Fictional action trumps real impotence

On the front page of CNN.com, I read two headlines this afternoon, in this order: "Paulson braces public for months of tough times" and "Batman dethrones Spidey as superhero king." Without having seen "The Dark Knight" but being reasonably familiar with the characters involved, I believe the two stories are related.

First, I click on the Paulson story and find that the appointed leaders of our corner of the Free World have abdicated their authority to fix our broken system. Paulson is the U.S. Secretary of Treasury but speaks in this report as if he's merely the town cryer, impotent and clueless, able to report what we all see, hear and feel, but incapable of fixing a damn thing. He speaks, and he engenders no confidence whatsoever:

"I think it's going to be months that we're working our way through this period - clearly months," he said.

Paulson said the number of troubled banks will increase as they struggle to cope with big losses on bad mortgages. The government this month took over IndyMac (IDMC) after a run led it to become the largest regulated thrift to fail.

"Of course the list is going to grow longer given the stresses we have in the marketplace, given the housing correction. But again, it's a safe banking system, a sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation," he said in broadcast interviews.

He enumerates the nation's economic ills like a trained medic, but the best medicine he offers is a stroke to the forearm:

"We're going through a challenging time with our economy. This is a tough time. The three big issues we're facing right now are, first, the housing correction which is at the heart of the slowdown; secondly, turmoil of the capital markets; and thirdly, the high oil prices, which are going to prolong the slowdown," he said.

"But remember, our economy has got very strong long-term fundamentals, solid fundamentals. And you know, your policy-makers here, regulators, we're being very vigilant."

His activism to correct economic course begins and ends with the advice an old uncle might give to a couple weighing a mortgage:

"Our first priority today is the stability of the capital markets, the stability of the system. And these institutions have investors all around the world ... and those investors need to know that we in the United States of America understand the importance of these institutions to our capital markets and to our economy and to our housing market," he added.

There is no sense of urgency, no commitment to act, not even an indication that he and his orbiters have any idea of what steps are needed to find the Titanic's leaks, marshal the resources necessary to plug them, hoist ballast and pump for dear life. Rather, there's admission of failure, married weakly to admission of incompetence:

Paulson acknowledged the U.S. is continuing to lose jobs, though he said the $168 billion economic relief plan approved this year has created jobs that would not otherwise exist. The plan included tax rebates for people and tax breaks for businesses.

This is not service, not leadership, not action; this is the ghost of a dead ideology, teetering in Purgatory and unsure of which direction to fall.

In case the reader needs further information, CNN kindly includes a link on that story's page to a series of analysis called "Scary economy, real solutions." Following that link leads to a series of briefs with titles like "A looming recession," "Weak dollar," "Falling stock market," "Unemployment anxiety," "Inflation," "Gas prices rising," "Home prices sinking," "Tightening mortgage market." The briefs dispense advice that wasn't fresh when Ben Franklin offered it under the name of Poor Richard: "Beef up emergency savings," one text offers, with nary a glimpse of irony.

It is no wonder, then, that America's moviegoing public has fled the real world where walking apparitions promise volumes of nothing and given a record-breaking opening weekend to a film about one disciplined hero battling one agent of chaos, neither of whom suffers from impotence, incompetence, bureaucratic malaise or a lack of creative ideas to resolve problems. Neither the superhero nor the supervillain are trapped in merely diagnosing and rediagnosing a situation; both see the matter at hand and move, by God, to handle it.

Would that America's leaders had a fraction of the simple gumption necessary to do the same.

An annotated tour of Capitol Hill

Hard to catch up a couple of weeks in a few paragraphs, but here goes: Daisy and I spent a week or so in Charleston with her mom in the hospital, then went to Washington, DC, for a work-related conference, then she came home to the Upstate and sweltered until a broken heat pump was repaired, then we rode back to Charleston for her mom's check-up in the heat and humidity. Daisy's right: It's been a long, hot summer already, and summer's not over.

A couple of interesting things occurred during this time, not counting that I've learned a little bit about kidney stones, E. coli, MRSA and other bacterial infections.

One is that we spent July 4 in the nation's capital but didn't spend it on the crowded National Mall with thousands of others; we watched happily from the air-conditioned comfort of our hotel room. Another is that we scheduled a tour of Capitol Hill through the office of one of our illustrious Senators -- I won't name names but there are only two, and only one of them made his name as a presidential persecutor during the Clinton impeachment trial. And speaking of persecutors, Old Scratch collected on his contract with Jesse Helms, and Daisy and I happened to drive through Raleigh on the very afternoon that the Helms account was closed at Hayes Barton Baptist Church. (Yep, I got pictures, but no, I didn't get inside.)

I'll skip the lessons in bacterial infections and hospital visits, and the various dramas connected thereto, and get straight to Washington. Well, it was hot and the days were long. This was no vacation for either of us, and some of our real goals were accomplished. But at the end of the work, Daisy and I scheduled with that unnamed Senator's office to get a guided tour of Capitol Hill.

In fact, Capitol Hill isn't open to the public as it was before Dubya's and Congress's knee-jerk reactions to the attacks of 2001. Now, law-abiding Americans can only visit the People's House -- as it was called when it was being conceived by Washington, L'Enfant and others in the eighteenth century -- by calling and getting an appointment for a guided tour through a member of Congress.

