Most specifically, we are in the process of creating a nation in which the traditional distinctions between the state and private sectors are becoming blurred to the point of being erased. Today, for instance, Facebook, Google, Amazon, eBay and any number of other online enterprises, as well as companies you never heard of, all know more about you than should be possible in any free society.

As we witnessed during the Boston bombing aftermath, anybody with a cell phone can be tracked to within inches of their location and followed all day. Add to that the national homeland security apparatus that’s grown up since 9/11–the NSA , for instance, is about to open a billion-dollar center in the Rockies that will monitor more or less all America’s Internet and telephone traffic in the name of anti-terrorism–and you have a state of affairs in which any citizen, for pretty much any reason, can be monitored around the clock. The Stasi would have drooled over this sort of capability, and yet no politician on the right or left is saying much about it, even though the danger to civil liberties is perfectly plain.

Overlay this with the continued blurring of the line between the state and private enterprise–in part by the weakening of the state and its regulatory powers and in part by the sheer growth of the private sector’s political power–and you have the necessary conditions to make the state, and its role of protecting its citizens from any number of dangers to their rights and well-being, irrelevant.

Looked at this way, the various scandals, claims, crusades and gossip that dominate all media outlets are mere distractions, and are probably intended to be. And as I say, this trend is apolitical and has persisted across administrations.

The political landscape since 1933 has been dominated by a furious attack on the New Deal. and a furious defense of the New Deal. The New Deal, meanwhile, is a product of the Industrial Age, which we’ve grown past. This is not to say the structures of the New Deal need to be abandoned–I think that if anything, the emerging likelihood that we are approaching a world without work, created by advancing technology, will require that New Deal institutions be strengthened, if only to preserve public order.

But the attack/defense mode has gotten us nowhere and, I think, needs to be abandoned in favor of a political framework that recognizes today’s realities and dangers. We could do worse, in this pass, than remember how Lincoln framed a different challenge to the republic. “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. As our case is new, we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves; and then we shall save our country.”

Most specifically, we are in the process of creating a nation in which the traditional distinctions between the state and private sectors are becoming blurred to the point of being erased. Today, for instance, Facebook, Google, Amazon, , eBay and any number of other online enterprises, as well as companies you never heard of, all know more about you than should be possible in any free society.

As we witnessed during the Boston bombing aftermath, anybody with a cell phone can be tracked to within inches of their location and followed all day, if so desired. Add to that the national homeland security apparatus that’s grown up since 9/11–the NSA , for instance, is about to open a billion-dollar center in the Rockies that will monitor more or less all America’s Internet and telephone traffic in the name of anti-terrorism–and you have a state of affairs in which any citizen, for pretty much any reason, can be monitored around the clock. The Stasi would have drooled over this sort of capability, and yet no politician on the right or left is saying much about it, even though the danger to civil liberties is perfectly plain.

Overlay this with the continued blurring of the line between the state and private enterprise–in part by the weakening the state and its regulatory powers and in part by the sheer growth of the private sector’s political power via any number of vehicles–and you have the necessary conditions to make the state, and its role of protecting its citizens from any number of dangers to their rights and well-being, irrelevant.

Looked at this way, the various scandals, claims, crusades and gossip that dominate all media outlets are mere distractions, and are probably intended to be. And as I say, this trend is apolitical and has persisted across administrations.

The political landscape since 1933 has been dominated by a furious attack on the New Deal. and a furious defense of the New Deal. The New Deal, meanwhile, is a product of the Industrial Age, which we’ve grown past. This is not to say the structures of the New Deal need to be abandoned–I think that if anything, the emerging likelihood that we are approaching a world without work, created by advancing technology, will require that New Deal institutions be strengthened, if only to preserve public order.

But the attack/defense mode has gotten us nowhere and, I think, needs to be abandoned in favor of a political framework that recognizes today’s realities and dangers. We could do worse, in this pass, than remember how Lincoln framed a different challenge to the republic. “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. As our case is new, we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves; and then we shall save our country.”

Easy.

Tax financial trades.

