First there's this, from the NYT:

Bush's Aides Put Higher Price Tag on Medicare Law

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — The Bush administration said on Thursday that the new Medicare law offering prescription drug benefits and private health plans to the elderly would cost at least $530 billion over 10 years, or one-third more than the price tag used when Congress passed the legislation two months ago.

Conservative Republicans said the new estimate confirmed their worst fears, while Democrats said it vindicated their view that the law gave far too much money to drug manufacturers and insurance companies. The bill passed narrowly in the House after Republican leaders gave assurances that the cost would not exceed $400 billion.

Uh-huh. We're surprised? Now look at this, from the WaPo, 12/23/03:

GOP's Pressing Question on Medicare Vote - Did Some Go Too Far To Change a No to a Yes?

About 20 Republican congressmen -- all fiscal conservatives -- gathered nervously in a back room at the Hunan Dynasty restaurant on Capitol Hill on Nov. 21, trying to shore up their resolve to defy President Bush. It was the night of the big vote on the Bush administration's Medicare prescription drug bill, which they had concluded was too costly, and they began swapping tales about the intense lobbying bearing down on them.

Over egg rolls and pu-pu platters, one complained that a home-state politician had insinuated that he would run against him in the next primary unless the lawmaker voted for the bill. Another said House leaders had warned that if the bill was defeated because of his no vote, he might lose his subcommittee chairmanship. Several recalled being telephoned by insistent lobbyists from the health care industry.

But the most dramatic account was given by Rep. Nick Smith (Mich.), who is to retire next year and hopes his son will succeed him. According to two other congressmen who were present, Smith told the gathering that House Republican leaders had promised substantial financial and political support for his son's campaign if Smith voted yes. Smith added that his son, in a telephone call, had urged him to vote his conscience, and with the support of dissident colleagues, Smith stuck to his no vote.

[ . . . ]

It was a little before dawn on Nov. 22 that the House passed the Medicare bill. And it was the next day that Smith wrote a column for the Lenawee Connection about the House leadership's use of what he called "bribes and special deals" to eke out that margin of victory.

During the deliberations, Smith wrote, some "members and groups" had not only offered extensive financial support and endorsements for the campaign of his son, Bradley L. Smith, but also "made threats of working against Brad if I voted no."

So. First: threats and bribes to get sensible Republicans--who can add--to vote for a patently interest-friendly and bad piece of legislation. (Remember: Medicare can't negotiate better drug prices.) Okay, maybe they would have gotten over that. Eventually. Now, the news that not only were you arm-twisted, you were rolled. By your own guys. Hear that hiss? It's a fuse burning. Many fuses. With (R)s attached.

Lord of the Flies certainly is an allegory for a lot of things, isn't it?

This hurts to watch. WorldNetDaily, Today:

Republicans: Don't give up on 'W' now!

The most serious threat to President Bush's second term is not a Democrat; it is the growing mass of disenchanted Republicans who are accepting the proposition that there is little or no difference between the two major parties.

[ . . . ]

The Patriot Act, the prescription drug program, the "guest worker" program, the so-called "free trade" programs and a half-trillion dollar deficit have left conservatives reeling, wondering why a Republican administration and Congress have produced results that look so much like what they would expect from a Democrat administration and Congress.

Consequently, many, many Republicans have thrown up their hands and have decided to either join some doomed third-party movement or simply stay home.

While this reaction may be understandable, it is not only self-defeating, it violates the first law of true believers: Never, never, never, never give up!

[ . . . ]

Democrats alone cannot regain control. If conservatives give up, throw in the towel and fail to show up for the November battle, the Democrats will win by default. Conservatives who truly believe that freedom is better than socialism, those who want freedom for their children rather than a world socialist government, will never, never, never, never give up. They will show up in November.

...and, swallowing hard, vote for the Democrat clean-up crew.

Dispatches from the everything-you-know-is-wrong department

Simplistic, emotional, unfounded or agenda-laden assertions are anathema to successful progress and the Scouting Motto. So here at Fouroboros Worldwide, we have an entire division dedicated to spreading a little light into the deep dark karst of opinion masquerading as fact. We call them the Sunshine Squad. It's dangerous work, but they get Dental.

From the Wall Street Journal, Via The Fulcrum:

PROFLIGATE PRESIDENT Average annual real increases in domestic discretionary spending
	Fiscal Years	% Increase
Lyndon Johnson	1965-69	4.3%
Richard Nixon	1970-75	6.8%
Gerald Ford	1976-77	8.0%
Jimmy Carter	1978-81	2.0%
Ronald Reagan	1982-89	-1.3%
George H. W. Bush	1990-93	4.0%
Bill Clinton	1994-01	2.5%
George W. Bush	2002-04	8.2%
Source: Club for Growth, based on U.S. Budget, Historical tables, 2004

WSJ:

The much delayed omnibus appropriations bill for 2004, scheduled for a vote in the Senate this afternoon, looks set to cap the first term of the most profligate Administration since the 1960s. [snip] GOP leaders would have us believe this all adds up to one of the leanest spending plans in years -- an increase in federal discretionary spending of only 3%, compared with 13% and 12% in each of the previous two years.

But Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation points out that it's really more like a 9% increase, and that's assuming there will be no supplemental appropriations as in previous years.

