By KIRKPATRICK SALE

It is quite ironic: only a decade or so after the idea of the United States as an imperial power came to be accepted by both right and left, and people were actually able to talk openly about an American empire, it is showing multiple signs of its inability to continue. And indeed it is now possible to contemplate, and openly speculate about, its collapse.

The neocons in power in Washington these days, those who were delighted to talk about America as the sole empire in the world following the Soviet disintegration, will of course refuse to believe in any such collapse, just as they ignore the realities of the imperial war in Iraq. But I think it behooves us to examine seriously the ways in which the U.S. system is so drastically imperiling itself that it will cause not only the collapse of its worldwide empire but drastically alter the nation itself on the domestic front.

All empires collapse eventually: Akkad, Sumeria, Babylonia, Ninevah, Assyria, Persia, Macedonia, Greece, Carthage, Rome, Mali, Songhai, Mongonl, Tokugawaw, Gupta, Khmer, Hapbsburg, Inca, Aztec, Spanish, Dutch, Ottoman, Austrian, French, British, Soviet, you name them, they all fell, and most within a few hundred years. The reasons are not really complex. An empire is a kind of state system that inevitably makes the same mistakes simply by the nature of its imperial structure and inevitably fails because of its size, complexity, territorial reach, stratification, heterogeneity, domination, hierarchy, and inequalities.

ASPEN — The Aspen Institute never promised that all the big notions aired at its popular Aspen Ideas Festival will be full of hope and inspiration.

The sixth annual festival opened with a sobering vision of the future from financial historian and Harvard professor Niall Ferguson, who declared that history indicates the United States is an empire “on the edge of chaos.”

“My working assumption is that the financial crisis that began in the summer of 2007 has accelerated a fundamental shift in an economic balance of power,” Ferguson told a near-capacity audience in the Greenwald Pavilion, which holds 750 people.

Even before the crisis, Goldman Sachs predicted that China would overtake the United States as the world’s economic superpower by 2027, according to Ferguson. “The financial crisis has unquestionably hit the U.S. much harder than China,” he said.

And American politicians don’t have a sense of urgency, Ferguson contended. They feel the country can limp along for another 20 years or so in its current financial health without making tough decisions about fiscal policy. He believes they are wrong. The federal government’s debt has grown so large in the past decade that the United States will inevitably devote an increasing amount of taxes to it. Meanwhile it’s facing a greater burden through the Medicare and Social Security programs as Baby Boomers age. It’s also currently fighting two wars. All that while revenues have plummeted in the recession.

To add to the doom and gloom, Ferguson said the collapse could come much quicker than people realize.

“Most empires collapse fast,” Ferguson said. “They’re complex systems. They exist on the edge of chaos. It doesn’t take much to tip them over, and when they tip over, they fall apart really quickly.”

He cited the Soviet Union as an example and noted Rome’s collapse happened in just a generation.

If the United States fades as a world economic and military superpower, Ferguson sees dire consequences, regardless of whether China replaces it. One result of the U.S. loss of power, he predicted, is the greater Middle East “spiraling out of control.”

With the immigration debate heating up - and a federal court case over Arizona's SB 1070 brewing - you'd think that the U.S. was besieged by growing numbers of illegal immigrants.

But you'd be wrong.

Despite the heightened rhetoric and the bloodcurdling vitriol surrounding the issue, illegal immigration has actually declined significantly over the past few years. While journalists like to characterize the anger over immigration as a response to facts on the ground - i.e. people are inundated and incensed - the numbers don't bear them out.

In fact, the opposite is true. According to a February report by the Department of Homeland Security, the number of illegal immigrants living in the United States actually dropped by a whopping 1 million between 2008 and 2009, which amounts to the sharpest decrease in 30 years. It was the second year of declining numbers.

Likewise, the Border Patrol reports that apprehensions are down by more than 60 percent since 2000, to 550,000 last year, the lowest number in 35 years, even though the border is more tightly controlled than ever. As William Finnegan wrote in last week's New Yorker, "The southern border, far from being ‘unsecured,' is in better shape than it has been for years - better managed and less porous."

1 - On the whole, users aren’t all that dissatisfied with Windows

2 - Too many distros
Want to know why more people don’t choose Linux? Here’s a clue for you:
Too many distros!
Put simply, there are just too many darn distros to choose from. Sure, put in some time and effort into research and experimentation and you’ll find a distro that works for you, but let’s face it Windows users are having a hard enough time now figuring out whether they should go for Vista Home Basic or Home Premium. Try and sum up the pros and cons of all the Linux distros and it just becomes far too complicated for users. Look at the Mac user numbers and ask what Mac got that Windows and Linux don’t - one choice.