As it happens, a bill to do that was introduced last week in Congress–by Senators Tom Harkin, Sheldon Whitehouse, and Bernie Sanders in the Senate, and Representative Peter DeFazio in the House.

Between them, S 410 and HR 880 recommend a tiny tax—three basis points, or three cents per $100—that would bring in an estimated $353 billion over ten years.

Unsurprisingly, the financial industry thinks this is a bad idea, mainly because, it says, the result on the markets would be uncertain. The real reason is likely to be that a tax—any tax—would, however marginally, cut into its profits.

An upside? By taxing short-term traders, and rewarding long-term investors who trade much more rarely, the tax would minimize the short-term mentality that’s helped cause market crashes.

You have to wonder what they’re even complaining about. In the first place, most other business sectors in the United States pay taxes on their profits; what makes banks and hedge funds so special? And then, most other advanced countries have similar taxes, so it’s not like a tiny tax like this would drive business offshore.

In any event, the amount of untaxed transactions is so vast that the cost of the proposed tax would be less than a rounding error. In 2011, New York’s Depository Trust Company settled securities trades worth $1.669 quadrillion—that’s $1,669 million million to you and me. That included almost all the securities trades in the US. The amount for 2012 is unpublished, but it’s unlikely to be lower.

The sponsors probably proposed the three basis point tax because it’s tiny enough to possibly get passed, and because in years past—the US had just such a tax between 1914 and 1965—the same tax was in that range. That’s prudent in this political environment.

But my question is: why so small? A similarly small tax—say, twenty-five cents per $100—could solve the country’s fiscal problems altogether, with room to spare. And it wouldn’t really cut into financial trading, because business people do what they do because there’s a profit to be made. Taxes are just the cost of doing business.

Unless I’m mistaken (and anyone reading this is welcome to correct me), a .25% sales tax on $1.669 quadrillion would produce $4.172 trillion a year (the finance business would call that twenty-five basis points—each point being one penny per hundred dollars). Last year, the federal government spent $3.796 trillion, including debt service.

If a 4-year sales tax on securities was set at .5%, it would bring in $8.345 trillion each year, which would retire the entire $16 trillion debt of the United States over that period, cover the entire budget of the United States, and create an annual surplus of $427 billion.

Some of that surplus could be distributed to the country’s citizens in the form of a guaranteed income, eliminating the need for social programs like welfare. After the debt was paid down—and the debt service minimized, so that it wouldn’t absorb so much of our tax revenues– the tax rate could be set at .25%–less, actually, since service on the national debt is now about $900 billion.

Income taxes would disappear, along with most other taxes, and could be replaced with a guaranteed income for all citizens. This would be a good thing, because thanks to computers and robotics, we’re approaching a world without work for large numbers of Americans. And no cuts in government programs would be necessary to do it; we could go to Mars and build all the aircraft carriers we wanted to.

This idea isn’t new. Congressman DeFazio has proposed similar measures in years past. And as I say above, the US had just such a sales tax on securities transactions between 1914 and 1965. And there’s an excellent paper in circulation that goes into the idea in some depth.

That paper says a sales tax on securities transactions would bring in about $100 billion. But it’s probably a little out of date on that score. It was written in 2001, when today’s enormous derivatives market barely existed. Since then, it’s mushroomed. In 2011—the last full year of statistics available–global derivatives transactions totaled $23.276 trillion—a very large portion of which had a U.S.-based party. In 2001, some derivatives routinely traded today didn’t even exist.

As the financial industry says, the impact of doing this may be unknown. But the impact of doing nothing, or of the various austerity proposals now fashionable in some circles, is known.

Ruin.

Any questions?

The court ruled that four recess appointments made last January by President Obama were unconstitutional and must be rescinded. Three of the appointments were to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and one appointed Richard Cordray as head to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The case arose over a ruling the NLRB made about the labor practices of one company.

Unsurprisingly, the ruling is already being used to attack the Administration as a lawless usurper of the Constitution. Mike Johnans (R.-Neb) has already demanded the NLRB appointees resign effective immediately.”

