Ethel the Blog

Dean Baker writes about how venerated economists such as Greenspan are either incompetent or crooked in regards to the housing bubble whose collapse is currently wreaking havoc on the economy. That is, the head of the Federal Reserve Bank for 18 years was either incapable of simple applications of such concepts as supply and demand as taught in Econ 101, or had an agenda that didn’t involve rationally dealing with irrational phenomena such as housing bubbles.

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How did we get here? The centerpiece in this story is the United States allowed an $8 trillion housing bubble to grow unchecked. Between 1996 and 2006, house prices rose by more than 70 percent, after adjusting for inflation. In the previous century, from 1896 to 1996, house prices had just kept even with the overall rate of inflation.

When there is suddenly a sharp divergence from a long-term trend like this, it is reasonable to look for an explanation. Was there some fundamental factor on either the supply or demand side that was suddenly causing house prices to skyrocket?

A quick investigation revealed no obvious suspects. On the supply side, there were no major new constraints that were impeding construction. In fact, housing starts were at near record levels over the years 2002 to 2006, so there was no reason to believe any developments on the supply side could explain skyrocketing house prices.

The demand side also didn’t feature any obvious culprits. The rate of population growth and household formation had slowed sharply. If demographics could explain a sharp rise in house prices, then we should have seen the surge in the 70s and 80s. That was when the huge baby boom cohort was first forming their own households. In the current decade, the baby boomers are preparing for retirement.

There also was no plausible income story. Income grew at a healthy but not extraordinary rate in the years from 1996 to 2000, but income growth has been very weak throughout the current decade.

Finally, if the run-up in house prices could be explained by the fundamentals of the housing market, then we should expect to see a comparable increase in rents. But there was no unusual run-up in rents. They did slightly outpace inflation in the late 90s, but they actually were falling behind inflation by the early years of this decade.

If the run-up in house prices could not be explained by the fundamentals, then it was a bubble, which would burst. This was easy to see for anyone who cared to look, but Greenspan and his sycophants could not be bothered. Greenspan insisted everything was fine - there was no housing bubble - and virtually the whole economics profession, including his fellow central bankers, acted an enablers touting Mr. Greenspan’s wisdom.

While the exact timing and path of the housing market’s collapse and the resulting turmoil in financial markets could not be predicted, the basic course of this tsunami was entirely foreseeable. The collapse of the bubble will destroy in the neighborhood of $8 trillion of housing wealth. Most of these losses will be absorbed by homeowners ($8 trillion comes to $110,000 per homeowner), but if just ten percent of the loss ends up on bank financial sheets, the losses will be $800 billion.

That is enough to put many banks under. Losses of this magnitude were virtually certain to sink Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two huge government-sponsored enterprises that created the secondary mortgage market in the United States. The current financial crisis was, therefore, an inevitable follow-on to the collapse of the housing bubble and will almost certainly amplify its negative impact on the US economy.

This all seemed painfully obvious from even a quick look at the housing data back in 2005 when the central bankers were honoring Alan Greenspan. In fact, it should have been obvious at least three years sooner.

But the Jackson Hole economists were convinced everything was just fine. Now, they are all saying no one could have foreseen the current crisis. And they say no one, at least among the Jackson Hole crowd, saw any problems coming.

The really tragic part of this story is there are no consequences. The same group of economists that led the economy into this catastrophe still has its hands on the wheel. Holding them accountable for their disastrous performance is simply not on the agenda.

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Never mind that the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq have now outlasted WWII - the war to end all wars - and that the military is being stretched so thin and service has become so unpopular that convicted felons are now being welcomed with open arms. Never mind that while the Bush 10,000 have become wealthier than Creosus - stuffing their Cayman Islands accounts with billions of war fraud dollars - the proles are watching their sons and daughters being brought home in body bags while they’re being impoverished by their mortgages and gas and food prices. Never mind that Obama is being painted by the usual whorish gasbags as an elitist celebrity hopelessly out of touch with the common folk, as opposed to John “10 Mansions” McCain whose list of TV and movie appearances would make many A-list actors green with envy. Never mind that Hilary Clinton made a gracious speech in which she wholeheartedly supported Obama and vigorously urged her supporters to now support Obama, the pundidiotocracy just knew that the Democratic Party was perched on the precipice of a bloody Civil War that would of course benefit their chosen savior Johnny “Maverick” McCain - J-Mav to the cognescenti who’ve obtained their secret J-Mav decoder rings that allow them to discover what he means rather than what he says. Reality and facts are stupid because in Rove-world, perception is reality, and perception is never further away than a few dozen repetitions of today’s official RNC talking points, a level reached before noon at Fox and marginally later at the ostensibly liberal networks as the pundidiots trip over each other hyperbolizing each day’s officially sponsored version of reality.

Glenn Greenwald details the latest version of reality - sponsored today and every day by Ike’s military-industrial complex - in which J-Mav’s foreign policy surrogates are making the Bush White House look like a pack of tie-die wearing peaceniks. It seems that Bush and Cheney - who turned a pack of egregious lies into a casus belli for invading and occupying Iraq, a move huzzahed by sabre-rattlers everywhere as absolutely necessary to protect the world from Islamofascism, the worst children-threatening evil in the history of the universe - are *GASP* soft on communism, you know, the worst children-threatening evil in the history of the universe. That’s right, only a couple of decades after a 70-year run on the world stage ended, the godless commies are back for an encore performance. Upon hearing this news, market analysts went bearish on viagra stocks as aging cold warriors found their vigor sufficiently renewed to go it alone with their 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th trophy wives. Greenwald tells us:

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John McCain’s two most loyal supporters and most influential foreign policy advisers, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, have an Op-Ed in The Wall St. Journal today proclaiming that “Russia’s invasion of Georgia represents the most serious challenge to this political order since Slobodan Milosevic unleashed the demons of ethnic nationalism in the Balkans.” Just as their neoconservative comrade, Fred Hiatt, does in today’s Washington Post, Lieberman and Graham demand that the U.S. expend vast resources and assert itself both militarily and politically in order to thwart the New Russian Menace (”This means reinvigorating NATO as a military alliance, not just a political one . . . The credibility of Article Five of the NATO Charter — that an attack against one really can and will be treated as an attack against all — needs to be bolstered. . . .The Georgian military should be given the antiaircraft and antiarmor systems necessary to deter any renewed Russian aggression”).

