The Inordinately Selfish.

The Ambitious Facing Unlimited Opportunities

When a population undergoing drastic change is without abundant opportunities for individual action and self-advancement, it develops a hunger for faith, pride and unity.  It becomes receptive to all manner of proselytizing, and is eager to throw itself into collective undertakings which aim at "showing the world."  In other words, drastic change, under certain conditions, creates a proclivity for fanatical attitudes, united action, and spectacular manifestations of flouting and defiance; it creates an atmosphere of revolution.  We are usually told that revolutions are set in motion to realize radical changes.  Actually, it is drastic change which sets the stage for revolution.The revolutionary mood and temper are generated by the irritations, difficulties, hungers, and frustrations inherent in the realization of drastic change.Where things have not changed at all, there is the least likelihood of revolution.

When a population undergoing drastic change is without abundant opportunities for individual action and self-advancement, it develops a hunger for faith, pride and unity.  It becomes receptive to all manner of proselytizing, and is eager to throw itself into collective undertakings which aim at "showing the world."  In other words, drastic change, under certain conditions, creates a proclivity for fanatical attitudes, united action, and spectacular manifestations of flouting and defiance; it creates an atmosphere of revolution.  We are usually told that revolutions are set in motion to realize radical changes.  Actually, it is drastic change which sets the stage for revolution.The revolutionary mood and temper are generated by the irritations, difficulties, hungers, and frustrations inherent in the realization of drastic change.

Paul Krugman comments:

<blockquote>Lately many people have been second-guessing the Obama administration's political strategy. The conventional wisdom seems to be that President Obama tried to do too much -- in particular, that he should have put health care on one side and focused on the economy.

I disagree. The Obama administration's troubles are the result not of excessive ambition, but of policy and political misjudgments. The stimulus was too small; policy toward the banks wasn't tough enough; and Mr. Obama didn't do what Ronald Reagan, who also faced a poor economy early in his administration, did -- namely, shelter himself from criticism with a narrative that placed the blame on previous administrations.

About the stimulus: it has surely helped. Without it, unemployment would be much higher than it is. But the administration's program clearly wasn't big enough to produce job gains in 2009.

Why was the stimulus underpowered? A number of economists (myself included) called for a stimulus substantially bigger than the one the administration ended up proposing. According to The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza, however, in December 2008 Mr. Obama's top economic and political advisers concluded that a bigger stimulus was neither economically necessary nor politically feasible.

Their political judgment may or may not have been correct; their economic judgment obviously wasn't. Whatever led to this misjudgment, however, it wasn't failure to focus on the issue: in late 2008 and early 2009 the Obama team was focused on little else. The administration wasn't distracted; it was just wrong.

The same can be said about policy toward the banks. Some economists defend the administration's decision not to take a harder line on banks, arguing that the banks are earning their way back to financial health. But the light-touch approach to the financial industry further entrenched the power of the very institutions that caused the crisis, even as it failed to revive lending: bailed-out banks have been reducing, not increasing, their loan balances. And it has had disastrous political consequences: the administration has placed itself on the wrong side of popular rage over bailouts and bonuses.

Finally, about that narrative: It's instructive to compare Mr. Obama's rhetorical stance on the economy with that of Ronald Reagan. It's often forgotten now, but unemployment actually soared after Reagan's 1981 tax cut. Reagan, however, had a ready answer for critics: everything going wrong was the result of the failed policies of the past. In effect, Reagan spent his first few years in office continuing to run against Jimmy Carter.

Mr. Obama could have done the same -- with, I'd argue, considerably more justice. He could have pointed out, repeatedly, that the continuing troubles of America's economy are the result of a financial crisis that developed under the Bush administration, and was at least in part the result of the Bush administration's refusal to regulate the banks.

But he didn't. Maybe he still dreams of bridging the partisan divide; maybe he fears the ire of pundits who consider blaming your predecessor for current problems uncouth -- if you're a Democrat. (It's O.K. if you're a Republican.) Whatever the reason, Mr. Obama has allowed the public to forget, with remarkable speed, that the economy's troubles didn't start on his watch.

So where do complaints of an excessively broad agenda fit into all this? Could the administration have made a midcourse correction on economic policy if it hadn't been fighting battles on health care? Probably not. One key argument of those pushing for a bigger stimulus plan was that there would be no second chance: if unemployment remained high, they warned, people would conclude that stimulus doesn't work rather than that we needed a bigger dose. And so it has proved.

It's important to remember, also, how important health care reform is to the Democratic base. Some activists have been left disillusioned by the compromises made to get legislation through the Senate -- but they would have been even more disillusioned if Democrats had simply punted on the issue.