These recess appointments were made because after the GOP blocked them for a long time, the Senate went on a three-day recess. During the recess, GOP senators came into town in rotation and convened the Senate for one or two minutes. This meant the Senate was technically in session. The goal was to continue to block any recess appointments and possibly provoke this lawsuit. It was a purely political challenge to the Administration, and the Administration took it up.

The court ruling was written by Judge David Sentelle, a Reagan appointee widely considered to be a strident conservative. It says that all recess appointments not made between the period one sworn-in Congress ends, and another begins, are void. That means most recess appointments.

Legal experts are saying that the ruling covers not just these appointments, but all recess appointments, made by any President, going back as far as the Administration of James Monroe in 1823.

Any appointments made under the conditions addressed by the Court, they say, could potentially be declared void. This would also mean that all regulations issued under such officials, and all court decisions made by judges appointed this way, would likewise be subject to voiding, if tested.

As a result, the ruling has the potential to provoke chaos; for instance, anyone convicted by such a judge, and serving or having served time, could move to have his/her conviction voided if the judge, as considered by the DC Court, was unconstitutionally appointed.

It could also apply to regulations made under any regulator so appointed, no matter how far back. As a hypothetical: A regulation covering food safety made in the early 20th Century under such an official could be declared void, allowing present-day manufacturers to ignore the regulations, and, for that matter, sue the government for the costs incurred by observing the regulation since it was posted in the Federal Register.

Since the ruling judges in this case are extremely conservative, this has every appearance of being a conservative attempt to disrupt government operations so they can criticize the Obama Administration and throw sand in the operations of government–not to mention cost the government a lot of money– and hang the larger result.

This case will very likely be appealed by the Administration. But if it’s ultimately upheld–and it could be, since on a very narrow basis, the judges have something on their side–you could, depending on the judge, see financial criminals set free, along with drug kingpins, bank robbers, etc. This doesn’t count fines that would have to be returned to corporate miscreants–banks and Wall Street firms, for instance if they were fined by a court that falls under this ruling.

To avoid this, the ruling would have to be declared to apply only to the case that provoked the ruling, and to no other.

This has been a fine example of rigid, right wing ideologues adopting what could be called the Samson Option—causing incredible damage, and perishing in the attempt, just to make a point. It’s a lot like someone loosing a pack of dogs on kids playing baseball next to their house because the kids were making too much noise.

Right wing politicians who defend this ruling, and then use it to attack the Administration as lawless usurpers of the Constitution–as some are already alleging–should not be allowed to get away with it. Neither should the Court that made it.

They’ve been doing this since Reagan was elected by insisting that only the second and third phrases of the Second Amendment—“…the right of the people to bear arms, shall not be infringed.”–mean anything.

If somebody brings up the first phrase—“ A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…” they insist the militia meant the people at large, and that the idea was to create a counterweight to the central government, so it wouldn’t dare infringe on the people’s rights.

I’m sorry to have to burst their bubble—well, not really–but the legislative history following the Second Amendment’s passage very clearly supports the opposite of what they say. In 1789, the militia was intended to substitute for a standing Army, and to defend the government from insurrection.

Congress passed two Militia Acts in 1792. The first created state militias, each under control of that state’s governor, specifically to resist invasion and put down insurrections. The second directed all able-bodied white men between the ages of 18 and 45 to belong to their state militia, own a gun and related equipment for that purpose, and report for duty twice a year. The law even laid out how many bullets each militia member had to bring with him–25 if he owned a musket, 20 if he owned a rifle. After the Civil War the Acts were modified to allow black militia members to belong. In 1903, the state militias were merged with the National Guard.

Aside from frontier fights with the Indian Nations, the militia was used only twice between 1792 and 1814: Once against the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pa. (led in person by George Washington); and then at Bladensburg, Md., to defend Washington DC against the British (the militia ran at the first volley and the day has been called the Bladensburg Races ever since). There was one use of a militia under the Articles of Confederation; in 1787, Shay’s Rebellion in western Massachusetts was put down by a private militia after Shay’s men attacked the Springfield armory.

