Miami needs to contract with Dutch Engineers Now!

Awakening the Dutch Gene  of Water Survival underscores the need of U.S. Coastal cities such as Miami to start taking global warming seriously in the sense that sea levels without a doubt are rising.  Carbon reductions will not stop the rise.  Only a concerted effort by localities under siege will do to mitigate the flooding.  As an anti-federalist I would rather see these efforts be local and not federal. Why should I pay to save Miami Real Estate when I have Connecticut shoreline to worry about?  Also flood insurance should be kept at market rates to help direct building and investment away from high risk areas. Subsidizing will only put more at risk.

Russian Jets and Helicopters to Iraq

Russian Jets and Experts Sent to Iraq to Aid Army.  Let them. Sisi Egypt is doing the same.  As if Authoritarian Jets and Helicopters are effective weapons against wily ISIS insurgents laughing about the impending air strikes with hand held anti aircraft rocket launchers at the ready.

Its always the Economy, Stupid

Thomas Friedman's Arsonist and Fire Fighters drew many comments and the New Times picked:

Michelle

 Chicago 13 hours ago

This column reminds me of Friedman's McDonald's Theory of Conflict from the pre-war late 1990s, that essentially, shared love of American culture and consumerism would repair all the sectarian violence in the world and lead former enemies to join hand in hand in pursuit of Democracy and Capitalism. It didn't happen then, and it won't happen now. Kurds liking dates from Basra won't make them accept Shiite leadership, any more than American love of tacos will make Americans welcome Mexican immigration. Until something is done to fundamentally change thinking away from tribalism and ethnicity as the main source of personal identification and political power, no amount of cultural affinity is going to solve the Iraqi crisis, or any of the other ethnic conflicts around the globe.

Great! But if people were working and and advancing economically then self interest would trump tribal vendettas.

Comment on Dick Cheney's interview with Charlie Rose Last Night

What a fucking authoritarian!  He is suspicious of Qatar because they own al-Jazera. He thinks Sisi Egypt is a terrific ally.  His every instinct is to top the pressure cooker.  He has no sense of History. If he were French and at the treaty of Versailles then he would have been the vindictive one planting the seeds of World War II, but as a disgraced American Vice President he now wants to sow the Middle East Armageddon he begat.

Newly Elected Majority Leader, Kevin McCarthy is the G.O. P. best hope for a Sensible Immigration Policy

McCarthy's Role is Debated in his Land of Immigrants. Democrats should target McCarthy this November and have Latinos run him out of office since his influence among the wacko's in Congress is minimal and it will really shake the party to lose two in one year.

Iran Says U.S. Should Avoid Iraq

Ayatollah of Iran Says U.S. Should Avoid Iraq.  Since Maliki is their puppet it does not appear that he will go just because some U. S. Political blowhards say he should.  Iran's total support of Iraqi Shiites makes it imperative we throw our full support to our only friend in the region, The Kurds.  

Decision to Renew Aid to Egypt is Useless

Kerry Says U. S. is Ready to Renew Ties with Egypt. It's a poor long term decision that will bite a future Administration in the ass.

24 June 2014 - With the al-Jazeera reporters convicted by the Egyptian kangaroo court it appears we didn't have to wait a day, much less a new Administration.

Don't Throw the Kurds under the Bus

Former Director of Central Intelligence Michael Morrell gave a three direction analysis of Iraq on Charlie Rose a few nights ago.  First and most likely is a partitioning of Iraq among Shia, Sunni and Kurds. Second was a Shia power play  using Iran’s Republican Army and Hezbollah to direct the Shia militias in Iraq and third was a pipe dream of harmony and peace directed by U. S. and other outside interventionists. It is a pipe dream because Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki did a thorough job of destroying the germ of reconciliation that General Petraeus’s Iraqi surge so carefully nurtured.  It took blood, treasure and maximum persuasion to convince moderate Sunni leaders to work with Baghdad despite the Shia majority. This effort lead to a coalition government in Iraq with a Sunni, Tarek al-Hashemi, as Vice President when American Forces disengaged in 2010.  From then on it all went south with Al-Hashemi sentenced to death in 2012 after an Iraqi court convicted him of running death squads, something akin to Obama having the Supreme Court string up Mitch McConnell on trumped up charges.  A massive  surge effort on our part will not counter ISIS, The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, insurrection which appears to be better organized, funded and promoted than initially thought.

For centuries the Ottoman Empire let the various regions in the Middle East govern themselves autonomously. After it’s break up during World War I it was left to the British to draw lines in the sand declaring various quadrants such as Iraq and Syria as Nation States.  Currently we are seeing the breakup of this fiction brutally maintained by the likes of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the al-Assads in Syria.  We should let it happen and give our maximum support to the Kurds in Iraq’s Northeast because as the only democratic and sane group in the region they are worthy of it.  The Kurds should not be thrown under the bus for the pipe dream of putting the exploded bomb back together again and appease Turkey and Iran.    