Because Daisy and I had watched C-SPAN's gorgeous documentary on Capitol Hill on Memorial Day, we actually called to get one of the special tours up into the Rotunda. But we were advised that the rules are different for those tours: Your member of Congress must accompany you, and you have to sign papers declaring your physical fitness for that tour (because it involves climbing a ton of stairs, and it takes a long while), and those tours have to be arranged with the office of the architect of the Capitol. Indeed, our contact advised us, our Senator had never taken that tour himself. (It is more important, after all, to travel the nation in support of John McCain's presidential campaign than to be available to meet the requests of constituents.)

So for these reasons (though we were not only sufficiently physically fit, but excited at the prospect of that behind-the-scenes tour), we didn't get the Rotunda tour. Instead, we got (the names have been changed to protect the uninformed) Bart. Bart would take us and another unsuspecting family on our guided tour. Okeydoke.

So on July 7, Daisy and I parked at Union Station. We tried to park closer to Capitol Hill, but Capitol Police advised us that the closest "citizen parking" was in the pay-by-the-hour parking deck behind Union Station. "Citizen parking," the officer called it. I took it to mean that those hundreds of cars parked behind the martial perimeter around Capitol Hill must be other-than-citizens, either "non-citizens" or "super-citizens." In either case, I'm concerned; the Constitution does not establish any "super-citizenship," and it makes no sense to allow non-citizens to park nearer to the government than citizens themselves are allowed to park. Nevertheless, we parked behind Union Station and called our office contact to ask about the policy on carrying bags and purses.

When we told her we'd parked at Union Station, she blanched (yes, even over the phone, we could tell she blanched) and said that we should park near the elevators and cover anything valuable we might have to leave in the truck. In fact, she told us that it would be safer for Daisy to leave her purse in the Senator's office than in our locked vehicle. It was a confidence booster, since we'd checked out of the hotel already, and everything we'd brought to Washington was in the truck. Mmm, I thought: My tax dollars at work. I gave my little truck a second glance as we rounded the corner to leave the parking deck.

Did you know Union Station was built on bottom land that once was occupied by Irish transients? The shantytown was called Swampoodle and the Irish had to be run out so the land could be filled in and the station could be built. What a fine welcome for the Irish, I thought. Give us your tired, your poor -- but get the hell out of the way now, because progress is coming, and its god is capitalist. Swampoodle.

And did you know that the statues of Roman centurions that ring the upper deck of Union Station were original cast as nude, but shields were cast additionally to cover the nudity in order so as not to offend weaker sensibilities? To which I thought, then why cast the statues at all, and why not just paint murals of Mickey Mouse up there instead? What unnecessary drama.

There are inspiring inscriptions in the station's facade, and we paused long enough to read them. But the heat and the taxi traffic kept us moving toward our Senator's office, a little up Delaware Avenue and on the left.

Though we got there a few minutes early, Bart started our tour fifteen minutes late, there being more important matters to address: checking Facebook pages and whatnot. It was a precursor of things to come.

Bart told us he'd only been with the Senator's office for a few weeks. He may have said, too, that he spent part of the spring as a legislative page, but he mumbled a good bit when he was unsure, so he may have been saying something else entirely. I'm certain that the mumbling is endearing to the co-eds at his college -- which will go unnamed here to protect those who may actually be paying attention to their history professors in Clinton -- as is his fresh-from-North-Myrtle tan and Zoom!-whitening, but it was a bit of an aggravation to someone who'd seen the C-SPAN documentary and who was actually interested in learning more about our Capitol. I can tell you too that those hiking from Union Station on a hot July afternoon were not as charmed by Bart's surreptitious smoothing and primping as were the nubile tour guides with whom we crossed paths. I'm sure that many have swooned upon hearing that he's a business major, with intentions of law school thereafter.

Lucky for Bart that the LSAT doesn't include a section on American history. Or on grammar. "The most funnest part" of the tour for Bart, he told us, was riding the underground trolley that ferries legislators from their office buildings to their respective chambers for votes. "The most funnest" is a direct quote; I have no reason to lie about it.

He took us downstairs to line up for the trolley and explained the little red light on the clocks located throughout the Senate complex. Based upon his mumbling explanation, I still have no understanding of the clock system, but I know the clocks have little red lights on them for some reason. And it's important to members of Congress.

The original statue of the Lady of Freedom, the model for the statue that stands atop the Capitol dome, was encased in plywood because it's being moved to a visitors center. Bart explained that this "15-feet-tall" statue was the tallest in Washington, by law. None can be taller, he said. Having seen the statues of Jefferson and Lincoln, I kept my lip buttoned, for I didn't want to get anyone into trouble.

Stepping up into Statuary Hall, Bart explained that each state has two statues in the Capitol, including South Carolina. (!) Our two are of Wade Hampton and John C. Calhoun, he told us.

Of course, Daisy and I went to marvel at many others we recognized by image or by name. We apparently impeded Bart's tour plan, as we pointed and called out names, and took pictures, amazed at the collective significance of the history in the room. I figured that if Bart were brighter, he likely would have thought, You can take the yokels out of the sticks, but you can't take the sticks out of the yokels. But I rest assured that Bart arrived at no such construction.

As Bart made his way through a halting, embarrassing explanation of Constantine Brumidi's murals in the Rotunda, Daisy and I agreed that he would benefit from watching the C-SPAN documentary, and we noticed too that other tour guides were going into much greater -- and more accurate -- detail than was ours, and that some were referring to a printed script of some sort. Not our Bart.

