A Democracy As Smokescreen for a Monarchy...

The Smokescreen of Democracy


It seems that we are following a path not unlike other countries who saw themselves in grandiose terms and felt it was within their purview to advocate aggression and eco-nationalism and globalist tendencies of power and control.

What we are exposed to is nothing new; It is a hybrid form of Colonialism rewritten to appear as if we are saving the world whereas in reality, we are working to plunder and control it. You see, nothing has really changed. If anything, we are no better than the British, the Germans, the Belgians and the French of other generations who tried to rationalize their brutality and self aggrandizement. However, in our case, the few get rich and the country bleeds its vital assets—vital assets that should be used to make us better and brighter to advance the state of thinking and help the world. These dwindling assets are being used to enrich the few as the many find themselves struggling to survive.

In the final analysis, we are catering to the kind of mind sets promulgated by the Yankee investors who saw the world as an American oyster just ready for the picking. This is nothing new. It’s the kind of mentalities shaped by the secret organizations, the Skull and Bones, the Bilderbergers, the Council on Foreign Relations and the other groups made up of people of privilege who were aggressive internationalists including the Cabots, the Lodges, the Bushes who saw the world as ripe for plunder and economic advantage.… It was not holy ground they were pursuing with their collective argot, it was simply profits not unlike the Robber Barons or the Colonial masters of previous centuries…

What we are doing is emulating the path of the other great conquering powers who eventually became a blip on the historical time line--eclipsed from their pinnacles of power because in their own ambitions, they were blindsided as to what keeps a country moving forward.

Our present government's view is already working towards the eventual downfall of America and towards a new economic unit that would advantage the rich and ignore the needs of the poor. We are seeing indications of that with the Mexican, Canadian, US treaty for economic partnership, which is nothing more than a shill for more profits for the bosses and dregs for the workers.

If we examine how we've neglected our own country in the last six years, we begin to see how America's policy has served to reduce this country to a colonial power while enriching those who control its assets. Our schools, libraries, and institutions of learning and science are less and less competitive and less equipped to meet the challenges of today. The Chinese excel at everything. Indians control our domestic job market for one reason: They work cheaper and don’t ask for benefits. Our work is flowing to other countries leaving our best and brightest to get by with part-time service sector jobs. College costs have forced parents already suffering with a stagnant housing market to incur more and more debt that they cannot already keep up with. Crime is on the rise in all of our cities. Why? Because the people do not see any opportunity. Our prisons have become a favorite growth industry of the rich that has no problem getting the country to pay 85,000 dollars a year to incarcerate one person whereas they stand to earn nothing if the state were to underwrite an education for half the cost. Yes, business is doing well--for at least the managers and the investors; but the truth is that we are in more debt than ever as a country; we can't afford to take care of our population's medical or pharmaceutical needs; and we have become a gross exporter of agricultural products and importer of finished goods--qualifying us as a Third World Nation. Increasingly, our future’s is being determined by a handful of countries—Japan, China, Britain and Saudi Arabia. What more proof do we need that democracy has been reshaped to fulfill the needs of the greedy in an age that is reinventing Sun Gods and unapologetic Royalty..


Yet, we run around the world investing in our high tech and weapons systems while our country falls apart. These are the issues that lie beneath the surface right now and someday, someone will have the courage to tell it as it is.

If we are to survive as a country, we must take our bitter medicine now. We must promulgate needed change in a way that will be good for our future. We cannot hope to move forward without a radical overhaul.

Presently, nobody is striking this chord.

But unless we do, we will join the ranks of Spain, Portugal and Belgium, the other once-great countries of the past…

Les Aaron

"Is Democracy Worth Fighting For?...And Knowing Who To Fight Is Half the Battle!"

“News&Views”
The Armchair Curmudgeon
April 25, 2007



What does it take to make America work?

People look long and hard for a solution that will elevate the Middle Class, end our dependency on fossil fuels, provide affordable health care and put America back to
work.

The key is participation; the feeling that I have a proprietary interest in what happens to my country. For too long, the mantra has been “what’s in it for me…” Or for the middle class, doing the shuffle to put enough food on the table and get my kids through school before they fall through the cracks and become wards of the state.

This kind of detachment has brought us to the endgame.

We have no choice. We must become not only engaged, but activist. We must make the difference.

Review your history and civics books.. This country was not created to insulate the rich and oppress the poor; yet that’s exactly what’s happened under one Reagan and two Bushes.

Our founders thought more of us than our current administration; now, it is up to us to think more of ourselves.

Let me just cite a few examples of how the Middle Class has been poorly served under three republican administrations.

Under Reagan, we experienced the greatest redistribution of wealth ever recorded. The Philadelphia Enquirer did a bang up report in 84 on the redistribution of wealth under Reagan’s reign. More than sixty percent of the nation’s wealth gravitated to the top five percent of the population. It now required two people to make the same wage as one person did in 1970.

Whatever happened to all that leisure time we were promised in the sixties? Whatever happened to Information Age jobs that would allow us to live comfortably until old age.


We’ll you can thank the last two Bushes for that and I don’t want to give Clinton a free ride either because he bought into the Free Trade canard that’s only served to kill off the Middle Class and reduce the rest of us to poorly paid service jobs…

Want to jump out of your skin.

Consider that under Bush II, management is earning up to 400% more than the average factory worker on the floor.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Green cards are being expanded to 450,000 guest workers. HB 1 permits have increased by 75%. Why? Because foreign workers will work for 25% less than Americans and they don’t require benefits. And our legislators don’t want to alienate the Microsofts and other big employers or the lobbyists who represent them…

Add to this the fact that jobs have been fleeing our shores to lower production costs (i.e. read ‘lower labor costs’) and escape taxes.