3 - People want certainty that hardware and software will work
Name me five bits of hardware that lists Linux as a supported system on the box. I’ve just had a look around the office and I can’t find a single thing that lists Linux explicitly (I think I got a USB key some time ago that mentioned Linux but I can’t be sure). Until we see hardware vendors shipping Linux drivers for hardware as standard, this will remain a nightmare for anyone who doesn’t have a sense of adventure.

It’s worse for software. Anyone making the leap from Windows to Linux has to start from scratch with regards to applications. That’s a much bigger undertaking than the Linux community gives credit for. Having to come up with an alternative for every application you use is a big job.

4 - As far as most people are concerned, the command line has gone the way of the dinosaur
Linux users rave about the fact that under Linux you can dispense with the GUI and go back to the command line (even I like the power offered by the command line). But let’s face it, we “command line fans” are in the minority. For those old enough to remember DOS, most are glad than those days are over, for others bought up on Windows, it’s hard to explain the benefits of a command driven interface.

In an age where people find it hard to keep a few control key keyboard commands in their head for any length of time, the idea of switching to a command line system just doesn’t appeal to many people.

5 - Linux is still too geeky
Over the last few years there’s been a huge push to make some Linux distros easier to use, and when you look at a distro like Ubuntu, you realize that they’ve done a pretty good job. Problem is, there are some areas of the OS that are still overwhelmingly geeky (for example, updates).

Ubuntu is nice, it’s solid, it’s fast and it’s robust (so far anyway), but it’s also way too geeky in spots. Don’t get me wrong, overall Ubuntu is nice, friendly and convivial. But there are dark corners that absolutely reek of Linux geekdom cliquiness that average users aren’t going to feel at home in (I don’t feel at home there). Ubuntu updates are one such area where you need a high level of know-how to understand what’s going on.What the Ubuntu dev team need to do is find, I don’t know, 100 people who aren’t Linux geeks and stick them in front of the OS. Use these people to get feedback on different aspects of the OS. As soon as users start to look confused, scared or go bug-eyed then something needs tweaking. If your average home user is going to look at Ubuntu as an alternative to Windows or Mac, all these geeky corners have to be smoothed out.

Sober people were skeptical-and rightly so. Reagan's Republican opponent for the 1980 presidential election, George H.W. Bush called it "voodoo economics." His own Budget Director, David Stockman, called it a "Trojan horse," a scam intended really to funnel more money to the already rich. Stockman was quickly dismissed.

The results, we now know, were a disaster. In 1982, the first full year after the tax cuts were enacted, the economy actually shrank 2.2%, the worst performance since the Great Depression. And the effect on the federal budget was catastrophic.

Jimmy Carter's last budget deficit was $77 billion. Reagan's first deficit was $128 billion. His second deficit exploded to $208 billion. By the time the "Reagan Revolution" was over, George H.W. Bush was running an annual deficit of $290 billion per year.

Yearly deficits, of course, add up to national debt. When Reagan took office, the national debt stood at $994 billion. When Bush left office, it had reached $4.3 trillion. In other words, the national debt had taken 200 years to reach $1 trillion. Reagan's Supply Side experiment quadrupled it in the next 12 years.

Is there anything to compare this to? When Bill Clinton took office he intentionally reversed the Supply Side formula, raising taxes on the wealthy and reducing them on the lowest wage earners. Supply Side true believers predicted the arrival of the Apocalypse. Bob Dole said the stock market would collapse. Newt Gingrich said the world would fall into another Great Depression.

What actually happened?

Between 1992 and 2000, the U.S. economy produced the longest sustained economic expansion in U.S. history. It created more than 18 million new jobs, the highest level of job creation ever recorded. Inflation fell to 2.5% per year compared to the 4.7% average over the prior 12 years.

Real interest rates fell by over 40% producing the greatest housing boom ever. Overall economic growth averaged 4.0% per year compared to 2.8% average growth over the 12 years of the Reagan/Bush administrations. Most impressively, Clinton reversed the mammoth deficits of the Supply Side years, turning them into surpluses. He used these surpluses to begin paying down the national debt.

By virtually every meaningful measure-employment, growth, inflation, interest rates, investment, deficits and debt-the economy performed better once the Supply Side experiment was terminated and replaced with a more honest economic policy where we actually pay our bills as we go.