I have to confess that because our little tour party included another family, a couple with elementary- or middle-school-age kids, I felt compelled to correct some of Bart's more egregious declarations. For example, a bit of the mural in the Rotunda illustrates the Wright brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk. When Bart said it occurred "sometime in the mid-1900s," I couldn't stop myself from telling the kids, "That happened in 1903."

"You must be a real history buff," said young Bart.

"I was an English major," I replied. What I didn't say, but thought, was: The reason I can recognize these statues and murals, and know the dates of certain important events, and know their significance, is that I paid more attention to what I was being taught in the public schools of eastern North Carolina than to what I'd be doing on Friday nights, and with whom, and where, and what beverages might be available there.

On the other hand, if only I'd paid more attention to primping and tanning and Zoom!-whitening, I might have been working for a Senator too when I was 20. And I might still be there, parking in the "super-citizen" parking areas, much closer to Capitol Hill than Union Station's dark and dangerous parking deck. C'est la vie.

Is it really important, after all, to know that flight began with the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk in 1903, instead of in the mid-1900s? Maybe not.

Is it really important to recognize Po'pay as a leader of the Pueblo tribe in New Mexico? Young Bart informed us that Po'pay -- which he pronounced unmumblingly "Pompeii" -- was a statue of an Indian and had been removed from Statuary Hall "to get a bath or something." He didn't know who Po'pay was, or why Po'pay was significant, only that a statue of an Indian had been removed, maybe for "a bath." In fact, in a chronology of all the statues on Capitol Hill, Po'pay represents the earliest one of a person born on what ultimately became America. Pretty significant, in the scheme of things. And the statue wasn't removed for "a bath," but has been moved to the new Visitors Center behind Capitol Hill. Hm.

Ushering us out of the Rotunda, young Bart took us quickly to and through the old well of the Senate -- which bears a literal resemblance to a well, and might explain why it's called that -- when the young nation's Senate had only 26 members and could be accommodated around a circular bar, overlooking the speaker below (like a medical theater). Daisy and I were fascinated here, standing where America's first few crops of Senators stood.

Then Bart led us hastily through the original Supreme Court's chamber and we took a few photographs of it. It's a tiny, rare space, all the rarer given the importance of what occurred there. And then he led us to the "Crypt," another room that today houses statues but was originally built to be the burial place for a president, Bart told us. "I think it was George Washington," he mumbled.

Pausing to wait in line to get out of the crypt, our tour mates asked Bart where he thought was the best place in town from which to watch the fireworks display on July 4th. He wouldn't know, he said; he'd spent the evening "on a crowded dock on the waterfront," he said. Okeydoke.

It happened that the Senate was in session that day (the House was not), so I asked Bart if we'd be able to visit the Senate gallery. Well, he didn't bring passes, he said. He didn't think we'd be interested in that, he said, because he finds it really boring himself. And he'd never taken a tour group way up there; he'd only been there himself on his own "training" tour with other legislative staff. But if we reeeally wanted to see the Senate gallery, he'd call back and "try to get some" passes. Mm, we definitely felt it might be an uphill climb. But indeed, Daisy and I said, and our tour mates agreed that they'd like to do that, too. So Bart made a call and mumbled that maybe someone could bring us passes as we moved along.

And we moved along, finally, to a momentous spot on the tour. In one smaller chamber off Statuary Hall is another ring of statues, including a massive bronze statue of King Kamehameha of Hawai'i. Bart merely pointed to the statue, standing in a dark corner, and said it was there because it was so heavy and it was moved to a spot where it was supported by a pillar on the floor below. He didn't know who it was, he said, but he told us it was solid gold and it was from Hawai'i. "It's a little ironic," he said, "I just got an email this week saying that Barack Obama's parents were from Hawai'i."

I was instantly embarrassed for Bart, knowing as most of America does that Obama's mother was from Kansas, as landlocked a state as any state can be, and that his father was from Kenya, which isn't even in the Western hemisphere. So I spoke up to divert attention. "It's King Kamehameha," I told our tour mates' kids, "who ruled Hawai'i when it was still a nation, before it was discovered by white people and became our property."

I think Bart was oblivious. He led us into the next little hallway where, he told us, President George W. Bush walks through double doors to deliver his State of the Union Address to Congress. In fact, he said, drawing our attention to a window between statues of Jonathan Trumbull of Connecticut and Father Jacques Marquette of Wisconsin, this is the spot where President George W. Bush knelt and prayed after September 11. "I wasn't here to see it myself, but I've heard it from several people."

Daisy didn't miss a beat: "He ought to be praying now," she said aloud.

I was aghast. Our tour guide, a representive of one of our state's Senators, had just repeated Internet misinformation about Barack Obama, and in the next breath had repeated equally vapid reverence for the least capable president in history, at least the worst one since James Buchanan. If there had been any question before of Bart's ineffectiveness, he had erased it now.

That would have marked the end of the tour, but there was the question of the Senate gallery passes. Bart hadn't gotten a call back yet, and he mumbled about someone bringing passes to us in mid-tour, but no one had come. So he left us alone in one of Brumidi's hallways, pointing to painted birds and lilies on the wall to keep us occupied. A bit later, he returned and turned us around to take a corridor to the Senate gallery.