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The foreign policy team exerting chief influence over John McCain is truly more extremist — in a purer and more deranged form — than the foreign policy team of the Bush administration. They’re not only the most extremist faction in American political life, but also the most delusional. These aren’t just the people who led the U.S. to war in Iraq — though they are that — but they’re also the ones who actually believe that the Bush administration has been far too meek in its assertion of U.S. military force and too passive in its interference in the affairs of other countries. They want to accelerate — massively intensify — virtually every one of the polices that has brought the U.S. to such disgrace and near ruination over the past eight years. There is nothing “moderate” or “centrist” about any of them. John McCain is the Candidate of Bill Kristol and Joe Lieberman and John Bolton for good and clear reasons (including in Georgia): he’s the best and most devoted instrument to advance their militaristic agenda.

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John McCain himself, and especially those who whisper foreign policy wisdom in his ear, have long had a lengthy list of New Enemies We Must Confront in the World — beyond those we’re already fighting. They not only want to add China, but now especially Russia, to that list, without the slightest concern for the severe degradation they have already imposed on the U.S. military and America’s economic security (but, Lieberman and Graham warn, Russia will go bankrupt if they have a 10-day border skirmish with a neighboring state). But infantile calls for Standing Tall in the Face of American Enemies and Not Blinking is still the definition of Seriousness in American political discourse, and the pure derangement and extremism that lies at the heart of this McCain foreign policy mentality will thus continue to go largely unexamined.

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That J-Mav himself is reinvigorated by the return of an enemy whose evil is surpassed only by its usefulness in rescuing numerous multi-billion dollar weapons programs from extinction is evidenced by his manly, stentorian pronouncements of “drill! Drill! DRILL!” on the campaign trail. No loser Bobdole he, shilling for and gobbling the sort of pill one needs to soldier on in the face of eternal threats to our precious children as pathetic as gnats-ass backwaters Grenada and Panama. Trophy heiress wife #2 Cindy - with her theft and drug addiction problems behind her with the help of her $200 million rainy day fund - also has to be thrilled at the course of events, knowing that the counter isn’t going to reach #3, at least not in the raging heat of a campaign season where hubby badly needs to convince that 2 wives, 10 houses and $200 million in butter and egg money give him a more intimate connection with Joe Sixpack than that muslim, er, other guy.

But then again, what’s more family friendly than a few spare houses for the various wives and children one has to deal with in the course of a long, saintly life? And after all, doesn’t a former (I refuse to mention that I’m a) POW deserve numerous, commodious accomodations to compensate for the years he spent as a (I refuse to trade on the fact that I was a) POW? And really, how family friendly is it of that godless muslim, er, other guy to have only one house in which to protect his castrating, evil, conniving bitch, er, single wife and his questionably legitimate offspring, er, children? One never knows what sort of domestic catastrophe is going to strike a country that was invaded and nearly occupied as recently as 1812. If “Red Dawn” taught us anything, it’s that the Sandinistas are but a breakfast stop in Harligen away from transmogrifying the land of the free and the home of the brave into a hellish gulag wherein dissidents are called terrorists and banished into remote prisons with no hope of fair trial or freedom. Not to mention the possibility of a home-grown catastrophe, for example J-Mav’s Keating chums pulling yet another S&L or mortgage scam that could do what no filthy, disgusting, commie hippie could dream of in his haziest, drug-addled fantasy, bring down War Street.

Not since the halcyon, cocaine-infused days of the Gypper administration has the fantasy known as a missile defense system been dragged out of the closet of wet dreams and flogged so vigorously. It’s all part of a return to the glorious 80s, when it seemed that the Soviet spectre could and would forever keep trainloads of cash being delivered to the sort of folks whose greatest hits album included the savings & loan debacle and the Iran-Contra fiasco. But, alas, those ungrateful godless commies buggered off, leaving cadres of stunned cold warriors with nothing left to console them besides the enormous piles of cash they’d squirreled away in Panama, Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. After all, what good is enormous wealth if you can’t order the largest military in the history of the planet to destroy things on capricious whims?
George Monbiot writes most lucidly on the matter.

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The good news is that, at the present rate of progress, reliable missile defence is only 50 years away. The bad news is that it has been 50 years away for the past six decades.

The system has been in development since 1946, and so far it has achieved a grand total of nothing. You wouldn’t know it if you read the press releases published by the Pentagon’s missile defence agency: the word “success” features more often than any other noun. It is true that the programme has managed to hit two out of the five missiles fired over the past five years during tests of its main component, the ground-based midcourse missile defence (GMD) system. But, sadly, these tests bear no relation to anything resembling a real nuclear strike.

All the trials run so far - successful or otherwise - have been rigged. The target, its type, trajectory and destination, are known before the test begins. Only one enemy missile is used, as the system doesn’t have a hope in hell of knocking down two or more. If decoy missiles are deployed, they bear no resemblance to the target and they are identified as decoys in advance. In order to try to enhance the appearance of success, recent flight tests have become even less realistic: the agency has now stopped using decoys altogether when testing its GMD system.

This points to one of the intractable weaknesses of missile defence: it is hard to see how the interceptors could ever outwit enemy attempts to confuse them. As Philip Coyle - formerly a senior official at the Pentagon with responsibility for missile defence - points out, there are endless means by which another state could fool the system. For every real missile it launched, it could dispatch a host of dummies with the same radar and infra-red signatures. Even balloons or bits of metal foil would render anything resembling the current system inoperable. You can reduce a missile’s susceptibility to laser penetration by 90% by painting it white. This sophisticated avoidance technology, available from your local hardware shop, makes another multibillion component of the programme obsolete. Or you could simply forget about ballistic missiles and attack using cruise missiles, against which the system is useless.