There is no record of any legally-constituted militia “defending the people against a tyrannical government” under the Constitution–acts it would construe as treason, under Article 3, Section 3 (“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”) The only way to claim otherwise is to use the Civil War as an example. Even then, using state armies that way fit the Constitution’s definition of treason; it was simply expedient after the war to let the matter go.

Given that, anyone can see that the militia under the Constitution was an instrument of the state from the first, and never meant to safeguard the people from the state. What the NRA is doing is trying to confuse colonial militias—when there was no United States–with militias under the Constitution.

The record likewise makes clear that personal gun ownership was protected by the Second Amendment as a way to arm the militia. Of course, lots of people owned muskets or rifles then anyway. And in general, most people didn’t care. But a glance at the historical and legislative record explains why the Second Amendment has three clauses in one sentence and can’t be understood without considering all of it—screams from the right notwithstanding.

What’s really disturbing about this debate is the fact that the boards of the NRA, the Gun Owners of America, ect. all know the historical and legislative record; I still believe— recent evidence aside—that they’re smart guys. Or at least, that they employ smart guys to tell them stuff.

That means they’re either pushing this meme knowing it’s untrue, or don’t listen when they’re told stuff. And by using an untrue and easily-dismissed idea to argue for a maximalist position–unrestricted ownership of AR-15s, or accessories like 30-round clips–they’re committing honest gun owners who believe them to a losing political proposition. In fact given the mood of the country, it’ll get them the opposite of what they say they want, and provoke gun control laws more restrictive than they’d get if they recognized reality and acted accordingly.

And let’s face it; they’re not going to get no new gun control legislation. What Newtown did was lump all the nation’s uneasiness about how we live and where we’re heading into a single wound—and focus our hopes that something, some little thing, can be done to make it better. Or at least not ignore it because, say the gun spokesmen, there is no perfect solution that will stop all gun deaths forever and create a perfectly safe society, so that we might as well drop the whole thing.

I’m really befuddled by the posture of the gun lobby. They’re trying to distort the debate with red herrings that anyone can see are red herrings, as if they figure they can get away with anything—that any Big Lie will work, if they just stick with it.

Yet no one outside their ranks believes that the alternative to totalitarian government is unrestricted ownership of military hardware—in a recent gun buy-back in Los Angeles, police took in a rocket launcher—or that mass murder is the price of liberty.

Trying to put that over defeats their own agenda and, quite frankly, betrays the trust of their supporters. It’s only worse that they probably know what they’re doing, and are doing it anyway.

Not that I mind. It was Woodrow Wilson who said, “Never kill a man who’s committing suicide.”

Almost everyone knows LaPierre’s suggestion to put armed guards in schools is easily demolished. As my old friend Mike Kane points out, armed guards don’t stop bank robberies, mall shootings, or casino heists. Before some of you dismiss Mike because he’s your typical gun-hating liberal: Mike’s a retired Army colonel.

While LaPierre was speaking, a man shot up a church in rural Pennsylvania and killed three people—one while she was decorating the Christmas tree. Three Pennsylvania troopers were wounded before they took him down.

In fairness, LaPierre couldn’t have possibly known events were showing everybody what the real stakes are; but that matters not a whit, because very clearly, LaPierre didn’t think things through before he got behind the podium. Example: It apparently didn’t occur to him that he was calling for a big tax hike. Putting armed guards in every school would cost about $7 billion—$80,000 a year for each of America’s 91,000 schools, not counting colleges or universities.

It gets much more bizarre. The wound that shooter Adam Lanza opened wasn’t just about the blood of 20 children, their teachers, and his mother: It plugged into all the other wounds we carry because we live in 2012, in a world that serves up gun deaths like hamburgers, that screams at us day and night, that so offends our sense of what should be that we can barely look at each other anymore and spend much of our time peering into various glowing screens spewing God knows what.

Given that, the nation is in no mood to find the money someplace and make the new taxes revenue neutral. More likely, we’d find the money by laying a user fee on owners of assault weapons, semi-auto pistols with big magazines, silencers, and the like—maybe with a surcharge levied every time there’s a mass shooting–and with an amendment repealing the 2005 law shielding gun manufacturers from liability when their products are used in crimes.

