The Latest Republican "Debate" & America's Ostrich Complex

Unfortunately, Viagra Works Magic On Only One of the Above

"The Economist Intelligence Unit sees at least a 40% chance of a recession in 2008, with overall GDP growth of not much more than 1%."

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-- The Economist Intelligence Unit, 11/30/07

"As much as $362 billion in U.S. subprime home mortgages with adjustable interest rates are due to reset at potentially higher rates in the coming year . . . Losses related to bad mortgages already have reached the tens of billions of dollars and have led to turmoil in the world's financial markets."

-- The Wall Street Journal, 12/1/07

"Any of you want to tell us about your gun collection -- roughly how many you own; what your favorite make, model and caliber is . . . ?"

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-- A question posed to Republican presidential

candidates during their November 28 "debate"

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The incongruity of the quotations above points up the extremely poor health of American democracy. Our nation seems unable to apprehend much less confront and deal with the social, economic and political complexities of the 21st century. Our citizens are losing their homes; our college students are drowning in debt; our children have insufficient health insurance; the value of the dollar is plummeting; totalitarians like Chávez, Putin and the Chinese politburo are in the ascendancy; and our government remains mired in the massively expensive and deadly Iraq debacle. Yet it is deemed important to ask our presidential aspirants about a quirky, anachronistic hobby. Worse still, these "leaders" -- rather than condemn the very question itself as fatuous -- trip all over themselves to provide an answer. How humiliating, both for them and for us.

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In 2000 I had a chance to watch a re-run of the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debate. Not only did I not notice any of the infamous beard stubble on Nixon, but I found him to be every bit JFK's equal as an orator, policy analyst, and intellect. Each man spoke in complete paragraphs, citing concrete data, and putting forth a coherent vision for the nation's future. In retrospect, of course, I knew that both men eventually would get a turn in the presidency and that Nixon would turn out to be a morally defective "crook." But I did not get the sense that either one was condescending to the viewer, or immersed in irrelevancies, or that I would be ashamed to have him represent me -- as an American -- abroad. Today, though, one questions whether either JFK or Nixon would put up with the trivialities and constant insults to his intelligence required to run for the White House.

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And so, while 2008 promises to be economically problematic and possibly catastrophic, we learn that a particular Republican presidential candidate believes that allowing gays in the military is inconsistent with Judeo-Christian tradition. (Although neither Britain nor Israel has a problem fielding openly homosexual soldiers!) And, while the US struggles with the most unequal distribution of income since the roaring '20's, we learn that the Republican candidates somehow balance an unwavering devotion to Jesus with a fervent belief in capital punishment.

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The fact is, we citizens no longer get real answers to serious questions from our politicians. Instead, truth from Washington probably will continue to trickle in like this: a friend of mine was recently informed via a mundane letter from the Social Security Administration that her promised federal retirement benefits would likely be reduced 25% by the time she was old enough to qualify for them. In other words, hard reality will be impressed upon Americans anonymously and without any room for political accountability.

Twins Fans Want A-Rod, Mr. Pohlad

A-Rod Should Swing in Minnesota

I am tired of Minnesota Twins fans accepting the canard that team owner Carl Pohlad somehow can't afford to bring the very best free agent baseball players to town. In that regard, I recently posted the following commentary on a sports blog connected to the Minneapolis StarTribune:

'“Iggy Iggthorne says:

November 1st, 2007 at 11:11 pm

Personally, I think A-Rod [Alex Rodriguez] is one of the best ever! I’d take him in a nano-second if we could afford him.”

Iggy, of course we [Pohlad] can afford A-Rod! Why would you think otherwise?!

Carl Pohlad’s net worth is at least $2.8 billion. He has been the beneficary of massive income tax cuts in ‘01 and ‘03, and a series of capital gains tax cuts.

Moreover, he bilked the taxpayers for a new stadium and he receives millions of dollars in annual revenue sharing payments from Major League Baseball. Furthermore, the Twin Cities are the fifteenth largest baseball market in the nation, meaning the Minnesota team is not small market, but mid-market.

We Twins fans need to show more self respect by not accepting underdog financial status and demanding a lot from our team and its filthy-rich owner.

We deserve the best, and this winter that means signing not inferior players like Luis Rodriguez ("L-Rod"), Jason Tyner or Nick Punto, but baseball's best player: A-Rod!' Minnesotans deserve to experience another World Series victory, or at least host a team that genuinely wants one.'

The "Africom" Menace

Does This Boy Need U.S. Military Oversight ?

How many Americans know their military has opened up a dedicated command center to keep Africa under its thumb? Far too few. Moreover, none of us had a say in this aggressive and expensive expansion of capacity to project violence onto the world's poorest continent. Yet, from its provisional base in Stuttgart, Germany, "Africom" will cast an imperialistic shadow over 900 million people more in need of medicine and job-creating capital than jackboots. Is this really the face our nation wants to present to Africa's vast population?