According to The New York Times article by Tim Arango, Bryan Denton and Suadad al-Salhy “In Chaos, Iraq’s Kurds See a Chance to Gain Ground” the U. S. and Europeans are actively trying to thwart early attempts by the Iraqi Kurds to sell oil outside Baghdad’s control.  Because of our loss of confidence in Maliki we should let them sell their oil to fund their defense. It’s really a case of fighting fire with fire since the ISIS group is funding itself with oil from Syria and eventually Iraq as well.

George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 uncorked the Tribal Genie of the Middle East exposing Mike Morrell’s CIA fear that other countries, such as Libya, will have it’s tribes re-examining made up borders draw up by Europeans and cause an even greater chaos  in the Middle East.  The West has to deal with rather than try to stop it.  If we try to cap The Genie and thwart the Kurds, the only sane democratic Middle East actor besides Tunisia, then we betray our only authentic friend and a possible future shining beacon on the hill for American values in the region.

Spanish thinking

Felipe, the newly coronated King of Spain, attended Georgetown University where one of his advisers commented that he required help in writing.  “He was using incredibly long sentences, filled with tons of subordinate clauses, and we worked together on writing in a more natural style of English,” Mr. McNeill recalled." I know the problem and it was not English  skill that needed work, but clarity of thought.  Spanish was my first language and my essays were just as convoluted.  The New Times Manual of Style and Usage cleared up the problem by college, but there are still remnants.  Possibly there has been a study of the problem I speak of.  The results of this Arabic style of expression is convoluted thinking resulting in nothing.  It is best exemplified by Harry Truman seeking out one handed Economists where he had no patience for the on the one hand this and on the other that variety. 

U.S. Military Airstrikes in Iraq - Don't do it

Obama is said to consider Air Strikes in Iraq.  Don't do it. It puts us on the side of the Maliki Shia and effectively takes us out of the position as intermediary in a civil war.  Besides, haven't we learned that airstrikes only harden the opposition?

The Best Description of Eric Cantor and why I detested him

"The combination of a successful electoral strategy and the safety net made being a conservative loyalist a seemingly low-risk professional path. The cause was radical, but the people it recruited tended increasingly to be apparatchiks, motivated more by careerism than by conviction." from Paul Krugman's editorial today.

Why keep artificial borders?

David Brook's editorial today regarding the "Sunni Shiite Conflict in Iraq" is dis-heartening in it's analysis that we should of stayed until we buried the twelve hundred year old religious split in Islam. ISIS, for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, is Sunni and is carving out a Sunni region within Syria and Iraq.  Let them!  The Kurd's would be better off by splitting from Maliki's Shia portion of Iraq as well.  Iraq was just a region of tribes drawn out on an English map after World War I so what is the big deal that it splits up? Is it worth one more American life to keep up the fiction?    

Say no to Sisi

The message that should be blaring like a flashing red light with horn blaring to the Sisi military regime in Egypt is: “It’s the economy, Stupid.”  Unfortunately the economic paternalism practiced by the military since Nasser is an institution. There is no chance that  subsidy and crony capitalist based precepts will change and so Egypt’s economy is doomed to stagnate to where Egypt’s young educated population will suffer perpetual disappointment from lack of opportunity.  Meanwhile the authoritarian powers looking for the appearance of order drive political discourse underground.  President Obama should consider The Carnegie Endowment for Peace Working Group on Egypt letter urging him not to “certify the democratic transition needed to release suspended military assistance” because its a bad bet.

Without a free market in Egypt’s economy the country is directed by self serving cronies driving the victims of its poor decision making process to the opposition. The Sisi government’s low election turnout reflects a delusional closed end loop of decisions by those who actually believe the made up conditions they propagandize.  It reflects a lack of intelligence. It will prove as fatal as it was to the Shah’s corrupt regime in Iran despite the oil wealth that supported it.  Economic intelligence comes from free markets that promotes many acting in their own self interest to develop in a manner that is best for the greater good.  This greater good manifests in a way that no central planner could conceive because it lacks crowd sourcing intelligence.  Central planning is always a corrupting hub of insider self dealing.  Free markets remove a great amount of pressure from authoritarian regimes by dispersing resentment to the market instead of the self serving insiders considered to to be part of the government.

General Sisi is appropriately named.   Nothing in his career that can be discerned as other than a successful apparatchik of Egypt’s military working within its confines.  No courageous decision for change can be expected from this leadership.

Obama is weighing Egypt’s duty to maintain the peace accord with Israel as a requiring our continued military assistance.  With a shaky government that may appease it’s Muslim opposition by throwing Israel under the bus, additional arms are contrary to Israel’s defense. If Egypt needs more arms to keep the peace, then let them ask Russia, their newly re-acquainted friend from the Nasser era and whose weapons Israel may find easier to counter rather than our good stuff falling into the wrong hands.

U.S. Food and Saudi Petro aid delays the reckoning that paternalism doesn’t work.  Egypt’s command and control bureaucracy needs dismantling and until it reaches rock bottom it won’t happen.  A Muslim theocracy may come after the deluge but without high tech weapons it need not be feared.