The Republic, for laughs

June 18:

President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner may be at odds over taxes, the debt ceiling and the conflict in Libya, but for today at least, they put aside their differences for a round of golf. Obama and Boehner took on Vice President Biden and Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich in a game at Joint Base Andrews' golf course in Maryland.
[...]
"The foursome had great time and really enjoyed playing golf at Joint Base Andrews today," a statement from the White House said.[...]

WABC radio's John Batchelor is not amused.

Golfing Backwards for Laughs
By John Batchelor

The strange detail is that four government men make a peacock display of the game of golf in order to show common purpose with regard the fragile state of the US economy and the overbearing Federal debt load that threatens the nationals ecurity.
[...]
What do we learn from the theatrical exercise? These four government men are not in the same economy as the rest of us working fellows: they take the Treasury's check, and we pay the Treasury's bills.

Stats show there are 30 million American males working full time between the ages of 15 and 45. There are 15 million American men working full time between the ages of 46 and 65. The younger, larger group is frustrated and stuck.

Spoke with Mike Dorning, Bloomberg, to learn that one million fewer men and women are changing jobs each month now than before the Great Recession; that is a reflection of fear, caution, lack of choice, frustration, drift, underemployment.

In addition there are nearly 14 million unemployed; in addition hourly wages year over year (2010-2011) have retreated 1.6%.

In sum, the youngest workers are going backward in the same job.

All this adds up to tens of millions of men and women who do not have the leisure, cash, temperament or desire to play golf on a Saturday in June.
[...]
So what to conclude from the golf summit? These four government men have too much down time and not enough anecdotal information to realize that the US is in existential trouble.

What happened in the Great Recession of 2007, 2008 and 2009 is that the US government took money from taxpayers and gave it to the bankers and sharpies who crashed the economy with gambling dens and fraudulent markets.

TARP was theft from a generation of working men and women. The US government (Bush approved and signed: Obama and Biden and Boehner voted Yes; Kasich was out of office) colluded to take $1 trillion of TARP for the bankers and whatever else struck their fancy and whined loudly. TARP was theft from a generation.

Now the TARP thieves can golf together to demonstrate purpose? A golf ball on grass is meaningful? This is the Republic for laughs?

The podcast for John's ten-minute discussion with Mike Dorning is here (second interview).

The following chart backs up Dorning's observations. Yet what is doesn't show is how many of the employed males work in civilian government and in the military. Nor does it show how many of the males work as hamburger flippers in fast food franchises or in other menial jobs. Remove all three sets of workers from the tally and the true measure of how far and fast America is pedaling backward would come into sharper focus.

Batchelor on the latest in Japan's nuclear reactor crisis

The John Batchelor Show has been closely following the situation. Below is John's most recent post at his website on the still-unfolding crisis. See the website for links and photos included in the post.

10 Million Times
by John Batchelor on March 27, 2011 12:46 AM ET

Sudden darkening news from Fukushima includes a Reuters flash, now backed by a BBC report, that the water at Unit #2 is up to 10 million times normal, and that the workers must be evacuated. This is not a positive development after anecdote for the last days of workers damaged by radiation from working in water.

The Japanese government has aleady estimated the quake and tsunami and reactor disaster to cost over $300 Billion. The puzzle remains if it can be contained. The reports for several days have pointed to Unit #3 as the problem. Unit #2 (below, #2 control room as they restored lights) was not featured for several days and was presumed solved.

The evacuation zone outside of Fukushima continues to grow, with a quarter of a million already evacuated and the red line spreading into Fukushima Prefecture.

The challenge is how to measure the TEPCO failure at Fukushima. The reminder is that this is said to be a 60% man-made crisis caused by TEPCO's denial, arrogance, delay and deception in the first critical hours.

A strange victim, of many more to come, is Angela Merkel, who is now slated to lose a bi-election in Baden-Wurtemberg because she reversed course on nukes in Germany. The Germans have only 17 reactors, and they have closed the 7 most like Fukushima for the short-term. The Greens are rallying voters to the no-nuke cause.

It is coming the US way, and we have 104 reactors, with four on fault zones and more than twenty like the light-water reactors at Fukushima.

The ongoing crisis at Fukushima will weaken the nuke forces in all hemispheres. Worse, TEPCO is now baldly revealed as untrustworthy, and this case will spoil all trust of nuke operators.