(Sorry, no link to WSJ - subscription only.)

For those playing at home the numbers tally thus:

	Avg. Disc. Spending growth	Total Administrations	Total Fiscal Years	CPI/Inflation (avg. annual)	Avg. Senate Maj.(yrs)	Avg. House Maj.(yrs)
RED TEAM	5.14%	5	23	5.565%	Dem. (21)	Dem. (18)
BLUE TEAM	2.93%	3	17	5.27%	Dem. (16)	Dem. (13)

(House and Senate figures tentative, still sourcing. -Ed.)

Dispatches from the everything-you-know-is-wrong department
[1/31/04: Edited]

NYT, Dan Pink: Love the tax subsidy, demonize the tax payer [Link via atrios]

Words failed me. So here's this instead:

Federal Taxing and Spending Benefit Some States, Leave Others Footing the Bill

If some states are beneficiaries, then naturally some must be benefactors - those states where so much is collected in federal taxes that any federal spending they receive is overwhelmed.
    
New York has often been the biggest payer in the Tax Foundation's annual comparison of taxes to spending, which inspired Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the Kennedy School of Government to launch their annual reference book comparing state taxes with spending (www.ksg.harvard.edu/fisc99) more than 25 years ago. In recent years, however, other states have eclipsed New York for the "blessing" of being the state that gives far more than it receives.
    
Combining the third highest tax burden per capita with the ninth lowest federal spending, New Jersey had the lowest federal spending-to-tax ratio (62¢). Other states that had low federal spending-to-tax ratios in FY 2002 are Connecticut (65¢), New Hampshire (66¢), Nevada (74¢), Massachusetts (75¢) and California (76¢).

[taxfoundation.org]

Red state, Blue state, Sponge state, Screwed state. Pitiful.

More Fouro's "Executive Lexicon and Big Book of Business Wisdom"^©

Flan -- The Plan that results from the decison to execute a Frydea.

FlowerPoint™ -- Presenter (or presentation) oblivious to an audience sniggering at repeated uses of "agreeance," "paradigm," "synergy," or "bucketize."

Frownsize -- Number of "personal days" requested after announcing "There will be no bonuses this year due to 'the economy'."

Frydea (Frydealist; frydealism) -- A concept that a decisionmaker thinks is deeply insightful or useful, and one that those responsible for executing believe could easily have come from a high-schooler who works at McDonalds.

From: The Enterprise System Spectator

Companies mum on savings from IT offshore outsourcing

Here's more on the impact of IT outsourcing. Computerworld observes that many large public companies, such as Microsoft, AT&T, and IBM, who are usually quick to trumpet their cost-cutting initiatives, are slow to publicize how much they are saving by moving IT jobs offshore, fearing an anti-outsourcing backlash. Furthermore, major Indian outsourcing firms such as Infosys, Wipro, and Satyam have stopped announcing new customers.

"The problem is that companies aren't sure if it's politically correct to talk about it," said Jack Trout, a principal at marketing and strategy firm Trout & Partners. "Nobody has come up with a way to spin it in a positive way."

The article predicts that as many as 2 million U.S. white-collar jobs such as programmers, software engineers and applications designers will move offshore by 2014.

"Nobody has come up with a way to spin it in a positive way."

Geezus. You don't need spin. Just a firm grip on reality, well explained. And a public reminder that we've travelled and survived this road before. Followed by a coherent, bracing and embracing answer to the question: "What's next?" Lookee here....



Now, what that looks like in practice....

USA Gross Domestic Product
	Billions_ Real year 2000 US dollars	CPI/Inflation
2002	10068.111	1.50
2001	9849.395	2.80
2000	9824.650	3.40
1999	9469.269	2.20
1998	9095.129	1.50
1997	8721.603	2.30
1996	8351.417	2.90
1995	8063.564	2.80
1994	7853.953	2.60
1993	7549.238	3.00
1992	7354.111	3.00
1991	7136.403	4.20
1990	7170.047	5.40

(OECD Excel)

Now look at what we and everyone else has gone through since Seventeen-hundred and frozen-to-death...



50 years... and equilibrium sets in, if Goldman Sachs and OECD are correct. And even if their numbers are off a bit, history doesn't lie.

Where is Gerstner on this? Bush? Or Commerce Secretary Don Evans. Or Dean or Kerry or Clark? This is the top line of their job descriptions, all of them. Absent political cojones or understanding, it's a prime opportunity for business to step up and show some national leadership.

In this case, to clearly explain that global growth and accelerated second and third world manufacturing puberty comes with, guess what? Growing pains. For everybody.

Act Two of that explanation is to demonstrate why the sooner developing countries grow mature industries and middle classes, the more incentives there will be not to rely on "cost" but "differentiation"--and it's commensurate higher margins--as their competitive advantage. (But first, WE have to shake that lazy habit ourselves. And quick.)

Finally, Act Three: if the near term course (30-50 years) is to follow Adam Smith's hand to inevitable Global Economic maturity and stability, what's the plan on what we do for eats and advantage in the interim, and then, beyond?

Once upon a time, another President named Bush said "we have more will than wallet."