The BBC reports that "the Pentagon has yet to find an African country willing to host the headquarters for Africom, despite a considerable amount of shopping around." The message is clear: Africans have rejected US military tutelage because they perceive a threat. Americans should listen, and shut down Africom. Humanity, diplomacy and the reality of scarce resources practically demand it.

'Rudely Stamped's' First Political Endorsement: Ron Paul for Republican Presidential Nominee

Ron Paul (right) Stands Up to the Jingoists of the Republican Party

Republican Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, a candidate for president in 2008, has shown that his political party still has some integrity, vigor and sanity left in it. With the nation suffering through some of the most noxious times in its history -- due in large part to incompetent, cynical and sadistic officials in Washington, DC -- Representative Paul stands out as an eminent exception. He has refused to bow to his party leadership's insistence on patriotic platitudes and capitulation before the military-political-industrial complex.

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"When we (Americans) make a mistake, it is the obligation of the people through their elected representatives to correct the mistake, not continue the mistake," Paul says during a September 5th debate, asserting that the US government should end the lethal legacy of neo-con warriors and withdraw its invading forces from Iraq. Paul thus courageously punctures on national television the vacuous bravado of his fellow presidential candidates. In Ron Paul's candidacy, Republicans and Americans have the chance to put US foreign policy back on a sustainable and moral track. With truth-telling in the national discourse increasingly rare, it is an opportunity wasted at our peril.

John Edwards Talks Some Sense on the Military

Retreat or Advance?

"Military leaders are warning about 'breaking' the force. It is tempting for politicians to respond to this situation by trying to outbid one another on the number of troops they would add to the military . . . But the problem of our force structure is not best dealt with by a numbers game. We must be more thoughtful about what the troops would actually be used for."

--John Edwards, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2007

Alone among so-called major presidential candidates, John Edwards appears to understand that the raw number of troops the US military can muster ceased to matter with the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan in 1945. Further evidence of this fact came with the American defeat in Vietnam, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. And, nearly every day for the past four-and-a-half years in Iraq, we have been taught the lesson again. The ability to apply massive, blunt force no longer helps a "superpower" very much at all.

To the contrary, large-scale spending on the military diverts scarce financial resources from economically productive activities, and removes our youth from civilian life, where they could have become teachers, engineers and entrepreneurs. Instead, they are added to the ranks of trained killers in an anachronisitc insitution that is tantamount to a federal jobs program. In other words, militarization stunts and diminishes our nation, without making us any stronger or safer.

As an alternative, Mr. Edwards proposes establishing a new organization -- the Marshall Corps -- consisting of "at least 10,000 civilian experts who could be deployed abroad to serve in reconstruction, stabilization, and humanitarian missons." He predicts such a corps will be useful "to stabilize weak and failing states and provide humanitarian assistance to the victims of disasters across the world." This is both an enlightened and prgamatic idea that surely would serve US foreign policy interests better than the application of violence, as in Iraq. Unfortunately, Edwards' support of just this sadistic and reckless action when he was in the Senate greatly undermines his credibility now.

Collapse

Which do taxpayers prefer to fund?

A freeway bridge over the Mississippi river collapsed in Minneapolis last night. Not only did this interrupt the Minnesota Twins' baseball season, but four motorists are confirmed dead, with up to thirty missing. Perhaps it is a good time, then, to reassess priorities and refocus our collective attention:

Spending so far on the war in Iraq: $448,593,276,851

Spending on inspecting and maintaining the I-35W bridge: ?

Number of deaths in Minnesota history caused by terrorists: 0

Number of deaths in Minnesota,

caused by the collapse of the I-35W bridge: Up to 34

Before continuing to venture abroad to fight bogeymen who are either figments of the national imagination, or created only by our aggression itself, perhaps the US should begin to tend its own garden. And stop public funding for the construction of billionaire Carl Pohlad's new Twins stadium immediately. Minnesotans need the money for a new bridge.

Barry Bonds, "Scooter" Libby and the Integrity of American Justice

Relax, It's Just a Game

"SAN FRANCISCO -- AP, 7/12/07. An attorney [Troy Ellerman] who admitted leaking the confidential grand jury testimony of Barry Bonds and other athletes to a reporter was sentenced Thursday to two and a half years in prison, by far the harshest penalty to result from the government's sprawling probe of steroids in sports."

If obstruction of justice by I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in the investigation into the leaking of the name of covert CIA counter-proliferation agent Valerie Plame was deemed not to warrant prison time by President Bush, can there be any doubt that Mr. Ellerman's sentence will be commuted as well? If the integrity of the nation's justice system can be eroded when issues of national security are involved, surely it can be obliterated when dealing with something as trivial as a summer game for boys. Mr. Ellerman should be able to rest easy tonight knowing the president will ensure he never serves a day in the slammer. Clearly, his sentence was "excessive." After all, thanks to the White House, the nation now understands that honesty in judicial proceedings isn't really necessary .