Somehow I don't see Chinese willing to be the Saudis' favorite slaves

"I summon my blue-eyed slaves anytime it pleases me. I command the Americans to send me their bravest soldiers to die for me. Anytime I clap my hands a stupid genie called the American ambassador appears to do my bidding. When the Americans die in my service their bodies are frozen in metal boxes by the US Embassy and American airplanes carry them away, as if they never existed. Truly, America is my favorite slave."
-- Saudi King Fahd Bin Abdul-Aziz; Jeddeh 1993

Batchelor dispatch re Bahrain and the Saudis (see his website for videos and links):

Last Exit to Bahrain
By John Batchelor on March 15, 2011 3:01 PM

From Youtube, and reported @AJELive #Bahrain Police shooting in Sitra this morning: what looks to be a handful of militia in a rough part of town, with graffiti on the walls, few cars, certainly not uniformed police authority, moving backward from unseen shouting. Two or more shots ring out, unclear from where, and then one of the militia fires a round.

Spoke Pat Pang and Larry Johnson, Tuesday 15, who tell me that Riyadh has broken off communication with Washington re Bahrain. David Sanger, NYT, tells me that the first time the White House knew of the Saudi troops rolling over the causeway to Bahrain was when it saw it on the news.

Pat Lang says this is a major turn in the road, an unprecedented breakdown. Pat Lang and Larry Johnson and I speculated who the Saudis will task for military cover in the Gulf if they are shedding the US. China is the guess.

The Saudis have quit the Obama administration as an ally. The deteriorating started with the Mubarak fiasco of late January and now continues through the [Gadhafi] fiasco of March. The Bahrain event, the imminent brutality, the distrust and disdain by Riyadh for Washington, all signs point to bloodymindedness in the Gulf. There is a proxy war between Riyadh and Tehran, and the US is out of the fight.

Wednesday Morning 16

Am reporting now that the Bahrain riot police backed up by tanks [as] the Saudi troops are moving now on the protesters camped out in the open in Manama, using tear-gas and brute force.

The US is out of the fight? Where is my Kleenex box?

I'm not sure I have the same view of the situation as Batchelor, and I'm certain I don't agree with Glenn Beck on this one. Beck is upset because President Obama is talking about basketball scores and Women's History Month while MENA is an uproar. He wants Obama to 'lead.'

I disagree, unless Obama wants to do the right kind of leading: Get out there and shout from a mountaintop, "Drill drill drill!"

But by a funny coincidence, the last time Americans got really serious about weaning themselves from foreign oil -- in 2008 -- which drove down the price of OPEC oil, there was a sudden catastrophe in the global financial markets, the genesis of which was never, ever quite fully explained.

Absent Obama saying that every American homeowner should start drilling for oil in the back yard, he's doing the right thing by being too preoccupied to play slave to squabbling oil kingdoms.

Yes of course there will be suffering for Americans if we seriously cross the Saudis and OPEC. But if there was ever a time to be inspired to take courage, all we have to do is look at how the Japanese are meeting suffering.

Donald Trump said recently that if he were U.S. President he'd make other nations respect us again. No. There can be no respect from others if we don't first respect ourselves. No man can bestow self-respect on others. This is something we have to do ourselves.

John Batchelor's analysis of President Obama's visit to India, and a few words about Mughalistan

Well. I was waiting for John Batchelor's show tonight to see how far he had gotten toward figuring out what President Obama said today about Pakistan to the students at St. Xavier's College in Mumbai. I see from his website that I don't need to wait. Now if I can only stop laughing long enough to post what he wrote this will be my personal triumph for the week.

Scolding Jihad
by John Batchelor

The past days POTUS scolded India with the same unearned experience of the world that he uses in the US to no purpose. Electing a POTUS with no experience of office is not nearly as extreme as electing a POTUS with no experience in human affairs. POTUS knows Oahu, some parts of Manhattan (now out of date because gentrified) and Hyde Park. POTUS takes this narrow discernment to the most critical of all democracies and uses it to scold the India Parliament that it must get along with the failed state of Pakistan.

Upon what is POTUS basing his measure? Did POTUS read it in a briefing paper, or did Val Jarrett rehearse his palaver?

POTUS represents the defeated Democratic Congress. The seat he occupied in the Senate is gone to the GOP. The Speaker he depended upon is now an insurgent in her own party. POTUS wins 28% of the white vote in the USA, which is an electoral college wipe-out unless he transforms his cant.

He scolds India for regarding Pakistan as a vandal? Now the POTUS Schoolmaster act moves to Indonesia. This will be slight irony -- returning to the scene of his Moslem flirtation before he became what a Democratic op tells me is a "radical atheist." Or what is more properly understood as a Bishop of Golf.