And politics should be about more than winning elections. Even if health care reform loses Democrats' votes (which is questionable), it's the right thing to do.

So what comes next?

At this point Mr. Obama probably can't do much about job creation. He can, however, push hard on financial reform, and seek to put himself back on the right side of public anger by portraying Republicans as the enemies of reform -- which they are.

And meanwhile, Democrats have to do whatever it takes to enact a health care bill. Passing such a bill won't be their political salvation -- but not passing a bill would surely be their political doom</blockquote>

My daughter and son-in-law bought a home outside of DC at just about the time the housing bubble burst.  They signed the mortgage for just under $500K.  Before they closed, all hell broke loose and the kids were forced to submit  new paper work, agree to a higher interest rate and increase the amount of their down-payment.  By the time they were ready to move in, the duplicate model...two lots away, was selling for $80K less than theirs'.  When my daughter called, defining their quandary, I grudgingly, told her to "walk!"  They would lose the $15K they had paid down on the property, but better that loss than to absorb the magnitude of the collapsed value.  They went ahead and moved in.

John Courson, president and C.E.O. of the Mortgage Bankers Association, recently told The Wall Street Journal that homeowners who default on their mortgages should think about the "message" they will send to "their family and their kids and their friends." Courson was implying that homeowners -- record numbers of whom continue to default -- have a responsibility to make good. He wasn't referring to the people who have no choice, who can't afford their payments. He was speaking about the rising number of folks who are voluntarily choosing not to pay.

Such voluntary defaults are a new phenomenon. Time was, Americans would do anything to pay their mortgage -- forgo a new car or a vacation, even put a younger family member to work. But the housing collapse left 10.7 million families owing more than their homes are worth. So some of them are making a calculated decision to hang onto their money and let their homes go. Is this irresponsible?

Businesses -- in particular Wall Street banks -- make such calculations routinely. Morgan Stanley recently decided to stop making payments on five San Francisco office buildings. A Morgan Stanley fund purchased the buildings at the height of the boom, and their value has plunged. Nobody has said Morgan Stanley is immoral -- perhaps because no one assumed it was moral to begin with. But the average American, as if sprung from some Franklinesque mythology, is supposed to honor his debts, or so says the mortgage industry as well as government officials. Former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. declared that "any homeowner who can afford his mortgage payment but chooses to walk away from an underwater property is simply a speculator -- and one who is not honoring his obligation." (Paulson presumably was not so censorious of speculation during his 32-year career at Goldman Sachs.)

The moral suasion has continued under President Obama, who has urged that homeowners follow the "responsible" course. Indeed, HUD-approved housing counselors are supposed to counsel people against foreclosure. In many cases, this means counseling people to throw away money. Brent White, a University of Arizona law professor, notes that a family who bought a three-bedroom home in Salinas, Calif., at the market top in 2006, with no down payment (then a common-enough occurrence), could theoretically have to wait 60 years to recover their equity. On the other hand, if they walked, they could rent a similar house for a pittance of their monthly mortgage.

There are two reasons why so-called strategic defaults have been considered antisocial and perhaps amoral. One is that foreclosures depress the neighborhood and drive down prices. But in a market society, since when are people responsible for the economic effects of their actions? Every oil speculator helps to drive up gasoline prices. Every hedge fund that speculated against a bank by purchasing credit-default swaps on its bonds signaled skepticism about the bank's creditworthiness and helped to make it more costly for the bank to borrow, and thus to issue loans. We are all economic pinballs, insensibly colliding for better or worse.

The other reason is that default (supposedly) debases the character of the borrower. Once, perhaps, when bankers held onto mortgages for 30 years, they occupied a moral high ground. These days, lenders typically unload mortgages within days (or minutes). And not just in mortgage finance, but in virtually every realm of our transaction-obsessed society, the message is that enduring relationships count for less than the value put on assets for sale.

Think of private-equity firms that close a factory -- essentially deciding that the company is worth more dead than alive. Or the New York Yankees and their World Series M.V.P. Hideki Matsui, who parted company as soon as the cheering stopped. Or money-losing hedge-fund managers: rather than try to earn back their investors' lost capital, they start new funds so they can rake in fresh incentives. Sam Zell, a billionaire, let the Tribune Company, which he had previously acquired, file for bankruptcy. Indeed, the owners of any company that defaults on bonds and chooses to let the company fail rather than invest more capital in it are practicing "strategic default." Banks signal their complicity with this ethos when they send new credit cards to people who failed to stay current on old ones.

Mortgage holders do sign a promissory note, which is a promise to pay. But the contract explicitly details the penalty for nonpayment -- surrender of the property. The borrower isn't escaping the consequences; he is suffering them.

