Music of the Day: Bob James, Restless

That phrase above, "It seemed like a good idea at the time," is one that always gets a laugh, or at least a chuckle; it is mostly used by the office/family/organizational bonehead after he screws up and somebody, usually his boss or mom or spouse, asks him, "Why the hell did you do THAT?" Answer: "It seemed like a good idea at the time. Ha ha." The questioner, feeling sorry for the bonehead, almost always goes along with the joke, so the scolding or riot-act-reading that follows is typically somewhat soft-pedaled.

I don't know the provenance of the phrase "It seemed like a good idea at the time," and I'm disinclined and unwilling to search for it, but I do know that a more sophisticated version of the phrase (or, if you prefer, a more "nuanced" version of the phrase) exists and here it is--"If I knew THEN what I know NOW. . . ."

The latter phrase is all the rage these days, particularly amongst Dem-pol presidential wannabe's who are being asked, again and again, why they voted to support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Their answer to the question usually begins with, "If I knew THEN what I know NOW, yadda yadda yadda, and I was deceived by the President, yadda yadda yadda, there were no WMD'S, yadda yadda yadda, etc., next question please, how about an easy one this time, Brian."

This is the best they can do? These people are seeking votes for the highest office in the land and the best line they can come up with to explain their thinking about, or a vote on, a vital issue is more or less the same line the office bonehead uses to explain his most recent screw-up. (NOTE to Office Boneheads: Use the more nuanced version next time; maybe the boss will think you're ready for a promotion.)

Let's assume for a brief and thoroughly chilling moment that any one of these people is elected to the Presidency (including, most frighteningly, the man from the Planet Whackazoid, Dennis Kucinich, who represents the 10th Congressional District in Ohio where, apparently, the largest known population of Whackazoidians settled when the came to earth from their distant, clueless, lightless, humorless galaxy). When the first big crisis arises after (say) the Mrs. takes her seat in the Oval Office, her thinking might go something like this: "I don't know NOW what I will know in the FUTURE, so I don't know what to do about that massive terrorist explosion in San Francisco--but I have to do something--wait, what do the latest poll numbers indicate? Damn! This leadership stuff is tricky and hard! Is there a Republican-appointee left over somewhere that can be blamed down the road for whatever it is that I'm going to do or not do? I know--if that doesn't work, I can always say "I didn't know THEN what I know NOW." Yeah, that's it. . . ."

NOTE to Dem-pols: No one ever knows in the NOW what they will know in the FUTURE--except in fiction and the sweet never-never land of Hollywood films. There is no political equivalent of the Terminator, nor a Michael J. Fox-McFly character, coming back from the future to tell the next president what actions to take to achieve success or what actions to take to avoid disaster.

No one ever knows in the NOW what they will know in the FUTURE, so this CANNOT be the standard by which one makes judgments about what course of action to take or to avoid. Present knowledge is almost always incomplete compared to future knowledge. And that means we should reject out of hand this kind of philosophical-dodge, the old rhetorical soft-shoe, and start asking questions about what PRINCIPLES underlie a person's thinking. If a principle is at the root of a decision, we can disagree with the decision, but the principle will remain intact. Any person who utters the phrase, "If I knew THEN what I know NOW" probably does not base decisions on principles, but instead makes decisions based on. . .what? God only knows.

Leadership in a crisis demands a principled stance, not vacuous blathering about imperfect knowledge preventing forthright and decisive action. When you hear some yahoo politician of any stripe utter the phrase, "If I knew THEN what I know NOW," remember the office bonehead.

AJ

Music of the Day: Keb Mo, Slow Down.

For some months now RB has been politely, gently, and subtly buggin' us to read The Fair Tax Book: Saying Goodbye to the Income Tax and the IRS, by Neal Boortz and John Linder--and I finally finished the book yesterday.

