Archives for 2012

The Invisible Great Recession: Did It Ever Happen?

2012/01/16 By Dr Leo Strauss 17 Comments

Years from now, will people really know we ever had a ‘Great Recession?’ How? Will those two words resonate a concrete sense of time and crisis? Or be just another meme football, drawing meaning from shadows cast by shifting contexts?

The Great Recession Is Not Happening, Move Along. Keep It Moving.

They can’t know because we today refuse to talk about the Great Recession in its granular reality. We’re a people compulsively determined to pretend it’s not happening.

Of course, there’s ‘talk’. Our lives every day are filled with tactical fluff. Snarky tweets. Cable ~~news~~ opinion – millionaire teleprompter readers solemnly reading economic numbers like a professional sports summary. The next Obama sound byte merges with the next Republican Debate in a vortex of detachment.

Ephemera. All of it flitting like lifespans of summer fireflies. Easily interchangeable by . . . Tebow, crashed cruise ships, whether ~~Vanity Fair~~ some magazine bleats is Zooey Deschanel ‘over’? And so on.

That is not how (healthy) societies memorialize and create legacies about one of the great catastrophes of the modern era, the Great Recession.

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Administrativa: Ground Control To Major Tom – Commencing Countdown Engines On

2012/01/13 By Dr Leo Strauss 11 Comments

An update on noises from behind the curtain.

The STSOZ 2.0 today completed one migration. From a creaky, ancient software base to a more modern and trendy version. In practical terms, you may notice slightly faster load times. A recent post or two may be hors de combat.

Why do it? This successful transition gives comfort that STSOZ 2.0 in its entirety (from the Quote Machine to the relic .com site) can move to ‘the cloud’ safely. And, as consumers, we’ve certainly been conditioned to believe everything “should go to the cloud.” Right?

Our focus turns to STSOZ 1.0. It’s antique software is not actually in digital code; it was carved into oak by Druidic sages while intoning “Inna Gada Davida” from the album. Long before Rachel Maddow became Olbermann’s Mini Me. (How was that for a little memory jog?)

The long and short? You may (or may not) see odd things happening here. If we throw the dice — and bet the last 8 years or so — we’ll give a shout. Unless we screw up unintentionally the site will go down for at least 6 days. (Just to clear the Internet Root Servers, etc.) If it arrives in pieces, one day at time then.

Stick around. It might be fun rubbernecking.

If Only People Opposed The PATRIOT Act Like SOPA; The Power Of LOLCats

2012/01/13 By Dr Leo Strauss 16 Comments

All the Interwebs are buzzing about de-railing the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its Senate counterpart, Protect IP Act (PIPA). Those kidz at Reddit started a campaign against a company (GoDaddy) so dull (it registers Internet domains and sells email) it gets marginal mindshare deploying quasi-strip tease acts for ads designed to be blocked at the Super Bowl. Technology companies flirting with the IP crowd are now backing away.

SOPA is kitchen table talk now. Perhaps everyone wants to at least feel like they’re ‘in’. Like Tina Fey-kinda-in. It’s a simple talking point, too. Why, allowing Hollywood lawyers to tell backbone companies to block websites the lawyers deem carrying pirated material? That would “break the Internet.” Angry Birds would die. Mafia Wars end. And so on.

We won’t rehearse all the original machinations of the Motion Picture Association of America, the Business Software Alliance (MSFT eta al.). You’ve seen it elsewhere. And of course, watching MSFT and others at BSA cave to pressure and retreat is not un-fun. But it’s the same old story of IP holders’ greed and fear from the DMCA days. Turned up a notch. Except now there’s social media – like Reddit. And it bit them in the backside but fierce.

Still, it’s a bread and circuses thing. We’re just puzzled why Amerikhuns care more about access to online porn, Pirate Bay wannabees and LOLCats than, say, oh, their personal freedom. Nobody lifted a finger to slow PATRIOT down then. Except Dick Armey and a few who demanded and got sunset provisions. OK, it was right after 9/11. Feelings were raw.

Feelings weren’t that raw when Democrats and Republicans voted to blow past the original sunsets. How raw could feelings be with the Boy King in office? To get *expansions* to the PATRIOT Act, notwithstanding its classified offshoots. Chirp. Chirp. You’d think this would be something custom made for social media, ala Cairo, etc. But alas, people can’t conceive of losing something that’s not tangible, like a shiny new iPad suddenly no longer showing a favorite website.

