Abu Hatem أبو حاتم

I just saw Congressman Kucinich on TV just blasting the bailout, unlike the rest of his party (Nancy Pelosi and Barny Frank et. al.).  He is the only principled democrat in Congress.  Happy to find another congressman against the bailout, I went on his website and found that he is opposing the bailout and offering his own “Main Street Recovery Act.”  Now the entire thing is full of typical liberal welfare and socialization programs, but there was one perk:

It is long past the time that we looked at the implications of our debt based monetary system, the privatization of money created by the 1913 Federal Reserve Act, the banks fractional reserve system and our debt-based economic system. Unless we have dramatic reform of monetary policy, the entire economic system will continue to accelerate wealth upwards. I am currently working on drafting legislation for an ‘American Monetary Act’ to address these and other issues in order to protect the economic wellbeing of America.

Ron Paul once said that if he was president he’d chose a democrat Dennis Kucinich as vice president (and his second choice was Chuck Hagel)!  Maybe Congressman Paul is getting to him on this monetary policy stuff.  Dennis is great on foreign policy and civil liberties.

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I am the only one tired of this cliche.  Congress should be “getting things done.”  The best presidents are seen as those who “get the most done.”  People are upset at there actually being opposition from groups of democrats and republicans on this bailout bill because it is “partisanship” and does not allow “getting things done.”

Umm… in a democracy if something isn’t debated and fought against, if there aren’t fights between powers, then we have collaboration of powers and tyranny.

And it seems like everything the Congress does sucks.  Instead of the Congress “getting things done” like taking our money, spending it like crazy, borrowing, and having war, maybe it should think about a novel approach - not getting things done.  A society when people look to government for the solutions of all their problems is a sick society said Edmund Burke.

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A very good op-ed by the California Orange County Register one of the only true limited government free market papers out there:

 Supporters of free markets believe that government should enforce some ground rules, but that companies should compete with minimal intervention. Businesses are free to make an enormous amount of money, of course, but they also must be free to fail. Yet the administration has pushed one set of market interventions after another, and when big companies fail, it is quick to turn to you, the taxpayer, to cushion the blow. That’s not capitalism, unless one sticks the word “crony” in front of it.

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More economists come out saying the bailout is dangerous, unnecessary and detrimental:

“It’s more hype than real risk,” said James K. Galbraith, a University of Texas economist and son of the late economic historian John Kenneth Galbraith. “A nasty recession is possible, but the bailout will not cure that. So it’s mainly relevant to the financial industry.”

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2008 is a pivotal year for the future of our country.  We are heading for perhaps an extremely painful recession, we just bailed out Wall Street for $700 billion dollars, we have been confronting the great Russian bear over Georgia, there are American troops in two long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 89% of Americans according to a recent poll believe we are on the wrong track, etc.

One would think that at this uncertain moment we would have some sort of strong leadership which would lead us out of this crisis and take us back on the right track, especially on foreign policy.  America is unpopular with the world, a more multipolar world is emerging, and American economic power seems to be in decline.  Who is going to save us?  Not John McCain or Barack Obama.

After watching that foreign policy debate, I am absolutely disgusted with both.  What horrid candidates.  I put together a little summary of each candidate’s foreign policy.

John McCain:

• Stay in Iraq indefinately, don’t leave without “winning,” we won’t be winning anytime soon.
• Georgia is a “rape victim,” and Russia is the “rapist” that should be blamed for the entire crisis.  Ukraine and Georgia should be put in NATO, and Russia should be kicked out of the G8.
• Sanctions on Iran to stop their nuclear program, if these don’t work then, as his oft-repeated ode goes “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran!”
• Does not support a surge in Afghanistan in theory.
• Does not support bombing Pakistan to stop cross border raids.

McCain’s most dangerous foreign policy move by far is the inclusion of Ukraine and Georgia into NATO.  Beginning a power politics competition with the Russian bear over a few provinces makes absolutely no sense.  Georgia’s addition to NATO would further increase Russia’s collaborations with Latin American and Middle Eastern nations as the Poland missile shield defense gave incentives for Russia’s military aid to Venezuela and military collaboration with Syria.  A return to power politics, albeit of a much more limited sort, less than two decades after the end of the Cold War is certainly not good for America’s standing in the world.