Jihad Repositioned

What the heck does this mean, when POTUS is asked about jihad by some snarky Xavier (a 140-year-old Jesuit-Catholic school to be sure) boys and girls: When is religious war undistorted?

"I think all of us recognize that this great religion in the hands of a few extremists has been distorted to justify violence towards innocent people that is never justified. And so, I think, one of the challenges that we face is how do we isolate those who have these distorted notions of religious war."

Another way to reply to the student's question would be to say that it's not religion when the goal is to make India disappear through the use of a census based on religious affiliation. That is what the "few extremists" in Pakistan's military have in mind for India. The envisioned end result is called Mughalistan or Mugalstan: Muslims drive out Indians of other religions from an Indian state or region, then demand that on the basis of their religious majority they should have their own 'nation.'

They pulled that crap in Kashmir and the Indian government foolishly went along. The upshot was millions of internally displaced non-Muslim Indians and the autonomous region of 'Indian' Kashmir, where only Muslim 'Indians' are allowed to own property or land.

In other words, Pakistan's goal for India is to reduce a nation to a bunch of emirates controlled from Rawalpindi. As to how far they've gotten with their plan, here is part of a post from 2006 at a Pakistan military defense site on the Mughalistan strategy. Note where Afghanistan fits into the scheme:

MUGHALSTAN is the Muslim response to Hindu Rashtra. Envisaging an united Islamic homeland stretching from Sind to Bengal via Kashmir, it is the very antithesis of Hindutva. No, we Muslims are not going to go to Pakistan as the Brahmins command. Instead we will break India once more and re-unite with our brethren in Pakistan and Bangladesh to form the greatest nation of the world - Mughalstan, "The Land of Mughal-Muslims". Mughalstan is "Greater Pakistan", or "Pakistan No. 2". In other words, Mughalstan is "India's Bosnia" - a nation within a nation. Mughalstan will Inshallah consist of the following coterminous territories:

PAKISTAN comprising Punjab, Afghanistan, Kashmir and Sindh.
BANGISTAN or Greater Bangladesh, comprising modern Bangladesh, southern Assam and the surrounding Muslim-dominated regions.
KHALISTAN, the Sikh Nation of Sufi Muslims. The Sikhs or Nanakshahis are followers of the Muslim Sufi saint Nanak Shah; hence Khalistan is a natural part of Mughalstan.
ROHILSTAN, northern Uttar Pradesh or `Rohilkhand', with a 60 % Muslim population.
MALWASTAN or Malwa in Madhya Pradesh.
BIHARISTAN comprising the Muslim-dominated regions formerly known as `Magadha' in southern Bihar, and of course.
KASHMIR, the Crown of Mughalstan.

Each of these regions individually possesses Mughal-Muslim population exceeding 50 %, and hence these regions justifiably belong to Islamic Mughalstan instead of Brahmin-Occupied Hindu Rashtra.

The population of the resulting Mughalstan homeland is obtained by adding the Muslim populations of Pakistan, Bangladesh and North India, and subtracting the populations for Brahmavarta, Rajputana, Bhojpur and Brahuiland, which are envisaged independant ethnic nations. Using the latest population figures, one obtains

70% Mughal-Muslim
03% Vaidik-Brahmins
05% Vaishya-Vaishnavite
15% Sudroid-Shaivite
05% Rajput-Saura
02% Portuguese-Christian and others.

Since 70% of Mughalstan's population is Muslim, Mughalstan belongs to us by birthright. The term `Mughal-Muslim' is analogous to the conventional ethnographic terms `Anglo-Saxon Protestant', `Sinhala-Buddhist' or `Russian-Orthodox'. Since each of these peoples have independant nations, it follows that the Mughal-Muslims deserve a homeland as well. [...]

That's what's out there, folks. Not officially, of course, but that's the plan; that's what Pakistan's army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani means when he says he's "India-centric." So former CIA official and White House advisor Bruce Riedel is not entirely correct when he calls Kayani a "liar." He's referring only to Kayani's rationalizations about why Pakistan's military won't deal with terrorist organizations that Rawalpindi controls. Kayani has actually been pretty frank in stating his goal. And Pakistan's military has no intention of stopping with breaking up India into emirates.

That is what the government of the United States of America and U.S. military brass such as Admiral Mike Mullen are supporting, every time they cave into extortion demands from Pakistan's military, and every time they give official cover to Pakistan's regime. Is there no way to divest these fools of the idea that if they cut off their fingers and feed them to a tiger it won't make a meal of them? Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, take note.