The End of The Aughties

There are 72 days left in the Aughties, y'know the current decade: 2000 - 2009. I was looking back at the decade, and what are its most important events. Here's my little list:

9/11 -- This is obvious. September 11, 2001 is clearly one of the most pivotal days in the history of the United States. In the previous century, there are probably only a couple of comparable events: the bombing of Pearl Harbor, V-E day, the moon landing, the JFK assassination. For several generations of Americans, 9/11 will be the most historical day of their life.

The Election of Barack Obama -- President Obama's election was historical in so many ways. Obviously it was historic that an African American was elected President. It also marked a transition to a new generation -- Obama is 15 years younger than Bush or Clinton (and let's not even mention McCain.) Obama is not only a Democrat, but is not from the more conservative, Southern Democrats of Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

Social Media -- Here's where maybe my perspective is skewed by living in Silicon Valley. Social media is not a single event, in fact it is a progression of events. To me, it really started with blogging and YouTube, and then exploded with MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. It is a fundamental change in the Internet. Every user is a creator of content, as well as a consumer. It is the great democratizing effect of the Internet, and it is only getting started. Even now we are starting to see how businesses, celebrities, etc. realize that not only can they use social media as a channel to customers and fans, but that it is a two-way channel.

Hurricane Katrina -- What made Hurricane Katrina so pivotal is that opened the eyes of Americans. It made people realize that many of their fellow Americans live in awful conditions. The divide between socioeconomic classes in America were never so obvious as during Katrina. When Kanye West went on TV and said that George Bush didn't care about black people, he wasn't just being a jackass, he was stating a sentiment shared by a lot of people.

The iPhone -- What did I say earlier about having a Silicon Valley perspective? Anyways... The iPhone has completely changed so many things for so many people. In the 90's, The Internet changed people's lives by bringing them information. Now the iPhone lets them carry it around in their pocket. Other phones were certainly moving in that direction, but the iPhone broke through by combining a large display with highly usable touch based interface. This revolution continued with the release of the App Store. Now don't get me wrong. A lot of other phones are following suit -- but that's exactly why the iPhone was so historical.

That's my short list. I know it's obviously biased from me being American and living in Silicon Valley. What did I miss? What doesn't belong?

A Great Day ... and A Day of Infamy

Today is a great day for America, and a day of infamy. Do you want the good news or the bad news first?

The good news is that today is the beginning of the end of the Iraq War. This war has been going on for so long, and has mostly faded into the back of people's minds. This is especially true these days as people are more concerned with the economy than anything else. But let's not forget how this war started.

The Iraq War became a certainty on 9/11/2001. On that day, just hours after terrorists from Saudi Arabia killed 2,974 Americans, the US government began preparing to attack Iraq. There was only one problem. Iraq was not involved in 9/11. The US is an ally of Saudi Arabia, where the terrorists has come from, so nothing could be done there. All that could be done was to go after the leader of the al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, and he was in Afghanistan. Luckily plans for attacking Afghanistan had been drawn up before 9/11. Those plans did not involve any US troops, just air support and special forces. It only took a few months to topple the Afghani government, and install drug traffickers to run Afghanistan. Given such a plan, it was not surprising that bin Laden was not found in Afghanistan.

With that little detail out of the way, it was time to move on to Iraq. But how to justify the war? We all got to learn a new term: Weapons of Mass Destructions or, in militaryspeak: WMDs. The US government produced all kinds of propaganda about Iraq and WMDs. Everything from yellowcake uranium to aluminum tubes were used to convince Americans that Iraq had The Bomb and was going to give it to terrorists who would use it on America.

And Americans believed it. Why? Are we all that stupid? Was the propaganda that good? Well maybe, but the real reason is that we wanted to believe it. We had malice in our hearts and wanted vengeance. The "victory" in Afghanistan had not satisfied this bloodlust. Maybe if we had caught bin Laden and let the NYPD beat him to death with nightsticks on primetime television (tape delayed for the west coast of course) then we would have been satiated and a little more likely to call BS when the "facts" about Iraq were presented. Who knows.

So the war began... It was definitely a more satisfying war for television views. We got Shock and Awe. We got to see huge numbers of troops marching through the desert. We got to see the statue of Saddam Hussein toppled and the American flag raised. We got to see our leader declare victory on an aircraft carrier. Good stuff. Great television.

Meanwhile there were massive casualties, but they were not the kind we cared about. They were not American casualties. They were not even Iraqi military casualties. No, the Iraqi military was virtually non-existent after years of economic sanctions against Iraq. The casualties were Iraqi civilians. Most agree that were tens of thousands, with some estimating hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens killed as a result of the war. It does not matter what the exact number is. It could have been millions of Iraqis killed, and it was still not newsworthy in the US.

