As if yesterday’s post were not enough red meat for the conspiracy theorists, there is the article Afghanistan War not close to legal; 9/11 “justifications” all lies. 1 of 2.

In this article David Ray Griffin gives a well argued case for his thesis.  Of course, well argued is not the same as true.

Just to show you how gullible I am, I read Immanuel Velikovsky‘s books and believed them (at one time). To further my disclaimer, I can say the same thing about me and Ayn Rand.

In the article The CIA/Likud Sinking of Jimmy Carter, author Robert Parry describes his theory of how the Republicans and their allies in the CIA conspired to prevent the Iranian hostages from being freed during the Carter administration.

It seemed fairly likely at the time that the Reagan campaign had conspired to defeat Carter’s negotiations with the Iranians for the release of the hostages.  This article just supplies all the details to make that supposition even more plausible.

If I had a “believe it, or not” category on this blog, I would put this story into it.

In the column The Third Depression in the New York Times, Paul Krugman again explains why government austerity measures make no sense at this time.

Since the pressures are so heavy from the people who understand little about macro economics, it is refreshing to see some reinforcement from someone who does thoroughly understand it.

There are lots of examples in the world about what happens after some policy or another is followed.  We have the recent examples of Greece and Spain who ran huge deficits.  We have the world of the 1930s who refused to run deficits.

It takes someone who understands the reasons for the consequences and who understands the actions more deeply than the headlines to know which examples apply to us at the current time. In this case, I think Paul Krugman is one of those people who have the requisite understanding.

People with little economic training do not seem to have the necessary tools to understand the current situation and the consequences of various policies.  If you don’t have the tools to analyze and understand, then your choice of policies is little better than throwing darts at the answers to a multiple-choice question.

Throwing darts has some probability of success, but I think the odds are in favor of people who know something.  There are no deeper assurances than that in the real world.

There is not much I can add to Obama Misses the Afghan Exit Ramp, the latest article by Ray McGovern.

I have heard the old saw about poker, “If you look around the table and cannot figure who the patsy is, then it is you.”

Perhaps the same is true for McChrystal’s clowns.  They looked around the table and actually thought someone else was the clown.

The Worcester T & G carried the AP story, Aid For Jobless Rejected – – GOP Blocks Plan To Extend Benefits.

Apparently the Republicans are doing everything they can to force a double dip recession so that they can win elections in November.

They thinly disguise their actions by the claim that they would cut off unemployment benefits because they are concerned over adding 0.3% to the federal debt.

Since when were our elected officials supposed to be more concerned with their own re-elections than they are about the good of the country?

Their very actions prove that they know the economy will recover if they give the Obama administration what it wants. Otherwise, they would do what the Democrats under Bush did. They gave President Bush just about everything he wanted. In the end his own poor policies are what sank him. At least the Democrats could claim they were giving the people what they seemed to have wanted when they elected George Bush.  I suppose they could also have claimed that though they thought it wouldn’t work, they were just giving Bush the chance to prove them wrong.

I wonder how many T & G readers will be able to recognize what is going on here.

Here is some email that I received.

Steven — We just launched RaiseYourVote.com, the centerpiece of our huge voter registration effort. RaiseYourVote.com isn’t just a voter registration site. It serves as a powerful clearinghouse for voter information across the country — armed with pretty much everything you need to know to cast your ballot. It even automatically personalizes to the user’s location — so when you visit the site, you’ll see voter information for your state. But the power of a site like this depends on how many voters see it. Check out RaiseYourVote.com today — and please share it with your friends. The 2008 election was a pivotal moment for our democracy. We saw 15 million people cast ballots for the first time and millions more vote for the first time in decades. These voters helped put President Obama over the top, and made the difference in tight races across the country. This site is about ensuring that we build on that same energy this year. Congressional elections are known to have lower participation than those for president, so we’re starting early with a tool that will help get more Americans involved. And, really, RaiseYourVote.com is just the online part of our unprecedented voter registration efforts already under way on the ground, which we’re ramping up with a national voter registration day of action across the country on July 17th. Casting a ballot shouldn’t be too hard or confusing for anyone — and we’re trying to make it as easy as possible for everyone to get the information they need. In fact, we even created a RaiseYourVote.com “widget” that users can install on their own blogs or websites, making it easy for people everywhere to make registering to vote as simple as possible. Please help us spread the word — send it on to three friends today: http://www.RaiseYourVote.com Thanks, Natalie Natalie Foster New Media Director P.S. — Text “RaiseYourVote” and your state abbreviation to 62262 (example: RaiseYourVote MA) to receive text-message updates on voter registration deadlines and early voting in your state. You’ll also be added to the Organizing for America mobile list to receive regular news and event information straight from OFA headquarters. Standard message and data rates apply. You may text “STOP” anytime to cancel.

Paid for by Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee — 430 South Capitol Street SE, Washington, D.C. 20003. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

The article, Congress Fails to Pass an Extension of Jobless Benefits, appears in The New York Times.

It is clear to me that the Republicans still don’t understand how you get out of a recession.  Their only expertise seems to be creating bubbles whose collapse causes recessions.

They are fighting to keep the extension of jobless benefits from adding to the deficit.  When you are trying to pump prime the economy to get out of a recession, the last thing you want to do is cut back the deficit now.  I emphasize the word now. After we climb out of the recession there will be plenty of time to reduce the deficit.

Well, knowing past history, we could cut the deficit and eventually run a surplus.  When the Democrats finally accomplish this, the American voters will vote the Republicans back into office.  What will be the Republican’s winning argument?  This surplus is your money.  You know how to spend it better than the government.  Put us into office and we’ll cut taxes. Debt of $13 trillion?  What, me worry?

Now for the part of the argument the Republicans won’t give you.  The national debt is also your money.  You owe it, so pay it back.  If we cut taxes instead of decreasing the debt, there will be another huge bubble and we will start the cycle over again.  Of course we’ll think of new ways to blame Barney Frank.  You will never knowingly face the consequences of your actions.  The key word is knowingly.  The consequences of your actions will be there whether you know it or not.

The Afghanistan Reboot: Can Obama and Petraeus Work Together? by Joe Klein from Time Magazine  is a thoughtful piece about the situation in Afghanistan.

One thing that I have learned from my experience in the Army and my experience in private sector employment is the danger of trying to go over the head of your boss and to appeal to higher authority to get what you want.  I am beginning to see that this was the technique that McChrystal and some others in the military have been trying to use.

The analogy to my experience isn’t perfect, but I think it still applies.  Unless your boss is totally incompetent, he or she enjoys the confidence of his or her boss.  Your boss’s boss probably knows your boss much better than he or she knows you.  The further up the chain of command you go, the more likely these observations are true.

When you go up that chain of command, you are asking your boss’s boss to consider issues that he or she has delegated to your boss.  The first thing your boss’s boss is likely to do is to ask your boss for an explanation of the issue.

If your boss appears to his or her boss to have a good handle on the situation, then the issue will probably be re-delegated to your boss.

The bottom line is that you had better have an exceptional case to present if you want to try going up the chain of command.  You had also better have strong evidence that you have tried all the normal processes to be heard and that those processes did not give your idea a fair hearing.  You should also believe in your case so strongly that you are willing to risk your career over it.

At the very least you need to be aware of the above dynamic and be prepared to take counter measures to overcome your disadvantages.  Understanding the dynamic makes you think of ways to avoid being seen as just a chronic complainer.

A story in The New York Times, U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan, seems to indicate that there are such vast mineral deposits.  I like to think that I was suspicious of this story when I first read it. I was suspicious on factual grounds and because of my general mistrust of The New York Times, given its recent history for making things up at the behest of U.S. government insiders.

Even if true, it reminds me of the suspicions that George Bush attacked Iraq to help US companies (and British Petroleum companies) get their hands on Iraq’s oil wealth on highly favorable terms. (Favorable to the oil companies, not to Iraq).

Now the story Analysis: Did the “gray lady” get played? is published on the Global Post web site. The story offers a bunch of questions on why the decades old pieces of information have recently become so important.

The author of the analysis piece, Jean MacKenzie, does not mention any names.  However, to me the name of General McChrystal somehow pops into mind.

In any case, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, if it turns out that Afghanistan does have immense mineral wealth it only makes our position there less tenable, not more. Again, the U.S. military might have been better off if they hadn’t been so forceful in pushing this story.  Maybe that’s why I think of General McChrystal.

At consortiumnews.com is the article How US Media Botched Iran’s Election.

One can still remain skeptical of the premise of the article (if you want to), and still have your mind opened to the possibility that what we think we know about the recent election is very far from reality.

U.S. foreign policy toward Iran may be way off base because of this faulty story line that western countries are accepting.

At least one has to wonder what Brazil and Turkey think they know that would lead them to try to deal with Iran on purely diplomatic term.

Maybe there is a rational reason why Russia and China are so hard to convince to go along with us on our bellicose behavior toward Iran.

Would our heads explode if we were to contemplate these possibilities?