McCain’s only pros are his rejection of further militarization of the Afghan war which is tentative at best.

Barack Obama:

• Said we should “reduce forces” in Iraq within 18-months.  This is far short of his fast withdrawal he advocated in the democratic primaries.  Notice also, he did not say a full withdrawal this time, but a “reduction of forces.”
• While first saying “both sides should exercise restraint” on the Georgia-Russia conflict (which McCain hit him hard on), now Obama says that Georgia and Ukraine should be entered into NATO.  His position is exactly identical with John McCain.
• Advocates negotiations without preconditions with Iran, even at the highest levels, yet stresses they must be preceded by “preparations.”  He does still support sanctions and other types of pressures on Iran to prevent an Iranian nuclear program.
• Supports a surge into Afghanistan analogous to the surge into Iraq.
• Supports bombing Pakistan to respond to cross border raids as well as if there is actionable intelligence on the presence of high level terrorist operatives.

Barack Obama is significantly better than John McCain in advocating more diplomacy and more talks.  Moreover, because of his more liberal internationalist tilt he would rebuild America’s standing with the rest of the world, especially American relations with Europe.  Even though he does not advocate full withdrawal from Iraq, troop reduction would be extremely beneficial by cutting down the war’s price tag, reducing anti-Americanism in the Arab world, and weakening terrorist motivations.

However, Obama is severely wrong, dangerously wrong, on two points.  Firstly his position on Georgia, as McCain’s, is absolutely insane.  There is no other country in the world in which cool relations are in America’s national interest than Russia.  Unnecessary provocation of Russia will simply create problems and conflicts which are also unnecessary, especially at this point in time.  The Georgia-Russian conflict is an internal matter between both respective countries, and let us not forget that Georgia started this fight.  A double standard in accepting the right to self-determination in Kossovo, Bosnia, and other countries while rejecting it for South Ossetians and Abkhazians doesn’t help our cause much.

Obama’s second major flaw is his support for a surge in Afghanistan.  This would be a horrible idea, as the Soviets learned in Afghanistan over three decades ago.  Former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezenski remarked three months ago to the Huffington Post, that a surge in Afghanistan would waste precious resources and not work:

“I think we’re literally running the risk of unintentionally doing what the Russians did. And that, if it happens, would be a tragedy,” Brzezinski told the Huffington Post on Friday. “When we first went into Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban, we were actually welcomed by an overwhelming majority of Afghans. They did not see us as invaders, as they saw the Soviets.”

Overall, I give Obama’s foreign policy a D+ and McCain’s an F on the non-interventionist and realist foreign policy report card.  Obama is clearly a much better alternative than McCain on foreign policy, although he is really medicore compared to the ideal.  I believe that if Obama gets into office he will probably be a little more internationalist than he claims and perhaps put pressure on the Israelis to settle with the Palestinians and perhaps accept more raprochment with Russia.  Yet, even if this is not the case, it is certainly better than tensions with Iran, and Russia and more indefinte troop presence in Iraq.  As bad as Obama is, he is no McCain, and I do have a little wiggle of hope that if Obama wins this election it will constitute a final referendum on the Iraq war and a return to a less hawkish interventionism which will be a lesser evil.

This doesn’t constitute an endorsement.  I withdrew my endorsement for Obama on this blog a few months ago.  His views on numerous issues absolutely contradict mine whether in economic, social or foreign policy.  However, I do believe he is the lesser evil.  Take that for what its worth.

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Some other livebloggers, with much better commentary, are Andrew Sullivan and Oliver Burkeman of the right and left respectively.

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@ Abu Hatem News on the sidebar (or here).

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The debate tonight is going to be a waste of three hours except for political junkies wanting to know who will win, and people wanting entertainment.  People who actually believe they will learn something in a presidential debate are crazy.  Anyhow, I will be liveblogging here at AbuHatem.com during the debate.