Under Bush II, 43 million Americans do not have a health care program.
And those who are on fixed incomes with Medicare find that they have had to put off operations and extensive surgery. Pharmaceutical users find themselves facing soaring drug prices. And some seniors are faced with deciding whether they eat or take their medications.

It is an appalling picture of how
this country is caring for its Middle Class and its seniors.

Today, NAFTA agreements and Fast Track have conspired to move American industry into third world nations while simultaneously denying employment to American citizens.

Today, 11 million illegals are competing for the same jobs normally reserved for American citizens and little is being done to enforce the rules of law at the borders or elsewhere. Today, a foreign worker can work about one tenth the time an American worker works, return home and qualify for Social Security in the US—even if they were only guest workers here on a temporary visa.

Today, there is a new program being promoted by the US, Mexico and Canada that will serve to eventually cut the ties between workers and the law reducing America to simply a land mass and mainly irrelevant to the conduct of business that will simply flow around the laws of the land.

Altogether, these examples demonstrate a government that isn’t working for the people.

The only way these injustices can be made right is through a spate of legislation that spells out punishments for those who so cavalierly interpret the laws to their own advantage.
.
To date, nothing is happening to remediate these injustices and it won’t happen because the people have not demanded positive change.

The only thing that can be guaranteed in the current climate
Is that our leaders and representatives will do nothing until they know how angry we are about their continuing abuses of the people. Until this happens, expect nothing and you will not be disappointed.

We are at the tipping point.

It is time we stood up and did what is necessary to replace this government.

I don’t think I need to hammer on the urgency of reinstalling a new government that is responsible to the challenges we face and the needs of the American people.

Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon

www.lesaaron.blogspot.com

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How The Rest of the World Thinks...

I learned a long time ago that the state of the world--and where we live--is often described in terms of the little things that people say or do not say and the icons that we hold dear. The inductive method lends itself to this type of observation and it begins with the individual. Of course, most newspapers use this method to prove almost anything…. So, while it is a worthwhile tool, the observer must exercise care in choosing his subjects for study.



Do they represent the larger body? And what makes them suitable test subjects are legitimate questions; nevertheless, they also open further avenues for investigation.



My thesis is predicated on my conversations with several people on a recent visit to southwest Florida; some of these people I’ve known over a quarter century; my second source is completely new to me.



Let me digress for a moment, annually I meet with a group of people drawn mainly from the mid-west, people I have known for many years and with whom I have a relationship of trust.



It is an odd pairing; I am a secular humanist—something they don’t understand; and they are mainly Evangelical.



These are educated people so their opinions are for the most part informed.



The one family I am thinking most specifically about is made up of laymen and ministers.



They are all lovely people who do good works without bravado or advertising the fact.



Probably the most difficult subject we talk about is politics. They tend to look upon the leadership of the country as being the president; not the individual who is the president.

Consequently, that tends to elevate the person who holds the president as being an extraordinary human being. Consistent with this notion is that a president could never mislead his flock or lie.

It is to my mind a kind of childish notion of belief that somehow is reassuring to those who consider themselves part of the flock i.e. the president would never do anything that is inconsistent with the betterment of those who believe. The key here seems to be holding the same things in common. As long as they believe that they have the same values, anyone holding the presidency can virtually do no wrong.



And this is the core of the problem and the reason why the president holds onto a base come hell or high water.



It has little to do with what he or she does; it has to do with what he is perceived to represent; that is my primary observation.



The second part of my thesis has to do with the intellectual well from which we draw.



Again. I employ randomness and observation to gather ideas about what the rest of the world sees and understand. Since again I am employing Induction to formulate my insights, I could be either off by a mile or a microsecond…. Nevertheless, in choosing subjects I tend to lean towards subjects that seem to represent the general case.



Using these simple lessons of observations, I never cease to be amazed at some of the stuff one learns on such a voyage of discovery.



On a recent trip to southwest Florida where I have a wealth of historical and personal memories from vacations and business trips over more than twenty five years, I found myself visiting a new library and a local bookstore owned by the library.





I begin this journey with certain knowledge; that the area is conservative and heavily oriented towards retirees from the mid-west which makes provides a fairly uniform platform for research and observation.



Getting back to my research, during the course of my investigation of this resource, I found myself in conversation with the manager, a man who had spent his life as a high school principal. On entering the store, he had asked me if he could help me find what I was looking for and inasmuch as the bookstore was overflowing with books laid out in a pattern I hadn’t quite discerned as yet, I told him I was looking to find a Vonnegut book that I had somehow missed.



We were both peers and I was surprised to hear him ask, "Vonn.....?" as if he had never heard the name. And after stumbling the second and third time, I rushed to his aid and pronounced the name again. I didn’t want to embarrass the man by describing his influence on those who graduated after the second world war.



He clearly never heard the name before.



This coming from a nice man responsible for the education of high school class after high school class who passed through the doors of his school, a man who clearly never heard of one of the most important post WWII writers!....



I couldn’t help but wonder how could an educator arrive at old age so poorly prepared unless his notion of education was far different from my own.



It was enough to make one wonder what has happened to education in the US?



THe bigger question to me was how could an educator who obviously quite impressed with his own academic credentials, a man of my own generation, not know of Kurt Vonnegut. I wondered what else this man who had shaped young minds also not know.



If an educator doesn’t know Vonnegut, how could he know what happened during the Beat Generation or the Protest Generation which defined much of the period through Vietnam. . I was sure he never heard of Kerouac or the broader intellectuals like Vidal or even people like Lippmann or Lerner. Who gave meaning to the post-war period right through Vietnam.. Did he know of the writers who wrote about that generation…. Could this man possibly know anything of the real world he inhabited? Did he know about the hawks who talked of falling dominoes, the Evans and Novaks and the rest of the war-mongering crowd who thought that the only way to save America was to spill American blood?. Men who failed to understand that all the Vietnamese leadership wanted to do was get rid of the Colonial powers and remove the yoke of foreign oppression…..How could he understand what was going on, in the same way he couldn’t understand how Vonnegut was condemning all war…



But by the very same definition, we were entrusting men and women like him to shape the way our young people thought. How could his generation of faux educators have possibly prepared young minds to deal with the aftermath of a war that caused us to lose over 50,000 young men and women. A generation that came home misunderstood and challenged by a world unprepared to welcome them back or appreciate them for their sacrifices.