This might all be ancient history if the spectre of Supply Side economics had not reared its ugly head again once Bush II took office. In selling his $1.6 trillion tax cut-half of which went to the wealthiest 1% of Americans-Bush promised in 2001 that it would produce 800,000 new jobs. In fact, the economy has lost 2.7 million jobs since Bush took office, again, the worst economic performance since the Great Depression.

The effects of Bush's tax cut on the deficit and debt are exactly what we would expect having seen Reagan's results-only worse. Bush inherited from Clinton a fiscal surplus of $127 billion. In his first year he turned that into a deficit of $158 billion. In this, his second year, he will run a deficit of over $400 billion-a swing to the worse of over $600 billion in only two years.

Now Bush has sold us on still another megadose of this same Supply Side voodoo. Two thirds of his new $350 billion tax cut will go to the top 10% of income earners. Bush's Congressional ally, Tom DeLay, promises more such cuts for every year Bush is in office.

The long term effects of these policies are profoundly damaging. When Bush took office, the government's ten year surplus was forecast to total $5.6 trillion. This was critical to building fiscal soundness as the Baby Boomers begin to retire.

Crash course on reconciliation

Reconciliation is a fast-track legislative process that allows a bill to pass the Senate in a limited time period, and with the support of only 51 Senators. A “normal” Senate bill can be slowed down by a single Senator, and blocked by 41 Senators. This is not true for a reconciliation bill.

The downside is that reconciliation “protections” apply only to a very narrow set of policy matters, all relating to changes in taxes, spending, or debt.

In the particular case of health care reform, some Senate Democrats are attracted to the reconciliation process because it would allow them to pass a bill even if there is unified Republican opposition, and even if as many as 9 Senate Democrats oppose the bill. It is, however, nowhere nearly as easy as these advocates might hope. They may be able to enact some parts of health care reform but not others.

Here are the three most important parts of the Byrd rule:

1. If a provision has no effect on spending or revenues, then it’s extraneous and violates the Byrd rule…
2. … unless it is a necessary term or condition of another provision that does affect spending or revenues.
3. If a provision has a small budget effect that is merely incidental to its broader non-budgetary policy effect, then it is extraneous and violates the Byrd rule.

Looking at the provisions of a likely reconciliation bill, here are my preliminary judgments. The ultimate arbiter is the Senate Parliamentarian. “OK” means that I think it doesn’t violate the Byrd rule, not that I think it’s good policy.

* Medicaid expansions – The spending is clearly OK. Some of the detail changes within the Medicaid expansion are not.
* New health insurance “exchange” subsidies – OK. Same as for Medicaid. Lots of the non-spending related details could violate the Byrd rule.
* Tax increases – OK.
* Individual & employer mandates – OK. They’re basically taxes with conditions.
* Small business tax credits – OK

Here are provisions that I think violate the Byrd rule:

* Exchanges / Gateways, and all the requirements imposed through them – They’re separated from the subsidies. Someone might argue that the exchanges are a “necessary term and condition” of making the subsidies work. That’s a huge stretch.
* So-called health insurance consumer protections – Insurance mandates such as those requiring guaranteed issue and guaranteed renewability, no lifetime or annual limits, extension of coverage to 25-year old dependents, and modified community rating – As I wrote yesterday, I think these clearly violate the Byrd rule. A couple of friends pointed out that these provisions would make health insurance more expensive. That depresses wages, which reduces income tax revenues, which is a budgetary effect. I think this fits in the merely incidental bucket – these provisions would fundamentally restructure the insurance industry with a minor budget effect.
* The public option – As currently drafted, it’s designed to be independent of federal spending. If so, it’s extraneous. I imagine they could redraft it to link it more closely to the spending so it doesn’t violate the Byrd rule.

Yesterday’s Byrd rule examples would allow a bill to pass the Senate, but with major parts possibly excised. A smart friend wrote that while Senator Reid may not be able to get the whole car through reconciliation, he could probably get the chassis, wheels, and engine. He could then come back in separate future bills to add things like seats, steering, and brakes.

And two smart friends wrote to tell me they think that clever Senate Democratic staff can draft around some of the Byrd rule problems I raised. They have convinced me that the public option can be drafted so that it is not vulnerable to the Byrd rule test I described yesterday. I still think the “health insurance consumer protections” are vulnerable. I received mixed views on the individual and employer mandates from a few experts.

But I missed the most important point. I was so focused on provisions that would not affect the budget and might therefore have to be removed, that I forgot to think about provisions that would affect the budget.

You will remember from the past two days that the reason Senator Reid might decide to use reconciliation is that he would then need only 51 votes to pass a bill through the Senate. If he cannot build a 60-vote coalition, either with Republicans or among his 60 Democrats, then he may feel his best option is to try a 51-vote strategy. Reconciliation is the only way he can do that.

