Yesterday Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the transfer of military no fly operations in Libya from the United States to NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization).
Say what?
How come President Barack Obama didn't make the announcement himself? Or if the president delegated the announcement shouldn't it have been to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, especially since it was basically a military issue?
Or was Obama placating his women hawks featuring Hillary Clinton at the expense of his men doves featuring Robert Gates? Obama had already acceded to Hillary Clinton's wishes and ignored those of Gates.
This is more than a simple point of protocol. Did Hillary Clinton take this upon herself? Unlikely. But it's still alarming given that Hillary Clinton is the least qualified Secretary of State since World War II.
There are two qualifications for any cabinet position: executive experience and subject matter knowledge and experience. Hillary Clinton was zero for two. No, being married to the president and making trips to foreign countries does not count as foreign policy experience. Nor does being a U.S. Senator. The last Senator to be Secretary of State was Edmund Muskie and he was a late term fill in during the failed term of Jimmy Carter after Cyrus Vance had resigned in protest over Carter's failed rescue attempt of the Americans being held hostage in Iran. Even Muskie had been a governor.
The closest thing to executive experience that Hillary Clinton had prior to being named Secretary of State was heading her can't lose presidential campaign in 2008, which was mismanaged into snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
In her brief time as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presided over the most enormous leaking of secret government documents (to wiki leaks) and has yet to be taken to account. Why is that?
Here's a trip down memory lane of Secretaries of State past and their qualifications. Read this and you'll see how pathetic Hillary Clinton's credentials were.
Condoleezza Rice January 26, 2005 – January 20, 2009: President George W. Bush's National Security Advisor during his first term; President George H.W. Bush's Senior Director, of Soviet and East European Affairs in the National Security Council, and a Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.
Colin Powell January 20, 2001 – January 26, 2005: retired four-star general in the United States Army; National Security Advisor; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Madeleine Albright January 23, 1997 – January 20, 2001: fluent in English, French, Russian, and Czech; she speaks and reads Polish and Serbo-Croatian; U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; Carter's National Security Council’s congressional liaison; academic staff at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., specializing in Eastern European studies.
Warren Christopher January 20, 1993 – January 17, 1997: Deputy Attorney General in the Lyndon Johnson administration: Deputy Secretary of State in the Jimmy Carter administration negotiating the Algiers Accords, and securing the release of 52 American hostages in Iran. He also spearheaded the Sino-American relations with the People's Republic of China, helped to win ratification of the Panama Canal treaties, and headed the first interagency group on human rights. President Jimmy Carter awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, on January 16, 1981.
Lawrence Eagleburger December 8, 1992 – January 20, 1993: career diplomat; joined the US Foreign Service in 1957, and served in various posts in embassies, consulates, and the State Department.
James Baker January 20, 1989 – August 23, 1992: Secretary of the Treasury from 1985-1988; Chief of Staff for Reagan and Bush the elder; served on the Economic Policy Council and National Security Council.
George P. Shultz July 16, 1982 – January 20, 1989: Secretary of Labor from 1969 to 1970; Secretary of the Treasury from 1972 to 1974; professor of economics at MIT and the University of Chicago, serving as Dean of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business from 1962 to 1969; 1974 to 1982, Shultz was an executive at Bechtel, eventually becoming the firm's president.
Alexander Haig January 22, 1981 – July 5, 1982: United States Army general who served as White House Chief of Staff under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford; Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, the second-highest ranking officer in the Army, and as Supreme Allied Commander Europe commanding all U.S. and NATO forces in Europe.
Edmund Muskie May 8, 1980 – January 20, 1981: governor of Maine from 1955 to 1959, United States Senator from 1959 to 1980; Democratic nominee for Vice President in the 1968; Maine House of Representatives.
Cyrus Vance January 20, 1977 – April 28, 1980: Secretary of the Army and the Deputy Secretary of Defense.
