The Obesity Dividend

There might be trouble ahead for the Pentagon. Even though every branch of the military recently met its recruitment goals, there’s reason to fear they won’t be so lucky in the future. According to an article in Wired, the upcoming generation of potential warriors is just too damn fat to make good soldiers:

More than three-quarters of the nation’s 17- to 24-year-olds couldn’t serve in the military, even if they wanted to. They’re too fat, too sickly, too dumb, have too many kids, or have copped to using illegal drugs.

The armed services are willing to grant waivers for some of those conditions - asthma, or a little bit of weed. But the military’s biggest concern is how big and how weak its potential recruits have become.

“The major component of this is obesity,” Curt Gilroy, the Pentagon’s director of accessions, tells Army Times’ William McMichael. “Kids are just not able to do push-ups… And they can’t do pull-ups. And they can’t run.”

America might be forced to abandon war as the basis of its foreign policy because we just don’t have enough people who are physically or mentally able to fight. Obesity will make us do the right thing.

Who could have thought that being fat, lazy and stupid would turn out to be our salvation?

Blessed are the peacemakers:

Another Dubious Milestone

You might be interested to know that the Army is about to break a new record:

Sixteen American soldiers killed themselves in October in the U.S. and on duty overseas, an unusually high monthly toll that is fueling concerns about the mental health of the nation’s military personnel after more than eight years of continuous warfare.

The Army’s top generals worry that surging tens of thousands more troops into Afghanistan could increase the strain felt by many military personnel after years of repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The October suicide figures mean that at least 134 active-duty soldiers have taken their own lives so far this year, putting the Army on pace to break last year’s record of 140 active-duty suicides. The number of Army suicides has risen 37% since 2006, and last year, the suicide rate surpassed that of the U.S. population for the first time.

The suicide rate in the Army, like the unemployment rate here at home, just keeps rising and rising. But the Army is on the case, and they’re taking proactive steps to deal with the problem. In conjunction with the National Institute of Mental Health, they’ll be conducting a five year long, $50 million dollar study “to better identify the factors that cause some soldiers to take their own lives.”

I’m no psychologist, but I think I might be able to save the Army some money here. Sending people half way around the world to be shot at, maimed or killed for no damn reason at all, for no goddamn reason at all, tends to be bad for their mental health.

That might be one of the risk factors you should examine over the next five years.

That’s Gratitude For You

Hillary Clinton has been in Pakistan, and Friday she was forced to deal with something that’s rarely a problem for politicians here in America, the people:

During the visit and talks with Pakistani leaders, Clinton found herself repeatedly on the defensive from ordinary Pakistanis brimming with resentment toward U.S. foreign policy.

During a live broadcast of an interview before a predominantly female audience of several hundred, Clinton struggled to avoid describing the classified U.S. effort to target terrorists, and still try to explain the efforts of American foreign policy.

One woman asked Clinton how she would define terrorism.

“Is it the killing of people in drone attacks?” the woman asked. Then she asked if Clinton considered both the U.S. missile strikes and militant bombings like the one that killed more than 100 civilians in the city of Peshawar earlier in the week as acts of terrorism.

“No, I do not,” Clinton replied.

Another man said bluntly: “Please forgive me, but I would like to say we’ve been fighting your war.”

One woman even had the chutzpah to call US drone attacks “executions without trial.”

So the Pakistanis, or, as George W. Bush once called them, the Pakis, are getting restive. For some reason, they don’t like being used as pawns in US wars, nor do they enjoy being targeted in drone strikes. When you consider all we’ve done for them, you’d think they’d be better sports about it. I mean, if it wasn’t for America, they’d never experience the joys of things like Kentucky Fried Chicken, or Hostess Twinkies, or Bruce Willis movies. That’s gratitude for you.

No matter. Anti-American sentiment there is on the rise, which could threaten our efforts on the entire “AfPak” front. It’s just one more bad situation on our increasingly dark horizon.

Mere mortals might consider this a good time to reconsider their situation, to regroup, and maybe even rethink their entire strategy. But we’re not mere mortals. We’re Americans. What do we do when we’re losing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, while at the same time suffering a severe recession at home?

Easy: Put the screws to Iran, because a bankrupt empire can never have too many enemies.

We’ve Lost Nuristan

We’ve lost Nuristan, and I feel fine:

ISLAMABAD - The United States has withdrawn its troops from its four key bases in Nuristan, on the border with Pakistan, leaving the northeastern province as a safe haven for the Taliban-led insurgency to orchestrate its regional battles.

