Afghanistan = Vietnam

On Friday's show, Bill Moyers drew upon President Lyndon Johnson's taped phone calls and commentary regarding the Vietnam war, before drawing the following conclusions:

Now in a different world, at a different time, and with a different president, we face the prospect of enlarging a different war. But once again we're fighting in remote provinces against an enemy who can bleed us slowly and wait us out, because he will still be there when we are gone.

Once again, we are caught between warring factions in a country where other foreign powers fail before us. Once again, every setback brings a call for more troops, although no one can say how long they will be there or what it means to win. Once again, the government we are trying to help is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent.

And once again, a President pushing for critical change at home is being pressured to stop dithering, be tough, show he's got the guts, by sending young people seven thousand miles from home to fight and die, while their own country is coming apart.

And once again, the loudest case for enlarging the war is being made by those who will not have to fight it, who will be safely in their beds while the war grinds on. And once again, a small circle of advisers debates the course of action, but one man will make the decision.

The conversations secretly taped by Lyndon Johnson are riveting. They demonstrate that Johnson consistently saw escalation to be a terrible option, yet he ordered it. The entire episode of Bill Moyers Journal can be viewed here.

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Life is real

After a business meeting in Boston last week, I had two extra hours before I needed to head to the airport. I decided to visit a few historical sites on foot by following Boston’s “Freedom Trail.” At one end of the trail is the “Old North Church,” from which the patriots displayed two lanterns to give warning that the British were about to attack “by sea.” As I was approaching the Old North Church, I had an odd thought: The Old North Church really exists. It’s not just part of a concocted story like Harry Potter. You can walk up and touch the bricks and feel the history in your fingertips. You can trace the history of the church through hundreds of authentic letters and other writings. You can say with great confidence that the Old North Church played a real-life role the Revolutionary War. Because I am a lawyer and a writer, I spend a lot of time thinking of abstract ideas. For that reason, I often need to remind myself about some of the many parts of life that really happened. Maybe I also need to remind myself that some things are really real because entertainment has become such a central part of our lives. When Americans get together, they often bond by discussing television shows and movies. These works of fictions are so often discussed that they seem to rise to the level of "facts." But our world mostly depends on real events that dramatically affect our lives. On the flight back home from Boston, I started thinking of some of the other amazing things that actually play critical roles in our lives. They aren’t just stories in history books or science books. For instance, World War II really occurred. It wasn’t just a movie. There are cemeteries filled with the bodies of the soldiers that died in that war. Consider also, the importance of large-scale immigration to the United States over the past centuries. Without that mass movement of people to the United States, most of us wouldn’t have been born. The scale and the details of many real life events are more amazing than anything any fiction writer could conjure up. Here are some other important facts that I am generally amazed at whenever I take the time to remind myself that these aren't simply stories: * The Greeks really built an extraordinary civilization, as did the Maya and the Egyptian. These aren't just yarns spun by museums and authors. * We’re floating in space and there are stars under our feet too. * The sun is a giant furnace that really does light and heat the earth, and someday the sun won’t exist. * The universe is expanding in rapidly in such a way as to suggest a Big Bang, which was a time when there was no Earth and no living things. * Human beings are animals, and we run in large flocks. 40% of our DNA matches the DNA of lettuce. * All living things are related. * We don’t have any credible users’ manual for living life on earth. * We are far from rational beings. * Despite its unfathomable complexity, including the fact that it is constituted of many billions of cells, the human body works. * Almost all human cognition is subconscious and it is driven largely by emotions, addictions and instincts. * There really are 7 billion people on our planet and we are rapidly exhausting the planet’s resources. I often need to remind myself of these things. I get too distracted by day-to-day aspects of my life, which causes me to take all too many things for granted. Thus, I need to remind myself that much of the world around us is really real, not just a story. This is almost embarrassing to admit, but I often enrich my life by consciously acknowledging the obvious.

