At every level, across every domain, a battle for the soul of America is raging. We addressed the “Paradigms of Failure” in 2008; more recently Peggy Noonan has spoken and written about the collapse of all of our institutions, and Thom Hartmann has written aboutThe Crisis of Western Culture at the same time that others write of the Broken Branch, the Cheating Culture, Running on Empty, and so on. The Tea Party Partiots movement is catching on in a manner that the Committee for a Unified Independent Party (CUIP) has not caught on. The reason is simple: the first is a bottom-up deeply felt populist movement, while the latter is a top-down umbrella organization loath to break completely with the two-party monopoly.

Below is a story on how Ron Paul, arguably the longest running voice for Constitutionalism within the Republican Party, and Sarah Palin, the very likeable “First Mom” so badly handled by the Bushies striving to undermine John McCain's candidacy, are fighting for the soul of the Tea Party.

The answer is the same answer that gets A's in Comparative Economics–this cannot be about one or the other, it must be about “all of the above” coming together. There is one thing, and one thing only, that all of the independent candidates can and must agree on: Electoral Reform in time for 2010 (four reforms including instant run-off) and 2012 (another four including tightly drawn districts and an end to winner take all control of Congress).

Ron Paul, Sarah Palin, Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, even the Average American whose integrity and non-partisanship is wildly superior to what both the Bush-Cheney and Obama-Biden Administrations have demonstrated–must come together on this one fundamental, or they will be defeated in detail.

Ron Paul vs. Sarah Palin for the Soul of the Tea Parties

There's trouble brewing between the Ron Paul libertarians who staged the the first modern tea party in 2007 by dumping tea into Boston Harbor, and the neocon war hawks led by Sarah Palin who are furiously trying to hijack their message.

After I appeared on MSNBC talking about Sarah Palin's appearance at the Nashville tea party convention, several libertarians told me they were unhappy with the exchange.

I said that Sarah Palin's hawkish message on Iran was oddly out of place in a group whose roots belong to the Ron Paul libertarians, particularly as the anti-interventionist

2010/02/03

Journal: New QDR–Pentagon Goes Intellectually AWOL

10 Security, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Ethics, Military, Reform, Strategy, Threats

The New QDR

The Pentagon Goes Intellectually AWOL

By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY

Monday, February 1, 2010, was a day that should live in budgetary infamy. The Defense Department released its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and its accompanying Fiscal Year 2011 budget request, which is the first year of the Fiscal Year 2011-2015 five year plan (2011-2015 FYDP). These documents are available on the internet and can be downloaded in PDF format here: QDR and the FY 2011 budget.

Even by the dismal intellectual standards of Pentagon bureaucracy, the QDR and the FY 2011 budget, taken together, establish a new standard of analytical vacuity, psychological denial, and just plane meaningless drivel. I will keep this short by using just one important case to prove my allegation. Judge for yourself if it is necessary and sufficient to make the point.

. . . . . . .

The chaos in the accounting system provides the intellectual “grease” to lubricate the engine driving narrow bureaucratic agendas that are causing the force structure meltdown. Senior decision makers can not possibly understand the trade offs they are really making when they put together a budget, assuming they wanted to, which is also in doubt.

Phi Beta Iota: The Pentagon is only as competent as the combination of three factors:

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2010/02/022010/02/02

Journal: Politics of Fear–Spending on National Insecurity

10 Security, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Military, Peace Intelligence, Reform, Threats

Answer: It all depends on what you think should be included, but once this is clear — this spending will be be exempt from any cutbacks needed to reduce the deficit.

The Table prepared by Winslow Wheeler, Director, Straus Military Reform Project within the Center for Defense Information.

Chuck

Defense Spending — Winslow Wheeler, Straus Military Reform Project.

2010/01/312010/02/01

Worth a Look: 1989 All-Source Fusion Analytic Workstation–The Four Requirements Documents

Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Historic Contributions, InfoOps (IO), IO Sense-Making, Key Players, Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Reform, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools

The software chapter in Book: INTELLIGENCE FOR EARTH–Chapter 22 Technical Intelligence Enablers Loaded is being doubled up as our smarter colleagues churn it around, it will probably be extended several pages and have more linked references.

Here are the four requirements documents for the all-source fusion analytic workstation converging in 1989–we do not have this today because no one has ever tried to manage the US Government's approach to IT–distributed chaos and centralized ignorance just will not do.

1989 Webb (US) CATALYST: Computer-Aided Tools for the Analysis of Science & Technology

Reference 1989 Analyst 2000

1988 Generic Intelligence Center Production Requirements

Reference: 1989 USMC Work-Up for JNIDS VI All-Source Fusion Analytic Workstation

1988-2009 OSINT-M4IS2 TECHINT Chronology

Search: The Future of OSINT [is M4IS2-Multinational]

2001 Porter (US) Tools of the Trade: A Long Way to Go

2010/01/282010/01/28

Reference: Transforming How We Hire Analysts

Analysis, Ethics, Government, Methods & Process, Military, Reform, Strategy

This is a righteous piece of work out of the National Defense University (NDU) by Mr. Adrian (Zeke) Wolfberg of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), entitled “To Transform into a More Capable Intelligence Community: A Paradigm Shift in the Analyst Selection Strategy.” Published April 21, 2003, this is still valid and of course still ignored.

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2010/01/262010/01/26

Journal: White House Nightmare, Insanity, or Ignorance?

Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Key Players, Methods & Process, Policies, Policy, Reform, Strategy, Threats

White House nightmare persists

At the end of Barack Obama’s worst week since taking power a year ago, the US president’s fortunes look set only to deteriorate over the coming days.

Phi Beta Iota: We find it quite remarkable that there is absolutely no “intelligence” in the sense of decision-support anywhere in this story. The last two Administrations (Bush-Cheney and now Obama-Biden) have been noteworthy for the completely absence of strategy, intelligence, Whole of Government management, balanced budget–just about everything a public has a right to expect from its elected and appointed and paid government.

Nightmare is the wrong word–this is self-imposed insanity based on willful ignorance and the absence of a national Open Source Agency (OSA) with a degree of independence equal to that of the Judiciary. In the Age of Information, information itself has become the Fourth Estate, and the Administration either needs to get a grip on reality and start governing with informed maturity, or watch as others pass them by–Brazil, China, India, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela, for example.

Search: smart nation intelligence reform electoral reform national security reform

2010/01/222010/01/22

Search: the method used by the c.i.a in learning

04 Education, Government, Reform

This is both a very intelligent search and a very funny search. CIA and the rest of the IC do not have a “method” because they do not do “learning” in the classical sense. It is virtually all “on the job” training and the culture across the board is one of hubris as in “we know best, if you have time for training–which we consider a vacation–then you must not be essential or having anything urgent to do.”

The National Intelligence University has taken a few baby steps, perhaps moving the US Intelligence Community from the first grade to the fourth grade, absolutely no further. The legal, security, management, budget, and cultural mind-sets are simply too daunting.

The ONE THING that could be taught early, and is not, because all of the management levels crush it along with creativity and freedom of expression, is INTEGRITY. The truth at any cost reduces all others costs. Most managers in most of the secret agencies believe they are the sole arbiters of the truth, the truth must by definition be secret, and anyone who disagrees with them is a traitor, stupid, or a loose-cannon.

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Category: Reform

Journal: Battle for the Soul of America