Missile defence is so expensive and the measures required to evade it so cheap that if the US government were serious about making the system work it would bankrupt the country, just as the arms race helped to bring the Soviet Union down. By spending a couple of billion dollars on decoy technologies, Russia would commit the US to trillions of dollars of countermeasures. The cost ratios are such that even Iran could outspend the US.

The US has spent between $120bn and $150bn on the programme since Ronald Reagan relaunched it in 1983. Under George Bush, the costs have accelerated. The Pentagon has requested $62bn for the next five-year tranche, which means that the total cost between 2003 and 2013 will be $110bn. Yet there are no clear criteria for success. As a recent paper in the journal Defense and Security Analysis shows, the Pentagon invented a new funding system in order to allow the missile defence programme to evade the government’s usual accounting standards. It’s called spiral development, which is quite appropriate, because it ensures that the costs spiral out of control.

Spiral development means, in the words of a Pentagon directive, that “the end-state requirements are not known at programme initiation”. Instead, the system is allowed to develop in whatever way officials think fit. The result is that no one has the faintest idea what the programme is supposed to achieve, or whether it has achieved it. There are no fixed dates, no fixed costs for any component of the programme, no penalties for slippage or failure, no standards of any kind against which the system can be judged. And this monstrous scheme is still incapable of achieving what a few hundred dollars’ worth of diplomacy could do in an afternoon.

So why commit endless billions to a programme that is bound to fail? I’ll give you a clue: the answer is in the question. It persists because it doesn’t work.

US politics, because of the failure by both Republicans and Democrats to deal with the problems of campaign finance, is rotten from head to toe. But under Bush, the corruption has acquired Nigerian qualities. Federal government is a vast corporate welfare programme, rewarding the industries that give millions of dollars in political donations with contracts worth billions. Missile defence is the biggest pork barrel of all, the magic pudding that won’t run out, however much you eat. The funds channelled to defence, aerospace and other manufacturing and service companies will never run dry because the system will never work.

To keep the pudding flowing, the administration must exaggerate the threats from nations that have no means of nuking it - and ignore the likely responses of those that do. Russia is not without its own corrupting influences. You could see the grim delight of the Russian generals and defence officials last week, who have found in this new deployment an excuse to enhance their power and demand bigger budgets. Poor old Poland, like the Czech Republic and the UK, gets strongarmed into becoming America’s groundbait.

If we seek to understand American foreign policy in terms of a rational engagement with international problems, or even as an effective means of projecting power, we are looking in the wrong place. The government’s interests have always been provincial. It seeks to appease lobbyists, shift public opinion at crucial stages of the political cycle, accommodate crazy Christian fantasies and pander to television companies run by eccentric billionaires. The US does not really have a foreign policy. It has a series of domestic policies which it projects beyond its borders. That they threaten the world with 57 varieties of destruction is of no concern to the current administration. The only question of interest is who gets paid and what the political kickbacks will be.

Billmon details a series of legislative actions since 1989 that have basically guaranteed another conflict with the scary bear now known as Russia. I’ve never believed that the most recent “worst threat ever to the safety of our precious chillun” - wherein the actions of scattered islamic psychopaths were hysterically trumped up into a galaxy-wide forever war with the evil, unified forces of “islamofascism” - had sufficient traction to last for the 40+ years that the Soviet bear had served as the designated baby-killers. The support for the signature battle against “islamofascism” - the invasion and occupation of Iraq - has rapidly waned over the last couple of years even among an increasingly apathetic and willfully ignorant population continually force-fed Bush administration propaganda in the guise of news reports by dutiful media shills.

The “Encyclopedia of Explosives and Related Items” is a behemoth of a single-topic compilation, consisting of 10 volumes released over the 23 years from 1960 to 1983. The chaps who made it machine-readable tell us:

There are few enough books in existence that cover a topic such as explosives, let alone do such a good job as to be a must have reference for anyone in the field. The Encyclopedia is the single greatest work on explosives period.

If you’re interested in the technical, historical, military, industrial, etc. aspects of explosives, this is the place to look. If you’re looking for a way to surf the bleeding edge of hip - well, besides wearing your baseball cap sideways and performing St. Vitus’ dance to the emo top 40 on your IPod - then get “The Anarchist’s Cookbook” and discover the literal bleeding edge.

DISCLAIMER: - We at EthelCo are not at all responsible if anyone misuses this information to, say, build an Illudium Q-38 Space Demodulator (p. I-73 to I-78) to, say, remove an annoying planet (Sol III) from the planned route for an intergalactic hyperspace bypass. Tinkering with this sort of stuff is more dangerous than hunting with Dick Cheney, and I guarantee you won’t get a chance to apologize to Dick afterwards.

The preface gives us some info as to the genesis of the Encyclopedia of Boom:

The widespread interest in explosives during and since World War II has resulted in the need for a comprehensive coverage of the field of explosives and related items. In 1941-1944, Dr. B. T. Fedoroff in collaboration with G. D. Clift had published a “Laboratory Manual of Explosives” in four small volumes (Lefax Co.), for which there were numerous requests. Since the printed editions had been exhausted and the plates were no longer availablee, Dr. Federoff decided to write a revised edition. As the work progressed, it became evident that additional help would be needed, not only becuase of the tremendous expansion of the literature, but also because it was decided to broaden the scope of the work.

This Encyclopedia is intended to cover the following items:

• military and industrial explosives, explosive compositions, propellants and pyrotechnic compositions;
  
• explosives and explosive compositions which have not been used for military or industrial purposes;
  
• analytical procedures for the more common explosives, propellants and pyrotechnic compositions;
  
• compounds which deflagrate or may possibly explode because of the presence of plosophoric groups;
  
• ammunition items, such as projectiles, bombs, grenades, detonators, fuzes, etc.;
  
• calibers of weapons and projectiles used in the US and foreign countries;
  
• brief definition of ordnance terms; and
  
• names of scientists who made important contributions in the fields of explosives, ammunition and weapons.
  