It cleared my mind a little to consider that this man had probably never traveled away from his home town and never questioned things on his own and perhaps because of him and his peers, we returning Americans felt so isolated and rejected from the rest of America.



I thought about these things as I continued my conversation with this man who managed to grow into his senior years clearly detached from anything that conflicted with his preprogrammed thinking and I thought how unfair it was for his charges not to know what this man, an educator, could not deliver. And maybe that’s why we are paying such a price for isolation right now in a world that we barely seem to understand. It is my thesis and I don’t know if it will hold up to scrutiny but I think it is a good starting point.



Les Aaron..

Answers To Your Questions About Iraq From Your Favorite Candidate at this Virtual Town Meeting...

THE NEXT GREAT STEP IN INTERNET POWER: THE VIRTUAL TOWN HALL MEETING...

A Great Idea

Although it’s not new, MoveOn has recognized the benefit of the "Virtual Town Meeting."

This coming Tuesday, April 10, at 7:15 Eastern, MoveOn is going to take the Internet to a new plateau: It is going to use the Internet to connect people to the democratic candidates--from the comfort of their homes.

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich, and Joe Biden will answer questions from MoveOn.org's 3.2 million members in the first of three unprecedented virtual town hall meetings. The topic: Iraq.
Here’s the excerpt from MoveOn about its plans:

“MoveOn members are asking candidates the tough questions about their Iraq plans, and we're gathering in living rooms from coast to coast to hear the answers directly. The mass media won't be filtering our questions or filtering the answers—-MoveOn will be connecting candidates directly to the people.
“Right after the virtual town hall meeting, MoveOn will survey our members to see which candidate they believe will do the best job of leading us out of the war in Iraq. We will also let MoveOn members know how they can get involved with the candidate of their choice.”

We think that this is a great idea that advances the democratic use of the Internet and allows everyone to participate in the process.
We hope you will get involved and make plans to be among the first on the Internet to use this powerful medium to ask questions and get answers to your most pressing questions about the War, the future and the positions of our candidates.

GET INVOLVED/PARTICIPATE

Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon

A Primary Season to End All Primary Seasons....

Will it be over before it begins.

This is the question that more and more activists are starting to ask themselves.

But this question goes deeper.

The real question is whether or not we as voters and activists have deluded ourselves
into believing that we will have any impact on the course of this election.

Will the election be based on money and the brief period up to the end of November when more than thirty states will have conducted their primaries.

It certainly seems that way from the record numbers generated in the first quarter.

Right now, there are six super-stars at the top of both campaigns and, oddly enough, most of us know little about any of them.

On the republican side, it's Giuliani, McCain and Romney. On the democratic side, its Obama, Clinton and Edwards.

Of them all, we now probably know Edwards best and perhaps we think we know Hillary second best..

The Democratic field is not expected to change much with little evidence of the second tier candidates breaking through at this point. It would seem that Richardson, Biden and the candidate from Connecticut--as talented and influential as they seem to be--will emerge as first tier candidates when all is said and done...

Among the republicans, there is still considerable doubt. McCain has fallen in fund raising; Romney has many question marks and Giuliani's credentials were shaped during one day in September. The truth is that none of them satisfy the demands of the ultra conservatives in the Republican party who will shape the outcome and, as a result, there's a good chance that a politician with strong conservative ties may emerge and overtake the rest.

But for the most part, it looks like the races are decided....even though there is much more to know about the candidates.

If this is the case, it is both good and bad.

It is good because it weakens the impact of the old guard who used to decide such things.

It is bad because the decision is being shaped by money not positions on the issues or the character of the individual candidates.

When Jimmy Carter ran, which seems almost like yesterday, he said that he had trouble raising 2,500 dollars. Today, if you don't raise fifteen million in the first quarter, the chances are that you will get lost in the shuffle. And that's the way it's shaping up.

Some suggest that this will be the first billion dollar election and judging from the performance in the first quarter, you can believe it.
.
It is, however, staggering to consider that when push comes to shove, the biggest loser in this election may be the people who increasingly feel that they've been isolated from the process.

And electing another president without knowing Jack Squat about him or her truly seems unAmerican.

Les Aaron

Cuomo Eviscerates Republicans at Cooper Union

The 2008 Cooper Union Series of Debates

The Lincoln Model at Cooper Union was exercised fully tonight with the paring off of
Mario Cuomo and Newt Gingrich discussing some of the key issues of the 2008 Election.

It was a sophisticated juxtaposition of opposing attitudes conducted in an intellectually stimulating environment where Abraham Lincoln 151 years ago spoke to the American people and as a result of that speech, was nominated to be the candidate of his party.

It was in that spirit that Newt Gingrich and Mario Cuomo came together.

Their opposing views on the fundamental differences between their parties and their approaches to solving problems agreed to disagree but found some harmony on Iraq where each felt that what is being done today is failed policy. They focused on a few vital categories ranging from protection, to health care and Iraq.

Cuomo uses that opportunity to blast republicans’ record of failure after failure ranging from the way we handled Katrina, protection of borders, to the threat posed by republican policy to a diminished middle class. Newt on the other hand, also feels that today’s government has failed in its approaches to the problems of this country and the world in areas like security and health care but for different reasons.