In some states, lenders also have recourse to the borrowers' unmortgaged assets, like their car and savings accounts. A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond found that defaults are lower in such states, apparently because lenders threaten the borrowers with judgments against their assets. But actual lawsuits are rare.

And given that nearly a quarter of mortgages are underwater, and that 10 percent of mortgages are delinquent, White, of the University of Arizona, is surprised that more people haven't walked. He thinks the desire to avoid shame is a factor, as are overblown fears of harm to credit ratings. Probably, homeowners also labor under a delusion that their homes will quickly return to value. White has argued that the government should stop perpetuating default "scare stories" and, indeed, should encourage borrowers to default when it's in their economic interest. This would correct a prevailing imbalance: homeowners operate under a "powerful moral constraint" while lenders are busily trying to maximize profits. More important, it might get the system unstuck. If lenders feared an avalanche of strategic defaults, they would have an incentive to renegotiate loan terms. In theory, this could produce a wave of loan modifications -- the very goal the Treasury has been pursuing to end the crisis.

No one says defaulting on a contract is pretty or that, in a perfectly functioning society, defaults would be the rule. But to put the onus for restraint on ordinary homeowners seems rather strange. If the Mortgage Bankers Association is against defaults, its members, presumably the experts in such matters, might take better care not to lend people more than their homes are worth.

Roger Lowenstein, an outside director of the Sequoia Fund, is a contributing writer for the magazine. His book "The End of Wall Street" is coming out in April.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 9, 2010
An essay on Page 15 this weekend about underwater mortgages misstates the parties who believe their homes will go up in value quickly. It is the homeowners -- not the "mortgagees," who issue mortgages.

A Leak About the Phantom Army

by Meteor Blades

Wed Dec 30, 2009 at 02:46:03 PM PST

Richard Engel on NBC and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC Tuesday delved into a devastating 25-page Pentagon report about the Afghan National Army that was recently leaked. The report provided more details on a story that has been making the rounds for several years. To condense: the Afghan National Army is a farce; there's little chance of turning it into a cohesive fighting force; and there's zero chance of doing so on a speedy timetable, all of which I noted 10 days ago in Phantom Hope: The Afghan Army.

Gareth Porter pointed out four months ago that data from the Pentagon and the Inspector General for Reconstruction in Afghanistan reveal that from September 2008-September 2009, one-in-four ANA combat recruits deserted or defected. The leaked, 66-page declassified version of General Stanley McChrystal's strategic assessment [pdf] of Afghanistan has equally grim things to say about the ANA.  (More)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/04/aetna-forcing-600000-plus_n_380130.html

Health insurance giant Aetna is planning to force up to 650,000 clients to drop their coverage next year as it seeks to raise additional revenue to meet profit expectations.

In a third-quarter earnings conference call in late October, officials at Aetna announced that in an effort to improve on a less-than-anticipated profit margin in 2009, they would be raising prices on their consumers in 2010. The insurance giant predicted that the company would subsequently lose between 300,000 and 350,000 members next year from its national account as well as another 300,000 from smaller group accounts.

"The pricing we put in place for 2009 turned out to not really be what we needed to achieve the results and margins that we had historically been delivering," said chairman and CEO Ron Williams. "We view 2010 as a repositioning year, a year that does not fully reflect the earnings potential of our business. Our pricing actions should have a noticeable effect beginning in the first quarter of 2010, with additional financial impact realized during the remaining three quarters of the year."

Aetna's decision to downsize the number of clients in favor of higher premiums is, as one industry analyst told American Medical News, a "pretty candid" admission. It also reflects the major concerns offered by health care reform proponents and supporters of a public option for insurance coverage, who insist that the private health insurance industry is too consumed with the bottom line. A government-run plan would operate solely off its members' premiums.

Aetna actually made a profit in 2009 but not at levels that it anticipated.

"They were surprised by an acceleration in medical costs in 2009 which pressured their earnings," Josh Raskin, an industry analyst for Barclays Capital, told the Huffington Post. "In an effort to get back to a more profitable level, they are raising their prices to match cost trends. When you raise rates, you run the risk of losing your membership. Health insurance is a very competitive marketplace."

As Williams told investors on the call: "The pricing that we put in place for 2009 turned out to not really be what we needed to achieve the results and margins that we had historically been delivering."

Aetna is one of the largest insurers in the private market, covering roughly 17.7 million people according to its 2008 annual report. It is also a major player in the current health care debate and inside Washington D.C. The insurance company has spent more than $2 million on lobbying just in 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

American Medical News, which first reported the story, noted that this is not the first time the insurance giant has cut the rolls in an effort to boost profit margins. "As chronicled in a 2004 article in Health Affairs by health economist James C. Robinson, MD, PhD, Aetna completely overhauled its business between 2000 and 2003, going from 21 million members in 1999 down to 13 million in 2003, but boosting its profit margin from about 4% to higher than 7%."