It took me way too long to read this little book; I readily admit that I'm easily distracted by other books that catch my fancy, so in the time after I started the book by Boortz and Linder I started and finished some other books, such as: The Few: The American "Knights of the Air" Who Risked Everything to Fight in the Battle of Britain, by Alex Kershaw; The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour, by James D. Hornfischer; Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America, by Brigitte Gabriel; The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World, by A.J. Jacobs; and Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys, edited by Mary Eberstadt.

This means, of course, that I'll probably have to go back and re-read whole sections of the Fair Tax Book, a task that I've already begun. But it's only right that I try to record some of my initial impressions here before they completely slip through my sieve-like mind. . . .

Honestly, the first seventy two pages of the book held little interest for me, although I see their utility in setting up the historical context for the Fair Tax proposal; now that I've finished the book, I think the authors might have been better served by putting the first seven chapters at the back of the book. I wanted to get to the meat of the argument and I felt bogged down by the first seven chapters--but old reading habits die hard, so I couldn't force myself to go directly to Chapter 8, The Fair Tax Explained. I wish I had--I would have finished the book much more quickly and some of my initial misgivings could have been cut off at the pass.

Some of those misgivings came about, I think, as a result of (1) either poor editing or (2) poor construction of the book itself. I think I counted about five places in the Boortz/Linder book where sections of text were interrupted with a (necessary) graph or chart--and where the text on the other side of the graph or chart was not related to the initial phrase or construction. I try to read stuff carefully, so this was disconcerting and when I was in a bad mood one day I said to myself, "If the actual bill before Congress is this poorly written or edited, what other more serious problems and flaws might exist in the proposed law?" And you can probably guess my next thought, which was this: "Hell, now I've got to go on line and read H.R. 25 to see if it has these kinds of simple errors in it." This is not a happy thought (what kind of sick freak reads tax legislation!?!?) but I suppose it must be done--after all, why should I, or you, take the word of Boortz and Linder? Boortz is an entertaining cat on the TeeVee and the radio, but Linder is a Rep-pol and as such might be the devil incarnate. Hmm, maybe I've been watching too much CNN of late. . . .

Here are the nuts and bolts of what the authors envision happening after the passage of the Fair Tax Act:

The following taxes will be repealed--"the individual income tax; the alternative minimum tax; corporate and business income taxes; capital gains taxes; Social Security taxes; Medicare taxes (along with all other federal payroll taxes); the self-employment tax; estate taxes; gift taxes."

Furthermore, they say "The Fair Tax is not a VAT or value-added tax similar to European VATs." And, "The Fair Tax is a replacement for--not an addition to--our current federal taxes." And, "Don't let anybody fool you into thinking this is a tax increase. . .and don't any of you fool your friends into thinking this is a tax cut. It is neither. It is simply a tax replacement." (See: The Fair Tax Book, pages 74, 75.) Basically, the proposal is for a consumption tax, a flat tax paid on all NEW RETAIL purchases.

This is an interesting idea but there are complicating factors in what sounds like a simple (perhaps too simple) fix-it for our national tax-generating and tax-paying problems. Boortz and Linder try to address as many of the objections to and criticisms of the plan that they have gotten and are likely to get in the future; once I started re-reading the book, many of my own misgivings about the efficacy of such a proposal were somewhat allayed. Caveat: I do want to try to wade through whatever mumbo-jumbo verbiage exists in the actual piece of legislation; if I'm able to make sense of it, I think I'll feel a little better about the whole idea. Right now I'm positively impressed by the idea, but I have to read more.

The other disquieting thought that I have, and one that has been nicely anticipated by the authors, is the idea that power brokers in DC and elsewhere will do everything they can to ensure that this proposal goes nowhere; if there's a widespread groundswell for the Fair Tax, I'm not aware of it--but then again, my distrust of what passes for political "reporting" in this country is too great for me to reject the idea just because Anderson Cooper hasn't made mention of it. . . .

Still, it's a juicy thought--having a simplified tax code and eliminating the IRS at the same time.