However, not too long after victory was declared, the US started suffering casualties. There was a civil war going on, created by the vacuum of power left behind when the US overthrew the Iraqi government. US troops were prime targets, as Iraqi militants knew that the best way to get the US to leave their country was to kill US troops.Soldiers being killed by road side bombs is newsworthy in the US as it turns out.

The situation only got worse in Iraq, until finally in February of 2007, the US increased troop levels to support policing of Iraqi streets. Many folks, including John McCain, had been saying this was needed and should have been done before victory had been declared. After more than six months of this, the violence had only increased. In August of 2007, religious bloodshed caused the leader of one of the chief combatants, Mugtada al-Sadr, to call for a cease fire. In September of 2007, the US government claimed that violence was down by 50% and took full credit for this.

In 2008, as part of his campaign for President,Barack Obama promised to withdraw from Iraq. This was viewed as a weakness in his campaign. During debates analysts would claim that Obama was a little weak on foreign policy, but strong on the economy. The economy won out, and Obama is President. Today he announced a plan to withdraw the bulk of US forces by 2010. This is pragmatically about as fast as is possible. It's not easy to move 100,000+ troops and all of their supporting infrastructure and equipment.

This post ran long, so you'll have to wait for the bad news...

Wall Street Deserves Its Bonuses

All of America is upset about Wall Streets bonuses. Even The President is pissed. Guess what. All of America, including President Obama, is wrong. It's easy to say oh these already-super-rich CEOs are just lining their own pockets with taxpayer money, but that's a knee jerk reaction with no thought behind it. All of those billions in bonuses did not just go to CEOs. They went to tens hundreds of thousands of American workers. They went to traders and portfolio manager and secretaries and HR people. It was money that was promised to those workers as part of their compensation. It was money that many probably used to pay for their kids college tuition or pay off their credit card bill from Christmas or maybe just for the basic staples of life. Maybe they used it to pay their mortgages. If you just think a little, then maybe you won't be so outraged. Maybe you'll realize that it shouldn't even be any of your business.

But of course it is everyone's business because of the government bailouts of the banks. Worse we have all been brainwashed into blaming things on the greed of Wall Street. That is the great red herring of this depression. Politicians want you to think that all of our problems are the result of the greed of Wall Street. If you have a scapegoat to blame things on, then you do not have to take any responsibility.

So if it's not Wall Street's fault, then whose fault is it? There is an easy and a hard part to that. The easy part is that it is the government's fault. It is the fault of the Federal Reserve for using its unconstitutional power to amplify business cycles. The Fed created a climate of malinvestment by fixing interest rates at unsustainably low levels. And guess what, they continue to do this. The seeds of the next recession are already being sown today.

That's the easy answer. The harder answer is that its your fault. Its the fault of every American who bought houses they could not afford. Its the fault of every American who constantly refinanced their house to "cash out" their equity. This carpe diem approach has lead to historically low savings in America, historically high debt, and historically high rates of loan default and foreclosures. Those are the real reasons why any bank would be a fool to loan out money right now. No matter how much money the government gives them, it will never make any sense to loan it out. The people who would borrow are not likely to be able to pay it back.

Back to reality. Nobody is going to accept personal responsibility. It's the government's job to saves us from ourselves, right? I actually thought for awhile that maybe people would (rightfully) blame the government, but that has not happened either. The politicians have cleverly manipuated the masses to put the blame on banks and Wall Street greed. Now we are pissed that those banks are paying the salaries of their employees instead of lending money. It's obvious what is next. We take over those banks and force them to lend money to everybody. Then we will get what we deserve.

Vote by Mail

This year I voted by mail. It was very convenient. The state of California even sent me a nice little "I voted" sticker. So how did I vote? Most things will probably not be a surprise if you read my blog on a regular basis. There were a lot of things to vote on, so here is a quick summary.

President -- Barack Obama. I am no fan of his proposed economic policies, but the war remains the most important issue to me. Besides, most of McCain's proposed policies are so similar to Obama's. It is very sad.

Congress -- I voted against my congressman, Mike Honda. I wrote him about the bank bailout, but he still voted for it. Gotta vote against him for that.

Propositions -- These are the fun stuff here in California. The most debated is Proposition 8. This was a no brainer to me, I voted against it. Terry put together a nice post about Prop 8. I was surprised to find myself voting for Prop 2...

