the notes are coming due

Reuters) - The United States should alter policy to take account of China's role as a major player on the world stage if it wants to avoid friction and instability, a major state newspaper said on Thursday.

The commentary in ruling Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily followed the latest spat in Sino-U.S. ties, over what China views as unwarranted U.S. interference in a territorial dispute in the South China Sea.

While senior officials, including U.S. President Barack Obama, say they welcome a prosperous, flourishing China, good words must be backed up by actions, the newspaper said.

"If the United States cannot find a way of recognizing and accepting China's entrance on the world stage as a big player, relations will swerve up and down like a roller coaster," it said.

socialism or barbarism

7-29-2010--A recent report from the Congressional Research Service finds that the war on terror, including Afghanistan and Iraq, has been, by far, the costliest war in American history aside from World War II. It adjusted costs of all previous wars for inflation. ... it is President Obama who is now requesting 6.1 percent more in military spending than the peak of military spending under Mr. Bush....Under Mr. Obama, we are now spending more money on the military, after adjusting for inflation, than in the peak of the cold war, Vietnam War or Korean War. Our battle fleet is larger than the next 13 navies combined, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The intelligence apparatus is so bloated that, according to The Washington Post, the number of people with “top secret” clearance is 1.5 times the population of the District of Columbia. Meanwhile, a sobering report from the College Board says that the United States, which used to lead the world in the proportion of young people with college degrees, has dropped to 12th. ... For the cost of just one soldier in Afghanistan for one year, we could start about 20 schools there. ...Mr. Mortenson lamented to me that for the cost of just 246 soldiers posted for one year, America could pay for a higher education plan for all Afghanistan. ...Faced with constant demands for more, Mr. Gates in May asked: “Is it a dire threat that by 2020 the United States will have only 20 times more advanced stealth fighters than China?” –Kristof, NYT
--FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress on Wednesday that he does not know how many of his agents cheated on an important exam on the bureau’s policies ... that raised questions about whether the FBI knows its own rules for conducting surveillance on Americans.—SBT A4
--A new climate report confirms the Earth has been warming, with the past decade the hottest on record. WSJ A1
--Insured Americans are using fewer medical services, raising questions whether patients are consuming less health care as they pick ukp a greater share of the costs. WSJ A1

7-28-2010

Things are so bad that Robert Blackwill, who was on W.’s national security team, wrote in Politico that the Obama administration should just admit failure and turn over the Pashtun South to the Taliban since it will inevitably control it anyway. He said that the administration doesn’t appreciate the extent to which this is a Pashtun nationalist uprising.
Dowd, NYT 7-28-2010

7-27-2010

7-27-2010—DHB, which specialized in making body armor used by the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, paid for more than $6 million in personal expenses on the behalf of [CEO David] Brooks, covering items as expensive as luxury cars....Also included where university textbooks for his daughter, pornographic videos for his son, plastic surgery for his wife, a burial plot for his mother, prostitutes for his employees, and, for him, a $100,000 gem-encrusted American-flag belt buckle. –NYT A1,3 privatization promotes patriotism, family values, & military victory!]

--Now, Representative Zach Wamp, following the lead of Texas governor Rick Perry, wants to revisit the Civil War. “I hope that the American people will go to the ballot box in 2010 and 2012 so that states are not forces to consider separation from this government.”[dude, we’re sorry we beat you crackerbillies! Separate, PUH-LEAZ, SEPARATE!! NOW!!!]

