America's Plan in the Middle-East

The first thing to recognize is that the situation in the middle-east is a mess. That's not to say we've done anything to cause that, it just happened naturally, as a result of oppressive regimes and weak economies and radical militant Islamists.

I believe the dangers of this "mess" would reach Israel far before it would touch America. Yes, we must be vigilant about Americans who have become radicalized Muslims, but the Israelis face much more danger.

Over the years Israel and its neighboring countries have refused to broker a real lasting peace deal. This lack of leadership has let the situation grow worse. Now, those opposed to any kind of peace are having their say.

Is there any chance this can be turned to some advantage?

Could we use statecraft to nudge those middle-east powers to find some kind of consensus about arrangement of power to exclude the radicals? Could we show them it requires peace with Israel, not just in small ways, but a real normalization of national relations?

We might have to oppose ISIS/ISIL, but that has yet to be proven. Until then we should use the situation to our advantage to push Middle-Eastern nations to do something truly productive for the long-run.

The West Virginia Senate Race

As in Kentucky coal is important to West Virginians. The Republicans keep arguing the coal industry is under attack by Pres. Obama. But, isn't coal production at an all-time high? Maybe mechanization is enabling coal companies to dump workers.

What Shelley Moore Capito and other Republicans refuse to face is that they have no plan to grow the economy and to produce more jobs.

Democrats wanted to change tax law to take away the corporation's incentive to send jobs overseas, but Republicans said "No". It's time for Republicans to step aside and let the Democrats and their policies improve the economy.

Each month since the recovery began the Obama presidency created more new jobs than for the entire 8 years of the Bush administration. It's time to let Democrats have more say in making the economy grow stronger.

Senator Natalie Tennant can help to get the job done.

Mitch McConnell doesn't have an answer

When asked if his job was to create jobs in Kentucky Mitch McConnell said "No".

But, in his advertisements he says it was the job of the president and the Democrats. What hypocrisy!

It's interesting that Kentucky is losing coal jobs, but that coal production is up and sales overseas is at an all-time high. Doesn't that mean mechanization is replacing the workers? What does any politician have to do with that?

Mitch McConnell doesn't have any answers, just attacks on Pres. Obama.

We need politicians who can actually do the jobs they get elected to. Mitch McConnell just wants to blame somebody else for his own ineffectiveness.

Republicans ARE Living the Fantasy

I received two sort of related phone calls today: one from a debt collector trying to recover money on a bill from 2009 and the other a political advertisement by the Republican member of Congress running for senator I WV -- Shelley Moore Capito.

They're related because the debt I had a health issue which caused massive expenses (which I couldn't pay) going back to 1998. It's amazing to me they are still trying to recover some of that today, but it's more amazing they would have me take money I need for food to pay an ER doctor money which he has already written off. The only reason I have these debts is that I had health problems and no health care insurance money to pay the bills as they arose. But now, Republicans are arguing Obamacare is a bad thing because it forces us to have healthcare insurance and they would repeal it...putting me (and others like me) right back where I was when I ran up the first bills.

Do the Republicans not want people to have insurance? How exactly do they expect people to pay their bills and avoid bankruptcy? They don't have a plan of any significance and they know it.

That's living in fantasy land. But, people who live in the real world have real health issues and real bills and can't afford leaders who aren't willing to deal with our real problems. We can't afford health care without insurance and we can't afford Republicans who would take away our health care insurance.

We can't afford to live in a fantasy world.

The Organizing Principle of America's Foreign Policy

When asked about foreign policy Hillary Clinton said it's not enough to "not do stupid things", it's important for great countries to have "an organizing principle". I agree, though I would have expressed it as "having a grand strategy" or "having a vision for the future" or something like that.

In the case of the recent American foreign policy I do believe there is an "organizing principle" and it has to do with two fundamental elements which existed from the 1980s onward: Europe has been lazy on security issues due to WWII fatigue & habit and America has growing debts which hobble us.

How this impacts our foreign policy is that we have worked more on developing international partnerships or coalitions to spread the cost of doing important things (like destroying bin Laden's al Qaeda) and this in turn requires Europeans to act more on issues of importance to themselves. This isn't a call for them to reassert themselves as conquistadors or to bring forth new Napoleons, but it requires them to wake up more to their security duties. The recent cases of the break-up of Yugoslavia and the genocide which followed and the difficulties between Ukraine and Russia come to mind. In neither have the Western European countries shown brightly.

Extrapolating this kernel of an idea leads America to demand local participants in activities they want America to help with. This limits the costs to America and establishes a rhythm and pattern to our behavior which the rest of the world can accept and work with. It also establishes the limits of power we will assert which may allow rogues like Vladimir Putin to exploit openings. Oddly, in the case of Putin and Ukraine it exercised the Western Europeans and may have helped develop their understanding of a stronger role for their military and diplomatic efforts in their part of the world. In some other places like the Middle-East they have wanted to use America to serve their purposes and wrt Saudi Arabia and oil states this has been destructive. It is all the better that we can move to an all-of-the-above energy policy (which we have) in order to demonstrate clearly we aren't anyone's toy and can't be bullied over energy. Incidentally, during recent months the price of gasoline has been declining despite the violence in the Middle-East. That wouldn't have been the normal order of things a few years ago.

Another benefit of this strategy is that America's humanitarian efforts, whether because of natural disaster or the costs of war, needn't always be one-sided -- we can more easily expect coalitions and group efforts as there are fewer human costs to other nations.

Hopefully the net effect of this many-sided organizing principle is to produce a future where America can focus more on domestic issues, avoid going so far into debt or of spending so much on our military or of being blackmailed on energy issues. This is a vision of a future where many countries cooperate on many issues and there needn't be super-powers when every country knows their own local region will be dominated mostly by local people and their interests. It's a more democratic vision.

Of course, I may be imagining too much and it's just that we're trillions of dollars in debt and the easiest way to get through that is to spend less. Sometimes the obvious is the truth.