AJ

Music of the Day: Bill Evans, Push.

Failed policies in Iraq! A new Taliban spring offensive in Afghanistan, signifying failure there! Failure to solve the continuing gas crisis! Failre to properly police homosexual Congressional e-mail predators of the Republican persuasion! No "serious debate" about whether or not to invade Iraq! Recognize the political party? Dem-pols, of course. And if FAILURE, Republican failure, administration failure, Bush failure, Rumsfeld failure, Cheney failure, Hastert failure, Condi failure, military-recruiting-quote failure, isn't enough to make you vote for Clinton (the Mrs.) or Obama or Edwards, why then it's time to trot out the other F-word: FEAR.

The environment is falling! Global warming! Melting ice caps! Endangered polar bears! Crime in the streets! School shootings! (By the way, the shooter at Virginia Tech wanted to kill "rich kids"--I guess the constant class warfare conducted by so-called "progressives" and Dem-pols for the last seven, or more, decades had some effect on young Mr. Cho.) A collapsing real estate market! The deficit! Homelessness (again)! A crisis in health care! Terrorism! Oops, sorry--not this one, terrorists are just mis-understood victims of western/American imperialism. Dangerous, spooky fundamentalists (not Muslims--crazy Christians!)!

Ask yourself these questions: When is the last time you heard a Dem-pol say something positive about the United States? When is the last time you heard a Dem-pol make an optimistic statement or future projection?

There's a related notion here: Any time a Republican tries to state a positive indicator about the economy (all of the important economic indicators these days are quite good), the war on terrorism (mad-dog terrorist plots foiled here and abroad), the many good things happening in Iraq (what happened to all those bad guys in Fallujah--did they just disappear?), the Dem-pols and the media dogs that yap the Dem-pol line say the Republicans aren't "facing reality." It's clear to me that the people who cannot face reality, especially any POSITIVE reality, are the Dem-pols. From the party of Franklin "The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear Itself" Roosevelt, they have transformed themselves into the party of Failure and Fear.

Harry "Neo-Neville" Reid says the war in Iraq is lost--FAILURE! Bring 'em home--we've lost! I can hear the soft echo of Jimmy Carter saying something about "a crisis of confidence" and "the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our Nation" in his so-called "malaise" speech. (By the way, I've re-read the speech, given in mid-July of 1979, and nowhere does the word "malaise" appear in the speech--but clearly the sentiment is there.)

I've been sick of this national self-flagellation conducted mostly by Dem-pols since Carter uttered his foul pronouncements all those years ago and once again it is time for some courageous Republican to re-assert a positive vision for America's future; it's about time to embrace once again the notions that victory can be won even in a hard-fought and long battle, that freedom is worth the struggle, and that the lives of our children and grand-children need not be filled with failure and fear despite the hard challenges that lie ahead.

I doubt that my father (RIP), a dyed-in-the-wool FDR Democrat would recognize today's Dem-pols, an apparent collection of whiners, scaredy-cats, and Chicken Littles. And I doubt that FDR himself would recognize his own party in 2007--this modern-day collection of appeasers, victimization-mongers, and micro-managers could not have stood up against Nazism, Japanese militarism, and the many significant military set-backs and defeats suffered by the United States and the Allies in WWII (see, for example: 1942: The Year that Tried Men's Souls, by Winston Groom, 2005). Social conservatives in FDR's day mostly hated his guts, but he fought the good and necessary fight of his time--no such Dem-pol in 2007 appears to have that kind of courage.

It would be nice in 2008 to have to choose between a Democratic candidate who espouses strong national defense and victory in the war against terrorism and a Republican candidate who has to match that stance. As of now, however, no Democrat seems to have the guts to declare that the United States will stand and fight in its own defense and in the defense of freedom and that the United States will support people around the world who seek freedom from tyranny.

