Comments on The Belmont Club,"You better get used to it"

Our strategy after 9-11 rested on two legs.
1) Was the military response. Refuse to play the interactive game of plausible deniability and cut the gordian knot by attacking any regime that supported the terror network.
2) Was the the organizational response. Restructure Homeland Security and tear down the walls that prevented a timely response to threats. Rebuild and refocus our intelligence capabilities.

Obama has crippled our ability to prevent future attacks by undercutting both legs.
1) He has slashed our military and committed us to the rule not of Law but of Lawyers in what is a military conflict.
2) The basis of successful military and security operations is Intelligence. The threats of prosecution for engaging the enemy, the threats of prosecution for interrogating the enemy, the release of captured enemies, all will have the same results. Prisoners will not be taken. Intelligence will not be collected. Future attacks will not be prevented. Our people will die.

-------
If the Israelis or the Israelis and the Saudis destroy the Iranian regime then Iraq wins and the Iraqi Shia become more important as a force in the arab world. If Sistani succeeds in overthrowing the Iranian regime and leads a reform of Shia Islam then Iraq wins under Shia leadership and becomes more important in the arab world. If the Iranian regime wins and destroys Israel as America crawls into a hole then Iraq wins by submitting to a client status. Maliki accommodating the Iranians makes sense. My expectation is that the Iraqis, the Iranians and the Turks will start ratcheting up pressure on everyones second favorite punching bag (after the Jews), the Kurds.

------
buddy larsen #106,
(who predicted that GE/NBC would shill for the administration's Public-Private Investment Program-PPIP)
There are semiofficial providers of the party line where you can see what is happening or what is said but not happening. For example it may be a good idea to keep an eye on Charlie Rose. On June 26th he had Jeff Imholt of GE on for the hour. It reminded me of the interviews he had with auto executives over the years. It was my belief that last year Dick Fuld had gone on the show to say “All is well” but I must be wrong about that.
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10412

-------
Unsk,
(who said that inflation would not start until banks began lending money again)
If the market can see that 3 trillion dollars are sitting in the Fed waiting to be tossed into the economy in 12-16 months then there will be a push to purchase assets as a hedge against anticipated inflation. That should start the up spiral going. Economics is not engineering. It is not a measure of some real worth that counts but only an aggregate of expectations. Economics is mass statistical psychology. At this point the best thing the Fed could do is probably burn a trillion dollars in public, maybe in a big pile with Congress in the middle.