You can imagine how popular that would be with the NRA membership. Next thing you’d know, LaPierre would be imitating Sen. Mitch McConnell (R.-Ky.) and opposing his own proposal. Because obviously, LaPierre wasn’t serious–just hoping to muddy the waters, change the subject, and seem to be doing something.

Instead, he ensured that almost no one will take him seriously again. And since the NRA is welded to the GOP, he’s taken it with him. You can almost hear the politicians saying that as far as the GOP goes the right to life doesn’t extend to the living.

When you pair LaPierre’s appearance with the collapse of the House Republicans’ so-called Plan B to avert the fiscal cliff—a crisis they created in August 2011 by refusing at gun-point to allow a routine rise in the debt ceiling–it’s clear that the wheels are completely off the right wing enterprise.

What they are telling the country by what they’re doing is that they’re uninterested in governing, and therefore can’t be trusted with the reins of government. This shouldn’t be surprising, since at bottom, the right’s most extreme elements, routinely described by an over-polite press as “libertarian”, don’t really believe in government.

That in itself is fine: This is America and we’re all entitled to our boneheaded ideas. But people run for office to govern, and no one’s yet explained why someone who doesn’t believe in governing should be in government. Unsurprisingly, little is heard on this question.

Meanwhile, the GOP’s right wing is spoiling for a divorce, and there are plenty in what’s left of the mainstream GOP who’d welcome one.

What said divorce will create, of course, is two small, narrow rump parties incapable of commanding a national base, followed by the disappearance of at least one of them, and the rise of a new party to represent the GOP’s natural constituency–the nation’s rich, and its business interests.

Maybe when that happens we can return to grappling with the many problems that right wing-inspired policy has allowed to fester, and now threaten to overwhelm us. Then, perhaps, we can begin addressing the many very large problems that will come in train with the approaching future.

The investment in Singer Associates LP used TARP funds in part to ship at least 25,000 jobs overseas and short-change pensioners. Republicans then blamed it all on the Obama Administration, while Romney himself insisted the auto industry be allowed to go bust.

The profits were realized in 2009. Romney has not released his family’s tax returns for that year and refused many calls to do so, apparently in part because they would have revealed the investment.

Many have speculated that releasing his 2009 tax returns would also have revealed that he took advantage of a 2009 IRS amnesty program for American investors who had used offshore accounts to dodge taxes. If he had used such accounts that way and hadn’t taken the amnesty, Romney would have been guilty of a felony.

The group sent its letter to Don W. Fox, General Counsel of the Office of Government Ethics, on Nov. 1st , claiming that an investment of at least $1 million, made in Elliot Associates L.P. in Ann Romney’s name, is a violation of the Ethics in Government Act because “Romney’s June 1, 2012 Public Financial Disclosure Report to your office did not…disclose the underlying holdings of his private equity and limited partnership funds.”

The investment was used to buy up the debt of Delphi Automotive. Elliot is a hedge fund run by Paul Singer, a man with a reputation for what Fortune Magazine called “strong-arming his way to profit.” According to an October 18th article in The Nation by Greg Palast—itself based on a recent Palast book that was referred to in the letter–Elliot used the Delphi debt, bought for pennies on the dollar, to gain control of the company for an average of $0.67 per share.

Once in control, Singer and his associates used a March 2009 meeting to force GM and the US Treasury to pay Delphi $350 million. If not, says Stephen Rattner, who chaired the meeting as head of President Obama’s Auto Task Force, Singer promised to shut down the bailout by stopping all supplies to GM. Among other things, Delphi supplies GM with steering columns.

Rattner, who described the meeting in his memoir,Overhaul, compared Singer’s demands to “extortion demands by the Barbary pirates.” His account has been corroborated by Delphi’s chief financial officer, John Sheehan.

Singer later offloaded Delphi’s pension liabilities to the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. (PBGC) and shipped at least 25,000 jobs overseas. Pensions taken on by the PBGC are cut anywhere from 30% to 70%. Delphi, which now has only 5,000 workers in the United States, has an overseas workforce of 100,000.