A spokesperson at Aetna did not return calls and emails for comment.

Hoffer's experiences at this historical fulcrum provided the basis for his seminal work The True Believer,  published  in 1951.   "A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises, he wrote, " but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties , barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence."  The true believer was at his core an ineffectual man with no capacity for self-fulfillment.  Only the drama provided by a mass movement gave him purpose.  "Faith in a holy cause,"  Hoffer wrote, "is to a considerable extent a substitute  for the lost faith in ourselves."

Obama's Profile in Courage, or Cave-In?

"It took a lot of courage on Kennedy's part to defy the Pentagon, defy the military -- and do the right thing," said Col. Larry Wilkerson, USA (ret.), according to Robert Dreyfuss in his recent Rolling Stone article "The Generals' Revolt."

Wilkerson, who was chief of staff at the State Department (2002-2005) and now teaches at George Washington University, was alluding to President John F. Kennedy's courage in 1962, when he faced down his top generals and refused to bomb Cuba and risk nuclear war.

That was as close as we came to nuclear calamity during the entire Cold War.

Despite the urgency of the threat posed by the Russian military buildup in Cuba (we now know the Russians had already placed nuclear weapons on the island), Kennedy's deliberate decision-making style allowed enough time for cooler heads to prevail and yielded a peaceful solution.

A hallmark trait of John Kennedy was his ability to listen and learn. At the same time, he did not hesitate to challenge conventional wisdom.

Call that "dithering," if you wish. I, for one, applaud President Barack Obama for following Kennedy's calm, deliberative style, as Obama faces similar pressure from the military to send tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan.

Kennedy: Out of Vietnam

The Cuban crisis was not the only time JFK found himself at loggerheads with generals who thought they knew better and who verged on the insubordinate. Kennedy's sustained arm wrestling with his senior generals over whether to send more troops to Vietnam was just as tense, and much more sustained.

In the end, he concluded that they had it wrong and decided against them. In short, he opted to behave like a President -- a "decider" (pardon the odd word). His overruling of the U.S. military brass on Vietnam had huge implications, both short- and long-term. This "real history" is highly relevant today.

The 46th anniversary of John Kennedy's assassination passed by last Sunday virtually unnoticed. The unfortunate thing is this: his legacy on Vietnam is so widely misunderstood that it is easy to miss the relevance of his decision-making in the early Sixties to the dilemma faced by President Obama today as he decides whether to stand up to - or cave in to - the Pentagon's plans for escalating another misbegotten war in Afghanistan.

Faux history has it that President Lyndon Baines Johnson's infusion of hundreds of thousands, up to 536,000, combat troops into Vietnam was a straight-line continuation of a buildup started by his slain predecessor. Kennedy did raise the U.S. troop level there from about 1,000 to 16,500 "advisers" -- a significant increase.

But as he studied the options, cost and likely outcomes, Kennedy came to see U.S. intervention in Vietnam as a fool's errand. Few Americans are aware that, just before he was assassinated, Kennedy had decided to pull all troops out of Vietnam by 1965.

The Pentagon was hell bent on thwarting such plans, and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara found it an uphill struggle to enforce the President's will on the top brass. Senior military officers were experts at "slow-rolling" politicians who favored a course that the Pentagon didn't like.

When in May 1962 Kennedy ordered up a contingency troop-withdrawal plan, it took more than a year for the military brass to draw one up.

As the President encountered continuing resistance, he paid increasing attention to more level-headed military and civilian advisers as well as to his own intuition and instincts. Kennedy asked the Marine Commandant, Gen. David M. Shoup, "to look over the ground in Southeast Asia and counsel him."  Shoup told the President:

"Unless we are prepared to use a million men in a major drive, we should pull out before the war expands beyond control."

Kennedy concluded that there was no responsible course other than to press for a phased withdrawal regardless of the opposition from his senior national security advisers. He decided to pull 1,000 troops out of Vietnam by the end of 1963 and the rest by 1965.

How To Do It

My Irish grandmother called Kennedy "a clever lad" and she was right. 

Realizing that he had to exercise the utmost care in navigating choppy military and political waters, Kennedy employed the artifice of sending Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Gen. Maxwell Taylor on a "fact-finding" trip to Saigon. At the end of the trip they would "recommend" the course the President had already chosen.

Stopping in Hawaii en route back to Washington, McNamara and Taylor were given "their" report, which had been written by John and Robert Kennedy. It was instantly named the "McNamara-Taylor report" and the two travelers presented it to the President on the morning of Oct. 2, 1963.