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Buffett’s bet on peak oil

Warren Buffett is lauded as one of the greatest investors of all time, if not the greatest. He's the second-richest person in the world, and known as the "Oracle of Omaha" for his seemingly prescient investments. For example, in the wake of the collapse of Bear Stearns and during the height of the market panic that followed it, Buffett stepped in and negotiated a deal with Goldman Sachs. He acquired $5 billion worth of preferred shares, which would pay him a 10% dividend, as well as warrants with the rights to sell those shares at any time within 5 years from the time of the transaction. As of September this year, those warrants were "in the money" to the tune of $3.1 billion, and that doesn't include the $500 million in premium payments that Goldman pays every year. Those lucrative terms (punitive for Goldman Sachs) left others wondering why the Treasury Department could only negotiate a 5% dividend, but that only added to the mystique and legend of Warren Buffett. At the time, Buffett was quoted as saying "If I didn't think the government was going to act, I would not be doing anything this week," referring to the massive bailout bill which was indeed enacted by the government. It's deals like that that enable one to become one of the richest people in the world. But it's also that background that has some on Wall Street scratching their heads at the news that he was purchasing Burlington Northern railroad. The Wall Street Journal discussed how the acquisition seemingly broke two of Buffett's cardinal rules on investments: 1) buy undervalued stocks or companies, for obvious reasons and 2) don't split your own stocks, as it dilutes the equity of the existing shareholders. Bloomberg quoted a hedge fund principal as saying, "It could be five years before the logic of [Buffett's purchase of] Burlington Northern becomes clear." Even Buffett admits that the purchase was "not cheap" and that it represents an "all-in wager"on the future of the American economy. And there can be no doubt that it is a significant investment-- he's liquidating other rail investments totaling $691.3 million while the Burlington Northern purchase will cost some $26 billion-- an increase in his railroad holdings of some 3,600%. And this bears repeating, he's splitting stock to get it done. This is the first time ever that Berkshire Hathaway (Buffett's investment company) has split shares. He's so reluctant to split shares, the class A shares regularly trade over $100,000 per share, an unheard-of valuation.

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“Going Muslim” as the new “going postal”

The shootings at Fort Hood last week have provoked a media feeding frenzy. Questions abound, and there is no dearth of speculation as to the shooter's motives. Most articles I have seen waste no time pointing out that the shooter was a Muslim, that he exclaimed "Allahu akbar" before shooting, and that he is linked with radical imams and possibly Al Qaeda. That's from the ostensibly "impartial" media, but there are also a few extremely distasteful editorial perspectives that are unfortunately quite mainstream that I wanted to comment on today. I'm afraid my ability to edit sarcasm out of my posts declines in direct proportion to the insanity and hypocrisy with which I'm confronted, so bear with me. First, Forbes featured an article by Tunku Varadarajan entitled "Going Muslim", a play on the old phrase "going postal". He describes it thusly:

As the enormity of the actions of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan sinks in, we must ask whether we are confronting a new phenomenon of violent rage, one we might dub--disconcertingly--"Going Muslim." This phrase would describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American--a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood--discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans. This would appear to be what happened in the case of Maj. Hasan.

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Church To State: “Do What We Want Or Else.”

The divide between church and state seems on the one hand to be growing but on the other narrowing, especially when you consider how intrusive established religions have been. Representatives of the Catholic Church sat in Nanci Pelosi's office of late while negotiations for the health care bill were ongoing, overseeing what she would do about abortion. Now this. Any way one reads this, it comes out as a threat. The quid pro quo is explicit. "If you don't bend to our will on this, we will stop services your city relies on." I have in the past believed that the tax exempt status of religions was a necessary work-around to preserve the fiction of separation. In the past, there have been instances of state intrusion directly into religions in, for one example, state funding for programs in parochial schools. There was always a quid pro quo in such offers and practices. But never has a representative of the state sat in the office of a minister while he drafted a sermon to be sure certain details got left out or included. Never, despite massive abuses by religious institutions in real estate and related financial areas, has the state moved to revoke 501(c)(3) status. It may be that any state official who tried it would be booted out of office summarily, but nevertheless that has been the unspoken law of the land. Seems the courtesy doesn't go both ways. If that's the case, I think it is time to revisit the whole issue. If the Catholic Church sees itself as providing services as an arm of the civil service sector and allows itself the conceit that it may use that service as a lever to influence political decisions, then they have implicitly given up due consideration as an inviolate institution, free from state requirements of taxation and regulation. Seems fairly clear cut to me. Obviously, there will be those who disagree. But it's time, I think, to seriously reconsider the state relationship to so-called "nonprofit" "apolitical" tax exempt institutions.

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