This behemoth has been PDF-ized (not by me) into 10 volumes:

1. Vol. 1 (1960, 800 pp.)
   
   
   
   • Introduction - I
     
   • Nomenclature - II
     
   • Physical tests used to determine explosive properties - VII
     
   • Abbreviations, code names, and symbols - Abbr 1
     
   • Abbreviations for books and periodicals - Abbr 66
     
   • Descriptive text of encyclopedic items - A1 to A673
     
   
   
2. Vol. 2 (1962, 646 pp.)
   
   
   
   • Preface - I
     
   • Errata in Vol. 1 - III
     
   • List of figures and illustrations - VI
     
   • Abbreviations, code names and symbols - VIII
     
   • Abbreviations for books and periodicals - IX
     
   • B to BWC - B-1 to B-394
     
   • C to Chloric Acid - C-1 to C-210
     
   
   
3. Vol. 3 (1966, 560 pp.)
   
   
   
   • Preface - I
     
   • Errata in Vol. 1 and 2 - III
     
   • Supplement to abbreviations for code names and symbols - X
     
   • Supplement to abbreviations for books and periodicals - XII
     
   • Supplement to the list of books on explosives and propellants - XIV
     
   • Chlorides to Czech Arms and Ammunition - C-236 to C-638
     
   • D to Detonating Relays - D-1 to D-108
     
   
   
4. Vol. 4 (1969, 1030 pp.)
   
   
   
   • Preface - I
     
   • Errata in Vol. 1, 2 & 3 - III
     
   • List of figures and illustrations - XXI
     
   • Supplement to abbreviations, code names and symbols - XXXIX
     
   • Supplement to abbreviations for books and periodicals - XLVII
     
   • Supplement to the list of books on explosives and propellants - LI
     
   • Detonation, explosion and related subjects
     
     
     
     1. Subjects related to detonation (and explosion) - D-137
        
     2. Detonation, explosion and explosives - D-217
        
     3. Detonation (and explosion), equations of state in - D-268
        
     4. Detonation (and explosion), experimental procedures - D-299
        
     5. Detonation (explosion, deflagration, combustion and formation), heats of - D-369
        
     6. Detonation (and explosion) by influence or sympathetic detonation - D-395
        
     7. Detonation (and explosion), initiation (birth), and propagation (growth or spread) in explosive substances - D-402
        
     8. Detonation (and explosion), pressures of and their measurements - D-485
        
     9. Detonation (and explosion)
        
        
        
        • Temperature and its determination - D-583
          
        • Temperature developed on - D-589
          
        
        
     10. Detonation (and explosion) theories - D-601
         
     11. Detonation (explosion and deflagration) velocity - D-624
         
     12. Detonation (and explosion) waves - D-676
         
     
     
   • Detonators, igniters, primers, and other initiating devices used for nonmilitary and military purposes
     
     
     
     1. Detonators, igniters and primers used for nonmilitary purposes - D-733
        
     2. Detonators, igniters, primers and other initiating devices used for military purposes - D-742
        
     3. Detonators, igniters and primers used for initiating low explosives in military ammunition - D-757
        
     4. Artillery and some other projectiles including their initiating components - D-810
        
     5. Fuzes (introduction) - D-879
        
     6. Bombs and bomb components - D-933
        
     7. References - D-1023
        
     8. Analytical procedures for explosive compositions used in detonators, primers, igniters and fuzes - D-1060
        
     9. Physical tests for determining explosive and other properties of detonators etc. - D-1078
        
     
     
   
   
5. Vol. 5 (1972, 785 pp.)
   
   
   
   • Detoniruyushchii Shnur to Dynamitron - D-1109 to D-1748
     
   • E to Esters, Nitric of Polyhydroxydicarboxylic Acids - E-1 to E-141
     
   
   
6. Vol. 6 (1974, 840 pp.)
   
   
   
   • Preface I
     
   • List of figures and illustrations - V
     
   • Supplement to the list of books on explosives and propellants - X
     
   • Etagenguss to Eyring Detonation Theory - E-142 to E-508
     
   • “f” to FZG - F-1 to F-259
     
   • “G” to Gyroscopic Movement of Projectives - G-1 to G-197
     
   
   
7. Vol. 7 (1975, 637 pp.)
   
   
   
   • Preface - I
     
   • Addendum - III
     
   • List of figures and illustrations - VIII
     
   • Supplement to abbreviations for books and periodicals - X
     
   • Supplement to list of books on explosives etc. - XI
     
   • H2 to “Hyros” Explosive - H-1 to H-263
     
   • IASP to IZZO - I-1 to I-184
     
   • J (Poudre de chasse) to Jute - J-1 to J-87
     
   • K (Pulver) to KZ - K-1 to K-20
     
   • L-Alloy to Lysol - L-1 to L-63
     
   
   
8. Vol. 8 (1978, 1005 pp.)
   
   
   
   • Preface - I
     
   • In memoriam - II
     
   • Errata - III
     
   • List of tables - IV
     
   • List of figures and illustrations - X
     
   • Supplement to abbreviations etc. - XIV
     
   • Supplement to list of books etc. - XV
     
   • M1 Thickener to Myrol Explosives - M-1 to M-164
     
   • “N” (Explosifs de Mine) to Nysol - N-2 to N-219
     
   • O, Explosifs du type to Ortho-Xylene Ozonide - O-1 to O-73
     
   • “P” (Explosifs) to Pyruvonitrolic Acid - P-1 to P-527
     
   
   
9. Vol. 9 (1980, 911 pp.)
   
   
   
   • Preface - I
     
   • List of tables - III
     
   • List of figures and illustrations - VIII
     
   • Supplement to abbreviations etc. - XII
     
   • Supplement to list of books etc. - XIII
     
   • QDX (SEX) to Quinonemonoxime and Derivatives - Q-1 to Q-6
     
   • Rabinet to Ruthenium Tetroxide - R-1 to R-203
     
   • S1 and S2 to Sytamit - S-1 to S-265
     
   • T1, T2 and T3 to Type Explosives - T-1 to T-416
     
   
   