Wasting no time, the President convened a National Security Council meeting that evening to discuss the report.

The senior military saw through the subterfuge and strongly opposed the key recommendations of the report. In his memoir, In Retrospect, McNamara wrote that the NSC meeting saw "heated debate about our recommendation that the Defense Department announce plans to withdraw U.S. military forces by the end of 1965, starting with the withdrawal of 1,000 men by the end of the year."

In McNamara's words, there was "a total lack of consensus." However, there is only one "decider" on the National Security Council -- the President.  Kennedy stepped up to the plate and decided, bypassing the majority opposed.

Thirty-two years later in a Sept. 12, 1995, letter to the New York Times, McNamara took strong issue with a charge in an earlier op-ed that "the groundwork was being laid for our tragic escalation of the war" before President Kennedy was killed.

McNamara described the President's reasoning in deciding to go ahead, despite the lack of consensus:

"[T]he President nonetheless authorized the beginning of withdrawal, believing that either our training and logistical support led to the progress claimed or, if it had not, additional training would not change the situation and, in either case, we should plan to withdraw."

His decision made, Kennedy wasted no time in acting, well, like a President. He told McNamara to announce it immediately in order to "set it in concrete," according to McNamara. 

As the defense secretary was leaving the NSC meeting to tell White House reporters, the President called to him, "And tell them that means all of the helicopter pilots, too," according to Kenneth O'Donnell and David Powers in their book, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye.

Action Memo

The President's policy was formalized nine days later in his National Security Action Memorandum Number 263 of Oct. 11, 1963. That document put into effect the McNamara-Taylor recommendations, which provided that:

"A program be established to train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried out by Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time ... [and] the Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963."

Whether Kennedy truly believed that the U.S. training program would succeed in helping the South Vietnamese prevail is doubtful. Clearly, he wanted out. He carried around in his conscience and from time to time spoke of the number of American troops already killed. (Eight died under Eisenhower; about 170 during Kennedy's tenure.)

Assistant Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff, to whom fell the task of announcing President Kennedy's death on Nov. 22, 1963, told James Douglass, author of JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, that Kennedy's mind was fixed on Vietnam the day before. Instead of rehearsing for a press conference that day, Kennedy told Kilduff:

"I've just been given a list of the most recent casualties in Vietnam. We're losing too damned many people over there. It's time for us to get out. The Vietnamese are not fighting for themselves. We're the ones who are doing the fighting.

"After I come back from Texas, that's going to change. There is no reason for us to lose another man over there. Vietnam is not worth another American life."

A month before, during his last visit to Hyannis Port, Kennedy told his next-door neighbor Larry Newman, "I'm going to get those guys out [of Vietnam] because we're not going to find ourselves in a war it's impossible to win."

Kennedy understood that decisions on Vietnam were far too important to be left to myopic generals. They were still chafing at what they considered Kennedy's failure in 1962 to seize the moment and obliterate Cuba -- and perhaps also the U.S.S.R., while we were at it.

Add Kennedy's clear desire to work closely (often secretly) with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in a priority effort to prevent another Cuba-type crisis, and then letting generic "Communists" take over Vietnam - with "dominoes" expected to fall all over the place -- and the military brass became convinced they needed to strongly oppose such "appeasement."

'Best and Brightest'

And it was not only the generals. Far from it. The "best and the brightest," first and foremost McGeorge Bundy, Kennedy's national security adviser, were also opposed to Kennedy's decision to pull troops out of Vietnam. 

Bundy strongly disagreed with the recommendations in the McNamara-Taylor report. He also resisted Kennedy's frequently expressed doubts that foreign troops, even in large numbers, could prevail in guerrilla war, and Kennedy's determination never to send combat troops to Vietnam.

Bundy thought he knew better, refusing to believe that the President would ever "let South Vietnam go." Years later, Bundy's memoirs defended his views and advice to Kennedy on Vietnam.

However, after McNamara published In Retrospect in 1995, in which he concluded that "we were wrong, terribly wrong" on Vietnam, Bundy went back to the drawing board to rethink his assessment.

Bundy hired a man half his age, Gordon Goldstein, as research assistant to help him on what turned out to be Bundy's personal quest for the roots of his own mistakes which, for the most part, were the result of hubris, pure and simple.

Early this year, author William Pfaff reviewed what started out as the Bundy Memoir Part II (McGeorge Bundy died in 1996), but ended up as Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam by Goldstein.