Newt made one entertaining comment about illegal immigrants. He agreed that many of government services were “broken” and that they should be turned over to private resources. He talked about how the government cannot find 11 million illegal immigrants; on the other hand, he pointed out how efficient UPS and FedEx are delivering packages anywhere. He suggested that the way to resolve the problem of finding the illegal immigrants was to send them a package.

At the end, each agrees that the candidates should follow their lead and agree to debate at nine different debates on the critical issues of our time.

It was a delightful evening of point and counterpoint where each speaker found much to praise about their opponent and much to disagree with as to the position of the opponents party.

Well worth one’s investment of time for the ideas it raises whether one agrees or not in the light of the fact that we are not often exposed to ideas from our prominent leaders. Frankly, from this perspective, it was good to see Cuomo filling the air with his eloquence; there are many of us who felt it was a long time coming and we were not disappointed.

Les Aaron

Time to Separate Zealotry and Science

Let's Get Out of the Dark Ages, Guys!

I’ve got a bone to pick.

Look, there’s nothing wrong with being dumb.
There’s nothing wrong with being a religious zealot.
And there’s nothing wrong with being a Bush supporter.
But there is something wrong with being all three…



Amazing! The numbers correlate. Fifty percent of the population literally believes in biblical interpretation of the world and blocks out any notion of science’s credibility. Okay, that’s your choice. Just don’t impose your will on those who do believe.

Fifty percent of the population believe that Saddam had something to do with 9/11. And fifty percent of the population believe that Bush policies on terrorism are right on!...This is the same population that believes it was right to wait fourteen months before conducting an investigation of the worst disaster to hit American shores ever!....

I’m not kidding!...

These must be the same people who accept the fact that Captain America is dead!... These are the people you shouldn’t entrust with their own shoelaces.


Imagine. 50% of this country’s population believes that the world was created 6,000 years ago…and at that time, God created man and all the animals and the dinosaurs…and they all co-existed in the Garden of Eden until Original Sin.

I am convinced that are the same folk that used to stand outside the Horn & Hordarts with the signs saying that “The World is Coming to An End,” but in an ironic switch, if it comes to an end it will be due to these sign carriers who can’t wait for Armageddon.

So much for the impact of science in the second Millennium, Christian Era.

Good-bye Newton, Descartes, Darwin, Alfred Whitehead, Rousseau, and all the rest who tried to drum some smarts into our heads….

Science has been “dissed” in the Century of Science…a century where virtually all of the comforts we enjoy are the results of good science…and there are more scientists alive today than ever lived!...

The fact that in this day and age that half of the population finds nothing wrong with the prevailing mantra of the deists who see everything in terms of religious experience or belief, seems to put into question those verities that the rest of us have accepted predicated on our own acceptance of what we know is provable and good science.

Now, we don’t mind you holding to your own views; we just can’t countenance your influence on policy and direction for this country.

So, listen up!....

We know that the Universe is approximately fourteen billion years old!

We know that Evolutionary theory holds up and we know that the dinosaurs saw their end 50 million years ago!...

What science cannot explain is why nearly 50% of the population have no trouble believing that their faith supersedes scientific wisdom and proof and proven facts.

It is as if we have not moved beyond the Scopes Monkey Trials in the 1920’s when fundamentalist thought hewed to the idea that man and monkey are not related; and that both were created by God at the same time.

But while that is one dimension, we are faced at the same time with advances in our technology that allow us to possess the means to literally wipe the earth clean and start over—something that fits into the Messianic view of religious zealots.

The fact that science has given us this weapon of mass destruction does not seem to trouble those who accept prophecy regardless of the seeming contradictions….

In their purview, almost all the pieces are in play…

In this context, faith trumps logic, facts and analysis making it very convenient to provide biblical solutions to real world problems that plague this country today.

On contemplating this anti-intellectual view of the world,
It tends to suggest that the world may be divided into those “who do,” and “those who don’t” accept hypotheses, testing, and proof as a sound foundation for formulating scientific fact; instead, they simply dump it all on God to come up with the appropriate solution.

But is that good? Is it good for mankind? Or the future of this country?

Shouldn’t religion and science each have their own province and not interact or conflict with each other. If you want to believe, that’s fine. Believe what you want. But don’t use biblical theory to discount what we know is scientific proof. The fundamental difference between faith and science is that you accept faith without requiring proof; with science, you need hypothesis, testing, analysis, and theory and repeatability of results. Faith deals with what you believe; science, what you can prove… They don’t overlap.

Remember what happened to the Greeks when Pythagoras called the shots: It was the end of the age of scientific thought and the end of Greek ascendancy.

This willingness to accept the clash between science and religion is no minor thing; it has vast implications for the betterment of our planet. Farsighted framers of our constitution understood that religion had no place in the running of the country; that religion could be used to manipulate and control and counter what we know to be true based on sustainable proof.

What is particularly deplorable to any rational mind is the fact that this amoral government stands to benefit by exacerbating this expanding clash between faith and science. And its implications are long term and dour.

Consider that jobs in science at State and many of the agencies go wanting because there has been no push to fill these slots. (Who needs the benefits of science?)

There has been a lagging effort to underwrite science at the highest levels.

And an unwillingness to explore the evidence made possible by good science; and, perhaps most distressing of all, a tendency to even denigrate scientific findings if they conflict with their own long held religious principles or convictions…

To acknowledge that this is distressing is an understatement.

If science is denigrated by the people at the very pinnacle of government, what will trickle down? What will happen is that the majority will accept the theological arguments proffered by those who support Creationist theory at the expense of science and technology. Clearly, not only will the population suffer, America will lose its technological edge.

The world will as a result America’s leadership role probably condemning us to obloquy in a fast paced dynamically shifting world. At that precise time, Japan or China will supplant America in leadership and we will have forfeited, a situation that will leave us vulnerable to competition and military challenge.