10. Vol. 10 (1983, 787 pp.)
    
    
    
    • Preface - I
      
    • Errata - V
      
    • List of tables - VI
      
    • List of figures and illustrations - XI
      
    • Supplement to list of books etc. - XV
      
    • U.D.C. (Unit Deflective Charge) to UZI
      
    • V-1 to VX - V-1 to V-170
      
    • W.A. (Powder) to W-Salz - W-1 to W-86
      
    • X-4, Ruhrstahl to Xytolite - X-1 to X-27
      
    • Yaw to Yuenyaku - Y-1 to Y-3
      
    • Zabel to Z-Salz - Z-1 to Z-26
      
    • Index for encyclopedia volumes 1 through 10 - A-1 to Z-2
      
    
    

Via Chris Floyd, we learn from the War Street Journal everything we need to know about the reality of the latest crisis, as well as the reality behind all of the other crises used to frighten the proles into supplying their own vaseline. The operational definition of freedom in this consumerist society - as opposed to all that theoretical nonsense in a Bill of Rights that’s being eviscerated by various “Patriot” Acts anyway - entails a dependence on imported goods, imported oil, and credit. Floyd continues:

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The decades-long quest for military-enforced dominance of geopolitical affairs has been has been both producer and product of this ravenous system. And now, the war machine is pretty much the only thing left. It has eaten all our seed corn, and must keep prowling constantly in foreign lands to feast on the resources of others. So war and the ever-present threat of war will continue to be the driving forces of American policy, at home and abroad, both in the public and private sectors - because that’s where the money is. Big money, gargantuan money, money out the wazoo. And what’s more, it’s free money - because most of it comes from the taxpayers, through insider sweetheart deals that very often guarantee profits for the crony contractor. No muss, no fuss, no risk - just gravy.

And so the Russian response to Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia - “Six Days That Changed the World!” as the deathless (or rather, death-filled) headlines proclaim - has been the usual win-win situation for the war-profiteers in the cockpit of the American corruptocracy, as the Wall Street Journal reports. The Journal writes for those who really count in American society - the movers and shakers and shifters of Big Money - so you can often get a better analysis of what’s really going on than you would from, say, the New York Times, with all its weighty think-tank lumber. The headline from Saturday’s WSJ story says it all: Attack on Georgia Gives Boost To Big U.S. Weapons Programs.

Just as the rash and bloody deed of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili - who assaulted South Ossetia in a ferocious sneak attack — gave the Kremlin war machine the excuse it needed to flex its muscles, so the Russian response has been a godsend for the Pentagon. Now you see why we need all them big new weapons we’ve been hankering for, say the boys from Hell’s Bottom: we got to keep them Russkies down.

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The WSJ article is a remarkably candid admission of the reality behind the bullshit. Some excerpts:

Russia’s attack on Georgia has become an unexpected source of support for big U.S. weapons programs, including flashy fighter jets and high-tech destroyers, that have had to battle for funding this year because they appear obsolete for today’s conflicts with insurgent opponents.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has spent much of the year attempting to rein in some of the military’s most expensive and ambitious weapons systems — like the $143 million F-22 Raptor jet — because he thinks they are unsuitable for the lightly armed and hard-to-find militias, warlords and terrorist groups the U.S. faces in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has been opposed by an array of political interests and defense companies that want to preserve these multibillion-dollar programs and the jobs they create.

When Russia’s invading forces choked roads into Georgia with columns of armored vehicles and struck targets from the air, it instantly bolstered the case being made by some that the Defense Department isn’t taking the threat from Russia and China seriously enough. If the conflict in Georgia continues and intensifies, it could make it easier for defense companies to ensure the long-term funding of their big-ticket items.

For example, the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. John Murtha, quickly seized on the Russia situation this week, saying that it indicates the Russians see the toll that operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are taking on the U.S. military.

“We’ve spent so many resources and so much attention on Iraq that we’ve lost sight of future threats down the road. The current conflict between Russia and Georgia is a perfect example,” said Rep. Murtha during a recent visit to his district.

Some Wall Street stock analysts early on saw the invasion as reason to make bullish calls on the defense sector. A report from JSA Research in Newport, R.I., earlier in the week called the invasion “a bell-ringer for defense stocks.”

Mr. Gates himself said this week that the new conflict will cause the U.S. to rethink its strategic relationship with Russia. At a briefing on Thursday, Mr. Gates said the U.S. has no intention of using force in Georgia, nor does it seek a reprise of the Cold War. He did make clear, however, that Russia appears to be punishing Georgia, which has flirted with North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership, for aligning itself with the West and is warning other former Soviet states.

Until now, Mr. Gates has been the central focus of a pitched battle over where the U.S. should spend its defense funds: on conventional weapons needed for traditional opponents or preparing to fight insurgent groups and terrorists.

At an event in Colorado earlier this year, Mr. Gates complained that the military services have “too much of a tendency towards what might be called “Next-War-itis” — the propensity of the defense establishment to be in favor of what might be needed in a future conflict.” In response, he has led an effort to seek or consider reductions to a long list of prominent programs that seemed geared toward the wars of the past.

High on Mr. Gates’s list of less-relevant programs has been the F-22 Raptor, made by Lockheed Martin Corp. with help from Boeing Co. and others. The F-22 is considered the Air Force’s best fighter jet, but Mr. Gates rebuked the Air Force earlier this year for doggedly pursuing it at a time when it hasn’t flown missions over Iraq and Afghanistan.

Another program under attack has been Future Combat Systems, a futuristic $160 billion effort to modernize the Army with new hardware and electronic gizmos. Lead contractors Boeing and SAIC Inc. have repeatedly retooled the program, hoping to avoid being accused by Mr. Gates of having “Next-War-itis.”

At the same time, the Navy is backing off from building its most expensive destroyers in favor of a less technically risky, and cheaper, existing design. Changing course, the Navy wants two, not seven, futuristic DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyers that the Congressional Budget Office estimates could cost as much as $5 billion apiece. Instead of those destroyers, it wants cheaper vessels better suited to missile defense and antisubmarine missions in the open ocean.

