Anno Mirabile!!!!!!!!!!!!

ANNO MIRABILE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Year of miracles! 

On February 8, 2013, George F. Will wrote a long column advocating the breakup of the nation's largest banks. Just imagine the stomach-churning at the Republican National Committee! Break up the big banks!! Why, that damned Socialist!

At the beginning of paragraph 4, George actually commits apostasy, criticizing that saint, the very essence of the living God, Ronald Reagan!

"In a sense, TBTF [To Big To Fail. Ed.] began under Ronald Reagan with the 1984 rescue of Continental Illinois,then the seventh largest bank.

Gasp! Blasphemer! Profane Scribbler! Writer of Lies! Blaming the Holy Reagan! Why, why, why, that sentence could have been written by a liberal!!!!! Choke, cough, gasp!

Then another apopletic sentence:

"There is no convincing consensus about a correlation between a bank's size and supposed efficiencies of scale, and any efficiencies must be weighed against management inefficiencies associated with complexity and opacity."

My GOD! This sentence says that giant companies, like giant banks, may not be good for the American economy!!! And that, that, that, it hints that binges of greed in the private sector do not of necessity contribute to the well-being of the American community.

Last paragraph:

"By breaking up the biggest banks, conservatives will not be putting asunder what the free market has joined together. Government nurtured these behemoths by weaving an improvident safety net and by practicing crony capitalism. Dismantling them would be a blow against government that has become too big not to fail. Aux barricades!"

Gulp! Choke! Wheeze!! Holy Ronald along with George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush "...practic[ed] crony capitalism"!! We already know that the execrable Bill Clinton and the unmentionable Barack Obama were guilty, but these righteous and godly Republicans, paragons of virtue and sinlessness, they too????? Is there no justice, no love of morality, no standard of truth in this our land?????

I must say it: George F. Will is advocating ideas that the infamous Occupy Wall Street espoused. Of all things! It looks like the New Republicanism starts with this article. They lost bad and they lost big in the last election - echoes of 1948 reverberate across America. Yes, this is the first evidence of change. Let's see what a few more months produce.

Underperformed!

"Underperformed" I'll Say!!!

The Solicitor General of the United States reported this month that the 206 billion dollars allocated to rebuild Iraq in the ten years since the war have "underperformed."

Duh.

With that amazing statement one is forced to ask, just what did that war accomplish, what war aim was attained? Why did over 4,400 Americans give their lives to, uh, "free" that country?

And on Facebook, we see George W.'s smiling face with the caption, "Miss Me Yet?" And former Vice President Cheney says that he regrets nothing and would do the same again.

Don't these people have any sense at all?

AT LAST!

AT LAST!

"...realism about the sociology of government and the logic of collective action. The theory’s explanatory and predictive power, Buchanan wrote, derives from its “ presumption that persons do not readily become economic eunuchs as they shift from market to political participation.”

From George F. Will, Balanced Budget Amendment, February 7, 2013

Ah, at last we have an explanation of Republicans in office. They merely exchange one form of aggrandizement for another.

Thank you, George.

JOHN YOO LIVES!

from the New York Times:

"Memo justifying the targeted killing by drone, of United States citizens overseas..."

JOHN YOO LIVES!!

George, the Movies, and Terrorism

George, the Movies, and Terrorism

Emperor Marcus Aurelius in Meditations:

"If you wish to know a thing, look to its origins."

The term, "enhanced techniques" or "enhanced interrogation techniques", meaning torture, is actually a Gestapo term, "verschaerfte Vernehmung." This term indicates Gestapo practices.

To explore the topic of American use of torture, George F. Will uses two Hollywood productions: Code Red and Zero Dark Thirty. It is unclear whether he believes that the scriptwriters had unique insights or unique access to information or whether he believed, and wants us to believe, their stories. But a scriptwriters job, we must remember, is not to explain or elucidate or illustrate, their job is to sell movie tickets. Boring truth or ambiguous moralities have little influence on them.

He tells us that Michael Hayden, former CIA chief, claimed that half of our knowledge about al-Qaeda came from the use of "enhanced techniques." However, this is just a claim, not truth. Michael Hayden was head of the CIA when it used waterboarding and other techniques on prisoners. (1) That claim is just another example of CYA, or "cover your ass", in case Congress looks into the matter. (2) The "knowledge" so gained may have been useless, such as the fact that Osama bin Laden was a disaffected Muslim, that he was in hiding, that he had couriers bring him information, and the like. If the information had been truly priceless and valuable, then the CIA could have tracked him down earlier instead of ten years after his triumph.

I have deep doubts about Mr. Hayden's assertions.

Lastly, we have George's glaring lack of historical knowledge. On July 20, 1944, a group of Army officers and civilians tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a bomb. The Gestapo rapidly arrested most of the conspirators. They were interrogated using standard police methods, not torture, and the Gestapo quickly learned the extent of the plot. Later, some were tortured, but for the most important information, standard police techniques of questioning and cross-referencing information was sufficient. What does this tell us? That not even the Gestapo thought that torture worked. IT DOESN'T WORK, George, maybe in the movies, yes, but not in real life.

I must also note that the plot of Code Red came from the Melville novel, Billy Budd, which explores the moral ambiguity of our guardians, who must act for good by less than moral means. The movie has a schmaltzy, idealistic ending, quite in keeping with Hollywood. All this escapes George.

You know, if the Republican Party, our incarnations of selfishness, ever came out against the Cruxifixion, George would publish an article praising Pontius Pilate and executioners.

Taxation and Deadlock

On the night of July 14, 1789.

Louis XVI: "Why, it is a revolt."

Duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt: "No, Sire, it is a revolution."

In 1789 the French monarchy was, to put it plainly, broke. The government of the richest country in Europe had no money. The costs of helping the Americans win their independence from England had been ruinous, but the intervention had been successful. However, the treasury was empty. In 1787 Louis XVI called a meeting of the nobility called the Assembly of Notables and asked them for help in solving the financial problem. The nobles at the assembly were so shocked at the extent of the debt that they rejected any attempts to solve it. In desperation the government of Louis XVI called a meeting of the Estates General, which had not met since 1614, to ask it to levy new taxes. Instead of voting by each member, the monarch allowed the Estates General to vote by Estate - the three estates being the nobility, the Church, and the lower classes. Since the Church was staffed by the younger sons of the nobility, any vote on increased taxes on the nobility, the richest class in France, would be two to one. The people of Paris, joined by the elements of the army, stormed the Bastille, a symbol of royal authority, on July 14, 1789.

I often think of this historical chain of events when I hear of the budget deadlock between the administration and the House of Representatives. We live in the richest country on Earth and yet our government cannot raise enough tax money to finance its programs. It must continually borrow. Yet attempts to raise taxes are met with unyielding resistance. The reason we have the deficit is that we didn't tax enough before 2012; the political resolve simply was not there. Now the only answer that one party will accept is cutting domestic programs antithetical to its ideology, which a majority of Americans will not agree to.

Me included.

George F. Will YET AGAIN

George F. Will - YET AGAIN

"When liberals' presidential nominees consistently fail to carry Kansas, liberals do not rush to read a book titled "What's the Matter with Liberals' Nominees?" No, the book they turned into a bestseller is titled "What's the Matter with Kansas?" Notice a pattern here?"

Perfect reasoning, George. Would you apply it to the losers of the 2012 presidential election? The lessons you will draw can be instructive.