Henry Kissinger September 22, 1973 – January 20, 1977: Nobel Peace Prize; National Security Advisor; consultant to the Director of the Psychological Strategy Board; doctoral dissertation was titled "Peace, Legitimacy, and the Equilibrium (A Study of the Statesmanship of Castlereagh and Metternich)."; Director of the Harvard Defense Studies Program between 1958 and 1971 and Director of the Harvard International Seminar between 1951 and 1971; consultant to several government agencies, including the Operations Research Office, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and the Department of State, and the Rand Corporation; U.S. Army Sergeant: volunteered for hazardous intelligence duties during the Battle of the Bulge; awarded the Bronze Star; taught at the European Command Intelligence School.
William P. Rogers January 22, 1969 – September 3, 1973: Attorney General from 1957 to 1961; U.S. Navy lieutenant commander in WWII.
Dean Rusk January 21, 1961 – January 20, 1969 (second-longest serving U.S. Secretary of State of all time, behind only Cordell Hull): World War II Army infantry reserve captain; work briefly for the War Department in Washington. Joined the State Department in February 1945, and worked for the office of United Nations Affairs; Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs in 1950; president of the Rockefeller Foundation.
Christian Herter April 22, 1959 РJanuary 20, 1961: governor of Massachusetts from 1953 to 1956; born in Paris, France; attach̩ to the U.S. Embassy in Berlin; part of the U.S. delegation to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference; Commerce Secretary; Massachusetts House of Representatives; United States House of Representatives; founded the Middle East Institute; served on the board of trustees of the World Peace Foundation.
John Foster Dulles January 26, 1953 – April 22, 1959: Both his grandfather, John W. Foster, and his uncle, Robert Lansing, served as Secretary of State; legal counsel to the United States delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference; member of the War Reparations Committee; participated in the San Francisco Conference and worked as adviser to Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg and helped draft the preamble to the United Nations Charter. He subsequently attended the United Nations General Assembly as a United States delegate in 1946, 1947 and 1950; appointed by New York Governor Dewey to the United States Senate July 7, 1949, to November 8, 1949; In 1950, Dulles published War or Peace, a critical analysis of the American policy of containment.
Dean Acheson January 21, 1949 – January 20, 1953: Undersecretary of the United States Treasury; 1939-1940 he headed a committee to study the operation of administrative bureaus in the federal government; assistant secretary of state in 1941; implemented the Lend-Lease policy that helped re-arm Great Britain and the American/British/Dutch oil embargo that cut off 95 percent of Japanese oil supplies and escalated the crisis with Japan in 1941; attended the Bretton Woods Conference (the birthplace of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the last of which would evolve into the World Trade Organization.) as the head delegate from the State department; Undersecretary of of State.
George Marshall January 21, 1947 – January 20, 1949: Chief of Staff of the Army; third Secretary of Defense.
James F. Byrnes July 3, 1945 – January 21, 1947: U.S. House of Representatives (1911–1925), U.S. Senator (1931–1941), Justice of the Supreme Court (1941–1942); headed Roosevelt's Economic Stabilization Office; also headed of the Office of War Mobilization; attended Yalta Conference in early 1945; close advisor to President Truman.
So where would you rank Hillary Clinton among these people as far as credentials to be Secretary of State prior to being appointed? Last if you're even a little bit objective. That's why it's alarming that Obama would let her infringe upon his responsibilities or those of the Secretary of Defense.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Libya: what the heck are we doing?
President Obama is making his usual mess of things in the Libyan civil war, trying to split differences. What happened to his willingness to negotiate with anyone as he stated during the 2008 campaign? He seems to be bouncing between two of his secretaries: Robert Gates at Defense and Hillary Clinton at State. Gates has the dove position and Hillary Clinton has the hawk position with Obama being dragged into the hawk sphere, trying to make amends for former President Bill Clinton's lament that he did not act more decisively to stop genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s.
The Arab League seemed to advocate then equivocate about wanting a no fly zone established in Libya. So why don't the Arab states just do it? Why do they need western states, especially the Unites States, to do it for them? They hate the west, especially the Unites States.
And why are so many in favor of opposing this particular tin horn dictator when there are so many from which to choose? If this were Mr. fill in the blank tin horn dictator, I doubt that much, if anything, would be said much less done. But because this tin horn dictator happens to be who he is, entire nations are behaving differently.