If any rules place 60-vote requirements on a reconciliation bill, they seriously foul up that strategy. Yesterday I explained why certain non-budgetary provisions would violate the Byrd rule because they don’t affect the budget. If Senator Reid has 51-59 Senators in his coalition, then those provisions will drop out.

I missed that there are two other 60-vote requirements that are triggered by the spending in such a bill.

* There is another prong of the Byrd rule test, which in our case says in effect that if the reconciliation bill increases the budget deficit in any year after 2014, then the spending parts of the bill can be removed unless there are 60 votes to waive the Byrd rule.
* There is a separate Senate point of order against legislation that increases long-term budget deficits. If CBO says that this bill increases the budget deficit by more than $5 B for any of the following periods: 2020-2029, 2030-2039, 2040-2049, or 2050-2059, then the bill dies unless there are 60 votes to waive this point of order.

So imagine that Senator Reid has had clever staff redraft the Senate HELP Committee and Senate Finance Committee language to avoid most of the Byrd rule problems I described yesterday. Assume that he knows from the Senate parliamentarian that, while he will lose some components of the bill if he cannot get 60 votes to defend them, with 51 votes he’ll be able to pass most of the bill.

But then along comes Senator Loper, who is deeply concerned about the fiscal impact that long-term budget deficits will have on her three children. She raises the long-term budget point of order against the reconciliation bill. Assume she has an estimate from CBO which shows that the bill increases budget deficits by more than $5 B in the period 2020-2029. It might look like this key quote from CBO’s analysis of the House Tri-Committee bill, H.R. 3200:

In sum, relative to current law, the proposal would probably generate substantial increases in federal budget deficits during the decade beyond the current 10-year budget window.

If Senator Reid cannot find 60 votes to waive that point of order, the entire bill dies.

Re:: Korengal Valley, Afghanistan - July 2008 edition
By LongIslandgirl in Who are the contacts?

so apparently the KOP got a resupply, but no mail-
this is a message from Anysoldier contact Patrick Newcomb:

So here's the deal. I just got back up here today and apparently they haven't got mail in over 2 weeks. There is at least 1 conex full of mail just for the Korengal Valley. Thats about 1,200 pounds of mail that has been sitting there for god knows how long. Christmas is tomorrow and nobody has presents, smokes, dip, anything. We are scrounging for stuff right now. I'm not asking you to do a lot here. Please make a simple call to your local congressman/woman and voice a complaint of concern about this. How would you feel if you were expecting to recieve stuff that you need for everyday life in the mail and you had to wait to get it for months on end. Please help us out. We have tried to get it up here and nothing is being done. Maybe if they hear about it from you guys something will happen. Happy Holidays ya'll.Patrick

I for one plan on making some calls...
Joanne

It was in the tiny community that a man stormed into a one-room schoolhouse and shot 10 young girls, killing five. He then killed himself. That old school has since been demolished. The new school was closed on the one-year anniversary and families met privately in prayer.

Since the tragedy, people around the world have been inspired by the way the Amish expressed forgiveness toward the killer and his family.

Charles Roberts wasn't Amish, but Amish families knew him as the milk truck driver who made deliveries. Last month, it was announced that the Amish community had donated money to the killer's widow and her three young children.

It was one more gesture of forgiveness, gestures that began soon after the shooting.

Donald Kraybill, is a sociologist at nearby Elizabethtown College and co-author of Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy.

"I think the most powerful demonstration of the depth of Amish forgiveness was when members of the Amish community went to the killer's burial service at the cemetery," Kraybill says. "Several families, Amish families who had buried their own daughters just the day before were in attendance and they hugged the widow, and hugged other members of the killer's family."

The truth is that many of the theories we come up with are bogus. They are based on the assumption that voters make cold, rational decisions about who to vote for and can tell us why they decided as they did. This is false.

In reality, we voters — all of us — make emotional, intuitive decisions about who we prefer, and then come up with post-hoc rationalizations to explain the choices that were already made beneath conscious awareness. “People often act without knowing why they do what they do,” Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winner, noted in an e-mail message to me this week. “The fashion of political writing this year is to suggest that people choose their candidate by their stand on the issues, but this strikes me as highly implausible.”

It is no accident that the major candidates in the Republican field are a pastor, a businessman and a war hero. These are the three most evocative Republican leadership models. Nor is it an accident that the Democratic race is a clash between a daughter of the feminist movement, a beneficiary of the civil rights movement and a self-styled proletarian. These are powerful Democratic categories

Cognitive neuroscience teaches us that our brains construct a reality for us based on relatively limited external input. Not only is the input limited, 95 percent of the processing is unconscious, involving those parts of the brain that are implicated in our emotional reactions.