He was wrong. A uniform paradox of business (and politics, and entertainment, and...) is that imagination and layered, sustainable solutions take sweat and spadework, perspective and patience, and more than just a little curiosity. Each of these are increasingly institutionally suspect and subservient to "speed." Writing a check is easy, and it feels like "action." Cut and paste ideas, Excel Spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations pass for expansive thinking. Going back to the moon doesn't cut it. We've seen that movie. In short, there is far too much money chasing far too few ideas. There is a dearth of new frontiers in American Business and Politics, and that lack has Americans Jonesing. And biting their fingernails. And swinging fists. Big time.

More to come later this evening.

Gallery of Global Leaders--the home game

I was working on a post about Finland's Weapons of Mass Lutefisk-related program activities this afternoon, and couldn't for the life of remember where I'd filed that headshot of Finnish Big Wheel Anelli Jaatteenmaki. I hate it when that happens. Lucky for me, Professor Phil van Auken of Baylor's Hankamer School of Business keeps a handy bigshot photo gallery for just such occasions. (Whoa, Turkey's Abdullah Gul looks like he'd kick your ass just as soon as look at you. My kind of guy.)

Lieberman to suspend campaign-related program activities.

[Courtesy Calpundit] Take these for what they're worth, although I have to say that they're remarkably close. Here's the average of all six [exit polls]:

Kerry - 35.7
Dean - 31.1
Edwards - 12.6
Clark - 11.5
Lieberman - 6.4

Fouro's "Executive Lexicon and Big Book of Business Wisdom"^©

Claradigm -- See Clara Peller, Actress; Wendy's Hamburgers: "Where's the Beef?™"

Crampion -- Throbbing pain you get after being told you're heading up the internal morale initiative following the recent layoffs.

Cross-disciplinarian -- A person, usually management, with a strong aversion to departmental collaboration but no qualms about public floggings.

Disintermediaryexpialidocious -- Medical term: Excision of puss-filled lesion. (Colloquial: Fire a consultant.)

A little sampling of something we're working on at Fouroboros Worldwide, Plc, SA, GmBH, Inc.

The Creative Class rises, then emigrates to Bondi beach.

From How the GOPs Anti-elitism could ruin America's economy:

...the lion’s share of benefits from The Lord of the Rings is likely to accrue not to the United States but to New Zealand. Next, with a rather devastating symbolism, Jackson will remake King Kong in Wellington, with a budget running into upwards of $150 million.

Peter Jackson’s power play hasn’t been mentioned by any of the current candidates running for president. Yet the loss of U.S. jobs to overseas competitors is shaping up to be one of the defining issues of the 2004 campaign. And for good reason. Voters are seeing not just a decline in manufacturing jobs, but also the outsourcing of hundreds of thousands of white-collar brain jobs—everything from software coders to financial analysts for investment banks. These were supposed to be the “safe” jobs, for which high school guidance counselors steered the children of blue-collar workers into college to avoid their parents’ fate.

But the loss of some of these jobs is only the most obvious—and not even the most worrying—aspect of a much bigger problem. Other countries are now encroaching more directly and successfully on what has been, for almost two decades, the heartland of our economic success — the creative economy.

Very good article encapsulating the folly of traditional economic and business thinking in the face of a world fast learning the lessons of growth and ambition--and in many cases, walking the talk better than we do. Read it, it's about much more than the movie business.

Richard Florida is an Economic Development specialist whose 2001 book, Rise of the Creative Class, factually and in great detail finally took the knees out from under the traditional urban revitalization view: Build it and they will come.

They didn't, don't, can't, won't come.

You've seen the syndrome: Big stadia, gallerias, Biotech parks and incubators, big-box blackfields (Wal-Mart-ish aircraft hangars for retail, surrounded by acres of asphalt desert with shopping cart tumbleweeds).

These, and similar Frydeas* are the embodiment of the shortsighted "crown-jewel", "silver bullet" mentality of urban politicians and developers without opposable thumbs. And they fail with depressing regularity while siphoning off tax revenue and small business bases, thereby strangling community viability. You might call them the ultimate triumph of ego over any understanding of the food chain that is economic systems: Lions get the pampering. Gazelles, rabbits, mice and ants get bupkis because they aren't "sexy". In the end, the lions die of starvation too. Ditto corporate America, ditto the military, ditto you name it.

(If I seem a tad animated on this subject, I am. I love it. I love shortsighted, left-brain executives--I wouldn't have a company otherwise.)

In this article, Florida wisely sees a corrolary for the nation: We're not just subsidizing short sighted business ideas based only on influence, not merit, we're exporting our future. Read it, he's good.

*soon to to be revealed in Fouro's "Executive Lexicon and Big Book of Business Wisdom"

Tacitus Squeaks:

If you told me in fall '00 that the next Republican administration would embrace mushy multiculturalism; wipe out our reputation for fiscal rectitude; preside over a massive entitlements expansion; embrace secrecy as a good in itself; and unnecessarily strain the US armed forces to the breaking point, I would never have believed it. But it has all come to pass, and we must be very clear on why it has come to pass: it is not because these things are expressions of the core principles of most Republicans -- it is because most Republicans have allowed them despite their core principles. In this, I am as guilty as the rest. It's difficult for outsiders to appreciate the depth to which the frustrations of the Clinton years scarred and shaped the Republican core.

Commendable.