And why are U.S. war ships necessary to launch attacks? Why not launch them from Italy or France or Greece or, better yet, neighboring Egypt?
The United States Air Force is the world's largest. Second largest: the United States Navy. What the heck are we doing spending so much money on our military when Europe is spending less each year. One way to reduce our military spending is to eliminate the Army. That would not just save enormous amounts of money but preclude us from engaging in mindless WWII type military activities like those conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan for so many years, including the incomprehensively stupid house to house search. It's not 1944.
NO boots on the ground. Anywhere. Certainly not in stupid Libya, which is probably devolving into tribal war.
More fundamentally, Obama should have gotten Congressional approval, as Bush the younger did before attacking Iraq, and not acted unilaterally, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, U.S. Representative for Ohio's 10th congressional district, has been making the point on TV talk shows that Obama is/may be committing impeachable offenses. Unfortunately, all Kucinich is doing is talk. He has taken no formal action. If we removed a few of these presidents when they do this stuff they'd stop doing this stuff.
Leave Libya to the Libyans, whatever they are.
The Arab League seemed to advocate then equivocate about wanting a no fly zone established in Libya. So why don't the Arab states just do it? Why do they need western states, especially the Unites States, to do it for them? They hate the west, especially the Unites States.
And why are so many in favor of opposing this particular tin horn dictator when there are so many from which to choose? If this were Mr. fill in the blank tin horn dictator, I doubt that much, if anything, would be said much less done. But because this tin horn dictator happens to be who he is, entire nations are behaving differently.
And why are U.S. war ships necessary to launch attacks? Why not launch them from Italy or France or Greece or, better yet, neighboring Egypt?
The United States Air Force is the world's largest. Second largest: the United States Navy. What the heck are we doing spending so much money on our military when Europe is spending less each year. One way to reduce our military spending is to eliminate the Army. That would not just save enormous amounts of money but preclude us from engaging in mindless WWII type military activities like those conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan for so many years, including the incomprehensively stupid house to house search. It's not 1944.
NO boots on the ground. Anywhere. Certainly not in stupid Libya, which is probably devolving into tribal war.
More fundamentally, Obama should have gotten Congressional approval, as Bush the younger did before attacking Iraq, and not acted unilaterally, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, U.S. Representative for Ohio's 10th congressional district, has been making the point on TV talk shows that Obama is/may be committing impeachable offenses. Unfortunately, all Kucinich is doing is talk. He has taken no formal action. If we removed a few of these presidents when they do this stuff they'd stop doing this stuff.
Leave Libya to the Libyans, whatever they are.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Catastrophe in Japan: It's the Tsunami, Stupid.
The scenes of horrendous death and destruction continue to dominate our mass news coverage, especially on television. Nuclear radiation could almost be mistaken as the cause. It is not. People in Japan died because of the earthquake and tsunami (tidal wave) that smashed northeastern Japan ten days ago. The radiation from the damaged nuclear plants has killed no one so far.
We hear about our brush with possible nuclear catastrophe at Three Mile Island, PA in 1979 mentioned as comparable to the disaster at Chernobyl in the defunct Soviet Union. The Chernobyl plant did not even have a containment chamber, the massively thick concrete structure designed to prevent nuclear radiation from escaping into the air in the event of a meltdown of the nuclear reactor within it.
The Japanese stored significant amounts of spent nuclear fuel rods on the roofs of its containment chambers. On the ROOFS! This is incomprehensibly stupid. And the Japanese did it, not the Russians.
Lest you think that I endorse nuclear energy in the United States I advocate closing our nuclear plants immediately. There is no way to safely dispose of the spent nuclear fuel rods. No one has found a way to do it, not we Americans, not the French, not the Japanese, obviously.
Every expert I've heard interviewed in recent days states that the U.S. must continue to use nuclear energy, just be really careful. There's no such thing as careful in disposing of the spent nuclear fuel rods. Ask the Japanese.
The explanation is that the U.S. gets 20% of its electricity from "clean" nuclear energy. How about we CONSERVE 20% and close the damn nuclear energy plants? Doesn't that make more sense?
