Back in the early 1970s — an era whose tumult we yet may come to regard as benign — social scientists here and in Britain coined the term “moral panic” to describe what can happen when groups of people are seized by an exaggerated fear that other people or communal forces threaten their values or way of life. The scholars described those who promoted the panic’s spread as “moral entrepreneurs” — a term that takes on a deep resonance when you consider the commentators and politicians who have attached themselves, and their interests, to the “tea party” and its attendant movements.
Last Saturday, Secretary of Defense Bob Gates went out to the Eisenhower library to remind the nation that Ike’s warning about the “unwarranted influence of the Military Industrial Complex” was more prescient than ever. Cynics will argue that Gates is just tinkering at the margins, but if you read the whole speech you will see that he’s dead serious. Here are some excerpts.
I should note that even the bureaucratically-wise General Eisenhower was flummoxed by the Pentagon, now referred to as the “Puzzle Palace.” Soon after the war and returning to Washington, Ike made the mistake of trying to find his office by himself, and got very lost. He later wrote: “One had to give the building his grudging admiration; it had apparently been designed to confuse any enemy who might infiltrate it.”…
Eisenhower was wary of seeing his beloved republic turn into a muscle-bound, garrison state – militarily strong, but economically stagnant and strategically insolvent. He once warned that “we must not destroy from within what we are trying to defend from without.” This fueled his passionate belief that the U.S. should spend as much as necessary on national defense – but not one penny more. And with his peerless credentials and standing, he was uniquely positioned to ask hard questions, make tough choices, and set firm limits… Continue reading ‘Bob Gates & The Cost of Empire’
As I wrote back in February, the new short trade by the vultures who won big betting against the mortgage market, has been to short the Euro. This morning the EU fired a bunch of ICBM’s headed towards the offices of John Paulson and the other hedge fund vultures who planned to make a killing on the Euro tanking.
Credit markets rallied around the world after the European Union agreed on an aid package worth almost $1 trillion to halt the sovereign debt crisis.
“There has been a poker game going on between the markets and the EU,” said Gary Jenkins, head of credit strategy at Evolution Securities Ltd. in London. “This is probably reaching a climax as the EU has just gone ‘all in.’”
It will be interesting to see if Paulson and his friends have their bluff called in the next 48 hours.
From the day after 9/11, the Neoconservative narrative has been to build up the awesome threat of Al Qaeda power, so as to substitute this new enemy for their old nemesis, the Soviet Union. Remember Bin Laden’s Mountain fortress in Tora Bora? The need to continue to spend $1 trillion per year in fighting this mighty foe, depends on the American people buying into this fictional narrative.
So the capture of Faisal Shahzad, the bungling bomber of Broadway, must make Jonah Goldberg and the folks at The Corner a bit crazy. If this is the best that Al Qaeda can throw at us, they must be reaching the bottom of the would be terrorist barrel.
Shahzad allegedly bought the car for $1,300 about a week ago, responding to an Internet listing posted by the daughter of the person who bought the vehicle from the used car dealer. He gave the seller a fake name, but an e-mail from the transaction included a phone number that was from a disposable cellphone. Extrapolating from telephone records, authorities found Shahzad and confirmed his identity with the seller, the official said. Continue reading ‘Bungling Bombers’
The New York Police Commissioner and the Head of Homeland Security are calling the bomb attempt “amateurish”. I’d say so. The detonators we M-80 firecrackers and he forgot to open the propane tanks. He also chose the two square blocks in all of New York with the most surveillance cameras (see the bomb car above). Despite the phoney claim of the Taliban that it was their operation the NYPD doubts it.
Police and federal agents on Sunday were reviewing surveillance footage that shows a possible suspect in the failed Times Square car bombing, describing him as a white man in his 40s who was walking away from the area where the vehicle was parked, looking furtively over his shoulder and removing a layer of clothing, officials said.
Of course Matt Drudge leads with a banner headline, “Times Sqare (his spelling) Taliban Claim”. Wouldn’t it be uncomfortable for Drudge, Limbaugh, Beck and Co if the “white man in his 40′s” turns out to be a Tea Bagger like these cretins?
Concerns about the cementing process—and about whether rigs have enough safeguards to prevent blowouts—raise questions about whether the industry can safely drill in deep water and whether regulators are up to the task of monitoring them.
The scrutiny on cementing will focus attention on Halliburton Co., the oilfield-services firm that was handling the cementing process on the rig, which burned and sank last week. The disaster, which killed 11, has left a gusher of oil streaming into the Gulf from a mile under the surface.
Did we all learn nothing about the way Halliburton cut corners in Iraq to keep their margins high?