aint no cure for the summertime blues

7-27-2010--“Super Sad” takes place in the near future, and Mr. Shteyngart has extrapolated every toxic development already at large in America to farcical extremes. The United States is at war in Venezuela, and its national debt has soared to the point where the Chinese are threatening to pull the plug. There are National Guard checkpoints around New York, and riots in the city’s parks. Books are regarded as a distasteful, papery-smelling anachronism by young people who know only how to text-scan for data, and privacy has become a relic of the past. Everyone carries around a device called an äppärät, which can live-stream its owner’s thoughts and conversations, and broadcast their “hotness” quotient to others. People are obsessed with their health — Lenny works as a Life Lovers Outreach Coordinator (Grade G) for a firm that specializes in life extension — and shopping is the favorite pastime of anyone with money. –NYT
7-26-2010—A six-year archive of classified military documents made public on Sunday offers an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal.NYT A1[pentagon papers redux]
7-25-2010—A federal investigation has accused dozens of military officials and defense contractors, including some with top level security clearances, of buying and downloading child pornography on private or government computers.NYT A16 [pentagon porno]
7-26-2010--Chile’s president abruptly rejected calls on Sunday from the Roman Catholic Church to pardon dozens of imprisoned military officials convicted of human rights violations during the era known as Chile’s dirty war. NYTA7 [hey, they forgive pederasts, why not fascists?!!]
7-25-2010—So Jeb Bush is running for president. I don’t know about the rest of the country, but thank God, ladies and gentlemen, the comedy recession is over—David Letterman—NYTWK2
--7-24/25/2010—In February 2003, [the CEO of Calpers] was sent a letter making a number of predictions. It said a housing bubble would soon deflate and wreak havoc on average consumers. It urged Calpers to resist risky investments in a push for higher returns. ... The prescient letter ... was from the leader of a small highway patrol union in California. WSJ B4 [these union goons do nothing but diss free enterprise]
7-24-2010—[Yu Keping travelled] across 30 states on a Greyhound bus.] He said he saw the chasm between the grotesquely rich and the abjectly poor, the lack of respect for the elderly, and the apathy on Election Day... He said he was mugged twice, once by a man who put a knife to his back in a public restroom in Indianapolis. NYT A5 [hoosiers educate commie Chinese dude]
7-24-2010—The Shirley Sherrod story tells us [that] the Obama administration, which runs from race issues the way thoroughbreds bolt from the starting gate, did not offer this woman fair or respectful treatment before firing and publicly humiliating her.... There is no way we’ll overcome those divisions if people who should know better keep bowing before and kowtowing to the toxic agenda of those on the right whose overriding goal is to foment hostility and hate. NYT A15 [The person who released the Sherrod tapes] ...Mr. Breitbart is the person who last fall released the Acorn tapes to Fox News. NYT 7-26-2010, p B2
--7-22-2010, LRB—The impoverishment of Iraq—not to mention the exclusion of its oil from the global market to the benefit of oil prices—was not a means to an end: it was the end. P. 9
--It is said that the analysts of the fighting in World War Two, concerned at the apparent reluctance to participate or even fire their weapons of so many of the Western armies’ combat soldiers, tried to figure out what characteristics marked the born warrior.... The only feature they could find which seemed to have strong predictive power was that effective fighters had a strong sense of humor. And that is one of the really distinguishing features of Old Norse poetry, legend, and saga: grim gallows humor. It is always a bad sign in a saga when some one cracks a joke. Ibid., 27 [ blondes do have more fun...]

7-19/20-2010

7-20-2010—“You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap around women for five years because they didn’t wear a veil. You know guys like that ain’t got not manhood left anyway, so it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.”—Gen. Mattis NYT A10
--E-Books top hardcovers at Amazon.----NYT B1
--China Top US in Energy—WSJ A1
7-19-2010—This was particularly pronounced among the private colleges in the study. For minority applicants, the lower a family’s socioeconomic position, the more likely the student was to be admitted. For whites, though, it was the reverse. An upper-middle-class white applicant was three times more likely to be admitted than a lower-class white with similar qualifications. Douthat, NYT A19

7-17-2010

--Tweet less, kiss more--NYT A19

--"Increasing executive compensation results in executives behaving meanly toward those lower down the hierachy."--WSJ,B4

--Paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue.--WSJ, A1,A6