In her newest book, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin sharply criticizes the record of President Barack Obama while defending her own, in the process offering an unapologetic vision of conservative politics that strongly suggests a forthcoming presidential run.
“America by Heart,” which will be officially released on Tuesday (The Huffington Post obtained an advance copy), exhibits Palin in a variety of roles: culture warrior, presidential critic, committed mother and political provocateur. Clocking in at roughly 270 pages, it reads, at times, like an episode of Glenn Beck's Fox News show. Lengthy quotes and historical research is threaded, often, around contemporary political debates. In the mind's eye of the former governor, the founders, were they alive today, would be nothing short of Palin devotees — and they would certainly be shocked by Obama.
The president makes infrequent appearances in Palin's book, but when he does surface it is in an unflattering light.
“There is a narcissism in our leaders in Washington today,” Palin writes. “There's a quasi-religious feeling to the message coming from them. They are trying to convince us that not only are they our saviors, but that we are our saviors… as candidate Obama proclaimed on Super Tuesday 2008, ‘We are the ones we've been waiting for, we are the change that we seek.'”
Obama, as Palin posits, is neither providing the change that was sought nor fulfilling the role of savior he supposedly promised. Instead, he is cast as a wealth re-distributor, a sly practitioner, and, above all else, a politician with policies antithetical to American values. This is true, she argues, on matters large and small.
QUOTE (32): What has taken place over the last generation is a highly complicated merger of crime and policy, of stealing and government. Far from taking care of the rest of us, the financial leaders of America and their political servants have seemingly reached the cynical conclusion that our society is not work saving and have taken on a new mission that involved not creating wealth for us all, but simply absconding with whatever wealth remains in our hollowed out economy. They don't feed us, we feed them.
I defer to the other reviewers on the substance of the book, but want to provide links here to several books that address the larger context of the soul of capitalism and the corruption of the two political parties that have undermined the US Government and US economy with malice aforethought.
I am blogging twice a week at Huffington Post on what a Virtual Cabinet doing sane evidence-driven policies in the context of a balanced responsible budget might look like, and would welcome visits there by those interested in getting back to honest government and responsible capitalism.
This is an extraordinary book, combining gifted insights and turns of phrase with serious research that has a point worth fighting for: Wall Street led by Goldman Sachs has ripped off the entire US economy, and they still have most people thinking that politics matters.
It merits comment that while Michael Lewis was first, with Liar's Poker, and was recently quoted as saying he had no idea Wall Street would get away with these obvious high crimes against the public for another 30 years, this author takes us all up another level, weaving in everything–politics, culture, sex, booze, LSD, and the occasional rabbid racoon.
The author is especially deft at observing, documenting, and describing the combination of lunatic ignorance and blessed righteous anger within the Tea Party, at the same time that he points out they have no idea that they have been funded and directed by the very people who have stolen their economy out from under them.
I am especially impressed by the author's understanding of how Wall Street has managed to co-opt the very people they are destroying by leveraging the “shared” view of excessive government regulation. I for one absolutely believe that states should start nullifying federal laws and regulations that impair state-based businesses (e.g. butchers and cabinet-makers). What the people being destroyed do not understand is HOW they are being destroyed by Wall Street, which is essentially eating out the foundation from under them.
QUOTE (32): What has taken place over the last generation is a highly complicated merger of crime and policy, of stealing and government. Far from taking care of the rest of us, the financial leaders of America and their political servants have seemingly reached the cynical conclusion that our society is not work saving and have taken on a new mission that involved not creating wealth for us all, but simply absconding with whatever wealth remains in our hollowed out economy. They don't feed us, we feed them.
Unquestionable a great book, with one big missing piece: it does not follow the money back to Wall Street. Buckminster Fuller understood in the 1960's that the White House had become theater, I did not understand his meaning until the economic meltdown and my noticing that Goldman Sachs has provided the Secretary of the Treasury for the last six or so Administrations.