Note this date. Go read the above in full. Unlike many who'll jump on his post as blaming Clinton for the Republicans Jingoism and Hubris, I think Tacitus sincerely recognizes precisely how myopic and bloodlusting Republicans have become; he senses the portent of a crash, not just for his party, but for the country. Good for him.

Tacitus works in this administration. He says he's not alone in his feelings. That computes. But the painful march to the obvious for elected and otherwise grown-up folks who should know better is the part that always jangles my fillings in these situations. The calories burned to noisily deny the existence of gravity, common sense and other laws would probably get Bush to Mars, with leftovers.

Good luck, Tacitus.

Travel Advisory

Two executives and a programmer for Company X were taken hostage by al Qaeda. Company X was willing to ransom the programmer, but they told the terrorists to keep the executives. Terrorists said it was all or nothing, so the deal fell through.

The terrorists hauled out the three hostages and gave them the bad news. They were all going to be shot, but each could have one one last request before he was killed.

First Executive says, "Before I die I would like to share some thoughts about Leadership."

Second Executive says, "Are you guys familiar with Six Sigma?"

Programmer: "Shoot me first."

Enough words, time for [neocon] cartoons:
(click for larger)

Welcome to DeanGoesNuts.com

It's the Arrrrrghh-a-palooza. A compendium of mp3 mixes from that fateful Iowa concession speech and primal scream fest. I pity the foo. [Link] courtesy atrios

Anger and Fear, Fear and anger. What's the difference?

The conventional wisdom is busily peddling the idea that Howard Dean is an angry man, and, that "anger' won't sell to an American electorate. Thanks to his little outburst in Iowa--and to people like Chris Matthews, gleefully playing that Iowa videoclip over and over with a grin reserved for a new toy--Dean may prove them right, for the wrong reasons.

Yet, strangely, there's little mention of the effects of the "paralytic fear" being fuel-injected into the American psyche by the administration Dean and the other Democrats hope to unseat. The dueling narratives seem to be,"We must be fearful about our security." And "We must be angry about the shortsightedness of the current administration."

Taking those as given, my question would be: if fear is the currency by which America is being led today, how is anger at that leader and that tactic misplaced?

[read more] (new window)

Shorter State of the Union

2002 "Duck and cover!"

2003 "Incoming!!!"

2004 "Weapons of mass destruction-related program activities" *

* Not including tax and tags. Offer not valid in all areas. Your mileage may vary.

Nuance? We don't need no stinkin' nuance.

I noticed last night, and this morning, that several democrats are asking: If the anti-war candidate, Dean, is repudiated in NH, can a candidate like Kerry or Clark or Edwards win with a nuanced Iraq war support position?

(Dean's NH ouster is doubtful, but potentially troubling--that money means he's around long past his useful life. Forget Lieberman, he's camp-following now)

Now the post nomination landscape matters and Joe America's attention will be inching up incremementally. I don't see this being won on an anti-war campaign. Why play the nuance angle? And what "nuance", anyway? Candidate X simply needs to repeat:

"Sure this war. Not that time, not that way. Look, national security is priority one, without it, jobs, healthcare mean nothing. Our kids have nothing. But treat it seriously, not as a prop or a shield for your shallowness. The record is clear from inside and outside the security community: A vote for George Bush says your children will live in the the wreckage of a future he creates.

We could have 50 Iraq's, and be no safer, if the commander in chief allows rigged intelligence to guide his decisions, if he allows staff to blow the cover of our spies in the war on terror simply because their relatives uncover facts that contradict an impulsive choice he's made years before.

This is one National Security decision that does not require intelligence, it requires common sense. If we have a commander in chief that doesn't take his job seriously, we need a new commander in chief.

Deploy the surrogates--the Generals Shinseki and Zinni, the career intel types who are smarting from the political backhand this adminstration has given their first loves: National Security and Rationality. Take that tack, shift the conversation, reframe the issue--there's lots of issues like jobs, trade, education that he's vulnerable on--and you keep him back on his heels. Get inside the Bush OODA loop. "Rove" HIM.

Dean: Well that was ugly

Not the numbers, the speech. The numbers would have been fixable.

I caught it watching the Tweety and Fineman revue--AKA: Hardball with Chris Matthews--and I have to say it's the first time I've agreed with those two and Mike Barnicle in ages: Is Dean that dumb, or just that undisciplined?

To give national voters their first, unfiltered impression of you, playing the role of, I dunno, a pissed off shop steward rallying the boys to go beat the shit out of some scabs.... well, it was amateur nite. [link-cspan] (Realvideo)

Edwards by comparison seemed like RFK, or Clinton. Kerry seemed like Kerry, after a B12 shot, but still Kerry.

What a set of bookends. As an ad creative director with not a few TV spots under his belt, I'd have a field day with Dean if I were a republican, not a democrat, advertising hack. Tonite's video is gonna have a very long shelf-life, $40 million and X00,000 Dean volunteers or not.

1-2-3, A-B-C.

Scorpion needs a ride across a river, asks a frog for same.

Frog says, "but you're a scorpion, you'll sting me and I'll die.'

Scorpion says, "No, no, no. If I did that, you'd die, but I would drown."

Frog figures this makes sense and tells the scorpion to hop on his back.