But we will be concerned with more important things.

Like how will we recognize the End Times? When will people rise up to Heaven? What will happen to the Jews and the Muslims? What about the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse and when will they appear? And when should we pencil into our calendars Armageddon?

The other fifty percent of us must prevail or else….

Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon

Getting Out is No Longer Just a Democratic Issue

Aside from the mind-boggling reports that innundate this country with images of destruction and failure and the president and McCain saying as if to mollify the public, or treat them as fools, it's okay, folks; everything is getting better, we have to seriously ask us what is the fall-out from Katrinization of the Middle East.

Well, for one, we know that the Middle East has ratcheted up its hatred of America along with most of the rest of the world; it will take us forever to mend fences here.

We have taken a land that may not have been number one on the hit parade of what a country should be and literally turned it into the land of J. Alfred Proofrock, A Wasteland extraordinaire....

For four long years, we have been told that it is necessary to eliminate terrorism.

We have not eliminated terrorism and in the process, we have not done much of anything else....
In fact, if anyone can point to anything positive that this government has accomplished for the people, not itself, I would like to know what it is...

Magicians all over the country are looking to Mr. Bush to explain how he managed to distract the American people from all their goals and objectives for six years....

And some wonder whether 9/11 was part of the trick....

Too cynical?

Please. These people invented cynical.

Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon

The Army: Lot's of Technology; Not Much Armor

Why do we have a broken Army today?

One of the reasons goes back to the days before Iraq when Rumsfeld first came on board. At that point, Bush was committed to cutting back on personnel and investing with his friends, the Military and industrial complex, the guys who ante up the big donations.

Well, to make a long story short, they got there’s.

Here’s the run-up:

My original assessment was that Rumsfeld was between a rock and a hard place and that he would become the sacrificial goat. But I didn’t consider the depth of the relationship between Cheney and Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld was, it turns out, in an untenable position especially with the tax breaks and the investment in the Antimissile shield which was budgeted at over 264 billion dollars. (Still doesn’t work!)…

Okay, so there you are starting off with a mega-problem of having no money but tied to big plans.

What do you do?

The obvious: You substitute technology for manpower.

Rumsfeld cut back everywhere. He cut back on education to Vets; he cut back on Veteran housing and benefits. He cut back on care and treatments.

He even cut back on transportation and armor.

And all the money went to the big name contractors, the guys who know how to survive this game of lobbying and relationships, the Lockheeds, the Newport News, Northrup-Gruman, Boeing, and all of Cheney’s other friends like BRK and the rest; not to mention the guys on the sidelines who were making a killing in investments (Caryle).

But what the Secretary of the Army and his cohorts failed to realize that when all is said and done, what makes the difference is boots on the ground.

The fact of the matter is that hundreds of companies and subcontractors are richer than Croesus thanks to military contracts. The Dallas Tallahassee Belt is literally covered in gold..

And that military allocations have allowed subcontractors to field their own Armies who get an average of 150,000 dollars a year to serve in the Green Zone and live in four star accommodations—most of this coming from “expenses” paid for by the US taxpayer in the long run.

In the end, we are getting the tar beat out of us because we should have put half that money into the troops; we should have made them jump at an opportunity to reenlist; instead we did everything in our power to discourage them from wanting to make a career out of the US Army….

Meanwhile, the subcontractors get richer by the day; the consultants make money hand over fist and our GI”s buy their own armor vests.

Figure it out and let me know if it makes sense to you.

Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon

Something Fishy...

The way we treat the seal
Is really quite unreal
Some may say
That our dismay
Is tangible and real
For seals are just a sample
Of our failure to lead
By example,


Consider any affected creature
And remember what God teaches…
Then reflect on how we fail
In the main
Against the possibility
Of financial gain

Ask us why
We don’t prevail
When it comes to
Saving the whale?

We club the friendly dolphin
We tear the fins from shark
And we’re disinclined to
View such facts
Because they are too stark

Our global warming attitudes
Are killing polar bears
But it’s hard to really find anyone
Who show they really care…

If there’s nothing else to absorb us,
We stand by
as they butcher the tortoise
No reason to be particularly sanguine
When we’ve already abandoned the penguin
But we perpetuate the lie
And spin a happy tome
While melting ice
Destroys their home…

And when nobody’s paying attention
There’s no reason for intervention
So, before our eyes, the Cod is gone
Without so much as a speech
Or a song!....

Moreover, The flounder is under stress
But can hardly express
What industrial fishing does
To habitat
When it’s been going on so long
It’s already old hat!

We say, “Isn’t that sad…
In our cavalier fashion
Without the necessary passion
That on the menu,
nowhere is listed the shad…”
Shallow as that sounds
It resonates with those
Who buy fish by the pound…

We dump toxins on the krill
And then wonder why the fishing’s nill…
We pollute the waters
At every turn
And then wonder why
The fish don’t return…

Are we dull or merely mad
To ignore what’s before our nose
Or are we too preoccupied
To expose
All of these abuses
That stare us in the face
And we blandly do nothing
This condition to erase…

You would think
That men of good will
Would rise up
And end this orgy
And help restore
the flat fish and the porgy
If for no other reason
Than just the halibut…
And then think well of it…

Our eyesight is myopic
To treat the north like the tropic
Our failure to intervene
Is really quite obscene
But then they ask quite obliquely
“Is it meretricious,
If we only do that which is nutritious

“Or are we within our right
To stand by
And observe the blight”—A
Question of great consternation
For its impact
On the crustacean

We ponder so about such questions drab
And in the end wonder
How such decisions
Will affect the taste
Of the blue claw crab

We ponder out in the rivers and bays
And wonder about our thoughtless ways
And hardly one sheds a tear
As all the shellfish disappear
And realize it’s just our way
To care less about things
Until they go away…

And then bemoan our fate
When there’s no
Tasty sea creature on our plate
And we find it hardly credible
That nothing left for us is edible…

Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon

Elections: The More You Know; the Less You Know...