Oh, how ever could we do that? Suppose that those nuclear energy plants stopped functioning. Do you think we could figure it out? Of course. So let's just do it. And while we're at it stop using oil. Same idea. Just stop. That would kick renewable energy into high gear.
We hear about our brush with possible nuclear catastrophe at Three Mile Island, PA in 1979 mentioned as comparable to the disaster at Chernobyl in the defunct Soviet Union. The Chernobyl plant did not even have a containment chamber, the massively thick concrete structure designed to prevent nuclear radiation from escaping into the air in the event of a meltdown of the nuclear reactor within it.
The Japanese stored significant amounts of spent nuclear fuel rods on the roofs of its containment chambers. On the ROOFS! This is incomprehensibly stupid. And the Japanese did it, not the Russians.
Lest you think that I endorse nuclear energy in the United States I advocate closing our nuclear plants immediately. There is no way to safely dispose of the spent nuclear fuel rods. No one has found a way to do it, not we Americans, not the French, not the Japanese, obviously.
Every expert I've heard interviewed in recent days states that the U.S. must continue to use nuclear energy, just be really careful. There's no such thing as careful in disposing of the spent nuclear fuel rods. Ask the Japanese.
The explanation is that the U.S. gets 20% of its electricity from "clean" nuclear energy. How about we CONSERVE 20% and close the damn nuclear energy plants? Doesn't that make more sense?
Oh, how ever could we do that? Suppose that those nuclear energy plants stopped functioning. Do you think we could figure it out? Of course. So let's just do it. And while we're at it stop using oil. Same idea. Just stop. That would kick renewable energy into high gear.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Most American workers are not needed and should stay home.
Prior to this blog I had some truisms. These three seem to be converging:
1. Around 1990 I stated that there would be an ever increasing gap not only between the haves and the have nots but also between the knows and the know nots.
2. We're all on welfare, especially people with jobs. For instance, retired people get paid to not work. They don't want to consider that welfare but it is.
3. 90% of work in America is not necessary.
How can this be? Technology. We no longer need all adults to work for the country to be prosperous. In fact, we're probably better off with them not working. The percentage of adults needed for work will continue to decrease.
Recent articles have impacted these concepts. Computer systems, including artificial intelligence for things like e-discovery in the practice of law, degrade the job possibilities for the knows, i.e., those who are educated. There are computer systems that can generate newer computer systems. Obviously, this undermines the mindless conventional wisdom most recently espoused by former Florida governor Jeb Bush at a joint appearance in Florida with President Obama. Even if throwing money at the education disaster worked and properly educated most students, there may not be enough jobs to support all the educated in our model of middle class life, which is assumed to be necessary to support our capitalist economic system.
Most entire industries in the U.S. are not necessary: advertising, insurance, junk food, real estate sales, insurance, much of law, sales, banking, etc. Necessary are:
- food production
- health care
- public safety: military, police, fire protection
- communication
- distribution
- infrastructure
- high level engineering, especially computer science
- physical labor, especially the big three that cannot be outsourced: electrician, plumber, carpenter.
Much of the rest is done in other countries anyway: clothing, manufacturing (especially electronic), toys. etc.
That's about it. How many people do you who know are working in those necessary categories and, if they are, how many are doing jobs that require a human being? What percentage of the U.S. work force is necessary? I'm guessing ten percent.
So instead of fighting the obvious, why not deal with it. Send people home and share the remaining work. Or have everybody do something local like cleaning up public areas. Stop trying to decrease unemployment. That's a losing strategy.
Our Puritan American work ethic is still very valuable. However, it is misplaced for most American workers who would rather work for a paycheck than accept welfare. The problem is that most of their jobs are welfare because the jobs themselves are not needed. What else would you call that? They are performing the old 1930s depression era economic concept of being paid to dig a hole and then fill it up.
Just let most of them stay the heck home and take care of their kids. That would be a greater contribution to the nation than jerking around at work, consuming energy both at the work place and in transportation to/from it.