Amid uncertainty about how the next administration will view any of these programs, defense-industry officials have been fighting hard to keep them moving forward — hoping they will at some point be so far along that they can’t be killed or seriously curtailed. A common refrain has been that the next administration will realize how dangerous the world is once the commander in chief gets briefed on the myriad threats to U.S. interests.

The change in administration comes at a time of record profits and sales in the industry, reflecting historic highs in defense spending. Yet budget pressure is already undeniable. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan require laying out almost $12 billion a month and the Pentagon faces a massive tab for repairing and overhauling equipment when troops start coming home.

Now, the Russian situation makes the debate over the equipping of the U.S. military a front-burner issue. “The threat always drives procurement,” said a defense-industry official. “It doesn’t matter what party is in office.”

…

It doesn’t take too much imagination to figure out what is literally and figuratively the money quote. From Floyd:

And here our candid if unnamed war-profit maven has neatly encapsulated both the last century of American policy - and the next century as well: “The threat always drives procurement. It doesn’t matter what party is in office.” His vatic pronouncement should be emblazoned on billboards, streamed constantly beneath the natterers on TV news, and chiseled in marble on the Capitol Dome. For it is, in a very real sense, what America is about today: Threat. War. Procurement. Profit.

Well, at least we’ve got NPR on the barricades sticking up for the soldiers. In a report this AM, they told of how corporate America is honoring those whose blood is enriching them. Despite a decades-old law that forbids such things, corporate American is foreclosing on and taking the houses of active military personnel who are - in the favorite phrase of those who prefer to rattle swords from behind their keyboards rather than on the front lines - in the line of fire.

But to be fair and balanced, Cokie’s boys and girls were sure to get the other side of the argument which, as we know, was equally valid since all issues are now nothing more than matters of opinion. The excuses offered by the corporate shills were “the law didn’t technically apply to the soldiers whose houses we took” and “some institutions just aren’t aware of this law.” That is, those who inevitably attempt to deflect criticism of the Iraq invasion by tearfully and angrily accusing the critics of hating the soldiers are the same ones hiding behind technicalities and supposed ignorance when stealing those same soldiers’ houses. If there isn’t a special circle in hell for these people, there should be.

There are presently 26,449 comments to various posts, all of which I’m assuming are spam.  Now if I could just find a way to nuke them all at once.

Leaping gracelessly onto the bandwagon, I’ll offer the following as literary excursions that might reward careful perusal during the remainder of the summer months.

Five Novels - Ronald Firbank

Sort of a pomo Wodehouse predating Wodehouse. Quite satirical, although the experimental prose style can be difficult going.

Bound to Please: An Extraordinary One-Volume Literary Education - Michael Dirda

A meta-read, containing essays about writers both famous and obscure. Dirda’s discovered many of the lost literary gems I’ve also found in several decades of scrounging.

Adventures in the Screen Trade - William Goldman

A scriptwriter of some reknown writes deliciously vicious essays about the trade and Hollywood in general. A particularly memorable bit was a quote from a famous movie mogul about how if you let the hero screw the woman too early in the film, then you’ve got nowhere to go.

Negrophobia: An Urban Parable - Darius James

Unclassifiable avant-garde pastiche/parody that is just frigging funny as all git out. An Amazon reviewer calls it “an ultra-pretentious, masturbatory, ego-driven, literary freakout of extreme proportions” and then gives it a single star. Go figure.

Borges and the Eternal Orangutans - Luis Fernando Verissimo

A Borges-esque novel of Borgesian length (well, at least, if Borges would have written novels they would have been of this length) that’s clever, funny and all sorts of other good things.

Anthony Burgess: A Biography - Roger Lewis

I’m a big Burgess fan, so you’d think I wouldn’t enjoy Lewis writing what’s not much more than a 400-page vicious attack on Burgess of the “..leaving a trail of slime as he entered the room.” variety. But dammit, it’s entertaining and funny in ways Lewis certainly didn’t intend. This is indeed a guilty pleasure, and one of the best novels written in recent years.

Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers - Lee Server

A not-at-all dry encyclopedia that offers details on 200 of the most memorable pulp fiction writers. It was worth the price of admission (okay, I got it for buck) to read how Lester Dent aka Kenneth Robeson resembled his most famous creation (and my favorite literary character until the age of 15) Doc Savage in the physical and mental realms.

Move Under Ground - Nick Mamatas

My favorite Cthulhu literary hybrid - wherein Kerouac and the other Beats encounter multi-tentacled things that must not be named - since the Wodehouse/Cthulhu hybrid “Scream for Jeeves.” Sure, it’s a small niche - containing two examples as far as I’m aware - but a fun one.

Throwim Way Leg: Tree Kangaroos, Possums, and Penis Gourds - Tim Flannery

A damned fine scientist who’s discovered 20 new species in two decades of exploring the wilds of New Guinea also proves to be a damned fine chronicler of how such things are done.

While listening to “ultra-liberal” NPR this AM I really didn’t expect Cokie et al. to “report” anything about the shenanigans in Georgia that didn’t contain the official “evil doubleplusungood Russian aggression” talking points. But, during the wait, I was rewarded with a new low wherein the official spokespeople for the Starbucks generation offered a 10 minute “report” about the anti-Obama jeremiad penned by racist World Net Daily hack Jerome Corsi. The announcer told me that while the screed was atop the NYTimes best-seller list, it wasn’t a matter of how many people bought the book, but rather how many heard of the allegations contained therein. This was followed by 10 minutes of NPR “reporting” on the allegations contained therein. Well, at least Will Shortz hasn’t started offering pro-neocon puzzles yet.

Mike Whitney offers some basic facts on the reality of what’s happening in Georgia rather than the hysterical bring-back-the-cold-war rhetoric that’s being repeated ad nauseam by the administration’s media lackies.