In the review, Pfaff highlights Bundy's pedigree: tops at Groton, professor of government at Harvard and youngest dean of faculty; his mother a Boston Brahmin, his father a diplomat. Pfaff is ruthlessly on point in describing Bundy's attitude:

"American had to 'win' in Vietnam because America always wins. America knows better than everyone else because of that intellectual firepower deployed at Harvard and other elite universities. America does not have to know about other people because other people are not worth knowing.

"Goldstein's decisive clue to why Bundy failed came by accident. He found a note written in 1996, when Bundy was asked what had been most surprising about the war. He answered, 'the endurance of the enemy.' Goldstein writes: 'He didn't understand the enemy 'because, frankly, he didn't think they warranted his attention.'"

The good news for today comes from press reporting that top officials of the Obama administration, including the President, have read Goldstein's book. Applying Kennedy's challenge on Vietnam to Obama's on Afghanistan, a Wall Street Journal report of Oct. 7 noted, "For opponents of a major troop increase ... 'Lessons in Disaster' encapsulates their concerns about accepting military advice unchallenged."

Obama Must Decide

There are hints that Obama is more Chicago than Harvard -- and that, like Kennedy, he carries casualty figures around in his conscience. His late-night, early-morning appearance at Dover Air Force Base to salute what the Washington Post calls "transfer cases" coming home from the war is, I believe, a telling sign.

Obama knows they are not just "transfer cases."

This young President, too, is a "clever lad;" he is also a politician. Intellectually, he is surely equipped to understand the March of Folly that would be involved, were he to send substantial additional forces to Afghanistan.

Moreover, Obama is surely aware that the majority of Americans are no longer deceived by the pundits at Fox News. Recent polls show broader and broader popular opposition to sending more troops.

The choice, in my view, is between courage anchored in a determination to do the right thing and cowardice cloaked in the politics of the possible. Let me guess what you're thinking -- "But that's asking too much of a young President; cowardice is too strong a word; Obama cannot possibly face down the entire military establishment."

John Kennedy did. So the question is whether Barack Obama is "no Jack Kennedy," or whether he will summon the courage to stand up to the misguided military brass of today. 

We are talking, after all, about thousands more being killed -- and for what?

I would suggest to the President that he give another close read to Goldstein's Lessons in Disaster and then ponder the lessons that leap out of Barbara Tuchman's The March to Folly: From Troy to Vietnam.

Obama may also wish to ponder the words of W.E.B. Dubois:

"Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year. It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow."

Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He was an analyst at the CIA for 27 years, and is on the Steering Group of VIPS.

That it is nothing new is evident in an article in the WSJ in December of last year:

Americans will not put up with such limits, nor will our elected representatives. Mr. Daschle himself proves this. He punts the hard decisions about rationing to an unelected board. Yet his main proposals are not only about expanding subsidized programs to cover more people but about adding the massively expensive benefit categories of mental health, which has a strong lobby behind it, and long-term care, which is important to the broad middle class. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123060332638041525.html

The article was attacking Senator Daschle who was spear heading the health care reform front for the incoming White House crew. I found this new take on the same crap in a conservative blog today:

For those who are hoping that Congress will deliver health care reform that includes a government run option, be careful what you wish for.

Despite the constant drum beat from Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and other Democrats who declare that a government run health care option would not result in a rationing of services, this notion simply seems to defy logic.

Why would anyone believe that it is possible to provide quality health care coverage to an additional 31 million people, without an increase to the number of doctors and while decreasing the cost of health care? The most logical conclusion that can be reached is that the government must begin to ration services, and the quality of our health care will be impacted in a very negative way. 

In fact, this is exactly what has happened in other countries that have already been down this road. Rationing of health care has been well documented in Great Britain and in Canada. long waits to receive vaccinations and some have even been turned away.

http://www.examiner.com/x-28541-Kissimmee-Conservative-Examiner~y2009m11d19-Health-care-reform-has-not-yet-been-passed-but-has-rationing-already-begun

As the Chicago Tribune put it a couple months ago:

Left unsaid by those who raise fears of rationing by any "government-run" or government-related health care is how much rationing the insurance industry does now.

For decades, experts writing in The New England Journal of Medicine and elsewhere have concluded that we do "ration" health care. We just do it through gross disparities in race, sex, age, regions, income and education. http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2009/aug/09/health/chi-oped0809pageaug09

You can google and discover stories of individuals denied proper medical care after they had paid premiums for health insurance coverage individually or through their employer. http://www.healthreform.gov/reports/denied_coverage/index.html

You can find hundreds upon hundreds of links. Or you can read blogs right here at TPM.

The death panels have been operating in this country forever. Haley Barber or some other repub asshole opined recently that if Congress wanted to get rid of pre-existing condition clauses in insurance contracts the bill would pass 400 to 35 in the House with a similar percentage voting for the provision in the Senate.