So if you go to one of those usual suspect ~~aggregators~~ news sites proclaiming this ‘dramatic’ SOPA victory to ‘preserve the Internet’, just remember, sure, Amerikhuns may get LOLCats unimpeded. And the torrents running free in Sweden.

High fives all around. Because, like, saving the “integrity of the Internet” is so much more important than a constitutional republic. You know we’re right.

Obama Tries To Weave A Strategic Narrative: But Did He Check The Feng Shui?

2012/01/05 By Dr Leo Strauss 15 Comments

Listening to the chattering classes, a paramount challenge for U.S. strategy is ‘the lack of a narrative.’ What is to go after ‘Once upon a time . . .’?

Obama tries his hand declaring by fiat ‘we have turned the page’ from whatever 2001-2011 was. (Report here). Apparently, winding down two land wars allowed him to glimpse the U.S. would seek agility with inevitable force re-sizing. Who knew? Conveniently forgotten is that DoD now has more contractors in *Afghanistan* than uniformed personnel anyway.

At its core the Stiftung finds the report, well, Goldilocks. Compared to competing camps and their ‘narratives’. Its cardinal achievement? To begin re-focusing institutional U.S. geostrategic fixation on Europe and re-align it to the Pacific Rim, alas 20 years too late.

This PR exercise is also less than it seems. Most of the hard questions about mission re-definement made real through procurement? Punted. A defense budget and alleged cuts, etc. are always gamed not what they seem. Obama claims he will start cutting $480 billion over the next ten years. First, reductions in future rates of growth are not reductions at all. Second, given the (malfunctioning) annual budget authorization and appropriations process, projecting beyond 3 years is to party with Charlie Sheen. The Stiftung has long-supported a two-year budget appropriation cycle but people on the Hill prefer the one year approach for narrow self-interested political reasons.

A Few Trillion And Soon You’re Talking Real ~~Chinese~~ Tax Payer Money

The current Obama FY defense budget is over $708 billion. That is over double the FY 2001 outlay of $316 billion. (And for those counting, pure top line defense industry profit – the net of the net profit in 2011 was over $25 billion according to SEC filings. That is a 400% increase since 2001).

Let’s put everything in context: the U.S. since 2001 spent $ 4trillion on defense *and* a further $1.4 trillion fighting actual wars. The latter costs were kept ‘off budget’ in so-called ’emergency’ war supplementals. (Don’t blame just Cheney, et al, a Democratic Senate went along). Remember that when you see frowns about ‘dangerous’ cuts, etc.

Substantively, the apparent fantasy is that U.S. power projection will be light and fast, with drones, JSOC and CONUS-based kinetic strike. The need for littoral heavy footprints and consequent force protection and SLOCs, etc? Gone. Booyah!

It’s a convenient day dream. Littoral access just about anywhere along the so-called Crescent of Crisis will be contested if not denied, whether Iran, Korea, the ASEAN region, etc. The pivot from Europe (so-called) is two decades over due. The Army presence there a hang-over from 1949 and 1991. So some down-sizing inevitable anyway. The Marines, by the way are themselves seeking a smaller force. They want to go back to being both elite and focused on their unique mission. Stationing a token presence in Australia a geopolitical signal Asians will understand.

You’d be excused for wondering how the U.S. forgets its own Asian Lost Weekend. It deployed unprecedented kinetic violence, body counts and Special Forces and eventually sent GROPOS ashore at Danang. The internal logic of escalation dominance (irrational to an objective outside observer) and all that. How’d that work out?

According to Obama’s document the U.S. will not repeat Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. You see, Obama has invented ‘partial-pregnancy’. We will assert U.S. global superiority but not with onshore footprint of large combat forces. We will intervene and help domestic entities but won’t get ‘dragged in.’ Apparently it is the geo-political equivalent of the Rhythm Method. We don’t need to worry about logistics or CSAR because, well, because. While a drone base has a smaller footprint than a F-22/F-35 capable runway, bladders, hangers, etc. the report doesn’t deal with the future of Jedi Knights sitting in cockpits.

Overall, it’s a B. Leaving Europe and realizing the future will be in Asia notable achievements given endemic superficial U.S. strategic planning. A few rice bowls got nudged. Most of all Obama cynically kicked the can down the road after the elections for the details and real turf fights. Because you just know how well Obama does when he’s fresh off a victory. It’s bank, man.

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Appropos of absolutely nothing, but offered as a public service. What history suppressed. And now can be revealed.