On the way, we passed a plaque in a stairwell, marking the spot where George Washington himself had laid the original cornerstone of the Capitol. I was struck by this and pointed it out to Daisy, because I've been reading a book called "The Sacred Geometry of Washington, D.C." about Pierre L'Enfant's draft of the city of Washington. It is this point, the cornerstone of the Capitol, that marked L'Enfant's "zero meridian" and from which he marked the various measurements, streets, avenues, circles and squares that were mostly realized as the city was built. As much as anything else we'd seen, seeing this spot sent chills down my spine; this point on a one-time hill overlooking the Potomac River was the origin of so much of the future world capital's history.

Of course, we passed it right by; it didn't register a blip on Bart's radar.

Upstairs, we unloaded all electronics into a plastic bin, which Bart checked into a little office, and filed into the Senate gallery. More chills. At the moment, Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota was orating on the rising costs of oil on the world market and decrying the role of speculators in that increase. Dorgan was alone in the chamber except for his legislative aides and Sen. Jim Webb, sitting on the dais as the presiding officer of that day. That very morning, Webb has issued a statement taking himself out of consideration for the vice presidency on Obama's ticket.

Far from being bored, I was enthralled, studying the busts of the first several presidents of the Senate in little alcoves around the gallery, and catching various details I remembered from the C-SPAN documentary: the Latin inscriptions over the doors, the eagle in the Senate skylight, and others.

Our tour mates had kids with them, so after twenty minutes or so, Daisy tapped Bart on the shoulder and said we were ready to go if he was. He certainly was.

And that was it. Bart led us back to the underground trolley, which carried us backward to the Senate office where we began, and we collected our things to leave. Outside, we paused on a park bench to rest, decompress and reflect on the tour before starting our long drive home.

Back at Union Station, we were thankful to find the truck intact and unmolested. We left Washington and got as far as Raleigh, North Carolina, where we passed the night at a hotel just outside downtown. And the next morning, we decided to spend the day in town. But that's a story for our next note.

Dubya: Master of the obvious

Moments like these make me proud to be an American.

'It's been a difficult time for American families," Bush said at a press conference. "We must ensure we can continue providing credit during this time of stress."

Odd that the solution to our woes is to announce artificial actions that don't solve anyone's problems. Maybe next year we can begin rebuilding.

"Stay the course and make your mama proud"

Heard an interview with James McMurtry on the Bob Edwards Show on XM NPR this week, and one of McMurtry's tracks inspired me to go buy his latest album, "Just Us Kids." The track is called "Cheney's Toy" and in a perfect world, country music radio stations would serving up double doses of this song every hour. But as we know, it is not a perfect world; someone, somewhere, has not yet learned about life from Kenny Chesney, and about relationships from Carrie Underwood, and about patriotism from Toby Keith. Those are truly lucky people, but so am I, having found the lyrics to McMurtry's songs online. Drink up.

Another unknown soldier
Another lesson learned
Kick the gas can over
Strike a match get back and watch that sucker burn

Keep smiling for the camera
Keep waving to the crowd
Don't let up for an instant
Stay the course and make your mama proud

You're the man
Show'em what you're made of
You're no longer daddy's boy
You're the man
That they're all afraid of
But you're only Cheney's toy

These are only part of the lyrics; the whole song is this good, and the rest of the cd bears hearing too. Buy a copy for your loved ones, and call your congressman.

Obama bags a 'Possum(us)

Oh, good God.

Did anyone check with anyone before releasing a presidential-seal look-alike logo whose legend reads, "Vero Possumus"?

That's "Possumus," folks.

"Possumus."

Obama's "hybrid" personality and management style

In catching up on emails and news articles from last week, I learned some things:

Barack Obama's managerial manner bears a striking resemblance to a former Texas governor who aspired to the White House:

Like most presidential candidates, Mr. Obama is developing his executive skills on the fly, and under intense scrutiny. The evolution of his style in recent months suggests he is still finding the right formula as he confronts a challenge that he has not faced in his career: managing a large organization.

The skill will become more important should he win the presidency, and his style is getting added attention as the country absorbs the lessons of President Bush's tenure in the Oval Office. Mr. Bush's critics, including former aides, have portrayed him as too cloistered, too dependent on a small coterie of trusted aides, unable to distinguish between loyalty and competence, and insufficiently willing to adjust course in the face of events that do not unfold the way he expects.

Mr. Obama's style so far is marked by an aversion to leaks and public drama and his selection of a small group of advisers who have exhibited discipline and loyalty in carrying out his priorities. The departure of Mr. Johnson, who was brought in to provide managerial experience to the vice-presidential search, was a rare instance of the campaign's having to oust one of its own in the midst of a messy public crisis.

He reads widely and encourages alternative views in policy-making discussions, but likes to keep the process crisp. He is personally even-keeled, but can be prickly when small things go wrong.

As the chief executive officer of Obama for America, a concern of nearly 1,000 employees and a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, Mr. Obama is more inclined to focus on the big picture over the day-to-day whirl.

He delegates many decisions, and virtually all tasks, to a core group that oversees a sprawling, yet centralized operation in his Chicago campaign headquarters, which going into the general election season is absorbing many of the political functions of the Democratic National Committee. Mr. Obama stays connected to advisers and friends via a BlackBerry, sending frequent but unsigned messages that are to the point. A discussion that cannot be conducted in a sentence or two is likely to be finished by telephone.