The US has retained some forces in Nuristan's capital, Parun, to provide security for the governor and government facilities. The American position concerning the withdrawal is that due to winter conditions, supply arteries are choked, making it difficult to keep forces in remote areas. The US has pulled out from some areas in the past, but never from all four main bases.…

The province is now under the effective control of the network belonging to Qari Ziaur Rahman, a Taliban commander with strong ties to Bin Laden. This makes Nuristan the first Afghan province to be controlled by a network inspired by al-Qaeda.

I can hear the children playing at the school by my house as I write this. Traffic is moving along the road, same as always. Flags aren’t flying at half-mast. The US empire is still crumbling apart like moldy drywall. It’s just another day.

And why should it be any different? After all, we’ll get Nuristan back. We always do. On that day, the recovery of Nuristan will be greeted with the same indifference as its loss.

Occasionally, we Americans show some intelligence.

Here’s a funny coincidence. On the day we hear about our retreat from Nuristan, the New York Times publishes an op-ed piece about the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan entitled, “Transcripts of Defeat.” (Highly recommended.) Here’s a quote from a Soviet commander at the time:

“There is no piece of land in Afghanistan that has not been occupied by one of our soldiers at some time or another,” he said. “Nevertheless much of the territory stays in the hands of the terrorists. We control the provincial centers, but we cannot maintain political control over the territory we seize. …

“About 99 percent of the battles and skirmishes that we fought in Afghanistan were won by our side,” Marshal Akhromeyev told his superiors in November 1986. “The problem is that the next morning there is the same situation as if there had been no battle. The terrorists are again in the village where they were — or we thought they were — destroyed a day or so before.”

Welcome To The New Normal

According to this article from the Associated Press, we’ve entered the realm of the “new normal,” which means long-term high unemployment, which means we’re fucked.

Higher jobless rates could be new normal

WASHINGTON – Even with an economic revival, many U.S. jobs lost during the recession may be gone forever and a weak employment market could linger for years.

That could add up to a “new normal” of higher joblessness and lower standards of living for many Americans, some economists are suggesting.

All of those lost jobs in construction and the auto industry are gone forever, and nothing is popping up to replace them. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that, even before the recession, “many jobs had vanished or been shipped overseas amid a general decline of U.S. manufacturing.”

Now we’re all caught in a vicious cycle where joblessness leads to decreased spending, which leads to more lay-offs and even fewer jobs, which leads to further decreases in spending, and so on. All the economists quoted in the article agree that we’re hopelessly trapped in the suck and there’s no visible way out.

So now is the time for that legendary American ingenuity to kick-in, right? Now is the time to invest in new industries and new technologies, to invent new models of economic development, or even launch another New Deal, right?

Wrong. We must think outside the box. In this case, that means getting your minds right and adapting to high unemployment as a permanent feature of American life, you dumb schmucks. It’s the new normal.

“This Great Recession is an inflection point for the economy in many respects. I think the unemployment rate will be permanently higher, or at least higher for the foreseeable future,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist and co-founder of Moody’s Economy.com.

“The collective psyche has changed as a result of what we’ve been through. And we’re going to be different as a result,” said Zandi, who formerly advised Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and now is consulted by Democrats in the administration and in Congress.

It’s comforting to know that one of McCain’s former advisers is “now being consulted by Democrats in the administration” and by members of Congress. It’s also nice to know that this self-appointed interpreter of our “collective psyche” is probably counseling them to accept chronic unemployment as the new normal.

I don’t think this guy represents the pinnacle of economic reasoning, but there he is, pitching his two cents to the White House. And I’ve no doubt that the White House, in the interests of achieving that holiest of states — bi-partisan consensus — is taking his advice into consideration.

I wonder if this is also part of the new normal:

At rescued banks, perks keep rolling

NEW YORK -- Even as the nation’s biggest financial firms were struggling and the federal government was spending hundreds of billions of dollars to save many of them, the companies as a group were boosting the perks and benefits they pay their chief executives.

The firms, accounting for more $350 billion in federal bailout funds, increased these perks and benefits 4 percent on average last year, according to an analysis of corporate disclosures filed in recent months.

Some chief executives, such as Kenneth D. Lewis of Bank of America and Jeffrey M. Peek of CIT Group, the major small-business lender now on the brink of bankruptcy, each received about $100,000 more than a year earlier for personal use of corporate jets. Others saw an increase in the value of chauffeured services, parking or personal security.