This is a goddamn lie and it enrages me because the repubs would have done it nine years ago. It is a statement made that is false and that the speaker knows is false as he makes the statement and it is done with one purpose in mind:  Derail the health care package and help insurance companies make more money than ever.

There have been times in our country when we came close to egalitarianism. But the possibility of a true democratic republic embodying the promises contained in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution never came as close to becoming a reality as it did during World War II.

It was a time when the American People were looking for fairness.

With the Masters of War making money hands over fists and millionaires like Joe Kennedy strutting in suits that cost as much as a working man could make in a year, Roosevelt actually proposed a 100% tax on all incomes over $25,000.00.  Probably about half a million dollars today.

Many controls were put on the economy. The most important were price controls, imposed on most products and monitored by the Office of Price Administration. Wages were also controlled. In addition, the military imposed priorities that largely shaped industrial production.[1][2] wiki

There has never been enough of anything in this country to 'go around', never.  The percentage of people who have certain commodities available to them shifts depending upon whether or not the repubs are in control or not.

But rationing was instituted in WWII in order to 'equal things out' so to speak:

Rationing is often instituted during wartime for civilians as well. For example, each person may be given "ration coupons" allowing him or her to purchase a certain amount of a product each month. Rationing often includes food and other necessities for which there is a shortage, including materials needed for the war effort such as rubber tires, leather shoes, clothing and gasoline. Towards the end of the First World War, panic buying in the United Kingdom prompted rationing of first sugar, then meat, for the rest of the war. During World War II rationing existed in many countries including the United Kingdom and the United States.

With the onset of World War II, numerous challenges confronted the American people. The government found it necessary to ration food, gas, and even clothing during that time. Americans were asked to conserve on everything. With not a single person unaffected by the war, rationing meant sacrifices for all. In the spring of 1942, the Food Rationing Program was set into motion. Rationing would deeply affect the American way of life for most. The federal government needed to control supply and demand. Rationing was introduced to avoid public anger with shortages and not to allow only the wealthy to purchase commodities

While industry and commerce were affected, individuals felt the effects more intensely. People were often required to give up many material goods, but there also was an increase in employment. Individual efforts evolved into clubs and organizations coming to terms with the immediate circumstances. Joining together to support and maintain supply levels for the troops abroad meant making daily adjustments. Their efforts also included scrap drives, taking factory jobs, goods donations and other similar projects to assist those on the front. Government-sponsored ads, radio shows, posters and pamphlet campaigns urged the American people to comply. With a sense of urgency, the campaigns appealed to America to contribute by whatever means they had, without complaint. The propaganda was a highly effective tool in reaching the masses.

Rationing regulated the amount of commodities that consumers could obtain. Sugar rationing took effect in May 1943 with the distribution of "Sugar Buying Cards." Registration usually took place in local schools. Each family was asked to send only one member for registration and be prepared to describe all other family members. Coupons were distributed based on family size, and the coupon book allowed the holder to buy a specified amount. Possession of a coupon book did not guarantee that sugar would be available. Americans learned to utilize what they had during rationing time.

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1674.html

The only downside to all of this was the black market. Big deal. The percentages of abuse were small and never compared to say prohibition. 

But there has always been and will always be rationing of health care services in one form or another. That is a fact of life.

If you are in need of a kidney transplant, you are put on a list by the hospital. The death panel decides whether or not you are going to die.

I pointed out before the terrible case of Mickey Mantle when he received a liver transplant. A no good drunk people screamed at the time. He was, after all, put at the top of some list. Personally, I would have put that man at the top of just about any list. The point here is that there will always be arguments, petty or otherwise, that someone received a life giving organ and someone else did not. Priorities are set on the basis of age, relative health, etc.http://www.unos.org/

Right now, insurance companies decide who will live and who will die just considering the needs OF THEIR OWN INSUREDS.

And as the Chicago Tribune article points out, 45 million people are told to do the best they can waiting in line at ER;s across the country.

We were a different country when we fought World War II, fighting two fronts simultaneously. There was no unemployment. There was under employment. Did you know that we actually used POW's to help us take up the slack in parts of our economy including agriculture?

We came together as a country. We sacrificed together. We shared what we had.

Sometimes I do not much like the country I live in today.