Although it appears Obama works well at night, while Dubya likes to be tucked in by 9.

On the other hand, Obama appears to have a short fuse to a Clintonian temper:

On policy issues, Mr. Obama can have a photographic memory of intricate details, but he often struggled to remember the names of local political supporters he had met. A cool demeanor on primary election nights, even in defeat, can give way to a short temper when a speech text is not on the podium, a loudspeaker crackles or an aide has not brought over a throat-soothing herbal tea.

''Who's handling sound? Who's handling sound?'' he snapped at his staff when a microphone repeatedly went haywire at a campaign event in South Carolina.

But I suppose that's allowed when one reaches the heights where he finds himself today.

One thing I like is that he values order. Does anyone know Obama's Myers-Briggs type? Could we be electing an NTJ?

Most high-level gatherings involving Mr. Obama are held either in his kitchen or at an office away from campaign headquarters, and are expected to unfold in an orderly manner. Written agendas and concise briefings are preferred.

He does not stir dissent simply for dissent's sake, but often employs a Socratic method of discussion, where aides put ideas forward for him to accept or reject. Advisers described his meetings as ''un-Clintonesque,'' a reference to the often meandering, if engrossing, policy discussions Bill Clinton presided over when he was president.

''He doesn't sit there for hours chewing on it and discussing it,'' said Susan Rice, a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Obama who worked in the Clinton administration. ''He's very thorough, yet efficient about it.''

I notice that the quoted advisor didn't call Obama's style as "Dubyesque" either, but it certainly sounds as if there's a similarity.

Isn't it odd that the last three Republican presidents have been hands-off delegators -- think of Dubya, George I and Reagan, all trusting their Star Chamber to get the work done -- while the last two Democratic presidents, Clinton and Carter, have been the polyglots, digging down into the weeds themselves to master the roots of every issue.

Gerald Ford didn't last long enough to leave a real imprint, though he seemed earnestly interested in understanding issues, and Richard Nixon had Bill Clinton's encyclopedic knowledge of policy, while LBJ sensibly relied more on his big-picture mastery of labyrinthine legislative processes than detailed policy points.

More and more, the picture emerging of Obama is a hybrid, leaning toward the Republican penchant for thematic direction and delegation. I wonder if that's what we need. Is it "change"?

Why I should vote Republican in 2008.

This is beautiful.

China's pulling a "Reagan" on America

Monday morning, I read about some squabble between Todd Purdum of Vanity Fair, who published an extensive and fairly brutal critique of former President Bill Clinton, and the former president himself, through his spokesman. A couple of lines from the response that Clinton's office issued came back to me on Monday afternoon when I read another article at CNN.com, titled "Is there a short-term fix for high gas prices?". I'll share both and explain the connection between the two.

First, Clinton's spokesman Jay Carson sent this note to Purdum, responding to Purdum's Vanity Fair article: "The ills of the Democratic Party can be seen perfectly in the willingness of fellow Democrats to say bad things about President Clinton. If you ask any Republican about Reagan they will say he still makes the sun rise in the morning, but if you ask Democrats about their only two-term president in 80 years, a man who took the party from the wilderness of loserdom to the White House and created the strongest economy in American history, they’d rather be quoted saying what a reporter wants to hear than protect a strong brand for the party. Republicans look at this behavior and laugh at us.”

The more I read that, the truer is is. But this is the part that stuck in my mind all day: "If you ask any Republican about Reagan they will say he still makes the sun rise in the morning..."

That's an article of true faith among the GOP, for sure. Republicans began the canonization of Reagan before George Herbert Walker Bush put his hand on the Bible. They started naming everything clean and pure and fruitful after him: major thoroughfares through the prettiest parts of town (unlike the many MLK Boulevards), major buildings, major open spaces. Hell, they even pushed George Washington himself -- first president of nation, for God's sake -- aside to make room for Ronald Reagan's name on Washington National Airport, serving Washington, D.C. itself! And on top of all that, there's still an effort under way to erect some sort of Reagan monument on the Washington mall.

And remember the weeklong funeral production staged for him two or three years ago -- what Kabuki theater that was: it felt like there was a funeral every day for a week, for the same man, with the same commentators saying the same things over and over and over. By the end of it, Reagan must have already sprouted wings and taken a seat at the right hand of God.

Why the Hollywood production for Reagan? Because, as the legend goes, Reagan single-handedly defeated the Soviet Union and won the Cold War. Brought the Russkies to their knees and made 'em beg for mercy. Then he gave them mercy, letting them live and demanding only that they bow and scrape to America and our political philosophy, and that they apologize for Khrushchev. And keep us supplied with Beluga.

How did Reagan do all that? He outspent them, enabled by a pliant Congress. He poured more money into the Pentagon than Russia could spend on its own military -- at the expense, of course, of America's domestic programs, ones that benefitted America's poor, its working class, its children, its elderly. Year after year through the 1980s, the biggest challenge at the Pentagon was figuring out how to spend all the cash flowing its way, borrowed from Japan through Treasury notes, under the public banner of "peace through strength."

It left us -- for those who don't remember -- with the largest budget deficits and highest debt in American history. When Reagan left office, the nation owed more than it had ever owed before -- in fact, more than all the budget deficits of all the previous administrations combined, Washington through Carter -- an achievement surpassed only by his successor, George I, whose campaign theme was "Stay the course."