Ralph W. Babb Jr., chief executive of Dallas-based lender Comerica, was compensated for a new country club membership, with an initiation fee and dues of more than $200,000. GMAC Financial Services chief executive Alvaro de Molina benefited from a $2.5 million payment from his company to help cover his personal tax bill.

I think I see the outlines of the new normal coming into focus, like the shape of a monster rising from a swamp. We accept the current level of 9.8% unemployment (a low estimate) as the baseline rate. We could even compromise and go a little higher, say, 12% maybe? Hell, if reality TV, wall-to-wall sports coverage and chemical food additives have done their job properly, we might even let it climb as high as fifteen percent before the great beast of the people finally lifts up its snout, smells something rotten and starts to get fidgety. Then we squeeze those remaining proles still lucky enough to have jobs in order to keep banks afloat and subsidize their CEO’s country club dues.

Sounds like a healthy economic model to me, except I’d hesitate to call it new. It sounds a lot like the oldest normal in history: a rich, tiny oligarchy living atop masses and masses of hopeless, poor dregs. All we need now is a new religion to cement the structure in place and keep it secure for the next two-thousand years.

Don’t worry. You’ll get used to life in the new normal. Cramped living conditions will bring your family closer together. As for a lack of work, look at the bright side: Monday mornings won’t suck so bad now. And you won’t miss your pride or dignity after they’re gone any more than you miss your baby teeth. Besides, Americans have always been known for their can-do spirit. We put a man on the moon. We defeated fascism and invented plastic. Surely we can condition ourselves to permanent unemployment and poverty? Just think of it as an adventure, like camping out.

Long live the New Normal!

Will The Real Founding Fathers Please Stand Up?

In the winter of 1778, the father of our country was camped out with the harried and motley remnants of the Continental Army at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. They were defeated, hungry, and frozen; the entire army was on the verge of disintegration. Had they fallen apart, it’s possible that the American Revolution would have failed, and the glorious cause of American independence would now be remembered as just another bloody skirmish in British imperial history, not much different than the Siege of Khartoum or the Zulu War in the following century.

Meanwhile, the British Army was comfortably lodged at Philadelphia, where they enjoyed a steady supply of food sent not from England, but over land from … the farmers around Valley Forge!

The Continental Army was wasting away while the hated redcoats were dining fairly well, thank you very much, from the bounty of nearby Pennsylvanian farms.

How did such a travesty come to pass?

By operations of the invisible hand, of course, the last God standing in our hoary universe.

Local farmers didn’t like to sell their produce to George Washington because he paid in nearly worthless currency, the Continental, whereas the British paid in pounds sterling, the choicest coin of the day.

Politics had nothing to do with it. It was a shrewd, sound economic calculation. It was the invisible hand of the market.

I can hear Jim Cramer, or Lawrence Kudlow, or any of the other epidermal infections on CNBC spasmodically cheering them on right now: Take the smart money! It’s a no-brainer!

Thus, from the storied mists of America’s past, we’re offered a prenatal glimpse of our developing national character, not in the stalwart figure of George Washington, but in the mercenary behavior of colonial husbandmen — our true spiritual forebears.

George Washington, on the other hand, displayed some unsavory conduct that would probably get him cashiered in today’s warfare state, as well as subject him to great, gushing heaps of slander from the Morlocks on Fox News.

To wit: when somebody suggested to Washington that they simply confiscate all the adjoining farms and remove the locals in order to deprive the British of supplies, he refused. Such harshness, he argued, would be worse than the problem it was intended to solve. He recognized that wholesale violence against the civilian population would not only be futile, but counter-productive.

And it would also be immoral. The “horror of depopulating a whole district,” he said, “would forbid the measure.” (I lifted the quote from American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the American Republic, by Joseph Ellis).

So Washington refused, on both moral and strategic grounds, to implement a policy that’s now fairly standard in U.S. wars, and which flag-waving American consumers regard with bovine passivity: pacification. He refused to burn the village in order to save it.

How positively un-American.

You could say the concept of winning hearts and minds has undergone a slight transformation in the years between Valley Forge and Fallujah.

(This is not to say that George was an angel. He did publicly execute men caught sending supplies to the British in Philadelphia, and occasionally left their bodies strewn along the road as a warning to any other budding entrepreneurs, but that was regarded as an extreme measure undertaken because of dire necessity. Now it’s the military equivalent of a slap on the wrist, and we send American soldiers thousands of miles around the world to do such things on a routine basis. George Washington was responding to an immediate, pressing crisis. We’re doing it now because of … why, exactly?)