The Tea Party, a grand mix of idealistic individuals who really think they have a shot at making a difference, is funded by the Koch Brothers, and all the other wing-nuts this book discusses all have financial underpinning that serve a purpose: to create theater. They are the American version of a political circus that keeps people's eyes off the raw fact that the US is a two-party tyranny with election manipulation so embedded that we no longer qualify as a democracy according to international standards.
NOTE: To investigate funding yourself, just search, my preferred search portal is Duck Duck Go, for <Koch Tea Party funding>
Wing-nuts is an “order of battle” for the extremist fringe, but it does NOT explain why the US government and US economy are in the toilet. For that we need just one word: INTEGRITY (lost).
The wing-nuts are getting their time in the sun because the extreme wealthy that have hollowed out America, exported all the skilled jobs, allowed illegal immigration so they could pay even less for unskilled labor, are now nervous. Bush Junior did his eight, Obama gave Wall Street four more years, right now the best that Wall Street can think of is making the next four years a complete circus.
`All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing' (or words to that effect). Edmund Burke and Justice Brandeis are both cited on this one. It says a lot when two comedians make more sense and demonstrate more integrity than all of our Senators, Representatives, and Executive Branch officials. Perhaps it really does take a comic (or two) to save a Nation.
Just one of many books supporting my suggestion that this is all theater:
You can find all of my non-fiction reviews sorted into 98 categories at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog. I have also created lists of reviews (e.g. corruption, education) and two master lists. The negative list is everything that is wrong with America and the world, the positive one everything that is right or could be right. Both those lists are also at the Huffington Post. It's time to restore the integrity of our Republic, that must of necessity begin with Electoral Reform.
Since its publication in 1946, George Orwell's fable of a workers' revolution gone wrong has rivaled Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea as the Shortest Serious Novel It's OK to Write a Book Report About. (The latter is three pages longer and less fun to read.) Fueled by Orwell's intense disillusionment with Soviet Communism, Animal Farm is a nearly perfect piece of writing, both an engaging story and an allegory that actually works. When the downtrodden beasts of Manor Farm oust their drunken human master and take over management of the land, all are awash in collectivist zeal. Everyone willingly works overtime, productivity soars, and for one brief, glorious season, every belly is full. The animals' Seven Commandment credo is painted in big white letters on the barn. All animals are equal. No animal shall drink alcohol, wear clothes, sleep in a bed, or kill a fellow four-footed creature. Those that go upon four legs or wings are friends and the two-legged are, by definition, the enemy. Too soon, however, the pigs, who have styled themselves leaders by virtue of their intelligence, succumb to the temptations of privilege and power. “We pigs are brainworkers. The whole
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management and organisation of the farm depend on us. Day and night, we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples.” While this swinish brotherhood sells out the revolution, cynically editing the Seven Commandments to excuse their violence and greed, the common animals are once again left hungry and exhausted, no better off than in the days when humans ran the farm. Satire Animal Farm may be, but it's a stony reader who remains unmoved when the stalwart workhorse, Boxer, having given his all to his comrades, is sold to the glue factory to buy booze for the pigs. Orwell's view of Communism is bleak indeed, but given the history of the Russian people since 1917, his pessimism has an air of prophecy. –Joyce Thompson
Phi Beta Iota: Morality is how civilizations transmit the hard lessons of the past. Both Communism and Fascism–including Faux Democracy Of, By, and For the Corporations and Banks, lack morality. The only antidote to corrupt elites is educated non-violence, as both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison among others understood so well. This web site is an attempt to inspire public intelligence in the public interest.
Thomas Jefferson: A Nation’s best defense is an educated citizenry.