Which brought us to Clinton's election in 1992 and his first budget proposal to Congress in 1993. Remember, he had a Democratic majority in Congress that year, and still his budget proposal -- titled the "Deficit Reduction Act of 1993" -- passed by a single vote and is largely credited with costing Democrats their control of Congress in 1994. Yet it was precisely this budget that set America back on the road to fiscal responsibility, which led then to the longest period of sustained economic growth in the history of the world.

By his last year in the White House, we had erased our budget deficit and were paying down the national debt -- including debt to foreign interests. In essence, Clinton spent his eight years making historic strides toward cleaning up the fiscal mess left behind by Ronald Reagan, whose name stains public property from Bangor to Boca to Malibu.

Then came Dubya. Poster Mike McL wrote yesterday here at Kos,

We have an obligation to pay our national debt (and yes, it is ours, yours and mine alike, and it presently stands at $9,391,228,825,656.43 as of May 29, 2008, which, with our present population being 304,231,448 as of June 2, 2008, means we each owe 10,868.70). There isn't a chance in hell that every man, woman, and child could come up with that kind of money to fork over right away to pay off the debt.

So, we pay interest on it. How much?

For Fiscal Year 2007, we paid $429,977,998,108.20 in interest, or given a population estimate for 2007 of 301,621,157 works out to $1,425.56 per person. 2007 tax revenues (PDF) were approximately $2,396,290,997,000.00. So for every dollar paid in taxes, $0.179 (almost 18 cents) went just to pay interest on the debt. If we could begin to responsibly pay down the debt, we could ultimately end up cutting taxes 10% across the board and still have extra revenue to invest in our military, our infrastructure, and our other important programs.

Our national debt stood at $5,728,195,796,181.57 on January 22, 2001, the day after George W. Bush took office. In other words, during his term in office, our national debt has so far increased by $3,663,033,029,474.86. Had we continued with the policy of pay-go and not enacted the President's inane tax cuts, we might instead have seen a decrease in the national debt. We certainly would not have seen the level of increase we have been burdened with.

Get that? We owe $9.4 trillion dollars to various debtors; Dubya and his own pliant Congresses are directly responsible for $3.6 trillion of it, or 38 percent of the total. And since we can't afford to pay it off under present economic policies, we pay only the interest on it.

And to whom do we now owe $1.53 trillion of that total? China. (Or, as Lou Dobbs calls it, Communist China.)

As one blogger puts it,

Apparently, when referring to America as the 'ownership society,' we forget to note that it's the f-ing Chinese government doing the owning. China's state-run central bank owns $1.53 trillion in U.S. holdings (including debt), an amount that increases by over $1 billion per day (it saw an increase of $470 billion in 2007).

Forget f-ing Osama bin Laden: This is a real national security problem. Or doesn't anyone else think that having a foreign totalitarian government able to completely eviscerate the dollar in one fell swoop (not that we can't do that job very well on our own, thank you very much) is a bad thing?

Yes, China had a great year in 2007, collecting $462 billion -- more than $31 billion in December alone.

China's foreign exchange reserve had reached 1.53 trillion U.S. dollars by the end of 2007, up 43.32 percent from 2006, the People's Bank of China announced on Friday. A total of 461.9 billion U.S. dollars were added to the country's forex reserve in 2007, said the central bank. In December alone, the forex reserve rose by 31.3 billion U.S. dollars.

China's forex reserve kept a sharp growth in 2007, reaching 1.2 trillion U.S. dollars by the end of March, 1.33 trillion U.S. dollars by the end of June, and 1.43 trillion U.S. dollars by the end of September.

China's soaring trade surplus is the major contributing factor to the forex reserve boom. Data newly released by the General Administration of Customs show that China's trade surplus surged to a record 262.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2007, representing a 47.7 percent growth over a year earlier.

The huge forex reserve is considered the main reason for excess liquidity in China, as the central bank has to spend quantities of basic money to purchase foreign exchange, thus aggravating the problem of surplus fluidity. By the end of 2007, the M2 -- a broad measure of money supply, which indicates the monetary demand of the whole of country and possible inflation -- grew by 16.72 percent from a year ago to 40.34 trillion yuan.

The growth rate is 0.22 percentage points lower than the end of 2006, but still higher than the target growth of 16 percent set by the central bank at the beginning of 2007. A total amount of 330.3 billion yuan was poured into the market in 2007, 26.2 billion yuan more than 2006.

On the other hand, continuous growth of the forex reserve has in fact increased the pressure on appreciation of the Chinese currency, which in turn has exerted greater pressure on value preservation of China's forex reserve.

In a move to make better use of the country's huge forex reserve, China established the China Investment Corporate Ltd. (CIC), the country's state forex investment company in 2007. The state-owned investment company will invest in overseas financial markets. The registered capital of 200 billion U.S. dollars of the CIC all comes from the forex reserve of the country, which have poured into the company so far.

Catch that? China has taken ownership of so much American currency that it had to form a brand-new investment corporation just to handle the SURPLUS American money it's collecting, a corporation that will invest these billions of dollars in foreign markets.