Rarely do voters make deliberate decisions by consciously contemplating the attributes of each candidate, understanding their issue positions, digesting their messages and logically processing the information. Rather, decisions emerge from a complex interplay of unconscious habits, emotions, and reason.

Some races will be won simply by having a better slogan, a tighter political argument or highlighting a different set of issues. Many will not. Focusing exclusively on these facets of communication is to miss how people process information. The 95 percent of processing that is unconscious does not receive, and cannot even use, that kind of information. A winning argument is only part of the battle.

This is not just a Wall Street crisis – it’s an American crisis, and it’s the American economy that needs this rescue plan. I understand why people would be skeptical when this President asks for a blank check to solve a problem. I’ve spent most of my time in Washington being skeptical of this Administration, and this time was no different. That’s why over a week ago, I demanded that this plan include specific proposals to protect the American taxpayer – protections that the Administration eventually agreed to, as well as Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

First, I said we needed an independent board to provide oversight and accountability for how and where this money is spent at every step of the way.

Second, I said that we cannot help banks on Wall Street without helping the millions of innocent homeowners who are struggling to stay in their homes. They deserve a plan too.

Third, I said that I would not allow this plan to become a welfare program for the Wall Street executives whose greed and irresponsibility got us into this mess.

And finally, I said that if American taxpayers are financing this solution, then you should be treated like investors – you should get every penny of your tax dollars back once this economy recovers.

This last part is important, because it’s been the most misunderstood and poorly communicated part of this plan. This is not a plan to just hand over $700 billion of your money to a few banks. If this is managed correctly, we will hopefully get most or all of our money back, or possibly even turn a profit on the government’s investment – every penny of which will go directly back to you, the investor.

The rescue plan now includes those four principles. It also includes a proposal I made yesterday morning to expand federal deposit insurance for families and small businesses across America who have invested their money in our banks. This will boost small businesses, make our banking system more secure, and help restore confidence by reassuring families that their money is safe.

Even with all these taxpayer protections, this plan is not perfect. Democrats and Republicans in Congress have legitimate concerns about it. I know many Americans share those concerns. But it is clear that this is what we must do right now to prevent a crisis from turning into a catastrophe. That’s why I’ve been reaching out to leaders in both parties to do whatever I can to help pass this plan. That’s why I’ll be flying back to Washington today to cast my vote to safeguard the American economy. And to the Democrats and Republicans who have opposed this plan, I say – step up to the plate and do what’s right for the country, because the time to act is now.

I know many Americans are wondering what happens next. Passing this bill will not be the end of our work to strengthen our economy – it’s just the beginning of a long, hard road ahead. So let me tell you exactly how I’ll move forward as President.

From the moment I take office, my top priority will be to do everything I can to make sure that your tax dollars are protected. I will demand a full review of this financial rescue plan to make sure that it is working for you. If you – the American taxpayer – are not getting your money back, then we will change how this program is being managed. If need be, we will send new legislation to Congress to make sure that taxpayers are protected in line with the principles that I have put forward. You should expect nothing less from Washington.

If we do have losses, I’ve proposed a Financial Stability Fee on the financial services industry so Wall Street foots the bill – not the American taxpayer. And as I modernize the financial system to create new rules of the road to prevent another crisis, we will continue this fee to build up a reserve so that if this happens again, it will be the money contributed by banks that’s put at risk.

This will only work if there is real enforcement and real accountability. And that starts with presidential leadership. So let me be very clear: when I am President, financial institutions will do their part and pay their share, and American taxpayers will never again have to put their money on the line to pay for the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street. That’s a pledge that I’ll make to you today, and it’s one that I’ll keep as President of the United States.

This financial crisis is a direct result of the greed and irresponsibility that has dominated Washington and Wall Street for years. It’s the result of speculators who gamed the system, regulators who looked the other way, and lobbyists who bought their way into our government. It’s the result of an economic philosophy that says we should give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else; a philosophy that views even the most common-sense regulations as unwise and unnecessary. And this crisis is the final verdict on this failed philosophy – a philosophy that we cannot afford to continue.

But while there is plenty of blame to go around and many in Washington and on Wall Street who deserve it, all of us now have a responsibility to solve this crisis because it affects the financial well-being of every single American. There will be time to punish those who set this fire, but now is the moment for us to come together and put the fire out.