James Madison: Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
*Starred Review* Could the U.S. be on the brink of becoming a Third World nation? Syndicated columnist Huffington argues that overspending on war at the expense of domestic issues and the alarming decline of the middle class are troubling signals that the U.S. is losing its economic, political, and social stability—a stability that has always been maintained by the middle class. She pinpoints the beginning of the decline to the Reagan era, with its denigration of a government safety net. But she is nonpartisan in assigning responsibility to George W. Bush and Bill Clinton for supporting monied interests over those of the middle class; she then takes aim at Obama for expending more money to bail out Wall Street than Main Street. She also points to loss of manufacturing jobs, outsourcing, and globalization, all with emphasis on corporate profits at the expense of workers. Although the U.S. has faced similarly fearful times during the late 1800s and the Great Depression, the middle class was not threatened, as it is today. She offers possible solutions for the decline, including creating jobs to rebuild national infrastructure, reforms in home and credit lending, and tighter restrictions on Wall Street. An engaging analysis of troubling economic and political trends. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The Huffington Post founder is sure to get some media traction with her assertion that the American Dream is an outdated concept. — Vanessa Bush
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The US economy has disintegrated, and with it into the abyss plummet the blueprints of neoliberal economists, whose theories about “the free market” have now gone the way of medieval alchemy. No voice has been stronger, no prose more forceful, than that of Paul Craig Roberts in predicting collapse. His weekly columns in CounterPunch have won an audience of millions around the world, grateful for a trained economist who can explain lucidly how the well-being of the planet has been held hostage by the gangster elite. Now Dr. Roberts has written the shortest, sharpest outline of economics for the twenty-first century ever put between book covers. He traces the path to ruin and lays out the choices that must be made. There is the “empty world” of corporate exploitation, abetted by the vast majority of economists; or the “full world” of responsible management and distribution of our resources. Amid crisis, this is the guide you've been waiting for.
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The authors of The New Color Line return with another libertarian polemic, this time taking aim at a justice system that has lost sight of its most important goals. Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton warn of a “police state that is creeping up on us from many directions.” There's the war on drugs, which makes it possible for federal agents to investigate people simply for carrying large amounts of cash. There's the crusade against white-collar crime, which has turned the plea bargain into an enemy of the truth. And there's outright misconduct, abetted by prosecutors more interested in compiling long lists of indictments than ensuring the fair treatment of all suspects. The Tyranny of Good Intentions is replete with examples of how government treads on freedom through ill-willed prosecution and faceless bureaucracy. The book's overpowering sense of disaffection sometimes leads to alarmist prose: “We the People have vanished. Our place has been taken by wise men and anointed elites.” The authors are swift to suggest that America, barring “an intellectual rebirth,” may yet go the way of “German Nazis and Soviet communists.” Yet The Tyranny of Good Intentions is nothing if not well intended; it is full of passion and always on the attack, whether the writers are taking on racial quotas, wetland regulations, or any number of policies they find objectionable. In a jacket blurb, libertarian icon Milton Friedman calls it “a devastating indictment of our current system of justice.” Roberts and Stratton, although right-leaning in many of their political sympathies, will probably find plenty of fans on ACLU-left–and anybody who cringes at the thought of unbridled state power. If the road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions, consider this book an atlas
1. The focus of this book is the complicated process that led to President Obama to increase the level of U.S. troops deployed to Afghanistan in support of the so-called “surge strategy.” Like all of Woodward’s previous books this book is apolitical and contains minimal analysis and commentary. It is a chronological compilation of quotes and paraphrases that Woodward has selected to demonstrate how the decision making process in this case actually worked. Woodward is a respected journalist and has a track record of accurately reflecting White House Deliberations.
2. Woodward makes it clear that President Obama’s concerns with Afghanistan so often articulated in his run for the Presidency were genuine and unfortunately well founded. The military and political situations in Afghanistan were rapidly deteriorating to the point of endangering the U.S. position there. The President wanted to formulate a new strategy that would neutralize the threats posed by al Qaeda still operating on the Afghan-Pakistan Border and transform Afghanistan into stable country that would not serve as a host to al Qaeda. To do this, he sought to obtain at least three or four strategic alternatives that he could choose from rather than simply going with the military centric strategy option that was already on the table.