China -- once the technological and manufacturing backwater of the world economy -- now holds America's financial fortunes on a leash. Which brings me back to the CNN.com article I read yesterday:

(CNN) -- Rising oil and gas prices have lawmakers and consumers scrambling for solutions, but it is unclear whether anything can be done to lower energy costs in the short term, experts say. A confluence of factors, from supply and demand to speculation and a weakened dollar, are driving gas prices higher. The price of oil has doubled over the past year. A barrel of crude oil cost about $65 in June 2007; it is currently hovering around $130 a barrel.

Gas prices have skyrocketed as a result, with some American consumers paying more than $4 a gallon. The national average is $3.95 per gallon, according to a AAA survey published May 29. A year ago, the national average was about $3.20.

Observers say several factors, domestic and global, are responsible for the price increases. Although demand is falling in places like the United States and Europe because of high prices, it is surging in emerging markets like China and India.

Every time I call for tech support from the manufacturer of my computer, I'm reminded why India has the financial wherewithal now to place such demand on petroleum products; we've exported so many of our high-tech service jobs there that we're probably the engine of India's growing middle class.

And it's no wonder that demand is surging in China, thanks to the billions in T-bills we've sold them to finance this idiotic war on Iraq.

Isn't this formula mindlessly simple? Dubya wanted to have a war AND wanted to give massive tax breaks to his base, so there was no tax revenue to pay for his war. He wouldn't forego the tax breaks, and wouldn't propose to raise taxes to pay for it, because Americans don't want the war and won't stand for paying for it through higher taxes. So his Commerce Department approved the issue of billions of Treasury bonds, which we sold to China to raise fast cash. We used the cash to pay for the war, so it's gone, Daddy, gone now. China's left in the catbird seat -- holding our promissory notes in a vice-grip.

America squawks about a trade deficit; they twist that vice-grip and the squawking goes away.

America wags its finger over some human rights abuses; they twist tighter and we tell our human rights activists to shut up and sit down.

Americans stage protests to disrupt the Olympic torch route over China's crackdown on Tibetan monks; they twist tighter still.

At the end of all this twisting, we're on our knees, clutching the weakest dollar we've had in ages, whimpering in nauseated anguish and inviting China over for dinner, our treat.

Just in case no one's yet paying close attention: Inflated gas prices, inflated food prices, inflated prices for everything are just the front edge of the great payback to China.

And that doesn't yet take into consideration the role of the Saudi royal family, who have their own little racket going. Foreseeing a Democratic administration that's committed to green energy, it's apparent that the Sauds are equally committed to wringing as much profit out of America as possible until the Great Wean begins.

Meanwhile, concerns are rising that supply -- battered by political instability in some oil-rich countries and a decision by others to not increase production substantially -- is not keeping up with demand.

Additionally, the declining value of the dollar, the currency used by the international oil market, has made it easier for Asian and European countries to purchase oil.

Some experts say speculation may also be playing a role in the rising price of oil. Many investors look to commodities like oil to act as a buffer against inflation, which typically occurs when -- as is the case now -- interest rates are low and the dollar is weakened. Other experts say the effect of speculation is minimal to negligible.

Whatever the cause, federal and state lawmakers are anxiously searching for short-term relief. Their options, however, seem limited.

Limited is right. Both McCain and Hillary have proposed a federal gas tax holiday, which Obama calls a gimmick. Analyses suggest such a holiday would give little relief.

"There is very little the government can do in the very short-term, other than providing misinformation about the potential for government to act," said Gilbert Metcalf, an economist at Tufts University.

He said that raising the price of energy may prove more beneficial. It seems counterintuitive, but the high prices could reduce demand and fundamentally alter consumer behavior, he said. "We are not going to do it by reducing the price," he said. "It's saying to people: 'Don't go buy a fuel-efficient car; we'll just lower the price when it's too painful.'"

"Our best bet is to wean us off oil."

So here's the conclusion I reached last night: China studied well Ronald Reagan's bankruptcy of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and it's applying those tactics to America now. Does it warm the hearts of Republicans that their sainted godfather -- dare I say "Beloved Leader"? -- taught the Chinese how to rip out the economic underpinnings of our country? Mourning in America, indeed.

And here's the question that come on that conclusion's heels: How well did we learn from Bill Clinton's economic plan of 1993, the one that dragged us back from the road to oblivion? Yes, Clinton benefited mightily from the naturally-occurring tech boom of the mid-1990s, but I assert that another boom is waiting in the wings. John Edwards talked about it in greatest detail, having studied well Al Gore's proposals of recent years: Green Energy.

Just as the combination of Clintonian economics and the tech boom gave America's economy back to Americans, a return to those policies and adoption of policies that spur green energy innovation can lead us back from the brink again -- AND solve our energy crisis, AND create more American jobs.

And maybe, one day many years from now, someone may offer legislation to put Bill Clinton's name on something, giving credit where it's due.

Memorial Day stay-cation made by great documentaries

During this year's Memorial Day weekend, thanks in large part to the rising cost of Bushgas, Daisy and I took a stay-cation and spent most of the three-day break at or near home. We didn't get a lot of work done, but that wasn't our intent. We stayed up late, we slept late. On Saturday night, we ate a late breakfast at Waffle House, and on Sunday, I made barbecue (the noun, not the verb; but we'll get to barbecue in due course, for there is much to say about it) with corn-on-the-cob, green beans and new potatoes, and the cole slaw that I learned to make at my grandmother's knees. And, without intending to, we were sucked into three documentaties -- two of them on the Sundance Channel.

