For MEB, always.

It's certainly not the recovery many would like, as to being the "new normal," and believe me, I know that all too well.

Nonetheless, if you walk around a city like Birmingham, which I have been doing as part of the conclusion of a project called Democracy in… Read full post »

I taught economics and finance for a minute, and did a lot of research in the process, in which this is something of a re-post here, as the issues involved aren't trivial, but are important to understand.

First, as to the semi-good news from J.P. Morgan's $2 billion loss, if its a… Read full post »

I taught political science and international relations for a minute.

Massive retaliation is the strategy most associated with Eisenhower, if the intellectual classes didn't like it too much.

Ike's theory was that he didn't want to bankrupt the country spending money on every single threat that could… Read full post »

 I taught economics and finance for a minute. 

First,as to the semi-good news from the J.P. Morgan $2 billion loss, if its a $2 trillion bank, in a derivatives trade like the one in question, as to "corporate bond synthetics," generally speaking, if there is no "counter-party fail… Read full post »

Dwight Eisenhower will rank as one of the most important American Presidents and individuals because of three decisions he made, the least known of which was probably actually the most important one.

The first decision of course that Ike made was to launch D-Day om June 6, 1944.

It was… Read full post »

 I will say the when I finished the mental part of the project Democray in America in Hard Times, A Personal Journey, by visiting Don Rickerts, such a brilliant man, only to find that he had died on September 10, 2011, a deep feeling of despair overwhelmed me as to the… Read full post »

As to the main risk, when one forms a national unity government as has been done in Israel today, there may be some who take that as war being an immediate prospect, and who therefore take moves that they otherwise might not have taken, e.g. Russia, China, Iran, or even Syria.… Read full post »

Of course, all domestic coalition formation in a parliamentary system like Israel's has a high degree of domestic content.

Thus, postponing the election that Prime Minister Netanyahu called for this fall is partly a function of what his Likud bloc and center right Kadima Party think is best for their… Read full post »

In the end, some people are not quite the best vessels for certain types of projects. I still think it was a good idea, to revisit Democracy in America, in a self-financed project called Democracy in America in Hard Times, A Personal Journey.

That's life too, as to how such a thing… Read full post »

It's unfortunate that it's a Presidential election year, and so policy tends to get overwhelmed by politics, on the theory that since it's a zero sum game as to who wins office, and so therefore the other side will maximize its chances to win office, you have to do so too.… Read full post »

Vladimir Vladimiorvich Putin "returned" to the Presidency of the Russian Federation today.

Of course, many people thought Putin never really left, and that Dmitri Medvedev at best was an advisor, but gloating at such moments (I told you he really ran the place with his fellow Chekists) is pointless.… Read full post »

I wish I had stayed with French when I tried it, as it's a lovely and of course important language, with my favorite single phrase: plus ca change, c'etet la meme chose, the more things change.... .

So, "a minimum," let us give France credit for an important fact; when the… Read full post »

 As to the action, this is a link to what has been reported as to North Korea jamming South Korean GPS signals.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-02/flights-disrupted-as-north-korea-jams-gps-signals/3985794

On average, there are 28,500 American soldiers stationed in South Korea, properly known… Read full post »

This article is based on extensive training in the economics and politics of budgets cross-nationally, especially beginning with a paper written in 1996 at UCI and presented to the Western Political Science Association, part of which became a book chapter entitled The Fiscal Policy of George W. Bush,… Read full post »

For MEB.And for Robert Tucker, SAIS, who trained me in the analysis of foreign policy, especially a book his trainer wrote, Robert Osgood: Ideals and Self-Interest in American Foreign Policy. That work really ought to be read by a lot more people, because it's still applicable as to our complex of… Read full post »

 For MEB. Hanguobeideren shi hen keychi. Hanguoderen Bu shi hen keychi, Ohio xiang dao Pynongyang qu. Hanguonanderen shi hen haode meigoude pengyou. Hen haode pengyou bu xihuan pengyou zheng.

There are good reasons for the presence of 28,500 members of the American Armed Forces in the Republic o… Read full post »

This is really a funny game here, except for the MI6 codebreaker found suffocated to death in a red North Face "holdall" bag, with the bag locked from the inside, but with the dead officer with the key.

And he was naked, and had $30,000 in women's clothes, so veddy British,… Read full post »

 For MEB, and their great, great uncle Mst. Sgt. Jim Rich, USMC, served in the Korean War at the age of 42.

This is not nor has the author ever advocated war for it's own sake, but as a defensive measure to be weighed very seriously given the stakes in Korea.… Read full post »

For Amera Khaterzai, Facebook friend from Afghanistan, like her family still there, who for all our narcissism about wars being just or well-conducted are ultimately the most impacted generally speaking, like the ARVN soldier down the street in this post.

It is kind of ironic that a year after Bin La… Read full post »

This is not to say that war is a good thing, just that it seems to have been a fact of life from time to time for a long time. There is an element in the United States that seems us to not ever win a war, maybe to be fair,… Read full post »

If you think about that, it makes sense, for North Korea to help Syria build a nuclear reactor, the one that the Israelis bombed in 2007, and then everyone got curiously quiet about.

The Syrians didn't complain having their hands caught in the cookie jar, nor did the Israelis say that… Read full post »

For Jim Rich, USMC 1950-53, Republic of Korea, resting easy in the Black Hills.

Unless you're the militarist clique in the North, and you do that to start something you want to do anyway, which is reunify the Korean Penninsula by the use of force, you don't want a war to… Read full post »

The sequence of walks out of which I derived these two essays, which are bound to be misinterpreted in the present, partly just because I am from Alabama, was part of a project called Democracy in America in Hard Times, technically a replication study of DeTocqueville.

You can't get a… Read full post »

As part of the project Democracy in America in Hard Times, A Personal Journey, which of course didn't work out, if it was a hard try, I have been taking a series of walks across Birmingham each Saturday, usually about eight to ten hours at a time.

Part of that is to… Read full post »