…

The American-armed and trained Georgian army swarmed into South Ossetia last Thursday, killing an estimated 2,000 civilians, sending 40,000 South Ossetians fleeing over the Russian border, and destroying much of the capital, Tskhinvali. The attack was unprovoked and took place a full 24 hours before even ONE Russian soldier set foot in South Ossetia. Nevertheless, the vast majority of Americans still believe that the Russian army invaded Georgian territory first. The BBC, AP, NPR, the New York Times and the rest of the establishment media have consistently and deliberately misled their readers into believing that the violence in South Ossetia was initiated by the Kremlin. Let’s be clear, it wasn’t. In truth, there is NO dispute about the facts except among the people who rely the western press for their information. Despite its steady loss of credibility, the corporate media continues to operate as the propaganda-arm of the Pentagon.

…

Russia deployed its tanks and troops to South Ossetia to save the lives of civilians and to reestablish the peace. Period. It has no interest in annexing the former-Soviet country or in expanding its present borders. Now that the Georgian army has been routed, Russian president Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin have expressed a willingness to settle the dispute through normal diplomatic channels at the United Nations. Neither leader is under any illusions about Washington’s involvement in the hostilities. They know that Georgian President Mikail Saakashvili is an American stooge who came to power in a CIA-backed coup, the so-called “Rose Revolution”, and would never order a major military operation without explicit instructions from his White House puppetmasters.

…

Eric Walberg adds some further salient points.

…

Last week, Georgia launched a major military offensive against the rebel province South Ossetia, just hours after President Mikheil Saakashvili had announced a unilateral ceasefire. Close to 1,500 have been killed, Russian officials say. Thirty thousand refugees, mostly women and children, streamed across the border into the North Ossetian capital Vladikavkaz in Russia.

The timing — and subterfuge — suggest the unscrupulous Saakashvili was counting on surprise. “Most decision makers have gone for the holidays,” he said in an interview with CNN. “Brilliant moment to attack a small country.” Apparently he was referring to Russia invading Georgia, despite the fact that it was Georgia which had just launched a full-scale invasion of the “small country” South Ossetia, while Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was in Beijing for the Olympics. Twenty-seven Russian peacekeepers and troops have been killed and 150 wounded so far, many when their barracks were shelled by Georgian forces at the start of the invasion. Georgian State Minister for Reintegration Temur Yakobashvili rushed to announce that their mini-blitzkreig had destroyed ten Russian combat planes (Russia says two) and that Georgian troops were in full control of the capital Tskhinvali.

…

The writing has been on the wall for months. Georgian President Saakashvili’s fawning over Western leaders at the “emergency” NATO meeting in April and his pre-election anti-Russian bluster in May made it clear to all that Georgia is the more-than-willing canary in the Eastern mine shaft. The Georgian attack on South Ossetia’s capital Tskhinvali — I repeat — just hours after Saakashvili declared a cease-fire, looks very much like an attempt to reincorporate the rebel province into Georgia unilaterally. But whoever is advising the brash young president ignores the postscript — no pasaran! South Ossetia has been independent for 16 years and is not likely to drape flowers on invading Georgia tanks. It also just happens to have Russia as patron.

…

This is yet another made-in-the-USA war. US President George W Bush loudly supported Georgia’s request to join NATO in April, much to the consternation of European leaders. NATO promised to send advisers in December. Not losing any time, the US sent more than 1,000 US Marines and soldiers to the Vaziani military base on the South Ossetian border in July “to teach combat skills to Georgian troops.” The UN Security Council failed to reach an agreement on the current crisis after three emergency meetings. A Russian-drafted statement that called on Georgia and the separatists to “renounce the use of force” was vetoed by the US, UK and France. To dispel any conceivable doubt, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday: “We call on Russia to cease attacks on Georgia by aircraft and missiles, respect Georgia’s territorial integrity, and withdraw its ground combat forces from Georgian soil.”

But it’s also yet another made-in-Israel war. A thousand military advisers from Israeli security firms have been training the country’s armed forces and were deeply involved in the Georgian army’s preparations to attack and capture the capital of South Ossetia, according to the Israeli web site Debkafiles which has close links with the regime’s intelligence and military sources. Haaretz reported that Yakobashvili told Army Radio — in Hebrew, “ Israel should be proud of its military which trained Georgian soldiers.” “We killed 60 Russian soldiers just yesterday,” he boasted on Monday. “The Russians have lost more than 50 tanks, and we have shot down 11 of their planes. They have enormous damage in terms of manpower.” He warned that the Russians would try and open another battlefront in Abkhazia and denied reports that the Georgian army was retreating. “The Georgian forces are not retreating. We move our military according to security needs.”

…

When US puppets get out of line, like a certain Saddam Hussein, they are easily abandoned. Saakashvili would be wise to recall the fate of the first post-Soviet Georgian president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, also a darling of the US (in 1978 US Congress nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize). He rode to victory on a wave of nationalism in 1990, declaring independence for Georgia and officially recognising the “Chechen Republic of Ichkeria”. But South Ossetia wanted no part of the fiery Gamsakhurdia’s chauvinistic vision and declared its own “independence”. Engulfed by a wave of disgust a short two years later, abandoned by his US friends, he fled to his beloved Ichkeria. He snuck back into western Georgia, looking for support in restive Abkhazia, but his uprising collapsed, prompting Abkhazia to secede.

Gamsakhurdia died in 1993, leaving the two secessionist provinces as a legacy, and was buried in Chechnya. Saakashvili rehabilitated him in 2004 and had his remains interred in Mtatsminda Pantheon with other Georgian “heroes”.

…

Matt Taibbi proves once again a worthy successor to Hunter S. Thompson at the Rolling Stone National Affairs desk. His latest delicious rant tells how McCain just doesn’t have what it takes to really suck up to (i.e. pull the right strings on and push the right buttons of) the twice-borners. The comments section is also entertaining, with the usual selection of still-borners whining about how horrible and mean Taibbi is, unlike all those polite folks on hate radio and Fox “News” elevating national political discourse on a daily basis. Really, he should find some class and taste by, say, insinuating that Obama is the anti-christ.