The first was one called "Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa." I was amazed that people can live in 2008 as was shown in this film -- a real-life version of "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" in the New Mexico desert -- and I'm confident I'd never want to live there.

A reviewer for the Chicago Tribune gave the movie four stars -- I don't know if I'd go that far but it definitely kept my attention -- and said it would be "too hasty, and quite possibly wrong" to dismiss the film's subjects as "a bunch of freaks" since they "demonstrate a civil lifestyle." Okay, so how does he explain them?

The 400 or so Mesa dwellers are a mix of hippies, veterans, runaways and other free spirits, surviving on about 15 square miles of New Mexico desert. Most consider their way of life the ultimate expression of self-reliant American freedom (but some charity food handouts and government checks do flutter into the area--one of several interesting paradoxes).

When a neighbor arrives asking for some gasoline, a Mesa-dweller named Gene (a.k.a. Gecko) tells him where to find a container with a couple gallons. Gene explains that while he won't get immediate compensation, he'll get something in return from his neighbor on another day.

In my opinion, this reviewer is sanitizing the folks on the Mesa a bit more than even they would prefer. Cleanliness, next to godliness, doesn't appear to be high on the list of the Mesans. Although he did get it right that these folks have an exceptionally healthy sense of right and wrong, and there's a mile-wide Libertarian streak running through their "Survivor" psychology.

Because of the climate, the people are also very frugal. They nurture a few crops (including some that ... y'know ... help mellow them out) and some animals. Many homes have solar arrays. But "living green" is often in stark contrast to fits of wanton destruction: After Gene's children return to his wife in Connecticut, he sets fire to a van outside his home. The landscape is beautiful except for the patches around the shanty/homes. Paradox.

The film is a scant 70 minutes, yet it embraces a broad range of people and ideas. In the end, you may find it difficult to decide if the last chapter of truly free America is unfolding in the New Mexico desert, or if it's just a bunch of wackos who've been toasting in the desert a little too long.

Todd Seavey got to attend a screening in New York last August with the producer/directors of the documentary, and he wrote:

In the Q&A that followed last night’s showing of the documentary Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa, one of the producer-directors said he was surprised (as a New Yorker who expects freedom-loving loners like the desert-dwellers depicted in the movie to be leftists) to find that this little community of people living on a southwestern mesa, while loving and raising marijuana and being suspicious of mainstream society, were also eagerly gun-toting self-proclaimed patriots, several of whom had served in the military and would do so again.

The head of the Lincoln Center Film Society, on hand to lead the proceedings, echoed my own thoughts when she said that if lots of people hear about the free-wheeling, Road Warrior-like (as one of the producers actually called it) life of the mesa-dwellers and want to share it, we may see “the gentrification of the mesa” — reminding me of last month’s Debate at Lolita Bar on such matters.

At the same time, it has to be said, some of the mesa-dwellers display the same psychological tendencies seen in the homeless, so they probably shouldn’t be a model for all of society (any more than Burning Man should be, as I suggested halfway through this entry). There’s always something a little crazy — though not necessarily bad — about leaving civilization behind and heading out into the wilderness. Or, as I believe my friend Deborah Colloton once said, “If men aren’t married by the time they’re forty, they start getting weird and go into the woods and make bombs [like Ted Kaczynski].” There’s probably some simple but profound truth to that. I have two years.

For more information on "Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa," click over here, and over here, and over here. My own advice: Don't watch the doc while having lunch. There's a particularly unpleasant sequence involving dead baby goats.

From the subverse to the sublime: Daisy went channel surfing on Sunday evening and landed on C-SPAN, which was airing a gorgeous documentary on Capitol Hill, including a fascinating guided tour all the way up to the top of the dome. In fact, what we watched was a series of short documentary segments, or, as C-SPAN describes it, "a special series looking into the history, art and architecture of the United States Capitol. Through interviews, tours, and unprecedented access into the building's public and private spaces, C-SPAN presents a groundbreaking look inside the building that both houses and symbolizes American democratic government here and around the world."

By sheer coincidence, the evening we watched this program was the twenty-fifth anniversary of my first visit to Capitol Hill, as part of my eighth-grade field trip to Washington, D.C. The documentary brought back some nice memories: My parents ponied up a hundred bucks for the field trip. We stayed in Falls Church, a suburb of Washington just beyond Arlington on the Robert E. Lee Highway.

I recall the hot, slow elevator ride to the top of the Washington Monument, and peering out of those tiny four rectangular windows at the top. I remember a slow walk through the sultry Botanical Gardens, and the ringing echoes in Statuary Hall on Capitol Hill. We also visited the Lincoln Memorial, but my favorite then, and still, was the Jefferson Memorial. I've only gone back to it once since then, last year, when Daisy and I visited it. Of all of the monuments, the Jefferson is the most emotional to me.

The field trip was great and I enjoyed Washington. I wouldn't be back in the city again for 12 years.

After watching the program on C-SPAN, both Daisy and I spent a few minutes online to search out more information about things we'd just learned, looking up great quotes and other notes. I've been back to Washington many times now -- I'm there fairly often -- but I learned things from the documentary I never knew before. To me, Capitol Hill is our national philosophical chapel. It's a powerful, spiritual place, given the history of the nation and all that has been said and done there.

I'll share notes on the third documentary we watched in the next note.