Reading the preceding, I realized that Dickday had passed a wealth of wisdom to each of us readers. Yet,he forced me to further consider our health care quandary:

What "IS" rational when we speak of illness or the terminally ill?
For the health insurance provider: It's get well fast or die quickly -- minimize losses.
For hospitals: Treat the patient, utilize as many of the hi-tech medical devices as can be justified and release said patient within the number of days specified by the treatment payee.
Doctors: Must manage the the case and attempt to heal or help the patient plus... do no harm. Follow-up visits to principle physicians are, usually, required. Let us not forget Big Pharma as our patient progresses or digresses, as the case may be.
Every step of the healing process is closely monitored by the payee...Before or after the fact. Each entity is acting in a manner that appears to be rational in relationship to the patient.
Under the microscope, the system is actually a tug-of-war for revenue! In this game there is only one looser -- if those directly involved can not come to an agreement, the patient owes the difference!
I have read that 50% of an individuals' health care costs are spent in the last two years of a persons' life.
Under the present health care system, the patients' recovery is implied to be the ultimate goal. Rationally speaking, the ultimate goal is the desire to maximize profit.
Yes, we do have our death panels. Check into the organ transplant systems. Someone is prioritizing those lists. How many hours do doctors spend writing letters of justification to health insurance companies in order to get authorization for procedures they wish to perform?
One act that can bring some rationality into this health vs. profit fiasco is what the Republicans call the "Kill Grandma" clause...I call it the Living Will. This document should be mandatory for all citizens over the age of 21.

There are hundreds of various Advanced  Directive forms available at clinics, hospitals and doctors' offices.  I copied and pasted this information fro the Mayo Clinic informational  URL.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/living-wills/HA00014

Advance directives: More than just living wills
Advance directives are written instructions regarding your medical care preferences. Your family and doctors will consult your advance directives if you're unable to make your own health care decisions. Having written instructions can help reduce confusion or disagreement. Anyone age 18 or older may prepare advance directives.
Advance directives include:
· Living will. This written, legal document spells out the types of medical treatments and life-sustaining measures you do and don't want, such as mechanical breathing (respiration and ventilation), tube feeding or resuscitation. In some states, living wills may be called health care declarations or health care directives.
· Medical power of attorney (POA). The medical POA is a legal document that designates an individual -- referred to as your health care agent or proxy -- to make medical decisions for you in the event that you're unable to do so. A medical POA is sometimes called a durable power of attorney for health care. However, it is different from a power of attorney authorizing someone to make financial transactions for you.
· Do not resuscitate (DNR) order. This is a request to not have cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) if your heart stops or if you stop breathing. Advance directives do not have to include a DNR order, and you don't have to have an advance directive to have a DNR order. Your doctor can put a DNR order in your medical chart.
How to plan for end-of-life issues
Injury, illness and death aren't easy subjects to talk about, but by planning ahead you can ensure that you receive the type of medical care you want, to take the burden off your family of trying to guess at what you'd want done. Start by having a conversation with your loved ones. Let them know you're creating advance directives and explain your feelings about medical care and what you'd want done in specific instances.
If you want to encourage parents or other family members to create advance directives, explain that it's important for you and the family to know how they would want to be treated. It's generally best to approach the subject in a matter-of-fact and reassuring manner.
Keep in mind that a living will cannot cover every possible situation. Therefore, you may also want a medical POA to designate someone to be your health care agent. This person will be guided by your living will but has the authority to interpret your wishes in situations that aren't described in your living will. A medical POA may also be a good idea if your family is opposed to some of your wishes or is divided about them.
Choosing a health care agent
Choosing a person to act as your health care agent is possibly the most important part of your planning. You need to trust that this person has your interests at heart, understands your wishes and will act accordingly. He or she should also be mature and levelheaded, and comfortable with candid conversations. Don't pick someone out of feelings of guilt or obligation.
Your health care agent doesn't necessarily have to be a family member. You may want your health care decision maker be different from the person you choose to handle your financial matters. It may be helpful, but it's not necessary, if the person lives in the same city or state as you do.
What treatments would you want?
In determining your wishes, think about your values, such as the importance to you of being independent and self-sufficient, and what you feel would make your life not worth living. Would you want treatment to extend life in any situation? Would you want treatment only if a cure is possible? Would you want palliative care to ease pain and discomfort if you were terminally ill?
Although you can't predict what medical situations will arise, be sure to discuss the following treatments. It may help to talk with your doctor about these, especially if you have questions.
· Resuscitation. Restarts the heart when it has stopped beating (cardiac death). Determine if and when you would want to be resuscitated by cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) or by a device that delivers an electric shock to stimulate the heart.
· Mechanical ventilation. Takes over your breathing if you're unable to do so. Consider if, when and for how long you would want to be placed on a mechanical ventilator.
· Nutritional and hydration assistance. Supplies the body with nutrients and fluids intravenously or via a tube in the stomach. Decide if, when and for how long you would want to be fed in this manner.
· Dialysis. Removes waste from your blood and manages fluid levels if your kidneys no longer function. Determine if, when and for how long you would want to receive this treatment.