Halfway across the river, frog feels an excruciating pain. Turns, looks at the scorpion and says, "Now we're both dead. Why on earth would you sting me?"

Scorpion says, "Can't help it, I'm a scorpion. It's what we do."

[image added 10.16.05]

What is a Neoconservative, exactly?

[They are] not normal people . . . they don't reason the way you reason, they're not motivated by human emotions such as rage and pity . . . they are calculating machines, they will look at the balance sheet, and they will see that they cannot win. -- Professor Groeteschele Fail-Safe. 1964

Okay, that's not the definition of a Neocon. It was a Hollywood neo describing, in the vivid way they love, the enemy of the time: Russia. It's cinema's first notable (near as I can tell) depiction of a neocon, the cold-hearted cold-warrior, Professor Groeteschele, played by Walter Matthau in Sidney Lumet's much underrated 1964 brinksmanship thriller, Fail-Safe,

So, what is a neocon?

Well, under the tinfoil hat, neocons are romantics. Don Quixotes with obscure PhDs who tilt at enemies foreign and domestic with modern ordnance and old fashioned righteousness. Toss in a downright sensual appreciation for all things Apocalyptic--prose, politics and policy--and you'd be getting warmer; Dante warmer, if you get my drift.

In a post over at Calpundit, poster Brandonimac suggested, "Metaphysical speculation about the nature of evil is really neither here nor there", when it comes to discussing neocons, or their influence, and the policies they beget.

Ah, but it is. Evil is here, there, everywhere for the neocons, as it was for their now-dead Moses, Leo Strauss (1899-1973). Here, I'll let the acolytes describe the master:

Leo Strauss was the twentieth century's greatest teacher of political philosophy, and this site is dedicated to the Straussian tradition. Its specific intention is to serve as a guide to students caught up in this wonderful, overwhelming, and persecuted academic movement. [link]

"Persecuted academic movement."

Indeed. The political philosophy (I use the term loosely) with a stranglehold on Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of the the government of the most powerful country in the history of the world is persecuted. How quaint. And how revealing. Romancing the idea of good and evil is beatitude itself for the Straussians. Their philosophy is so flush with Freudian land mines of underdog-ism, persecution-memory and past disappointment mixed with grandiosity, you'd best beware: The laws of man and nature need not apply in the traditional, on-the-up-and-up sense.

So, to know a neocon, you must really ask "What's a Straussian?" I asked myself that same question once, sixteen years years ago, when Bush 41 picked Dan Quayle as his second, and Quayle, in turn, picked Bill Kristol as his chief campaign advisor. I didn't know much about Kristol at the time but had been subjected to the ideas of his dad, Irving Kristol, and those of his fellow traveller, Strauss, in college political science classes. In fact, the elder Kristol was something of a hero to my then-favorite professor, a mad ex-pat Hungarian named Zarzar. But at the time I didn't understand. How could one--Zarzar, the admirer, or elder-Kristol and Strauss, the patrons--flip from socialism to conservatism and not need a brain transplant or at least a whole-body transfusion?

So I went back last year and reread, and it came back to me: If you bend your brain in just the right way, in just the right, odd, reactionary way, it was clearer. Not crystal, but clearer. Problem is, who has the time or the inclination to walk in the shoes of a neurosis masquerading as a political ideology, albeit an ascendant one? This requirement for simultaneous political spelunking and mental gymnastics all at once is the reason today's policies are so misperceived or ignored by those who should be monitoring such things--the media.

Back to the lessons of the mad Hungarian:

The mainline, academic neocons were primarily reformed leftists: ex-communists (oops, I mean proto-marxists) and disillusioned socialists of whom time has washed clean their sins the hard way. With the failure of their old ideology, it was as if they and their world were flipped upside down and they themselves, up, into the air.

To add insult to injury, at their apogee, mainstream America was only too happy to use them for skeet practice before they landed with an inglorious thud. Ouch.

Like any wanderer, fresh from the Road to Damascus, their zeal far outweighs that of those born to an ideological bent. They were once Revolutionaries. They are still revolutionaries. Except now, The Right has title to their biblically ordained hormones. And this time, they have JDAMs.

Biblically ordained? Aye, more than you may know. Remember, these are absolutists, believers in dyads, severe polarities--yes or no, not maybes. You're either free or in bondage. Your own man, or a prisoner of The State. And, after dwelling in the land of agnosticism, utopian debate and secular Socialist disappointment, where else would an ideological vagrant go but to the beckoning, untried, "Virtue-centric" side of the tracks? There lay certitude and hot coffee, good and evil, black and white. And three squares a day. And a Republican Establishment in search of a new defining ideology.

A home.

Quite a comfort, when up until then, your mental, and loosely voiced, spiritual ideals had met with man's irrational unwillingness to do things that made rational sense. Yea, Eureka!, they exclaimed: The problem is not with theory, it is with the unreformed man himself!

"We," the neocons thought, "are the select who have seen the light." So began an odd, now some 50-years old relationship with faith-based politics and faith-based intelligence and faith-based anything. The task was set: saving the aforementioned Man, in the shape of the American public, and also the world, from its unenlightened self. From places like the Rand Corporation, the Heritage Foundation, The American Enterprise Institute and others, they've been struggling to save us barbarians from ourselves ever since.