It’s worrisome….

A year or more before the Primary,
The guy—or gal—who raises the most money
Stands the best chance of survival….and incidentally
Winning the election!

How about that?

This is the prevailing thinking out there and it forces us, the hapless voter, to wonder what it’s all about but at the same time, not wanting to appear misinformed.

Of course, the fundamental question becomes why do we allow ourselves to be subjected to such exquisite torture unless we get something out of it i.e. like finding out who the candidates are and where they stand on the issues.

But of course, the campaign staffs will tell you right off that that is what this period is all about.

Really?

Here is the problem we face: How can the American people commit themselves to a specific candidate during the time they are supposed to acquaint themselves with the candidate? This is illogical..

Ah! That is the conundrum is it not?

So, what are we left with?

What we have is a cause and effect scenario that suggests that he or she who raises the most money is the best qualified candidate running. The interesting thing is that nobody questions that deduction; and in our culture that tends to always correlate money with being right, it is the natural order of things.

And when push comes to shove, who really wants a poor president anyway who is always sucking around asking for favors.

And if he isn’t rich in the first place, doesn’t that mean that there is something wrong with him or her?
…
Unfortunately, that seems to be what the tea leaves are saying.

Therefore, unless you have the wealth of Midas, solved the problem of string theory, deduced a solution for Global Warming, developed an alternative fuel that runs on grass and you have entered the Election contest, you are history, old buddy, before you even start.

Don’t worry about anyone getting to know you; they won’t!...And they won’t care which is insulting at least.

Right now, there are literally dozens of potential and real candidates running around to all of these fundraisers and nobody knows them. They don’t even know them in the diners in Iowa or New Hampshire. But candidates being candidates do not see that as a problem but an opportunity even though for the most part, they are blowing smoke…

There is only one way any unknown candidate can emerge from this maelstrom: All of the other more likely candidates have to self destruct!

And what are the chances of that happening? Unless some Moslem terrorist straps himself down with explosives during the debates and nobody’s left standing…or the candidates start howling like Howard…

The one thing that candidates mothers tell the candidates when they are being groomed for this job when they are six years old is not to blow it i.e. read do not self-destruct!...

What’s more, as we’ve discovered, serious candidates are seriously concerned about giving too much away about where they stand. Therefore, in the ultimate test of hubris, they expect you to buy into them without knowing where they really stand on the issues…

As it turns out, the most successful candidate is the one who gives away the least; therefore, the less you know about the candidate, the better his or her chances of winning…

This not only makes life difficult, it entitles you to participate in the grab bag that these elections have become…

A year from now, a contributor may say to himself, “Gee, I thought so and so really stood for A; but now I learn that they stand for B!”

Oh well, by then it will certainly be over…..and all of the donors will have little trouble carrying their much lighter wallets home…


There is no time to get to know a candidate these days even though we are beginning the process earlier and earlier..

I am convinced that the only way to get to know the candidates is to move to Iowa or New Hampshire and spend a lot of time in diners.

People in diners in Iowa and New Hampshire get the inside scoop.

We get about five minutes of it interspersed with Viagra and Great Abs commercials and a big dose of opinion that usually doesn’t say anything you can go to the bank with….
We wind up knowing more about Katie Couric than we do about Mitt Romney and is that the way it’s supposed to be.

I guess that would be okay if Katie was running and Mitt was doing the news… But Mormons can’t do the news because they’re not good at dwelling on objective facts and retelling bad news…so there you go. You would need a stand up guy like Giuliani who would have fired everyone on the news cast and told America that he is necessary to do the news and that CBS should extend his contract for six months….

The media is so concerned about taking sides against the current party in power that they bend over backwards to present the distaff side whether it’s valid or germane….

It will continue to allow them to seek access and send them rushing all the way to the bank on Fridays…

It’s really hard being a voter and trying to get the facts.

In fact, you have to go through piles of speeches to get anything of substance out of the exercise.

The trick in elections, one learns, is to say nothing; be noncommittal. Make it seem that you are trying to please every voter by first saying one thing and then saying the opposite. This is the Molotov Defense best known for confusing the opposition.

There are certain things most candidates have to be very clear about.

They have to be clear about values, religion and patriotism in that order.

Your values have to be at least as good as your opponents. And today, you cannot afford to get into the finals unless you wear your religion up front—which of course has to be Christian. There is no much of a market for an Islamic or Jewish presidential candidate in a country that likes to think of itself as Christian yet readily violates anything that Jesus would have stood up for in his short life. It is okay to use the word “Jihad” as long as you use it against those invisible terrorists.

Bear in mind, that you can not keep Americans docile unless you convince them that in order to do away with terrorists, you have to put the Constitution and individual freedoms on hold indefinitely.

Definitely, you do not mess with patriotism. If anyone is being groomed to be a patriot, make sure that you start early with the good old red, white and blue. And that does not mean of course that they had to sacrifice themselves going to war if they were too busy like our Vice President or had taken the easy way out with a short term stint in the Reserves. No, you don’t have to demonstrate you are a patriot to act like one or demand it of everyone else..

And when push comes to shove, if you can have one of those Southern preachers, like Billy Graham’s son singing your praises, well, you’re just so much more ahead of the curve.

We must leave that up to others who invest literally many thousands in the belief that their candidate will do what they want them to do—irrespective of whether that’s good for the American people or not….

It’s a strange way of thinking unless you are so convinced of what you are doing and the ‘rightness’ of your mission, that to not do it would be illogical. And that is the Zen motivator de jour.

