Go ahead and piss into the wind, Glenn Beck

While I initially died laughing when the tea baggers first started, well, "teabagging," this movement of disenchanted, disenfranchised self-styled alienated patriots has become a cause for concern. Glenn Greenwald pretty much summed it up thusly: this crowd defies category, other than a common hatred of Barack Obama, common allegiance to Glenn Beck and a common ignorance over what it is exactly that is making them so angry.

This is not a laughing matter; there is a very tangible and seething anger that unites these people. The department of Homeland security (though not Homeland Security Czarina Janet Napolitano herself) issued a report last week that right wing extremist groups may attempt to harness the discontent of returning veterans from the Iraq and Afghan wars, and may potentially pose a security threat. Veterans groups other than the Veterans of Foreign Wars condemned the report as paranoid heresy, but the VFW stated that DHS would be derelict in its duty if it did not assess all internal and external security threats. The DHS report cited Timothy McVeigh as a possible example of a domestic terrorist profile: ex combat veteran with a weak support network, disenchantment with the Government and vulnerable to suggestion by a influential and negative peer group.

These people, apart from being WalMart shoppers even though Beck disparages WalMart, are a class of mostly white, working or lower middle class people who have barely survived the post industrial era and possess no useful skills in the 21str century. On top of that, the capitalist system they have gone to war for, and defended in their hearts and minds has repeatedly given them the short end of the stick. They are no longer guaranteed the kind of life style that middle income americans have enjoyed. They don't like foreigners (the "Birthists" in this movement count Obama among these), particularly Mexicans who are darker skinned, speak a different language and take all the construction jobs from whites because they will work harder for less money. These teabaggers have probably lived beyond their means, taking on large mortgages and leveraging consumer debt on credit cards--debt which is traded on the open market and disproportionately acquired by the Chinese, the Saudis and others who are not exactly supportive of freedom and democracy, either here or in their own countries.

If this sounds like rambling that's because it most certainly is. These people are a pitiful and sad response to the challenges of a 21st century, where American power is seen to be in decline, and wolves are at our doorsteps in the form of foreign competition, energy prices, and the siren song of the Glenn Becks of the world who spew vitriolic propaganda but don't actually have a plan. It's ironic that these folks compare Obama to Hitler, because populism in the form of National Socialism came to power on the backs of disenfranchised populists. These are political refugees fleeing the realities of their own country. Pissing into the wind.

Barbarism Begins at Home...or Abroad...

With Israel inching away from the two state solution proposed by #43 and Dr. Condee Rice in late 2007, what options remain for the moderates both within Israel and their supporters in the United States?

With Likud and the third place Ultra Nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu likely to hook up and form a far right governing coalition, it seems less and less likely that Israel will be willing to compromise Ysreal Eretz (biblical Israel) for the sake of peace. Conservative Christians in the United States understand very little about Israeli politics, even less about the Palestinian question, and consequently adhere to a very radically pro Israel position. Israel can do nothing wrong, so long as it does not compromise its own existence.

With the recent elections, it becomes more apparent to moderates on both sides of the Atlantic that this unquestioning relationship between American evangelicals and any pro Israel lobby is counter productive in the context of America's War on Terror, or any intentions by the Obama administration to coax the Israeli government toward a peaceful solution, which maintains basic human civil rights for Palestinians.

The Ultra Nationalists of Avigdor Lieberman's Yisreal Beiteinu are not to be confuesed with the Ultra Orthodox, or even religious Jewish conservatives. They may be practicing Jews or non-practicing, but they are not the Zionist Ashkenazim whose identity politics were shaped by the European Holocaust, and whose motives were largely secular and influenced by European socialism. They are akin to the United Russia party of Vladimir Putin, who many of these same evangelicals revile as a godless totalitarian. It was easy for Christians to hate the Soviet Union: after all they practiced and enforced state atheism. Those same Russians, many of whom have one Jewish Grandparent granting htem right of return to the motherland, have relocated to Israel. This new coalition is not what the evangelicals think it is. They should educate themselves, lest they be used as pawns by the conservative politicians in Israel much as they have been used by the Republican party in the US.

A little John Maynard Keynes never hurt anybody...

In light of President Elect Obama's call for action on the nation's failing economy, I thought I'd posit some regurgitated wisdom from that famed economist of the last century, good old First Baron John Maynard Keynes. First, the criticisms of Obama's stimulus plan from members of his own party are sound and should be considered earnestly by the new President's economic advisers. A tax cut, in the form of a $1000 credit to "most middleclass families" may not have much of an effect on consumer confidence if it has any effect at all.

I don't know what you all did with that $600 (per child) from last years income tax returns, but at my house we used it to pay off debt from Christmas...not exactly the intended outcome. Obama, keen to bridge divisions between old school supply siders who populate the Republican ranks ad nauseum, is barking up the wrong economic tree. What the country needs now, besides love sweet love, (which it always needs) is an ambitious program of infrastructure investment that will serve two purposes: 1.) it will put people back to work immediately. People with jobs spend money, and there are multipliers that reverberate through the greater economy. #2) it should (if well conceived and executed) provide economic development in the form of capital projects which should continue long after ribbons are cut for the bridges and highways and powerlines. Tax cuts at this point are moot, since incomes are alredy likely down for most of us, $1000 per family isn't likely to bridge that particular gap (pun intended).

I'm not keen on Keynes. He was IMHO a socialist, who advocated government intervention in the economy far more than a Chicago schooler like myself could ever accept (not to mention at least 40% of US voters at any given time.) But bold initiatives in the form of quasi-socialist workl programs have saved my beloved capitalism from itself in the past. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the New New Deal lite...

My father, a lifelong conservative Republican evangelical, recently remarked to me that free markets only work when there is an underlying morality guiding them. I disagree. The only thing that guides free markets is millions of consumers making millions of decisions with their own interests in mind. If we can assume that all the actors on the stage are acting in good faith (as I believe most are) then there is no reason to over-regulate. Do people game the system? Yes. I believe people, like dogs (my dog anyway) will try to get away with as much as they possibly can, and give away as little as they possibly can. However, it is usually knee jerk reaction to a market failure that leads to stricter regulations, just at a time when the wheels of commerce should be greased. Do we need a more intrusive government? No. When markets fail, as they recently have, do we need a more active government? I believe we do.

I won't stand for some serious rethinking of American government, the system actually works and it works pretty damn well. Anyway, the two party system virtually ensures that the politcal winds will blow the other way (with a vengeance!) if the party in power over reaches its mandate. For that reason, unless we're dusting off the old Soviet model, we as a nation must peg center if we're going for lasting change. The initial thrust of the stimulus must put people back to work, and leave us with a product that is mostly devoid of pork. Major infrastructure like freeways, bridges and power grids will do the trick. The return of the WPA? I think not.

Then again, I may be wrong. Maybe this is unprecedented. Maybe this is the end of the Empire. Maybe this is the beginning of the end times. mmmm...I don't think so.