Of course, this preachifying brings up an interesting contradiction. Oddly, these same conservatives who pooh-pooh "liberal prescriptives" as the elite condescending to show the common man how things ought to be use exactly this same modus operandi in their own thinking and formulations. The chief difference is that the neos' inspiration comes not from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, but from the Pantheon: Received wisdom as it were, from the teachings of Plato, Socrates, and the rest of the Greek Chorus, sprinkled liberally (sorry) with the teachings of that nice Carpenter from Judea. To their view, what makes their missionary political sermonizing literally paramount over the liberal premise is that theirs is cribbed from Olympus, or, from that other Mount, the one on the North End of the Sea of Galilee.

"Blessed are the cheesemakers", indeed.

Perhaps it's just a cruel joke then, that their poster-boy is an evangelical Paul, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. He gets all the sexy coverage, but he's got plenty of back-up. There's the grand patron, the current Lorenzo Di Medici of the neocons: Dick Cheney. His Chief of Staff, Lewis Libby, and Libby's chief aide Eric Alderman are neos too. There's Wolfowitz immediately under neocon-dabbler (but not convert), Donald Rumsfeld at the the Pentagon. Under those two you find Douglas Feith, an undersecretary, and various influential but unassigned ex-government neo-goblins like Richard Perle (former assistant secretary of defense), and James Woolsey, (former director of CIA).

Like any good organization-to-organization embrace, neocons are six wide and six deep throughout any institution that matters in DC, public and private. Elliott Abrams and Robert Joseph in the National Security Council, Under Secretaries John Bolton and Paula Dobriansky at the State Department.The aforementioned Kristol the younger, along with Michael Ledeen, Thomas Donnelly, Reuel Marc Gerecht and Joshua Muravchik are all prefects at neocon high school: The American Enterprise Institute. And don't forget Neocon War Corps Central Command, the Project for the New American Century. Toss in Orrin Hatch, Newt Gingrich and countless others and you've got an I-Know-Better-Than-You-What's-Best-For-You Hoedown.

Orbiting drunkenly around this cadre of insiders is a whole Ark of pundits and talking heads who have barely clue one how Straussianism and neoconservatism really views the great unwashed--or what its greco-theocratic, wiser than thou underpinnings really are. They just love the new whiffle bat they've been given to use on the bleeding hearts.

So, where exactly do they derive their ideology? We know Strauss gave birth to this brood, but where did he get his ideas? Well, the Sermon on the Mount reference was no joke. Ditto the Mount Olympus thing. Strauss and acolytes like Alan Bloom and Albert Wohlstetter, ex- of the patient zero of conservative think tanks, the RAND Corporation divined their world view from The Ancients, as they like to call them--The Persians, Greeks and Romans on through to renaissance thinkers, but mostly the Greeks.

The neos' infatuation with this Nico-Manichaeanism--I guess what you'd call a hybrid of Machiavelli's power ideas blended with those of Manes of Persia, and then the Greeks--a bright line view of the world as Good or Evil, Light or Dark--is clearly apparent in their domestic and foreign policy beliefs and execution, if, as I said, you know what you're looking for. It's explained better than I ever could here:

Manichaeanism holds that principles of Light and God contend with Darkness and Matter for hegemony over the cosmos. Human beings in bondage to Darkness and Matter can free themselves to unite with Light and God through severe ascetic practices and adherence to the teachings of the Manichaean elect, who shall one day be united with the Light. Manichaeanism thrived in the ancient world as a missionary religion. Augustine of Hippo was attracted to the Manichaeans in his youth before becoming a Christian. [link]

Yeah, that Augustine, the big guy: Saint Augustine. Before he sobered up and became the Gretzky of religious philosophers. And yes, "The Manichaean Elect." That would be first, the Strauss-Kristol-Wohlstetter Axis, then the Cheneys, Perles, Wolfowitzes, and the whole AEI crew. A witches brew of creeds, colors, spotty track records and cranky authoritarianism, here to save us from ourselves and our flabby thinking. With ideas of their own like preemptive war based on a hunch. And democratization at the point of a gun and the boom of a Bunker Buster. Now, if all this reminds you of Washington DC's 1861 socialites jaunting off to a local hill top to witness the proceedeings at Bull Run as if it was a Saturday Matinee, you'd be wise indeed. Many of the neo hawks are of the Chicken variety, as in Chicken-hawk, as in never fired a shot in anger. As in never served and got deferments to avoid that discomfort when duty and country called. Vice President Cheney has famously said "I had other priorities."

They have no qualms, however, about telling the military that they don't know how to fight. Or what war is "really" for.

By now, it should be understandable how Richard Perle and David Frum (Ex-Bush speechwriter, the "Axis of Evil" guy, also neo) can at once usurp the biblical job description of God himself--the eradication of Evil, tentatively titled, Armageddon--then up the Holy Ghost's timetable and coopt it as a how-to-book for armchair Ceasars: An End to Evil: How to Win the War On Terror The hubris is not imaginary, the naivete however, borders on delusional.

Oh, what the hell. It's nuts.

Wait. It gets better.

"Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue." -- Rochefoucauld

The spud in the tail pipe of this movement for many "don't tell me, show me" type Americans is that Straussians think that 'the virtues" are vital, but personal "virtue" is not an absolute requirement to preach said. In other words, Virtue is a good thing always and imperfect man may be imperfect, but that should never preclude him from telling others how to live virtuously.