Some predictions:

• Obama is going to lose the debate.  Hillary beat him in almost every debate.  McCain sucks at speeches but rocks the average joe “straight talk” facade like none other.  Obama is too professorial.  No matter who says what, I think McCain’s prememorized zingers will win him the debate.
• Obama has had a huge 2 week boost.  Rasmussen polls (the gold standard of polls) this week had him winning in the red states of Virginia and North Carolina.  On intrade his odds are back up to the mid-50s and even sometimes breaking 60.  Expect the race to tighten up a bit after he loses tonight.
• FiveThirtyEight.com referenced this political scientists data on post-debate bounces here which shows that “These data suggest that the norm is for very little swing in candidate support following debates. Across all thirteen presidential debates the average absolute change in candidate support was 1 percentage point. There are a few notable exceptions, of course. Two that stand out are the second debate in 1992, following which George H.W. Bush lost 2 points, and first debate of 2004, after which George W. bush lost 2.26 points.”  So don’t expect the debates to really matter.  But then again, we said that about VP nominees and Sarah Palin gave McCain his only two-week lead in national polls all campaign (since Obama won in May).

I think that even though the race will tighten after McCain wins the debate tonight, if this Wall Street mess keeps going during October then Obama could win.

Obama’s early victory indicators - his massive fundraising advantage, dislike of the Bush administration, high chances of recession, low economic growth - are virtually all gone.  Obama still has an edge because of Bush’s unpopular incumbency, but I don’t think that an Obama blowout like I predicted earlier is still probable although it is certainly possible.

Look for the state polls on about October 22nd, a week after the third debate.  If Obama is close in Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Nevada, Virginia, and even Indiana then I would say an Obama victory is very probable.  Don’t look at national polls, they never matter.

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Finally the neocon magazine Human Events comes on board and realize that Bush was not a conservative president, but the most interventionist in history.  However, since this is Human Events - no criticisms of global empire and foreign interventionism are included:

George W. Bush might be the most successful socialist in American history.  His administration has engineered the greatest increase in entitlement and discretionary spending since FDR.  His deficits amount to the largest tax increase in recent history.  His domestic response to 9-11 was the Transportation Safety Administration, the greatest increase in federal bureaucracy and payrolls in a generation.  His Ted-Kennedy-authored education bill is the greatest expansion of federal power over education ever.  His economic stimulus solution was to send “rebate” checks to people that don’t even pay taxes — the most direct transfer of wealth I’ve ever seen.

His solution to the mortgage crisis was to nationalize much of the mortgage industry, to forcefully deliver one bank to another at a government-determined price, and to buy 79.9% of AIG, the world’s largest insurance firm with $80 billion in public funds.  Now his crew of economic megalomaniacs have moved to bailout the nation’s incompetent bankers by using nearly a trillion dollars of taxpayer money to buy from them their worst investments – lest their losses lead to a recession.

Add in a war with Iraq of choice, a collosal waste of money, and you have an airtight argument!

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Jon Stewart rips into George W. Bush’s bailout speech, showing the similarities between the politics of fear in 2003, and the politics of fear in 2008.  Bush is trying to scare the people into supporting this bailout, but it won’t work, public opinion is strongly against this.

The democrats have proven themselves as the no. 1 supporters of the Bush administration.  They could pass this bill by themselves if they wanted to, but then in elections they would be seen as supporting a bailout while the republicans didn’t.  It would destroy them.  The house republicans are actually acting with balls, fighting against the Bush administration for the first time, and trying to stop this bailout.  If they do this, then congratulations to them.

McCain, Obama, Bush, Pelosi, Reid, are all on board to make ex-Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson a king-like treasury secreatary and to spend a trillion dollars of your money.

The democrats complain that they won’t be able to pass anything.  Thats the point, you shouldn’t be passing anything at all!  What are you talking about?  Bush’s threats are complete bull.  The economy will not fall apart if this is not passed.  The democrats and Bush were saying that if this does not pass by tomorrow there would be chaos.  Tomorrow?  Nothing rushed into makes sense.  This is all electoral politics.

I am absolutely disgusted by the republicans and democrats right now.  The only people making sense, who could stop this, are the House republicans who are actually trying to stop it.

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