And by the way, at the end of Jimmy Carter's infamous 1979 speech, he said this: "Whenever you have a chance, say something good about our country." This is advice that he himself ought to take and it's advice that he ought to give again to his colleagues in the Democratic party.

AJ

Music of the Day: Dave Matthews Band, Crash

I received a "comment" on a recent posting that had to do with the California Coastal Commission and its ridiculous lawsuit against the US Navy (see, What Planet Are These People From?). I will make no comment on the comment I received--the logic and argument and point of the comment says all that needs to be said.

With respect to yesterday's post, the Good Doctor makes an excellent point--if the critics of the "war on terror" are incorrect, the consequences are grave, a point which seems to elude them.

AJ

Music of the Day: Chopin, Mazurka, Opus 56, No. 3

Here's an idea that has been rattling around inside my head like the aforementioned BB in a boxcar. Maybe EVERYTHING I've written here about the "war on terror" is WRONG. Maybe EVERYTHING I think about the "war on terror" is WRONG.

I've written a fair number of postings here on what can loosely be called national security issues, or "war on terror" issues and I would encourage you to look through my archive for that stuff. But recently I have tried thinking about these ideas from a different perspective--that I'm WRONG, that everything is WRONG that I've read in the last half dozen years that has led me to write the way I have in my blog postings, that September 11, 2001 was just an ABERRATION carried out by the most extreme of the really whacked-out extremists who were themselves VICTIMS of Western culture, economics, politics, and depredations by the international Jewish conspiracy, and that there is no longer any real threat to the continental United States or to Americans anywhere in the world. Or, maybe it's true that we don't need to have a Department of Homeland Security. Or, maybe it's true that we don't need the Patriot Act and maybe it's true that the Patriot Act just ERODES our civil liberties. Or, maybe sitting down and "talking" with various folks such as Mr. Assad and Mr. Ahmadinejad is the best course of action. Or, maybe we can "alleviate the grievances that fuel extremism." (See: Why We Fight Over Foreign Policy, by Henry R. Nau, in Policy Review, April/May 2007). Or, maybe we should just bring our military home, down-size our forces as we did during the halcyon days of the Clinton administration (it's the economy, stupid!), and keep building shopping malls. Or, maybe Rosie is right--we need to find the bastards IN THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT who planned, orchestrated, and carried out the September 11 attacks in order to start a war to enrich the Vice President and his cronies in the oil business. Or, maybe American foreign policy is now controlled by a handful of war-mad neo-cons and blood-sucking Zionists who only wish to protect Israeli interests no matter how matter how many American soldiers have to pay with their lives. Or, maybe the Iranians just want nuclear power for "peaceful" purposes--better lighting, say, or more rides for Six Flags Over Isfahan.

What if all of this is correct? We should let our guard down--Islam is a religion of peace. We should stop searching every Tom, Dick, and Ahmed getting on domestic flights--racial and ethnic is a really bad and dangerous thing and it hurts people's feelings. The jihadists will eventually just leave us alone--Catholics can go to mass, Jews can go to temple, Lutherans can go to church, and Baptists can go for a swim--no problem for our Islamic brothers. We can just forget about the fact that there may be "only 100,000 or 200,000 [who] may really believe that murder, maiming, and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear and create a new political force will actually strengthen Islam." (See: The Myth of the Invincible Terrorist, by Christopher C. Harmon in Policy Review, April/May 2007).

I'm willing to at least entertain the idea that I'm totally WRONG about all of this stuff; but I wonder if the critics and nay-sayers and doom-mongers and "anti-war" activists are willing to consider, even for a minute, that THEY might be WRONG and what that might mean to a whole lot of people in the United States. What if they're wrong. What if the real enemies aren't George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Tony Blair and racist, Islamophobic America and Western European culture? What if the real enemy is the jihad-mad Islamist who seeks to kill as many of us as possible on his way to heaven? It seems to me that the "anti-war" activists seek peace without victory, which I think is another way of saying, "We surrender."

AJ