Later—after taxpayer-owned General Motors forgave Delphi $2.5 billion in debt–Elliot and its partner took Delphi public at $22 a share. At this writing, Delphi is trading at $33.24.

The exact amount of the Romney investments—and the profit it earned—has not been disclosed; disclosure laws don’t require more than what Mrs. Romney made public—that she invested “at least” $1 million and earned “at least” $15 million. This is the minimum disclosure required by a law that was subject to much lobbying when it was being written and passed.

The Nation story and the group’s letter have attracted media attention in Ohio–Delphi’s home—but the Romney campaign slammed the reports to the Dayton Daily News, claiming they resulted from a “partisan, left-wing study meant to distract from the $1 billion of taxpayer funds the Obama Administration handed over to the UAW in the Delphi bankruptcy.”

The group includes Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, People for the American Way, Public Campaign, Public Citizen, SEIU, UAW and The Social Equity Group, People for the American Way, Public Campaign, Public Citizen, SEIU, UAW and The Social Equity Group.

Whether Mitt Romney would listen to that is another matter, and he has plenty of enablers, on his staff and elsewhere, to tell him it’s all somebody else’s fault.

But the unanimously negative—if merely current–verdict about Romney’s election chances in the polls isn’t because of some sinister conspiracy or because, as running mate Paul Ryan told Chris Wallace on Fox this Sunday, “the president has done an effective job at trying to confuse the issue” and people don’t understand them.

It’s the opposite–Americans understand Republican policies, judge them by the result, and reject them. It doesn’t help that Romney apparently doesn’t believe what he’s saying, that it shows, and that that makes people mistrust him. But he’s had to say what he’s been saying because that’s where the party is.

Which brings us back to Republican policies.

In sum, I believe the problem is that the country as a whole–party faithful aside–doesn’t buy current Republican ideology when they understand what it means for them,
that they do understand it, and that the nation disagrees with it. Republicans made this election a referendum on their policies by putting Ryan on the ticket, and the electorate is giving them its answer.

Having said that, I think it’s less a matter of Obama winning than of Romney losing. This has been helped by an Obama team that hasn’t made any mistakes, versus a Romney team that’s made plenty of them up until now. Romney now appears to be on his back foot, and he may have lost too much ground to win. We’ll see more on the Wednesday debates; but unless he demolishes Obama, which I doubt, I’d say the debates won’t help much.

My impression is that Romney is a decent, intelligent, capable man who’d probably make a pretty good president a la GHW Bush–non-ideological, prudent, careful. But he’s a package deal, and many in the GOP coalition have said and done things that scare the bejesus out of the country.

The country doesn’t want to empower the Michelle Bachmans, Allen Wests, and Eric Cantors of the world, and likewise it doesn’t sign on to the Tea Party’s apocalyptic views. Likewise, the urgency the Right claims it’s acting on simply doesn’t go over with the majority of Americans, any more than it goes along with its ad hominem attacks on Obama, what he allegedly is, and what he’ll be doing to the country. If anything, the never-ending din is working against them. The boy who cried wolf and all that.

Looked at that way, bringing Ryan on to the ticket was a mistake. There’s too much heat at the bottom of the ticket and that gets some Republicans to thinking they should wait till next time, while the clear ideological choice he represents is spurring Democrats to work harder to defeat them.

Here’s one example of how their message is losing voters.

Romney and Ryan are promising to cut taxes. Yet they concede that by closing various deductions–mortgage deductions, for instance–the tax burden on the middle class will actually be heavier. And Democrats have been relentless—and right—to keep explaining that lowering taxes on capital gains and the various other income sources of the rich will lighten their tax burden.

As Henry Kissinger used to say, this contraction is not only useful in itself, but has the added virtue of being true. Hitting it with spotlights undercuts the basic Right Wing premise that cutting taxes makes life better for everyone, and makes people believe the GOP isn’t on their side. And more people have come to this conclusion than they’d like to believe. In other words, the American people are smarter than the consultants think.