Distractions

Distractions are everywhere. Some people say that Ron Paul is a distraction. Is Sarah Palin a distraction? Or maybe it was Hurricane Gustav. I say that the economy is a distraction.

The focus of the election has become the economy. The economy is important, right? For two years in college, I actually double-majored in economics. If I wouldn't have been so lazy during my senior year, I would have a degree in it. However, it is not the most important issue in this election year, at least not to me. That distinction is still the war.

Sometimes other libertarian leaning people question me for voting for Democrats. I always say that I would rather have my economic freedoms violated than personal freedoms. In one case I am broke, in the other I am in jail. I don't want to be broke, but I really don't want to go to jail. There are worse things than jail, namely death. U.S. foreign policy has been dealing out death in a big way over the last eight years. War is worse than any economic or personal freedom violations. Of course war actually cause these violations as well.

Look at the Patriot Act. Clearly a war-time measure that is one of the most egregious violations of personal freedom in the checkered history of the United States. Look at our budget deficit and how much money we are spending on wars. Go beyond that and look at the weakness of the dollar and the problems that is causing.

If you keep looking, you'll soon notice the price you pay for gasoline. How much did gasoline cost before we started waging war in Iraq? I know better than most that correlation does not imply causality, but what do you think the price of gasoline would be today if the United States never invaded Iraq?

If we gasoline was in the $2/gallon range, the deficit was a fraction of what it is currently, and the dollar was stronger, do you think the economy would be much of an issue at all?

There is a price to pay for war. We have tried to push all of that cost to our children in the form of budget deficits, but it has not worked. We are paying it at the pump. We are paying it at the grocery store. We are paying it when we buy "cheap" goods at Wal-Mart.

War is the most important issue. The only hope for less war is to vote for Obama. I wish Obama would pull all of our troops out of Iraq and not even leave behind any bases. I am frightened that he will expand military activities in Afghanistan and maybe Pakistan. He is not a perfect choice, by far. But in the interest of Country First, he is the only responsible choice that I can make.

Yes to Bitterness

A lot of folks think that Barack Obama has really shot himself with his comments about "bitter" Americans:

"It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

That's the quote that everybody cites. It incited Obamafan Dave Winer to take umbrage at Obama's quote and state that "To equate geography with intellect is as wrong as to equate it with race, ethnicity, gender or age." That quote is taken from a blog post by Winer titled Is my candidate too elite?

Before I state my opinion on the matter, let's get a few things out of the way. A lot of people would say that I am the worst kind of elitist: a libertarian. I think Republicans are stupid for wanting to tell people what is right and wrong and how to live their lives. I think Democrats are stupid for thinking they are smart enough to fix everyone's lives and treating people like children. In other words, I think everyone is an idiot. I am a supporter of Obama, but only after Ron Paul fell out of things and Obama became my best bet to ending the ongoing atrocity that is the War and Occupation of Iraq.

That being said, I also consider myself to have a very scientific mind. Thus Obama's quote must be examined in context. Taking quotes out of context is the worst kind of yellow journalism (and perhaps the most common as well.) Obama was explaining why he was having a hard time winning over white working class. He used the bitterness bit as a counter to the notion that it is just because he is black.

You might be wondering what my point is. This is the kind of argument that always annoys my wife. The semantics of the statement are what is important. Obama was not talking about how certain people (white working class in the midwest) are, but why they are skeptical of him as a leader. Look at the recent history of presidential campaigns. The Republican Party has done an exemplary job of using divisive issues to win elections. What are some of those issues? Things like religion and moral values (abortion), immigration, and gun control. These are the exact things brought up by Obama.

So was Obama saying that midwest white working class people are gun toting, racist, religious zealots? I don't think so. I think he was simply stating the fact that certain issues have been effective in deciding the votes of those people. That is not a stereotype or generalization, that is a statistical fact. In the past those people have been swayed by divisive issues by the Republican Party. Now we are seeing them swayed by divisive issues by Hillary Clinton. Obama is just relating these as the facts that answer the question posed to him.

Finally, my propensity for scientific thought forces me to denounce the hypocrisy of the outrage. It is publicly acceptable to call the people on the East and West coast elitists. Everyone else says that the "liberals" think everyone else are dumb. In other words stereotypes of people in "blue states" is ok, but stereotypes of people in "red states" are not. Why is this? Because there are more red states than blue. Might makes right. This is the reason why divisive issues have worked for the GOP. They can play all of the stereotypical, prejudiced cards they want because the people who will be offended are outnumbered. Well outnumbered from an Electoral College perspective at least...

Awesome Obama Ad

This is way too clever.