There is another secret to being a good candidate: It’s to always be on the Offensive.
Never give the other guy a break. Keep pushing yourself by demeaning the other guy, not directly but by indirection. Sometimes the best response is just to smile differentially which would indicate that this guy you’re running against is such a dodo bird that even responding would be beneath you. It makes you look diplomatic and sensitive to awkward situations. What’s more, you wind up looking smarter and the other guy dumber when he comes after you with both barrels. Then you can get away with calling him a sorehead and misunderstanding the drift of what you were trying to say—which, of course, was a compliment.

All of this smoke and mirrors makes it all very difficult for a voter to sort things out. The voter is really caught between a rock and a hard place. He is forced to make a decision based upon very little useful information if any and then will be held to task for his decision for four long years. It is a mind-racking conundrum that not all of us are up to. As a result, you may find many of us hunched over our newspapers or listening to NPR for a hint or a whiff of a clue of what our candidate really stands for beside apple pie, the flag and mom.

But in the end, we all throw up our hands and give up and go with our gut instincts.

In the interim, we struggle along doing our best to appear sagacious despite the fact that most of us wind up guessing.

And so in the end, the American elections where this year it is expected that candidates may spend more than one billion dollars will wind up being an elaborate guessing game with nobody knowing any more than the next guy but thinking they do.

There will be hand-wringing, insults, and nastiness through it all and little information or clarity and in the end, 50% of the American people will be joyful and 50% will be either angry or resigned.

And so it goes. Elections in the new millennium, where all of the candidates are above average and all the issues and where the candidates stand ultimately unknowable. This despite the investment of a billion dollars to convince you that you are doing the right thing.

I say forget it all and visit a Fortune teller; you will probably get more out of it and at least it will be about you….

Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon
www.lesaaron.blogspot.com

The High Price of Rose-Colored Glasses...

What’s up with McCain?



Do you think that candidate McCain is losing his grip?...
Is he insane? Or just a liar?

How can he say some of the things that he does?
Just review the kind of stuff that he's been coming out with
since he's committed himself to staying the course in
Iraq.

To prove his point, that the media isn’t getting it right, he decided to go to Baghdad in order to show that Baghdad is really “safe” and that you can go to the market and not have to worry about your safety.

Only, a couple of weeks after he left that market the first time, dozens of people were killed and wounded by an incendiary device.

So, he’s had to go back and justify the position he’s taken for the campaign.
I am willing to bet that he’s sorry he’s embarked on this fool’s errand.

The fact is that while he's trotting around Baghdad claiming that
The country is really safer, the media shows him huddled among hundreds of troops, swaddled in armor, protected by snipers, and moved from place to place
by Black Hawk helicopters from the relative safety of the Green
Zone with a couple of Apaches lurking in the background just in case the bad guys show up.

Is he kidding? Doesn’t he realize how contrived this all is—especially when you have the hard-bitten journalists shaking their head with some of his pronouncements….

Put this all together and you get “encouraging signs that Baghdad is getting better?”
Excuse me? Perhaps it’s time for Mr. McCain to have a reality check.

If someone wanted to communicate how off the mark the well-intentioned Senator really is, he couldn’t have done better. This tour should have been underwritten by Mitt Romney or Giuliani because if anything, it has just moved McCain to the bottom of the candidate list I would imagine…

The very fact that McCain is so out of the reality loop--and so incapable of saying he was wrong has to weigh really heavily on his future campaign plans…

After all, who is likely to vote for anyone who can’t absorb reality and adjust to it—certainly a demand on any incoming Chief Executive… And it is rather sad and pathetic to see this whole scenario played out knowing what a hero McCain had been….

The truth is that he should have kept his options open and his mouth shut; but he didn’t and now he is yesterday’s mashed potatoes. But then again, no one’s ever lost money underestimating the depth, the maturity and the wisdom of the American people…


Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon

Will the Brits Stand By? It's Not In Their Character...

News&Views

The Armchair Curmudgeon

April 2, 2007







It is Not In The British Character to Do Nothing!



Can anyone recall Britain sitting still when its people have been held hostage by a foreign power?.



No, of course not. Britain would not tolerate it!



They may not rule the seas as before; and the sun may set on soil non-British, but that would not deter the Brits one iota when it came to protecting its citizens in foreign lands.



We must not underestimate their resolve. The Brits have backbone.

Since the days of Victoria, the Brits have not taken kindly to challenges especially when they involve threats to its people anywhere in the world. And until the Falklands, they have stood by their values.



Not in memory has anyone taken British hostages without England showing up with dozens of gunboats or some kind of show of force to bring the opposition to its knees. Whether it was the Fuzzy Wuzzies in Africa. Or at the Khyber pass or even in Rangoon or Mandalay where the Brits put an end to Japanese plans for South East Asia as payback for their bad manners in Singapore. And this policy has not changed one iota. It was true in World War II, and in South East Asia. Nor can anyone who has been there forgotten the fearless Scottish bag pipers of the Black Watch out front of the steely Brits seeking to take back Korea from the North?



Our English friends have stood up to any incursions or threats with a by your leave and an unchanging view of their world prerogatives. And that has been the case even with Argentina’s violations of the Falklands.



It must be said that Brits have not lowered their standard of protecting their own. That’s why one suspects that Iran will not be allowed to get away with this audacious act challenging British authority—something that they would never try before without facing the might of Empire. This, of course, has nothing to do with whether the incursion was either right, legal or judicious something most of us could argue about over a good Guiness. Britain doesn’t concern itself with such things when its power is in question. .



One suspects that the plans are already in full sway to get their people back safely and to preserve their perfect track record of standing tall when it comes to threats to English power. So, don’t be surprised if you wake up one morning to discover that SAS were dispatched to Iran and pulled the rescue off brilliantly with no casualties thereby preserving British respect in the rest of the world, securing its cherished tea and seasoning routes while sipping a little sherry and sharing "A Well done, old chap" while the rest of the world jumps up and down. .’…



Les Aaron

Where Does the Pharmaceutical Industry Come Down Between Morality and Profits?