3. The military centric option was favored by Admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff (JCS), General Petreaus (USA) Chief of CentCom, and General McChrystal (USA). General McChrystal strongly argued that the Afghan security forces could be quickly brought up to such a level (400,000!) and that an all American Force of 40,000 troops (four brigades) could easily seize, hold, and transfer key population centers over to Afghan Security Forces. Although his optimism was at variance with actual conditions in Afghanistan, Admiral Mullen and General Petreaus supported McChrystal’s argument.
4. Still President Obama wanted to be able to review other options before committing so many troops to a failing state like Afghanistan. He also was aware that any Afghan solution would by necessity involve a Pakistani solution. The all powerful Pakistani Military had a very complex relationship with the Taliban movement and, it was suspected, al Qaeda. He therefore sought to develop a strategy that would recognize this.
5. Prior to beginning his search for alternative solutions to the Afghanistan problem the president asked Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institute to draft a Review summarizing the current situation in Afghanistan and providing some strategic insights. Riedel is a thirty year veteran of CIA, a real expert on the Near East and Central Asia, and dates from the halcyon days when intelligence analysis was still considered a profession. His review followed and expanded points he had already established in his book, The Search for al Qaeda (Brookings Institute, 2008). The Review was especially useful in clearly articulating that solving Afghanistan’s problems necessarily involved solving Pakistan’s as well. In Riedel’s opinion the center piece of any strategy should be the elimination of al Qaeda from its border strongholds in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATAs). Riedel also pointed out that it would take a long term military-civil effort to turn Afghanistan into a viable nation-state. All of the National Security Council (NSC) principals, including the military, agreed that Riedel’s Review was the most accurate information on Afghanistan, al Qaeda, and Pakistan.
6. In reading Woodward’s account it is clear that Pakistan has its own high complex agenda in Afghanistan, driven not by U.S. concerns, but by fear of India. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) appears to be playing a very dangerous game of supporting the Taliban (usually), tolerating al Qaeda yet still trying to cooperate where feasible with CIA. The ISI has one primary target and that is India; it appears that ISI considers Afghanistan just another strategic pawn, as is the U.S., in its life and death game against India. The Pakistani Military share this world view and indeed General Kayani, Chief of Staff of the Pakistan Army told Woodward as much. President Zardari of Pakistan appears weak and ineffectual, serving at the sufferance of the military.
7. Remarkably Riedel’s Review is a both timely and accurate summary of the situation in the Afghanistan-Pakistan (AfPak) yet it was developed from largely unclassified sources. Unremarkably, the U.S. Military while agreeing that the Review was an accurate situation report chose to ignore it because it did not fit into their pre-determined surge strategy which simply transferred the superficially successful Iraqi Surge model to Afghanistan.
8. Besides the Riedel Review, the NSC had remarkably little intelligence to help them in their search for alternative strategies. A close reading of Woodward’s account reveals why.
9. The simple fact of the matter is that in a reprise of the last forty years, the U.S. Intelligence System has been able to produce very effective tactical intelligence in support of military operations (i.e. locations of individuals and groups, tactical level threats etc.), but completely unable to produce strategic intelligence. Repeatedly in this book NSC participants express surprise that almost nothing is known of the organizational structures, funding, and level of Pakistani involvement in al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other affiliated groups. There is also no evidence in this book that anybody in the NSC took it upon themselves to review a reasonably extensive literature on the ethnography of Afghanistan to help clarify just what the Taliban and other Afghan groups actually are after.
10. In the end, the unrealistic strategic plan advanced by General McChrystal won out because the military simply refused to come up with any other and, in the absence of strategic intelligence nobody else could come up with a politically acceptable alternative.
Forward to Future of Capitalism and GRIFTOPIA
Theater–Follow the Money to Understand