Sound convoluted? Sound familiar? Witness the Bill Bennett (virtue-meister and Neocon Shaman) penchant for Las Vegas' one-armed bandits and compare it to the tepid response he offered as the media-required mea culpa: I may have overdone it, but I didn't endanger my family, I don't have a problem. Over the course of several years, he pumped roughly $8 million simoleans down the tubes feeding a Vice frowned upon and even shunned in many circles of faith. He honestly believed--or, tried to spin--that there is no cognitive dissonance, no failure of virtue, in the quandary many perceived him to be in.

Now, to Mrs. Bennett, there seemed to be a bit of a question on this point. But to his adherents, to the faithful, Bill's heart was in the right place; the Sunday School lessons he peddles are ones they adhere to, if not regularly, therefore he gets a pass. Sure, facts are meddlesome things when larger ideals like your idealized self or collective identity are at stake. But just to add an exclamation point, Rush Limbaugh (useful blowtorch, but not neo) thoughtfully came out, came down, checked into rehab, filed for his 3rd divorce and proofed the "free pass" theorem for all. Things like impeaching the credibility of a "witness" as the lawyers call it, don't really have traction in the neocon tent-meeting. If you pay your dues. And if you lead the Halelujahs.

(To be fair, for a rough equivalent wonder back to the O.J. trial and you'll remember how seldom logic need apply in the clash of worldviews.)

In this way, membership in the neocon clan is ironically very much like one of their favorite scratching posts, the oft-maligned government job. Once pledged to the club, barring live-boy or dead-girl events, you're in for life. This accepted, and abetted, lack of ironic regard for ones own actions is rampant, and seemingly, very freeing for the right: Virtue failure is proof of virtue, just not for Liberals.

It's also a new fashion that conservatives of the generic stripe are learning to love. And why not? It works. For anybody. For gaijin like the Delays (not a neo, just a spiteful, selfish man), for the Limbaughs (again, not a neo, just likes the bullying, John Wayne aspect), for the Frists (not a neo, just a man who forgot his Hippocratic Oath, yet remembers healthcare and pharma lobbyist names). It works for Colin Powell (also not neo), always regarded as a "Political Soldier" at the Pentagon and earlier in his career, yet somehow retaining the sheen of being above it all. He's now forced into personal torture and paroxysms of illogic, team-talk and stonewaling thanks to the willful neocon subversion of an armload of military and foreign policy doctrine he holds dear--and, co-authored. Don Rumsfeld's Iraq plan and post-war lack of plan and exit strategy is Anti-Powell Doctine.

Strange. So what exactly is "working"? Nothing really. Unless "because I said so" and "you don't get it, do you?", confidently and somberly delivered relentlessly, counts as a political construct and apparat. That's the big joke. In many ways, President Bush is the punchline to that joke. (Not neo, not a congregation-member, just a virtual church-goer.) In Bush's neo-vetted and -scripted platitudes about America's role of freedom and democracy bringer to the world, he sounds like a giddy sophomore who believes with all his soul that if people would just listen people would all hear wisdom and reform their silly selves.

And it was quaint when we heard Rodney King say it. We expect fuzzy thinking from habitual offenders and college students. Difficult to take from the "Fuzzy Math" President.

There's nothing cut and dried or well formed about the philosophy once it leaves somewhere like Strauss' University of Chicago. Certainly, the Machiavelli aspect has remained firmly intact, albeit of what John DiIulio, former head of Bush's Faith-based Programs called the "Mayberry Machiavelli" variety. But the higher minded ideals of Socrates, Plato and the rest of the Greek Agoran All-Stars are Hallmark Card afterthought, if it's hauled out at all. Virtues like temperance, forebearance, charity, justice, honor take on an eerie silly putty quality when applied in their practical neocon executions. The track record resembles a high school physics experiment, as arranged by, say, a substitute music teacher: doomed, befuddling and quaint in it's naivete. That is, when it isn't simply tragic or blasphemous or, dehumanising to the subjects: Language: A Key Mechanism of Control. Abu Ghraib.

It seems neoconservatism is the blank slate that allows any wing of conservatism to view themselves and portray their particular ideas as the only saving grace of a nation--nay, salvation from tax "Holocaust". If only people would listen and not keep getting bogged down on things like reality, moral consistency and the imperfectibility of the messengers. In a uniquely politico-religiose way, it's Manna from heaven straight to a neocon flack's word processor. Pie in the sky, for everyone. A chicken in every pot. As long as you don't ask where it came from, or who it belonged to before it landed on your table.

Again, those pesky workaday "show me" type Americans may have a problem with this "nuance," once explained, because the idea of Fairness is ever-present in the back of their minds. As Nathaniel Hawthorne noted, "No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally being bewildered as to which may be the true." At the neoconservative center, there is no plan that plays to logic, only power-hunger, along with constant probing of political enemies to maintain that power, to keep fellow citizens rocked back on their heels and pliant. As the neocon wheels come off, slowly, grudgingly, the politics are revealed as pique and failed, paranoid bullet points to the even mildly observant.