Who is more familiar to contemporary American eyes, a general cum politician with common sense and some small measure of humanity, or a bunch of opportunistic profit seekers scrambling to make a buck, regardless of the consequences? Which character type is today more celebrated, more envied, and more sneakily admired? Which type shanks his way up to the highest peaks of American public life?

Which type now makes the rules?

Who are the real founding fathers?

Next Fourth of July, don’t forget to tip your tin cup to the true progenitors of the American Way.

Biting The Hand That Feeds

I’m not sure what’s more dumb, whether the idiots who did this got the swastika wrong, or whether they did it on a golf course at a country club where, it’s probably fair to say, a large percentage of the members agree with the sentiment:

The dumb shit teabaggers are alienating their own patrons.

This rabble just doesn’t understand. You can carry placards depicting Obama as Hitler or Mao. You can hint about how you’d like to see a military coup in the United States. You can even criticize big banks. But one thing you can’t ever, ever do, is vandalize a golf course. That’s an unpardonable sacrilege to the aristocrats who run your party, you fools. It’s almost as egregious as burning the American flag, saying ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas,’ or claiming that Ronald Reagan didn’t win the Cold War.

Looks like the sugar daddies in the Republican party are gonna have to clarify the ground rules for their barefooted army of useful idiots.

The Benefits Of Unemployment

CNN is giddily reporting that all branches of the military have met their recruitment goals. The Army, they say, has even exceeded their quota. As usual, we’re not given any context for this ‘happy’ state of affairs. The story is left hanging in a void from which, I presume, we’re supposed to conclude that all is well at the Pentagon and that Americans are still patriotically taking up the standard in defense of their nation.

Go team!

I don’t suppose this has anything to do with it:

9.8% unemployment. That’s not including people who’ve given up looking for work or who haven’t filed for unemployment. Nor does it include thousands of impecunious serfs like me who are ‘under-employed,’ one of my favorite euphemisms which, around where I live, means ten dollars an hour, twenty hours per week, and don’t forget to smile and wear plenty of flair.

Gen. McChrystal might get his 40,000 new ‘trigger-pullers’ for Afghanistan after all. Funny how things work out, isn’t it?

America’s Most Sacred Shrine

And now, via Salon.com, comes another heroic tale from the terminal stages of America’s decline:

Oct. 7, 2009 For the first time in a generation, Arlington National Cemetery has marked the burial of an unknown on its storied grounds. Only this time, 25 years since the last interment at the Tomb of the Unknowns, the identity of the body remains a mystery not because the ravages of war made identification impossible, but because in a bureaucratic error the cemetery lost the paperwork showing the identity of the remains.

Arlington recently installed a headstone marked “Unknown” above grave 449 in section 68 of the cemetery. “A grave marker has been placed at grave 449 in section 68 noting the remains as Unknown,” Army spokesman Dave Foster confirmed to Salon in a statement.

They lost the paperwork! I dunno, maybe the fax machine got jammed. Maybe it happened the afternoon they threw an office party celebrating Iraqi National Sovereignty Day. Who knows? Now this soldier, whomever he or she is, resides for eternity in plot 449, section 68. But rest assured, they died a hero.

But it gets even better:

But Arlington’s newest unknown, buried without special ceremony, is the exception to what was intended to be the rule. The cemetery buried someone in grave 449 -- likely relatively recently, since that section is an active part of the cemetery -- and then lost track of the paperwork showing the identity of the remains. In 2003, workers went to bury a newly deceased service member in that plot, only to find unmarked remains in the ground. Paper records had listed the plot as vacant.

Rather than publicly admit this error, Arlington quietly left the remains unmarked for six years. For those six years, passersby saw only an empty plot of green grass in spot 449, surrounded by stones etched with names.

This remained the case until this past summer, when Salon began working on tips from current and former workers at Arlington who said these kinds of mistakes occur with disturbing frequency at the cemetery, which calls itself “our nation’s most sacred shrine.”

At first, Arlington denied any problem. Salon asked the cemetery last summer, “Has the cemetery ever dug a grave only to find there is already someone there, though the grave is unmarked?” Cemetery spokeswoman Kaitlin Horst responded, “We are not aware of any situation like that.” Salon later produced internal paper records showing that the cemetery did not know the identity of the remains in grave 449.