It’s actually painful—if very welcome in my house–to watch a bunch of really smart people be this clueless about what they’re doing to themselves. When, for instance, Republicans push the idea that half the country doesn’t pay taxes, the response in most minds isn’t that those people should share the burden or that they’re takers and not makers–they wonder why those people are so poor in the richest country on earth, why Republicans want to make matters worse for them, and then ask themselves what happened to the premise of trickle-down economics, and what it’s going to mean for them. And yet, Republicans simply can’t seem to understand this.

That may be part of the problem. This really is a policy driven election–one that’s been long overdue, in my opinion.

Obama didn’t do this. Gadaffi, Mubarak, soon Assad, and the rest of the Arab dictators did this by keeping things the way they kept them for so long, with only one way out.

Although we do need to include a caveat: Except for Gaddafi, we supported all these regimes for decades. But that was a good thing while it lasted, because stability was better than what we’re seeing now—a dangerous unpredictability.

These were deep-rooted popular uprisings. The Islamic element in the Arab countries is strong because the dictators used the mosques as (they thought) safety valves; but when push came to shove, it turned out they’d been revolutionary breeding grounds.

Obama had nothing to do with that at all; for much of it, he was in college, law school, or the Illinois Senate. Why turn it into something it’s not?

After all, you could blame the Iranian bomb on George W. Bush, for removing Hussein and, by virtue of being unchecked, releasing larger Iranian ambitions.

Or you could blame everything on Ronald Reagan. Reagan, after all, pulled the Marines out of Beirut after Islamists bombed their barracks and murdered 289 of them. He didn’t exact vengeance at all, and you could say that that encouraged a lot of the attacks we’ve been subsequently subjected to.

But I wouldn’t blame him, either. It’s just history, and he just happened to be in office when Communism collapsed from internal forces, eliminating one-half of the real politik equation that had kept the world from a general war for almost 40 years. That balance of power kept the Arab World subject to greater, global forces; when they evaporated, the sky was the limit as far as internal Arab politics went.

Asking who killed Ambassador Stevens is like asking that overwhelming question of the 1950s–who lost China. Who lost China? Chang Kai-Chek lost China. Do you really think we control everything?

Get it straight–we barely control anything. We never really have, anymore than any great power actually controls things, and it’s been worse since Communism collapsed, because now we have nobody to talk to to get the bad guys back in line.

In fact about the only thing we could do is something we won’t do; exert massive, terrifying vengeance. That would feel good, but only make things worse. The Russians don’t even do that–they take their vengeance quietly, which is what I assume President Obama will do.

It’s been a long time, in fact, since, as Jed Bartlett said on The West Wing :

“…that two thousand years ago, a Roman citizen could walk across the face of the known world free of the fear of molestation? He could walk across the Earth unharmed, cloaked only in the protection of the words civis Romanus — I am a Roman citizen. So great was the retribution of Rome, universally certain, should any harm befall even one of its citizens.”

Ain’t like that anymore. Not for any nation.

But why am I saying this? You know it perfectly well yourself.

And that arithmetic doesn’t look great for the Democrats. In a nutshell, and according to the most recent hard data, for 2008:

· There were 146,311,000 registered voters;
· Of those, 131,144,000 actually voted.

And Rasmussen Reports says that:
· People calling themselves Republicans comprised 37.6% of voters;
· People calling themselves Democrats comprised 33.3% of voters.

There are all sorts of currents running through both parties right now, mostly collecting around whether party members like their nominees. So the party that gets more of their voters to the polls, convinced to vote for their guy, wins. Period.

Long/short: Before you decide your vote doesn’t matter, that it doesn’t matter which party wins this election, or that you’re simply too mad at President Obama to vote for him, think about whether you want to vote for the Bush Administration 2.0, and whether you want people in power who think the things below are OK.

1. Republicans apparently don’t care what they do to people or to national security, or who they hurt, to win.

Consider the retired Navy SEAL who wrote the recently-released book on the mission to kill Osama Bin Laden, No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama bin Laden, outed by Fox News as one Chief Matt Bissonnette, 36 years old.

