Reaganomics:

Is Reaganomics on its last gasp, facing certain death? Is the Republican right trying desperately to resuscitate it? Was that why they killed the bailout/rescue bill in Congress? This will likely also be why they will vote for a slightly modified version of it in the near future.

Richard Nixon once said something to the effect that “we are all Keynesians.” In that, of course, he was stating the obvious. That was before the age of the rabid ideologues.

Reagan and his conservative hordes came at a time of deep national angst, in the aftermath of the defeats in Indo-China and the crisis of the first oil shock, as well as the scandals that forced a vice president and then his president to resign. That was a first in US history: first Agnew then Nixon. They were both Republican, but the electorate wanted some kind of a break with the past and chose to look at the hapless Jimmy Carter and his Iranian debacle as a symbol of the past.

Hence the Reagan Counter-Revolution: counter to the Great Society of Johnson, to the political and economic empowerment of the Kennedy-Johnson years, and ultimately counter to the New Deal of FDR. That last part of trying to dismantle FDR’s legacy was not obvious until George W Bush came to office. It took an MBA (from Haaved no less) surrounded by zealots to seriously try to end the legacy of the New Deal: a legacy that arguably saved American capitalism from some of its own worst excesses.

They failed in making government smaller, their mantra. They increased its size in terms of the budget, the deficit, and intrusion in personal lives. They only succeeded in weakening government supervisory powers over the economy, preventing adequate monitoring and regulation of modern corporate America’s worst excesses. Now they are back at the government door in order to salvage the little that they can salvage from the “Reagan Revolution”. Bonzo needs to be put to rest.

George Stephanopolous, ABC News: "Are you for the stimulus package?"

John McCain: "I am for keeping taxes low"

Courting the Taliban:

News agencies report that Hamid Karzai, Afghan president and mayor of metropolitan Kabul, has been seeking a rapprochement with the Taliban. The very same Wahhabi Salafi murderous group that turned his country into a hell on Earth, and provided the base for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Karzai is seeking the ‘intercession of the Saudi royal family” to bring the Taliban to the negotiation table. He called the King of Saudi Arabia “leader of the Islamic world”, an assertion that is news to many Muslims and will surprise them. He is also trying to enlist Pakistan in the process.

That means the Taliban, as well as the Pakistanis and Saudis will come full circle. The Saudis provided the ideology, the money, and the schooling for the Taliban to grow and sweep Afghanistan during the 1990s. Now they will provide a fig leaf for them to share power and eventually take over- during a Democratic administration in Washington of course.

No comments yet from the Republican administration in Washington.

Ramadan, Rosh Hashanah, and a faithful tree:

Just as the Jewish members of Congress were heading home for Rosh Hashanah, the Islamic world was on the eve of the Eid al-Futr, the end of the Ramadan quasi-fasting (quasi because you fast during the day and gorge yourself during the night). Half the Muslim countries are celebrating today, a bunch of them tomorrow, and the rest…..who knows, maybe on the 31^st of October.

Saudi media report that NASA (yep that NASA) has said that it is impossible to discern the early moon with plain eye sight. It (NASA) also said that the first day of Eid al-Futr is today. Do they still fast in Houston?

A prominent Saudi Shaikh (of the religious type not the ruling type) has made a statement about Jews and their attachment to a certain tree that is at least interesting if not insightful in some peculiar ways. Shaikh Mohammad al-Areefi says that Jews like to plant a certain tree (the Gharqad or Boxthorn"?" tree) around their homes for good reason. He notes that they plant it around their homes even in Israel for protection: because of an Islamic story that during an ancient battle with Muslims they hid behind that particular tree and it did not betray them, while other trees betrayed them. Verstehen?

Not clear when that shaikh went to Israel to witness the ubiquity of that particular tree.

But there is more: the shaikh says that at 'the end of time' a battle will rage between Muslims and Jews and that the Jews count on the gharqad tree to protect them again. Hence the preponderance (my word not his) of that tree all over Israel and Manhattan. He forgot San Fernando Valley and Malibu, but then he wouldn’t know about that.

And so it goes in the moderate polygamist New Middle East.

Cheers

mhg

m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com