When Fantasy Faces Reality:

With all the fuss about hired guns cutting up in Iraq, it's easy to overlook the obvious. Nixononian politics taught us above all else to "follow the money." Paul Krugman puts the Blackwater et al affair into perspective in his Op-Ed piece today in The New York Times.

What nobody seems to want to talk about is the Bush party's plans to privatize the world. There was the plot to sell out the Social Security System to Wall Street speculators, the attempt to do away with public education, the privatization of America's prisons, and to fight America's wars with mercenaries.

The latest Blackwater incident isn't an isolated occurrence, it's a symptom of the attempt by the very rich to further exploit all of the rest of us. These are the same forces that have led us into the current housing crisis, by the way. The same folks who oversaw the failure to come to the aid of New Orleans because they couldn't figure out a way to exploit it for their own profit. The same people who demand that you go into debt to pay for a war about which they lied when they attempted to justify it and further lied when they promised the could pay for the war with oil money.

Big Brother:

Today's Washington Post addresses the current state of government surveillance of private citizens by looking at how the Department of Homeland Security is spying on and retaining travelers' personal information, including inaccurate or flawed information, which the department's critics claim cannot be corrected. In other words, the department might mistakenly identify you as a terrorist or even a common criminal, and once that information has been placed in its data base, you will be so identified forever. 1984 appears to have arrived at this party a bit late, but nevertheless it's here and thriving. (Read the article, "Collecting of Details on Travelers Documented.")

The Student Loan Rip Off Made Clear:

The federal government borrows money to finance the national debt (and the Iraq War) at an interest rate of 3 to 4 percent, so why do federally financed student loans on which the government pays the loan interest while students are in school cost the government (i.e. the taxpayer and eventually the student) 7 to 8 percent?

Michael Kinsley, founder of Slate, takes a look at the the student loan fiasco, pealing off another layer of government scandal foisted upon us by the Republicans over the course of the past 13 years. What's clear is that the student loan fiasco that has been high lighted by college administrators receiving kickbacks from banks for funneling student loans to them has come about because the government, controlled by Republicans until 2006, has been the dairyman for the banks, milking you and your children.

Follow the money.

More Idiocy from the Far Right:

Candy Rice and her fellow travelers who have authored a fantasy entitled, "The Strategy of Campaigning," have an Op-Ed piece in today's Times in which they mythologize the intellectual brilliance of the late Ronald Reagan and his presidency, during which he enriched the military industrial complex by many trillions of dollars borrowed from gullible tax payers and their children and their children's children.

The notion is, of course, based on the myth that Reagan "won the Cold War," by which they mean the collapse of the Soviet Union, which the Russians themselves had been forecasting as early as the 1960s. The Russians, as anyone who is willing to examine the evidence, are responsible for their own demise as the number two guys on the major powers block.

Ms Rice is supposed to be an expert on Russia. That's how she earned her shot in the Bush administration, where she notoriously mishandled information that might have helped to prevent the 9/11 terrorist attacks. What she really seems to be an expert at is talking really fast and loud and continuously so that you can never find out how little she actually knows and is capable (or incapable) of.

The op-ed piece portrays Reagan as a master of policy, purporting that this led him to victory over Carter in the 1980 election. But the simple truth is that image was the be all and end all of Reagan's election success. Rice's success has been achieved through her willingness to prostitute her considerable skills by maneuvering to find the right coattails to ride upon.

The Reagan legacy is the policy of fouling one's nest while misdirecting everyone's attention to the neighbor's yard. (Massive debt. High unemployment. Homelessness. Serious drug epidemics. Two of the worst fiscal recessions in the country's history, including the second worst depression in the country's history. Notorious losses of social services. And the glorification of self-interest.)

Technology:

Curiouser and curiouser: in an article in today's New York Times, Matt Richtel points out that "there are 78 million [baby] boomers—roughly three times the number of teenagers—and most of them are Internet users." In fact, Richtel tells us, "the number of Internet users who are older than 55 is roughly the same as those who are aged 18 to 34."

The latter age group is the one that advertisers lust after, as anyone who watches TV knows. But here's the thing, as Richtel explains it, young people, teenagers especially, are a "drive-by" lot. They don't stick around long, leaping to the next "hottest thing," disdaining not only what belongs to their parents' generation but also their older siblings.

Older folks—they used to be called "mature" with admiration—tend to "settle," and not necessarily with the negative connotations their children and grand children would have you believe. Internet entrepreneurs, according Richtel, are beginning to see the value in cultivating this group. As most people know, it ain't just the one time buyer you lust after. A good business needs the repeat customer.


Where We're Going, and What We'll Do When We Get There:

Tom Friedman, over at The New York Times, tends to drive me up a wall with his particular brand of liberalism. Leading up to Bush's Iraq fiasco, you'd have thought Friedman was the front man for the Cheney band so vocal was he in favor of armed intervention. But sometimes, or perhaps eventually, Tom gets things right.

In today's Times, Friedman tells the story of how "a $6 million high-tech U.S. helicopter with a highly trained pilot [blew] an insurgent off his bicycle" in order to capture the man. (It sounds like an episode on Cops, right?) In the meantime, Friedman, who is in China where no one talks about Iraq and the the leadership of that country is highly invested in discovering the answers to their energy problems, ends his piece today with the following:

That image of a $6 million high-tech U.S. helicopter with a highly trained pilot blowing an insurgent off his bicycle captures the absurdity of our situation in Iraq. The great Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi said it best: “Great powers should never get involved in the politics of small tribes.”

That is where we are in Iraq. We’re wasting our brains. We’re wasting our people. We’re wasting our future. China is not.

Education in America:

Today's New York Times editorializes that the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act needs to be strengthened, stating that "If all of the nation’s children are to get the education they deserve, Congress needs to strengthen the No Child Left Behind law." But public education in this country has never been about children getting "the education they deserve." Our public education exists in order to provide employers with an educated/trained workforce. Educational improvements will come about when employers demand that they be implemented. So far, only the technology industry has been raising complaints, and as long as they can find the educated workforce they need overseas, changes in this country will come about like the flow of molasses. Currently, the global economy and the de facto implementation of English as everyone's second language have more to say about the state of education in this country than any well meaning laws the federal government makes.