At least 30 years ago it was thought that office workers could tele-commute, i.e. work from home. That never happened, I think, because boring old corporate management did not trust its workers to work at home. Better to have them goofing off at the office and tending to personal stuff on company time.
Even education, once kids are taught to read and write, may be done better by computers and those stay at home parents. Today's teachers are clearly getting increasingly worse results. Those clowns in Wisconsin should wake up and realize that most of them are not needed.
With the web people can educate themselves, even without using formal educational online programs. Most colleges have online classes. Many, maybe most, will not educate themselves. Those are the same ones who are not learning now, except that they are consuming resources better allocated elsewhere.
Grammar schools have devolved into incredibly inefficient baby sitters for working mothers, still earning less than their male counterparts, who would be more valuable staying home and educating their kids themselves. With my system, most dads could stay home, too, and do likewise.
Pay people to:
- educate their own kids
- perform local public service stuff
- spend.
That should have the economy humming along nicely.
1. Around 1990 I stated that there would be an ever increasing gap not only between the haves and the have nots but also between the knows and the know nots.
2. We're all on welfare, especially people with jobs. For instance, retired people get paid to not work. They don't want to consider that welfare but it is.
3. 90% of work in America is not necessary.
How can this be? Technology. We no longer need all adults to work for the country to be prosperous. In fact, we're probably better off with them not working. The percentage of adults needed for work will continue to decrease.
Recent articles have impacted these concepts. Computer systems, including artificial intelligence for things like e-discovery in the practice of law, degrade the job possibilities for the knows, i.e., those who are educated. There are computer systems that can generate newer computer systems. Obviously, this undermines the mindless conventional wisdom most recently espoused by former Florida governor Jeb Bush at a joint appearance in Florida with President Obama. Even if throwing money at the education disaster worked and properly educated most students, there may not be enough jobs to support all the educated in our model of middle class life, which is assumed to be necessary to support our capitalist economic system.
Most entire industries in the U.S. are not necessary: advertising, insurance, junk food, real estate sales, insurance, much of law, sales, banking, etc. Necessary are:
- food production
- health care
- public safety: military, police, fire protection
- communication
- distribution
- infrastructure
- high level engineering, especially computer science
- physical labor, especially the big three that cannot be outsourced: electrician, plumber, carpenter.
Much of the rest is done in other countries anyway: clothing, manufacturing (especially electronic), toys. etc.
That's about it. How many people do you who know are working in those necessary categories and, if they are, how many are doing jobs that require a human being? What percentage of the U.S. work force is necessary? I'm guessing ten percent.
So instead of fighting the obvious, why not deal with it. Send people home and share the remaining work. Or have everybody do something local like cleaning up public areas. Stop trying to decrease unemployment. That's a losing strategy.
Our Puritan American work ethic is still very valuable. However, it is misplaced for most American workers who would rather work for a paycheck than accept welfare. The problem is that most of their jobs are welfare because the jobs themselves are not needed. What else would you call that? They are performing the old 1930s depression era economic concept of being paid to dig a hole and then fill it up.
Just let most of them stay the heck home and take care of their kids. That would be a greater contribution to the nation than jerking around at work, consuming energy both at the work place and in transportation to/from it.
At least 30 years ago it was thought that office workers could tele-commute, i.e. work from home. That never happened, I think, because boring old corporate management did not trust its workers to work at home. Better to have them goofing off at the office and tending to personal stuff on company time.
Even education, once kids are taught to read and write, may be done better by computers and those stay at home parents. Today's teachers are clearly getting increasingly worse results. Those clowns in Wisconsin should wake up and realize that most of them are not needed.
With the web people can educate themselves, even without using formal educational online programs. Most colleges have online classes. Many, maybe most, will not educate themselves. Those are the same ones who are not learning now, except that they are consuming resources better allocated elsewhere.
Grammar schools have devolved into incredibly inefficient baby sitters for working mothers, still earning less than their male counterparts, who would be more valuable staying home and educating their kids themselves. With my system, most dads could stay home, too, and do likewise.
Pay people to:
- educate their own kids
- perform local public service stuff
- spend.
That should have the economy humming along nicely.
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