News&Views
The Armchair Curmudgeon
April 1, 2007



If you believe there is no human cost to collusive behavior,
check your next pharmaceutical bill…



If you are a Medicare recipient, you probably spend a good part of the month cursing the pharmaceutical companies for eating up much of your social security pension..

And you may posit the fundamental question, “Why me?”

Well, don’t feel bad.
. You’re not the only one paying high costs for pharmaceutical products. In fact, you’ve got a lot of company and they’re called American retirees who are getting clobbered with things like high prices for drugs and an arbitrary killer called the doughnut that can wipe out your savings…

In the past, both democrats and republicans claimed they were seeking solutions
For those who are paying too much for high drug prices.

Their solution? The republican congress got together and produced a bill—a pro-industry bill that was literally hundreds of pages written by guess who? You’ve got it, the pharmaceutical lobbyists.

Then Congress was given virtually no time to read the bill or act on it.

While the voting should have been opened only fifteen minutes, it turned out that enough votes did not come through to pass the bill with all of its distasteful provisions until around 4:00 AM—an outrageous misuse of Congressional voting and pressure…

And when all was said and done, a bill came out that gave the pharmaceutical industry reason to applaud. And, incidentally, made the Pharmaceutical Industry billions of dollars more a year.

Why?

Because as part of the bill, Congress and Medicare was prohibited from negotiation for better drug prices.
Right now, the pharmaceutical industry has virtual carte blanche in setting prices with no investigations by the FDA which is loaded with pharmaceutical execs who just can’t wait to get back to bilking the public.

At least fifteen leading proponents of the bill were rewarded by the pharmaceutical industry and hired as lobbyista…The leading proponent of the bill really cashed in two months after the bill was approved with a two million dollar contract from the industry. Most shocking, he doesn’t see anything wrong with his behavior or actions.

Cynical actions by congress people who are sworn to support the interests of the American people; instead in collusive behavior with industry that are supposed to control and monitor…

A sad day for American justice when the people who are supposed to control business instead choose to lie down in bed with the most manipulative. Not exactly what the Founding Fathers had in mind two hundred and some years ago.

Think about that the next time you pay twice what Veterans pay for the same drug. Somebody has to pay for the lobbyists and the perks!

Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon
www.lesaaron.blogspot.com

Is Phase One of the Iraqi Invasion Already Cast in Concrete?

Phase One of Iranian Mission Completed…


Is the Iranian game already in play?

Ask yourself this: Is the mechanism for our intervention already there?

The rationale for going in and bombing the Persians back to daylight?

I asked myself this question when I realized that the supervisors of the inspection boat, filled with English sailors, might have been set up to clearly move into Iranian waters.

Certainly, we knew it would provoke the Iranians; but did we do it purposely so that we now had the excuse to go in an help our allies.

This would all seem very legitimate in the way the Iranians played along as we knew they would.

If our intent is to rescue the “hostages,” it could be the desired trigger that would allow us to knock out their nuclear facility.

But most importantly, it would be a strategic move designed to keep Bush popular with his base; it would distract Americans from the failures not only in Iraq but in Afghanistan, too, and it would keep the republicans in business….

It is a cynical statement but judging from what’s happened in the past, not outside the realm of reason for this administration where you need to match cynicism with cynicism.

Remember, according to the last NYTimes poll, 75 % of Republicans support Bush’s aggressive behavior to wipe out “terrorism.”

Good bye, Democracy; Hello, stupidity!

Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon
www.lesaaron.blogspot.com

The New Math

News&Views
The Armchair Curmudgeon
April 1, 2007


In Iraq, do two opposites make one positive?

What is wrong with the “Surge” philosophy..which if nothing else, seems to be the final desperation act of a sinking president with a sinking policy who is forced to pull a last minute rabbit out of a hat only to discover that the rabbit is only partially formed and largely incompatible with everything done before….

The president’s new rabbit concoction contradicts four years of having a diametrically opposed position.

Think about it, over the last four years we heard incessantly that there were plenty of boots on the ground to handle America’s needs in Iraq.
General Shinseki lost his command because he disagreed with Dictator Rumsfeld who preferred robots over soldiers..
And the newly appointed general in command suggested in a proposal to the Chiefs of Staff that we would only need 5,000 troops after Shock and Awe. No armor but an abundance of rose colored glasses!...

To date, no one’s paid the price for being so wrong except for the honest generals who disagreed with Rumsfeld who goes sailing off into the sunset, a hero in his president’s eyes. (Nice job, Rummy!)

Okay, we don’t want to be perceived as trouble makers for throwing the administrations’ words back in their face so let’s move on to the second fundamental change between Baghdad then and Baghdad now: General Petraeus—the architect of the new plan to bring sanity into a war-torn theatre where Civil War rules the day…

But here’s a thought: If General Petraeus’ ideas were so evolutionary and so on the mark, why didn’t we put him into Iraq before this?....Obviously, the reason is because nobody in the chain of command was buying his ideas at the time.

So in this act of last minute panic, the president sees no good alternative posed by anyone—and especially his father—he pulls out all the punches and selects the scenario least compatible with his historical track record. And after this admission of being wrong for four years, he expects us to buy this scenario—even though all the other scenarios he had proposed accomplished no positive progress.

This is a stretch for Congress; it’s also a stretch for Americans.

Why should we believe that after everything we were told is right, we now choose to go in the opposite direction because this has to be ‘right,’too. Hard to understand the logic here.

And I think that’s where most Americans are having trouble.

Here’s what it boils down to: If something was right for four years, how come the opposite action is right now?

Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon