The truth of the matter is that things could hardly be worse.  For one thing, corruption is so rampant that U.S. forces have practically given up on enforcement.  This is due structurally to the fact that the regular Afghan economy is dwarfed by U.S. military transfer payments and Opium.  Things are so bad that the central bank has failed because of corrupt real estate speculation in Dubai (among other places and Dubai is not in such great shape itself having recently been bailed out by the UAE).

Of course the Karzai family is heavily implicated in all of this and we’ve just had a Parliamentary election that was if anything even more fraudulent than last year’s disputed Presidential one.  There are credible reports of double and triple voting (seems that Iraqi ink isn’t quite so indelible after all) and thousands of forged ballots were intercepted being smuggled in from Pakistan.

Speaking of Pakistan it’s now clear that a substantial fraction of their Military/Intelligence establishment, perhaps even a majority of it, support the Taliban and are providing them with Safe Havens and logistics support; and that the Pakistani civilian government is either unwilling or unable to prevent this.

Despite the Troop surge our military situation has not improved.  We’re unable to exert control over the countryside except in limited areas for short periods of time and to prevent co-ordinated attacks against our bases by Company and Platoon size units, even the big ones near Kabul.

But only amateurs talk about tactics, Generals talk about logistics.  It is technically impossible to support any more Troops in Afghanistan than we currently have in the field.  Anything that can’t be airlifted in, which includes almost all the Bullets, Beans, and Gasoline, has to go through about half a dozen choke points that are mostly Taliban controlled.  The only way we are able to get through at all is by bribing the Taliban with “security” contracts.

Now this may seem counter intuitive to you.  Why should they allow us to supply our Troops the means to kill them?

Because we’re doing a lousy job at it and they hardly notice the pain.

Not only that, but once inside Afghanistan supplies are distributed over a road system that is naturally impassible during certain seasons and easily sabotaged.  All you have to do is block a culvert and wait for the snow melt to wash out the road, you don’t even have to use explosives.  And there are hundreds of thousands of vulnerable points, too many to constantly guard or even check on a regular basis.

Comparisons with Vietnam are inappropriate.  Afghanistan is much, much worse.

Now despite our lack of progress, any prospect of progress, indeed even a definition of progress, and 9 years of futility, The Man Called Petraeus, our new Westmoreland, is making statements like this–

This is the kind of fight we’re in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids’ lives.

“I can see light at the end of the tunnel.”- General William Westmoreland

“I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”- President Barack Obama

Oh boy howdy.  Be sure and set your DVRs to record Jon’s lame shilling for his ‘Million Moderates March’ on BillO tonight.  Jon- there is right and wrong in this world, good and evil, and good does not consist of splitting the difference between them or ass kissing the ‘lesser evil’.

What makes you particularly pathetic is we know you know better than that and are choosing to sell out deliberately.

Shame on you.

Broadcast premiers, none worth mentioning.  PBS is carrying the Opening Night Concert of the New York Philharmonic.  Keith and Rachel all night.

• AMC– Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome x 2 (the last good movie Mel ever made)
• Bravo– Top Chef marathon (2 premiers)
• Discovery– Mythbusters, Man v. Wild (Season Finale)
• E!– Bridget Jones’s Diary
• ESPN– Rays @ Yankees, Padres @ Dodgers
• Food– America’s Best (with Alton, another premier)
• FX– Forgetting Sarah Marshall (again, in case you haven’t seen it yet), Terriers (premier)
• Lifetime– Bringing Down the House
• Oxygen– A Cinderella Story x 2
• Turner Classic– Five Graves to Cairo, Rashomon
• TNT– Bones marathon
• Toon– Regular Show, MAD
• Travel– Man v. Food marathon (with premier)
• TV Guide– The Bridges of Madison County x 2 (again and again)
• USA– NCIS marathon
• Vs.– Slap Shot

Later-

• AMC– Rubicon (this week’s)
• USA– Ocean’s Thirteen
• Turner Classic– Brewster McCloud, This Is Spinal Tap

Dave hosts Joaquin Phoenix and Tom Jones (he has a new album).  Jon has Edward Norton, Stephen Guillermo Del Toro.  Alton does Pork Tenderloin.

Boondocks– Mr. Medicinal.

We’re very lucky in the band in that we have two visionaries, David and Nigel, they’re like poets, like Shelley and Byron. They’re two distinct types of visionaries, it’s like fire and ice, basically. I feel my role in the band is to be somewhere in the middle of that, kind of like lukewarm water.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 India battles deepening Commonwealth Games crisis

by Kuldip Lal, AFP

Wed Sep 22, 12:50 pm ET

When a Stranger Calls

So it’s pretty clear this morning that a staffer identifying himself as Jimmy used a computer in Senator Saxeby Chambliss’ Georgia office to leave this message on Joe.My.God..

All Faggots must die.

Well, as Clint would say, “we all got it coming.”

I mention it more for its amusement value than anything else.  When I call Republicans bigoted and racist I’m not slandering them- I’m just stating facts.

James Galloway at the Atlanta Journal Constitution has the mainstream media lead on this.  He expects a clarifying statement by Senator Chambliss before tomorrow sometime identifying the culprit.  Frankly you’ll get a lot more information from this blog post by Max Fisher at The Atlantic.

The Defining Issue: Who Should Get the Tax Cut – The Rich or Everyone Else?

by Robert Reich, Sunday, September 19, 2010

Who deserves a tax cut more: the top 2 percent – whose wages and benefits are higher than ever, and among whose ranks are the CEOs and Wall Street mavens whose antics have sliced jobs and wages and nearly destroyed the American economy – or the rest of us?

…

The rich spend a far smaller portion of their money than anyone else because, hey, they’re rich. That means continuing the Bush tax cut for them wouldn’t stimulate much demand or create many jobs.

But it would blow a giant hole in the budget – $36 billion next year, $700 billion over ten years. Millionaire households would get a windfall of $31 billion next year alone.

…

The $1.3 trillion Bush tax cut of 2001 was a huge windfall for people earning over $500,000 a year. They got about 40 percent of its benefits. The Bush tax cut of 2003 was even better for high rollers. Those with net incomes of about $1 million got an average tax cut of $90,000 a year. Yet taxes on the typical middle-income family dropped just $217. Many lower-income families, who still paid payroll taxes, got nothing back at all.

And, again, nothing trickled down.

As I’ve emphasized, the U.S. economy has suffered mightily from the middle class’s lack of purchasing power, while most of the economic gains have gone to the top. (The crisis was masked for years by women moving into paid work, everyone working longer hours, and, more recently, the middle class going into deep debt – but all those coping mechanisms are now exhausted.) The great challenge ahead is to widen the circle of prosperity so the middle class once again has the capacity to keep the economy going.

The Winds of Deflation

by Robert Reich, Friday, September 17, 2010

(Y)ou have what could be a recipe for deflation: Flat consumer prices, weekly earnings, and hours, coupled with increased pessimism about where the economy is heading.

Consumers aren’t buying. They’re acting rationally. Their debt load is still huge, they’re worried about keeping their jobs, they know they have to tighten belts, and they’re justifiably worried about the future.

But for the nation as a whole, it spells even more trouble. If consumers hold back even more, prices will start dropping. When and if they do, consumers will hold back even more in anticipation of still lower prices. That means more layoffs and less hiring.

It’s a vicious cycle. And once deflation sets in, it’s hard to reverse. Just ask Japan.

Why No Amount of Fiscal or Monetary Stimulus Will Be Enough, Given How Small A Share of Total Income the Middle Now Receives

by Robert Reich, Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Every indicator suggests third-quarter growth will be as slow if not slower than in the second quarter. Consumer confidence is down. Retail sales are down. Housing sales are down. Commercial real estate is in trouble.

A growth rate of 1.6 percent means even higher unemployment ahead. Maybe we’re not in a double-dip but we might as well be in one. Growth this slow is the equivalent of heading downward, relative to the growth needed to get us out of the hole we’re in.

…

Even though (The E)conomy is heading downward, flooding it with more money may not help.

The problem isn’t the cost of capital. Most businesses can get all the money they need. Big ones are still sitting on $1.8 trillion in cash.

The problem is consumers, who are 70 percent of the economy. They can’t and won’t buy enough to turn the economy around. Most don’t qualify for more credit given how much they already owe (or have already defaulted on).

Without consumers, businesses have no reason to borrow more. Except to speculate by buying back their own stock and doing mergers and acquisitions, which is exactly what they’re doing.

…

(The Economy) can’t run on its own because consumers have reached the end of their ropes.

After three decades of flat wages during which almost all the gains of growth have gone to the very top, the middle class no longer has the buying power to keep the economy going. It can’t send more spouses into paid work, can’t work more hours, can’t borrow any more. All the coping mechanisms are exhausted.

Anyone who thinks China will get us out of this fix and make up for the shortfall in demand is blind to reality.

So what’s the answer? Reorganizing the economy to make sure the vast middle class has a larger share of its benefits. Remaking the basic bargain linking pay to per-capita productivity.

So it’s the Season Finale of Warehouse 13 and I’ve mostly spent the day watching the ‘catch up’ marathon which has unfortunately left me terribly confused because of my distractions.  Next week we’ll start Season 2 of Stargate Universe (I think, all the starting and stopping, did I mention I was terribly confused?) with a similar marathon.

Three NCIS premiers and a bunch of miscellaneous others on broadcast.  Keith and Rachel all night long.

• ABC Family– Melissa & Joey (premier), Mean Girls
• AMC– Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior x 2 (same reason as last night)
• Bravo– Flipping Out, The Rachel Zoe Project (premiers)
• ESPN– World Series of Poker x 2 (premiers)
• Food– America’s Best (premier, Alton), Chopped (Champions, last semi-final)
• FX– The Day After Tomorrow
• History– Swamp People marathon (with premier)
• Oxygen– Bad Girls Club, Hair Battle Spectacular (premiers)
• Speed– Monster Jam (premier, with Inside Monster Jam 3)
• Turner Classic– Fire Over England, That Hamilton Woman (seafarin’ Larry and Vivien, Arrgh)
• Toon– Unnatural History (Season Finale), Clone Wars (repeat of Season Premier)
• TV Guide– Tin Cup (why this channel is worthless, but a great movie)
• Vs.– Minor League Baseball, Triple-A National Championship: Columbus Clippers vs. Tacoma Rainiers

Later-

• SciFi– Haven (this week’s)
• Turner Classic– Waterloo Bridge huh, I guess it’s [Vivien Leigh night)
• USA– Chase (Series Premier repeat)

Dave hosts Simon Baker, Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi, and Maroon 5.  Jon has Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Eric Schmidt.  Alton does Peanuts.

Boondocks– The Story of Lando Freeman.

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Good riddance to bad rubbish, but also ‘too little, too late’.

As Atrios puts it-

Decision Points

They screwed up first with a too small stimulus.

They screwed up second last December/January when they got skeered of zombie unicorns invisible bond vigilantes.

They screwed up the third time when they thought recovery summer was here and the jobs growth was coming, despite very little evidence of that.

And-

Bye Larry

Don’t let the door…

And maybe one day you can explain to the world why an "insurance policy" was all that was needed.

Update:

Chris in Paris–

If this is correct, we may be in for an even more conservative economic agenda. Should that be the case, there’s really even less reason to support this administration.

Administration officials are weighing whether to put a prominent corporate executive in the NEC director’s job to counter criticism that the administration is anti-business, one person familiar with White House discussions said. White House aides are also eager to name a woman to serve in a high-level position, two people said. They also are concerned about finding someone with Summers’ experience and stature, one person said.

His “experience and stature?” Really? So another scoundrel with deep ties to Wall Street who represents everything that’s wrong with the current system? It better be a hard right turn so he can attract the Teabaggers because this sounds like one kick too many for liberals.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 NATO chopper crash makes 2010 deadliest year of Afghan war

by Lynne O’Donnell, AFP

51 mins ago

So it’s OK for REPUBLICANS to stab our Troops in the back to advance their bigoted, racist, anti-immigrant, anti-gay social agenda.

Not only did Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor join the Republicans, but Barack Hussein Obama and the White House DID NOTHING to lobby in support of this bill.

Why vote Democrat?  Because Republicans are worse?  You can’t prove it by results of which this White House has none.  Anyone who claims to care about electoral victory is a LIAR!

As Joe Sudbay at Americablog says-

There’s plenty of blame to go around — and I have every intention of playing the blame game.

Americablog coverage of today’s vote-

• We lost in the Senate, ‘The whole thing is a political train wreck’
• Obama complains about Dem. base, but fails to say a word about DADT repeal
• DADT repeal: Progress today or a ‘massive failure of leadership’
• Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Lots of premiers if you watch broadcast.  But I don’t.  I don’t watch HBO either but if I did I could hardly escape Boardwalk Empire.

• ABC Family– Independence Day (enthralls me less and less with each viewing.  How come every alien computer can be accessed by a Mac and yet no Windows computer can?)
• AMC– Mad Max x 2 (normally I skip Gibson films because he’s a raging racist anti-semite theocrat, but this one really is a classic)
• Disney– High School Musical (I’m going to stop covering it after this because Disney is wasting a whole week on teen dancing musicals showcasing their stage mom slaves)
• ESPN– Pro Throwball, Who ‘Dat @ ‘9ers
• Food– Unwrapped (premier), America’s Best (Series Premier as far as I can tell.  Alton!  Get your wiki people on this!  Stat!), Triple D (premier)
• FX– The Transporter 2
• History– New Pawn Stars
• Lifetime– Bond of Silence
• National Geographic– How Nero Saved Rome (new, also Decoding Bible Relics and Ghost Ships of the Black Sea.  I’d look them up but it’s a pain in the ass.)
• TBS– Family Guy night
• Turner Classic– The Prowler, The Red Shoes (yes I know it’s a classic, I hate it)
• Toon– New Regular Show, MAD, Total Drama World Tour (one of the Adventure Times with Finn and Jake may be new too)
• Vs.– Bull Durham
• Travel– At least we have a Man v. Food marathon
• TV Land– When Harry Met Sally (still watchable)

Later-

• AMC– Rubicon, Mad Men (this week’s)
• Turner Classic– Shadows

Dave hosts Bill Clinton and Chromeo.  Jon has Jimmy Carter (dueling Presidents), Stephen Pavement.  Alton does Pretzels (he won’t give you the good recipe that uses lye, but you know they use lye to cure olives and lutefisk so I don’t understand what the big deal is).

Boondocks– The Lovely Ebony Brown.

Yeah, I was in the show. I was in the show for 21 days once – the 21 greatest days of my life. You know, you never handle your luggage in the show, somebody else carries your bags. It was great. You hit white balls for batting practice, the ballparks are like cathedrals, the hotels all have room service, and the women all have long legs and brains.

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