Still, with events unfolding as quickly and perversely as they are, who's got time to wait for the wake-up? Media, certainly, are no help in contextualizing the tectonic shift for those of us with other things to attend to. (Neocons don't change hairstyles or favor sweaters very often, they make boring article fodder.) Those with a megaphone who do recognize that something is truly awry are stymied: Does my doubt, spoken clearly and out loud, undermine the larger goal of maintaining our security? Do I feign ignorance and keep my access? My job? Indeed, "would I be counted with them--the Evil Doers?" Of course, unvarnished, unspun truth in the news business finds itself in the company of words that were once rarely conjoined in polite conversation: words like "fifth" and "column", or "liberal" and "traitor". Needless to say, causing these jewels to roll off the tongues of your viewing and reading customers is not conducive to garnering market share or enhancing profit and loss statements. Just the opposite:

We've created this cottage industry in which it pays to be un-objective. It pays to be subjective as much as possible. It's a great way to have your cake and eat it, too. Criticize other people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. It's a great little racket. I'm glad we found it, actually. -- Matt Labash of the Weekly Standard (the neocon "People Magazine")

Yes, he actually said that. Out loud. On the record.

And so the Fourth Estate--even the so-called "good guys"--has voted with its balance sheet, picked their Team, and now they're all partying together nervously, players, owners and referees. The spectators? You're on your own.

As we're seeing, this philosophy, with once impeccable Western cultural and intellectual roots has mutated into a marvelous tool for mass deception and herd-direction: its vacuous certitude belittles, even eliminates, the need for debate. Second thoughts or Devil's Advocacy are for wimps and Popes. Men of Action don't contemplate their navels, they poke a sword in someobody else's. Therefore, the same quixotic freelance thinking accrues for a military and foreign policy that hews to no understandable accord--the enemy is who we say it is, not who it ought to be; your choices are those we frame for you, in your best interest, by our estimation. Trust us, we're Spartacus. And you're not.

Perhaps you thought Iraq was about imminent threats from Weapons of Mass Destructon? Where on earth did you get that idea? Iraq was about a democratic Middle East or an oppressed Iraqi citizenry or about stonewalling UN resolutions or about whatever you need to hear to feel comfortable with us going ahead with the thing because, well, because you just wouldn't understand the larger reason: it's a good and evil, gotta do it kind of thing. Relax. Don't get your knickers in a twist, we'll let you know when we need you.

Simple huh? Neoconservatism is really a thing of beauty if you're from the High Priest school of leadership: On certain days, the tea leaves suggest flexibility, on others they demand steely resolve. And perhaps an invasion or two. Same tea leaves, different political necessity. But since only you can read them, and as long as you remain defiantly and confidently inscrutable, your lessers have no choice but to be befuddled, shocked and awed: "Surely there's a plan? Yes, this MUST be PART of the plan." An example, from Perle and Frum's The End of Evil:

[We must] Accept the subcontinent's nuclear weapons as an unwelcome but unalterable fact and drop all remaining sanctions against India and Pakistan. The sanctions were ill conceived from the beginning. There was never the slightest chance they would succeed in halting either the Pakistani or Indian nuclear program. Their only effect was to estrange the United States from both countries.

The United States estranged from India? Gee, I did not know that. Pakistan gets a bye? Righto! Thank you, David and Richard. You da men!

You see, holding WMDs, the real kind--and not too firmly at that--is not the "pass go" for US invasion that we've been led to believe. Those capital B-A-D Ba'athists? They're not so unequivocally bad when Falujah is in flames and we need them to restore order. The Maximal Non-Equivocators of the Project for the Next American Century are not unreasonable men and women. They're willing to relax their rhetoric in acceptance of Lesser Evils and Realpolitik after all. For the "proper" reasons, of course.

Alas, if you were a neocon, this would be clear as Socrates' poison. All will be revealed. Honest. Swear to God.

[edited 5-11-04, 1-23-05]

Media Buy of The Month. [link]

"As an executive, I was hesitant at first, thinking that it might negatively affect my standing at work. But, on the contrary, it's a big hit. The rate of visitors to my cube has increased 35%!"
- Arthur White

"I was present at a staff meeting when Deputy Undersecretary Bill Luti called General Zinni a traitor."

Certainly, the neoconservatives never bothered to sell the rest of the country on the real reasons for occupation of Iraq—more bases from which to flex U.S. muscle with Syria and Iran, better positioning for the inevitable fall of the regional sheikdoms, maintaining OPEC on a dollar track, and fulfilling a half-baked imperial vision.

A bug in the rug, LTC Karen Kwiatkowski relates her experiences in that Glitter Factory known as the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Ca. 2000-2003. Warning: The laws of physics, common sense, duty, honor, honesty, and even Conservatism have been suspended for the duration of this journey. Again, from, of all places, The American Conservative magazine.

Troubled by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy? Is mad cow disease more than just a chronic, degenerative disorder affecting the central nervous system of cattle? Is it sick cows ground up to feed healthy cows?

NO, friends! It's just an example of an industry not putting its best face forward. You need an Icon. One that says, "nothing to fear, we're on top of things!" You need a bovine who says "Pure as Mother's milk," but in an updated, child-friendly approachable kind of way.



You need Pete. He's a spokes-cow whose time has come. [Gotta have sound turned on]