Some tasty selections from Taibbi’s article.

…

While Barack Obama gives regular addresses at churches, where he comes off very like a preacher (right down to his natty blue suits and his lilting oratory), McCain’s chosen stump locations are invariably VFW halls or factory sites — where he tries to win over working-class crowds by telling them that their jobs aren’t coming back. As the nominee of a party that has swept two straight elections by hawking cheap pieties and ramming one preposterous lie after another down the public’s throat, McCain’s agnostically bummerific public-speaking strategy is a curiosity, to say the least.

…

The Republican party returned to power at the beginning of this decade thanks to a brilliantly innovative political hybrid represented in its most advanced form by the Bush-Cheney ticket — a high-tech engine of ruthless neocon capitalism wedded to a half-literate aristocrat dunce hiding his alcoholism in born-again Christian platitudes. Add corporate money to fundamentalist-Christian demographics in a country as dumb and superstitious as America, and you can vaporize a century’s worth of Al Gores and John Kerrys.

…

The marriage of fundamentalist Christianity and the conservative movement has been a powerful force in world affairs. It has been the best smoke screen the archpriests of supply-side economics could possibly have had, giving Wall Street a populist in with the very people victimized the most by their union-busting, deregulatory policies. It turned out, for decades, that Bible-thumping Americans didn’t mind having their jobs shipped to China, so long as someone was worrying about the air supply to Terri Schiavo’s brain lump. As political cons go, this was the ultimate gift that kept on giving.

…

In a way, this scene says everything you need to know about McCain’s dilemma. The man is a relic from a previous era of conservatism, when privacy was sacrosanct and public expressions of religiosity were considered vulgar and in bad taste. McCain comes from a generation of American men for whom religion was a ticket you punched once a week, a low-effort symbol of conformity to go with your two-car garage, your sorority-girl wife and your weekly golf game with the fellas. The whole braying-to-the-moon, born-again Promise Keeper act perfected by the Bushes and Huckabees of the world is as alien to his sensibility as an Iron John man-poetry retreat. Sitting here in the North Phoenix Baptist pews, he has a look on his face like he’d just as well suck a cock as do an altar call. It’s one of his most likable qualities.

…

But that was back in the days when Huckabee was still a candidate and a whole field of more openly pious and gay-bashing Republicans had not yet dropped out. Since then, McCain has dealt with his weakness on the gay-marriage issue as he has dealt with countless others — by changing his mind. In fact, McCain changed his mind barely 11 minutes after the above “gay marriage should be allowed” statement, made on Hardball back in October 2006. “I believe that if people want to have private ceremonies, that’s fine,” he said in his about-face. “I do not believe that gay marriage should be legal.” Just last week, McCain also came out against gay adoption. But for the most part, his strategy has been to just stop talking about any of this shit at all, recognizing that his political situation vis-à-vis the religious right improved dramatically without him saying a word the minute his chief opponent stopped being ex-preacher Mike Huckabee and started being queer-loving, Bernie Mac buddy Barack Obama.

…

The real problem here might be that McCain’s stubborn refusal to pull a full-court Huckabee on the God front has coincided with (a) an impending economic catastrophe and (b) statements by one of his closest advisers, Phil Gramm, to the effect that America is in a “mental recession” and is a “nation of whiners.” As a result, McCain now has the daunting task of somehow keeping voters in economically hard-hit evangelical regions mesmerized by Bible-humping, gay-bashing bullshit, despite the fact that he only started going to church regularly a month ago and as recently as a year ago was actually saying gay people are human beings. If he doesn’t, who knows — people might actually start voting according to their economic interests, which would be disastrous for a Republican Party that has duped America’s white underclass for decades, thanks to Christian conservatism.

…

Watching these once-united wings of the Republican juggernaut devolve into frank mutual suspicion and distaste along the runway to almost certain electoral disaster is, of course, a delicious development. The Moral Majority Christians and the supply-side neocons always represented two of the worst and most vile impulses in the American character — mass, willful ignorance and total, shameless greed. In one wing of the ruling-party mansion they housed preachers who transformed the religion of “turn the other cheek” and “go, give away all your possessions to the poor” into a “Christianity” that celebrated shock-and-awe bombing and assault-rifle ownership and decried the progressive income tax as unfair to the propertied class. In the other wing they housed “conservatives” who turned the party of limited government into a giant snooping apparatus, one that borrowed trillions against the future earnings of ordinary taxpayers and sacrificed thousands of lives to snatch a few Middle Eastern oil wells for companies that were rich as hell to begin with.

The Bible-thumpers, mainly working- and middle-class whites with limited educations from the landlocked states of the South and the Midwest, would seem to have had little in common with the archpriests of the neoconservative movement, who as it happened were mainly Jewish academics with fancy degrees from the East and West Coasts. But they did: They shared an almost equal disdain for democracy, free speech and learning, and paradise for both groups was an intellectually mute America of vast malls, prisons packed full of ungrateful blacks, shitty TV programming to keep the brains chilled and 200-foot-high electrified fences along the Rio Grande. And lots of hero worship of soldiers, if not so much in the way of VA benefits.

This vision looked unstoppable for a while; there was a time in the early Bush years when this mean-spirited program of flag-waving, gun-toting biblical nationalism looked destined to become a kind of continental religion, a Church of America our missionaries would spread everywhere — and woe to those liberals and Frenchmen and other heretics who didn’t get with the program! Then we left them in office for a while, and it turned out that our would-be nationalist priests were totally stupid and completely incompetent at running anything at all, much less the world economy. And suddenly the red states stopped looking so much red as broke and fucked and responsible for a giant mess that even they didn’t pretend to know the way out of.

It was at this low point in the Christian-corporate marriage that John McCain stepped into the breach to wreck the demographic even more. At this critical moment, the party needed a turbocharged con man to revive the old religion, and what they got was an old man with doubts who can barely bring himself to go to church on Sundays. The worst possible scenario. Or the funniest, depending on how you look at things.