Losing the future

A certain reverence is required just to approach the book’s title: “The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict” by noted economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes. I can see why they understated it.

The pulse of outrage beats behind the cold calculations in this concise volume, newly published by Norton. We’re not just “losing” this tragic, arrogantly unplanned war in the conventional sense of failing to subdue our enemies — we’re committing slow socioeconomic suicide with its open-ended pursuit, losing, as we plunge recklessly into debt over it, our options, our ability to choose. We’re losing the future.

“Because of the war, the national deficit is $2 trillion higher,” Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001, told me. “At 5 percent interest, that’s $100 billion a year, year after year after year — forever!”

Such numbers are beyond the scope of the human imagination. To begin putting the war into financial perspective, Stiglitz suggested that we need a new unit of account: “Think of what things would cost in terms of hours, days, weeks of fighting.”

The war election

Maybe it sounded good when politicians, pundits and online fundraisers talked about American deaths as though they were the deaths that mattered most.

     Maybe it sounded good to taunt the Bush administration as a bunch of screw-ups who didn’t know how to run a proper occupation.

     And maybe it sounded good to condemn Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush for ignoring predictions that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to effectively occupy Iraq after an invasion.

     But when a war based on lies is opposed because too many Americans are dying, the implication is that it can be made right by reducing the American death toll.

     When a war that flagrantly violated international law is opposed because it was badly managed, the implication is that better management could make for an acceptable war.

Who do you trust?

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If you think Karl Rove is evil, make phone calls today

I don't know when Hillary Clinton and her advisors started channeling Karl Rove, but it's happened and it's ugly. If you want to stop them from tearing the Democratic Party apart, then get on the phones today and volunteer to turn out the Obama vote in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont.

Her campaign's been sleazy since Obama first emerged as a serious challenger. I've written about it here and here. But in the past week, it's escalated. She's just run a radio ad on NAFTA that pretends to be a news report. Meanwhile, Canadian television reported that Clinton's campaign offered the same disavowals she just accused an Obama advisor of making. Her 3:00 AM ad echoed the worst of Dick Cheney and Rudy Giuliani. When asked if she'd "take Senator Obama on his word that he's not a Muslim," she left the door open to the right wing lies by saying "there's nothing to base that on. As far as I know."

She just handed McCain his campaign script by saying,  "I think that I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002."

Primary day at the polls in Columbus, Ohio

COLUMBUS, OH I arrived at the Free Press office with two six-packs of Newcastle and a flask full of good bourbon whiskey, prepared for whatever ill assignments may be levied in my direction. Dr. Bob was hurrying off to school, declining the beer, but they sent me to the Sullivant Gardens to cover the polling. Today is March 4th and, by all counts, the most important day of the campaign since Super Tuesday. Perhaps it is even more important, because for those of us who were paying attention, the results of Super Tuesday were a foregone conclusion, but today all the weirdness really manifested itself and the race for the presidency is in full swing. If Hillary Clinton can hang on to any of these critical states, Texas, Ohio, Vermont or Rhode Island, than she will almost certainly press on until the final stupidity and those of us hungry for Political Entertainment will get a brokered convention.

Kathmandu blackout

KATHMANDU, Nepal -- When this nation's capital is cut off from electricity, survival becomes a surreal mix of medieval streets lit by candles, people stimulated as if in a Pavlov experiment, and concern that climate change and poverty may doom Kathmandu.

If it's Monday, and you are living in Kathmandu's trendy, tourist-packed Thamel neighborhood, take your hot shower and go online before 9 a.m., because this prosperous section of town will not get electricity again until 1 p.m.

Also plan for a blacked-out dinner on Monday evenings, when Thamel's electric supply stops again from 6 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

The next day, stagger your electric needs differently, because on Tuesdays, Thamel's supply stops from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and from 8 p.m. to midnight.

Kathmandu's electric "load shedding" schedule changes daily, while rotating throughout the city, making it impossible to do the same things at the same time each day, even in the same neighborhood.

Obama & Clinton: who's more likely to confront global warming?

If we ignore global warming much longer, we'll face a world of perpetual disaster, so there's no larger question for presidential candidates than who is more likely to tackle it successfully. Although Obama's and Clinton's positions are similar, he seems far more likely to. The key difference is their ability to mobilize a grassroots base to demand that the necessary changes get passed.

Ohio primary voting off to slow start

COLUMBUS, OHIO 11:00AM -- Free Press reporters returned on Tuesday to the site of long lines and hours-long voting delays in the 2004 election and found low voter turnout, short waits and no major voting problems as Ohio's 2008 primary voting began on March 4th.

There were no reports of voter challenges of likely Barack Obama voters by apparent Hillary Clinton supporters. Ohio's primary is open, meaning people can cross party lines to pick a presidential nominee in any party.

At a dozen African-American majority precincts on the east side of Columbus, no more than 12 percent of the voters already cast ballots by Election Day, according to surveys by reporters. Typically, the lines were short, with the longest taking 15 minutes to vote. Compared to 2004 and 2006, there appeared to be twice as many voting machines and voters also were able to vote on a paper ballot if requested.

The apparently slow start of inner-city voting also was reported in Cleveland, where election protection staffers for People for the American Way reported a similar early turnout. The weather was rough across Ohio,

Obama's talking points

Discussion of Barack Obama's presidential campaign has mainly focused on the candidate's undeniable rhetorical skills and the obvious follow-up question: What, if any, substance lies behind them? He can talk the talk, but what's the walk, or is there a walk at all?

Conservatives like to point to his National Journal rating as the most liberal member of the US Senate, and considering another of its members -- Vermont's Bernie Sanders -- is an avowed socialist, that would be liberal, indeed. But many of the most hard-core liberals see in Obama just another bought-and-paid-for politician whose ability to mesmerize potential foot soldiers behind what they believe will ultimately prove to be a corporate agenda only diverts their energy and actually hurts the cause. And then there's a third camp of critics, who see just a gifted man with a large ego, uttering attractive but empty platitudes to advance the cause of nothing but the glory that is Barack Obama.

Free Press reporter at Cleveland's Obama-Clinton debate

I seemed to have peed on my suit jacket, just now, in the restroom here at the Cleveland University's Wolstein Center, location of the last Democratic debate in the 2008 presidential primary cycle. I am on Location, I have traveled through Icy Hell to bring you this top-notch Reporting; I have seen the Beast up close, and it let me keep my beer.

Oh God....where am I? Why am I here? And why do I always begin these missives in the restroom, with detailed accounts of the heroic struggles of my urinary tract? These are legitimate questions, and by God, you deserve some answers. I am sorely addled, but let me try to sort this out, for my own sake if for no other reason.

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