Publishing that book was bad for national security, and outing him was bad for Chief Bissonnette. As Lt. Cmdr. Chris Servello, a spokesman for the Navy, told Fox, “Any service member who discloses classified or sensitive information could be subject to prosecution — this doesn’t end when you leave the service. There is nothing unique to the special warfare community in this regard.”

At this point, there’s no way Chief Bissonnette can claim he didn’t what he was doing or that he didn’t commit this crime. SEALS signed non-disclosure forms, and the evidence he violated them is in print.

And since he’s a pro and had to know what he was doing, I’d say the only way he’d do that was if he was promised free legal help to minimize his sentence, and big bucks employment or a big bucks bonus when he gets out.

Chief Bissonnette is, after all, facing long legal proceedings and, very possibly, a long prison sentence, so you have to ask, since he knew what he was facing, if he’d take that on simply for the prestige.

That Chief Bissonnette was very likely promised some sort of reward for publishing the book and taking on these liabilities would be necessary because the publisher, Penguin Dutton, is reported as saying the royalties will go to charities that benefit the families of fallen SEALs.

That is a good thing, since the proceeds from crimes are confiscated. Meanwhile, Al-Qaeda has announced it will kill chief Bissonnette, and Al-Qaeda’s not known for idle threats. They are, however, known for going after their targets’ families.

And guess what? His lawyer, Robert Luskin of Patton, Boggs LLC, was Karl Rove’s lawyer during the Plame matter—another case of Republicans not caring what they do to people or national security.

So, taken together, the evidence suggests very strongly that elements in the GOP approached Chief Bissonnette and made him promises to get him to violate his oaths and his responsibilities to his fellow team members—not to mention to his mother–just to get some media coverage that could be used to attack the President during an election.

And you want these people back in power?

2. The $716 billion number thrown around as either “Obama’s Medicare cuts” or “Stolen from Medicare to pay for “Obamcare”—depending on who’s talking to whom, and where–is a reduction in the growth of reimbursements to providers, not a cut in benefits to recipients. Anyone who says otherwise is either being lied to and trusts the liar, or knows the facts and is lying themselves. Plus, the Ryan Plan calls for the same mechanism. There is no middle ground on that.

And since Romney is promising to “restore” that amount to Medicare, but offers no explanation of how it will be paid for, what Romney is offering is a $716 billion subsidy to insurers and medical providers, paid for by a $716 billion increase in the debt. I am sure the faithful will simply reject this, but those are the facts.

Tell me how this is in the country’s interests.

3. I don’t blame the GOP for trying to bury the truth about unemployment, but the losses either occurred under Bush the Younger, or were the result of his Administration’s policies, and the slow growth in employment has a lot to do with GOP obstruction in Congress.

None of those things were caused by Democrats. You simply can’t get around it. It’s no wonder they try to bury it in the same grave they threw the Bush years into, since the GOP can hardly run on the Bush record. But that doesn’t make it untrue–only election day poison for them.

Do you really want to let hem get away with this?

4. The Republican plan to get out of what their own policies created is to double down on said policies—cut taxes another 20 percent, and raise defense and Medicare spending, with no explanation of how this will be paid for—a sort of Bush Administration on meth.

I hear plenty of forceful assertions this will work, but no explanations based on facts and laid out in a methodical, rational manner. In the years since trickle-down economics has been the reigning fiscal orthodoxy–1980 to now– median family income has been flat and the number of people under the poverty line has almost doubled. But per capita GDP has grown four-fold. If trickle-down economics worked, the former data would reflect a rise in typical incomes, and a fall in poverty. So obviously, trickle-down is what it seems to be–a massive payday for the top, paid for by everyone else.

Tell me how that’s wise, or good public policy.

Add it together. These are the sort of people who want America to vote for them in November. Do you want them running the country—again?

If not, vote Democratic, and work hard to get out the Democratic vote. Senator Jim DeMint—he of the Tea Party–is right: This election decides the future of America.

It’s in your hands.