concept of engaging Iran rather than alienating them makes more sense…or we’ll find ourselves deeper and deeper in the quagmire of the Middle East.

Today on Reason Magazine, Michael Flynn writes an interesting and straightforward description of how Wall Street has gotten itself into this mess. We all know the basics:

• Cheap Money
• Sub Prime Mortgage
• Mortgage Default
• Undercapitalization
• Bankruptcy / Freakout

But what I didn’t realize is that the most important part of this mess isn’t neccessarily the undercapitalization, but its the uncertainty of the value of those damned Mortgage Backed Securities. It seems that since no one knows what they are worth…banks are forced to write them down to zero.

But they actually aren’t worth zero. Merrill Lynch recent unloaded some of that crap for 22 cents on the dollar…which does to show that, although everyone fucked up on Wall Street, that the sky may not be falling…it might be that we’re just coming down to earth.

Problem is that all of this panic might just make the sky fall…rather than vice versa.

In the National Post, Martin Masse writes:

In his Communist Manifesto, published in 1848, Karl Marx proposed 10 measures to be implemented after the proletariat takes power, with the aim of centralizing all instruments of production in the hands of the state. Proposal Number Five was to bring about the “centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.”

If he were to rise from the dead today, Marx might be delighted to discover that most economists and financial commentators, including many who claim to favour the free market, agree with him.

Indeed, analysts at the Heritage and Cato Institute, and commentators in The Wall Street Journal and on this very page, have made declarations in favour of the massive “injection of liquidities” engineered by central banks in recent months, the government takeover of giant financial institutions, as well as the still stalled US$700-billion bailout package. Some of the same voices were calling for similar interventions following the burst of the dot-com bubble in 2001.

“Whatever happened to the modern followers of my free-market opponents?” Marx would likely wonder.

Amen.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want the economy to collapse. But its kinda funny our fiscal policies look more and more communist. WTF. Seems kinda…well…un-American.

[click to continue...]

Don’t get me wrong, she is attractive and likeable…in a hockey mom kind of way. But she is definitely not qualified to be the President of the United States.

This fact isn’t lost on Kathleen Parker of the National Review.

Parker, rightly states that:

Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.

No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted.

Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there’s not much content there. Here’s but one example of many from her interview with Hannity: “Well, there is a danger in allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into the issue that we’re talking about today. And that’s something that John McCain, too, his track record, proving that he can work both sides of the aisle, he can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this.”

When Couric pointed to polls showing that the financial crisis had boosted Obama’s numbers, Palin blustered wordily: “I’m not looking at poll numbers. What I think Americans at the end of the day are going to be able to go back and look at track records and see who’s more apt to be talking about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions for some opportunity to change, and who’s actually done it?”

If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.

If Palin were a man, we’d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she’s a woman — and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket — we are reluctant to say what is painfully true.

It’s refreshing to see clear thinking coming from anyone these days…especially on the party who believes that the world is 4,000 years old.

But the president of Pakistan said that she was gorgeous. Yeehaw!

Jim Rogers, the CEO of Rogers Holdings said on CNBC Europe’s “Squawk Box Europe” that “America is more communist than China is right now,” He went on to say “You can at least have a free market in housing and a lot of other things in China. And you can see that this is welfare for the rich. This is socialism for the rich. It’s bailing out the financiers, the banks, the Wall Streeters.”

Damn.  I hear that.

But he kinda has a point.  Seems like our “less government” Republicans are the ones who are pushing us more and more toward the “socialist utopia” that they accuse Obama of proposing.

That’s my beef with the GOP.  They’re a bunch of frickin’ hypocrites.  I’m not saying that the Dems are any better…but the Dems don’t come off (to me at least) as a bunch of “my way or the highway” kind of people.  The Republicans are so black and white on everything.  Life isn’t that simple.

http://businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20080908171808.aspx

I used to think that this song was “cute” and “fun”.  Now all of a sudden, Peter Pumpkinhead isn’t so funny.

Here are the words.  Wow.  Prophetic.

____

Peter pumpkinhead came to town
Spreading wisdom and cash around
Fed the starving and housed the poor
Showed the vatican what golds for
But he made too many enemies
Of the people who would keep us on our knees
Hooray for peter pumpkin
Wholl pray for peter pumpkinhead?
Oh my!
Peter pumpkinhead pulled them all
Emptied churches and shopping malls
Where he spoke, it would raise the roof
Peter pumpkinhead told the truth
But he made too many enemies…
Peter pumpkinhead put to shame
Governments who would slur his name
Plots and sex scandals failed outright
Peter merely said
Any kind of love is alright
But he made too many enemies…
Peter pumpkinhead was too good
Had him nailed to a chunk of wood
He died grinning on live tv
Hanging there he looked a lot like you
And an awful lot like me!
But he made too many enemies…
Hooray for peter pumpkin
Wholl pray for peter pumpkin
Hooray for peter pumpkinhead
Oh my oh my oh!
Doesnt it make you want to cry oh?

____

This would be a GREAT cover…if you really do it right…especially now.  Note to self: Do not do it like the fucking Crash Test Dummies.  Sorry Shifty.  This shit needs to be called out.  It’s a very karaoke performance. (TM Simon Cowell 2001-2008)

And the fucking “base lick”?  Frreal.  Dood.

Anyway.  XTC might be my new old favorite band.

I’m listening to Dear God again right now.

Awesome.  How in the hell can anyone say anything about Obama when this frickin’ woman believes that war is God’s plan and Alaska isn’t even truly America.

WTF!!!!

If McCain wins…and then he dies…which is a 50% chance given his age (actuarily)…then SHE BECOMES PRESIDENT.  Imagine that.

Wow. I’m not sure that I want religious beliefs dictating our country’s foreign policy. Sounds a little like the Christian version of Islamic extremism to me. What’s the difference? We’re on this side of the fence?

NOT good enough.

Wow.  Leroi Moore, the sax/flute/pennywhistle/etc. player of the Dave Matthews Band, has died at the age of 47.  That sucks.  My thoughts are with his friends and family.  A tremendous loss.  He was a true talent and a hell of a guy.

(Photo ripped from dmband.com)