When confronted with the foul up, they denied it, and they did so in language that would make any Pentagon spokesman proud: “We are not aware of any situation like that.”

We’ve gone from “Give me liberty, or give me death” to “We are not aware of any situation like that” in a scant 234 years. That’s what I call American exceptionalism!

Now the Army’s looking into into the mystery of plot 449, section 68, but won’t give any details, because, you’ll be surprised to learn, they “can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.”

And with good reason. They don’t know what’s in plot 449, section 68. It might be empty, or the headstone might have been placed over a soldier they’ve correctly identified, which means that the real unknown soldier is buried under someone else’s name. But whose? For all they know, the real unknown soldier might be at the Detroit morgue. The Army would be facing what the Salon author describes as a “ripple effect public relations disaster” as one falsely identified corpse leads to the discovery of another, and another. Everyone in section 68 might be sleeping under the wrong tombstone.

Whoopsie daisy! Fubar, you know? Just place flowers three graves deep in every direction from where you “think” your son is buried. You’re bound to hit the right one sooner or later. It’s the thought that counts.

We produce so many deaths and so many corpses the people in charge of handling them can’t keep up. Maybe they’re short-handed and need to hire some new help. Maybe Arlington National Cemetery is one of the few truly recession-proof industries in America.

So much for “our nation’s most sacred shrine.” Besides, didn’t that honor pass over to Goldman Sachs last fall?

When Plutocrats Cry

The future looks bleak for our poor sclerotic plutonomy. First we don’t get the Olympics, then comes word that China, Russia, France and numerous Arab countries are laying the groundwork for eventually dumping the dollar, a move which will expose America as little more than a Third World country with credit cards and a big army. But I didn’t really begin to tremble until I came across this story from last weekend’s New York Times. Verily, the sky is falling:

Too Rich to Worry? Not in This Downturn

It turns out the other half — or at least the tiny slice who live at the top of the wealth pyramid — are not sleeping any better than the rest of America.

At a closed-door meeting of advisers to family offices — which serve families who typically are worth more than $500 million — I learned that the super-rich are just as concerned about the future as everyone else.

Even though the stock market has rebounded from its March 9 low, the family office advisers said many of their wealthiest clients were bracing for more bad news and wondering how it would affect their family unity.

Maybe the same way losing a home, a job, or your life’s savings affects your family unity; maybe the same way your family unity is affected when someone gets cancer and dies for lack of decent insurance, and the response from multimillionaires is to shrug their shoulders, tell us all to go eat cake, and then lecture us that national health insurance is socialism.

But I’m inching towards class warfare, which, as any self-respecting American plutocrat will gladly tell you, is just a false front for envy.

It’s also self-defeating, as the author of the article takes pains to point out:

Before you start laughing up your sleeve, be advised that this is not a good thing. When the super-rich get cold feet, the rest of America gets swine flu. They are, after all, the people who might finance new companies that create jobs, make big investments to support existing companies and spread their wealth throughout the economy.

True. Then again, they might also be the same people who’s stupefying greed created this whole mess in the first place. People who live in trailer parks don’t trade mortgage-backed securities.

The super-rich are learning how to cope, the article goes on to inform us. They are starting to look at their families “in ways that the average American can learn from.” Because, you know, us proles learn everything from the rich.

The basic issue for them is deciding what they want to do as a family now that they realize they cannot do everything. “You’re worth $500 million one day and wake up the next and it’s $350 million and you’ve pledged $100 million to the Met,” said Rob Elliott, senior managing director at Bessemer. “What are the family’s goals? Is it philanthropy or bringing along the next generation?”

Good gracious! Only worth $350 million with a hundred million pledged to the Met? I need a Valium and a glass of Cristal just thinking about it. But at least they’re coming to the realization that they can’t do everything. It’s nice they’re learning a lesson that most of us picked up somewhere around age ten or so. Better late than never.

They are also starting to understand “that they can’t have everything.” “It used to be, ‘I’m going to buy A and B.’ Now it’s, ‘I’ll buy A or B.’”

The mind reels.

But you know what’s really got them scared? The lurking shadow of Big Government:

The other risk to super-rich families is government action and increased regulation. They suspect it is coming but do not know how it will affect them. The result is that they are increasingly anxious about the future while still shell-shocked from the past year.

Lack of government regulation facilitated this recession, and they’re worried about … government regulation.

The mind reels. Wait, I already said that.