Happy Reagan Day!

Happy 100th, President Reagan

"I have not only seen, but lived the marvels of what historians have called the 'American Century.' Yet, tonight is not a time to look backward. For while I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future. So this evening, for just a few minutes, I hope you will let me talk about a country that is forever young..."

"that's what it was to be an American in the 1980s. We stood, again, for freedom. I know we always have, but in the past few years the world again, and in a way, we ourselves rediscovered it..."

"The way I see it, there were two great triumphs, two things that I'm proudest of. One is the economic recovery, in which the people of America created — and filled — 19 million new jobs. The other is the recovery of our morale. America is respected again in the world and looked to for leadership..."

"whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence rather than your doubts. My dream is that you will travel the road ahead with liberty's lamp guiding your steps and opportunity's arm steadying your way."

Happy Reagan Day!

And I quote:

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden.

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

It is time for us to realize that we're too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We're not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing. So, with all the creative energy at our command, let us begin an era of national renewal. Let us renew our determination, our courage, and our strength. And let us renew our faith and our hope. We have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we're in a time when there are no heroes, they just don't know where to look.

You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down — up to a man's age-old dream; the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order — or down to the ant heap totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.

You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we're not bound by that same limitation? We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow.

This is not the time for political fun and games. This is the time for a new beginning. I ask you now to put aside any feelings of frustration or helplessness about our political institutions and join me in this dramatic but responsible plan to reduce the enormous burden of Federal taxation on you and your family

The size of the Federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern

I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.

Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuous revolution of the marketplace. It is the understanding that allows to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions.

America's best days are yet to come. Our proudest moments are yet to be. Our most glorious achievements are just ahead.

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness

We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free.

Follow Up: I Keep Waiting for Somone to Say "Joke"

Stuff ain't cool unless it's secretive. See how it worked for Nixon? He was about as un-cool as they come until ... well, you know.

In that vein, the Nobel Peace Price nominees are kept secret for 50 years in order to avoid offending anyone ... and to respect Alfred's will, in which he ordered that the Peace Prize be the "coolest" of all prizes offered.

So we'll never know which deserving candidates really got snookered in this year's run-off for said prize. In lieu, more than one reader/friend (you know who you are) has suggested I come up with my own list. I'd never be so presumptuous as to assume I knew better ;-) but here are just a few names I might have offered if asked:

The US Military - How many lives HAS the US Military saved? Seriously, folks, is there any other entity on the planet who has actually DONE more to quell conflict? Every life is valuable - everyone is someone's son or mom. These guys are the only group on the planet willing to make the REALLY tough decisions about life - their own and those of others. If this is too big a group for ya, pick the current leaders - Gates, McChrystal, Mullen.

Ronald Reagan - Jeez, where to begin. Not only did he take the first steps to de-escalate the Cold War, he finished the job he started. He understood this had to be done from a position of power. Along the way, he left us with guiding principles that serve us well even today. "Trust but verify" would get us a lot further along with the Evil Leaders League than sending the Clinton twins for photo-ops.

The faceless, nameless, and thankless who dedicate their lives selflessly to promote peace one person at a time - Each of us knows one, but no one can see them all.

SOS Children’s Villages - In their own words, the "world's largest charity dedicated to orphaned and abandoned children"

Morgan Tsvangirai - Pick your metaphor. He put his life on the line. He went all-in. He took a leap of faith. He spoke truth to hideous power. He stood toe to toe ... and continues to do so in the most peaceful, calm manner possible.

Mordechai Vanunu - On a one-man lifelong crusade against military escalation.

Japan - For quietly fostering over 50 years of peace in Asia

Romeo Dallaire - Betcha don't know this one. Look 'em up.

Bono - If you don't know this one, your name must be Osama.

Wei Jingsheng - Oft mentioned as a candidate, and for good reason. Standing up to the People is beyond ballzy.

Helmut Kohl - Yeah, really. How quickly we forget. He accumulated and then spent incredible political capital to see through the peaceful reunification of a nation. Who'd have thought a commie police state could be turned into a beacon of democracy and capitalism in a mere decade? Who'd have thought West Germans could be convinced to effectively donate a quarter of their income for a decade or more to fund the reconstruction of the rusty East

Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, Ian Paisley, Hugh Smyth, Tony Blair, and Bertie Ahern - One of the world's best examples of conflict resolution, de-escalation, de-militarization, empowerment, and legitimization. They dealt with an incredibly sticky wicket with patience and trust from the grassroots up. In a scary world, they proved that, at least in some cases, there IS a way out of terrorism ... err ... I mean 'troubles.'

Gates Foundation - I'll never understand why anyone considers it novel or controversial that development creates stability creates wealth creates peace. There are too many examples to list, yet the Gates foundations is one of the few major benefactors attempting to take whole economies from zero to a stable platform for development in order to facilitate true wealth (and thus peace) creation.

Safaricom, the M-PESA, and the Safaricom Foundation - Along the lines of the above, these guys are establishing the factors of development in order to let poverty-stricken people bootstrap themselves.

The 150 (and counting) Russian Journalists murdered for speaking truth to power

OFAC - Struggling, albeit bureaucratically, but fairly successfully to cut off the lifeblood of conflict.

Rodrigo Lara Bonilla - Colombian Minister of Justice who sacrificed his life in the fight against the collapse of his country into a cartel-owned narco-state.

Virgilio Barco Vargas, César Gaviria - Colombian politicians at a time when that was a decidedly ill-advised career choice.

No Funny Business to See Here ... Please Keep Moooving!

At the risk of stating the obvious, money is the raw material of the financial industry. Banks need a constant stream of new money, just as a microchip factory needs silicon. In fact, most banks can't go even a single day without new money (a dangerous strategy that has not gotten the attention it deserves through our recent little trouble). For a period of weeks in late 2008, even good banks couldn't raise money at a rate they would accept.

Enter Uncle Sam, who agreed to do what most other countries have done for years: guarantee bonds issued by banks (called GGBs by most, TLGP-IDIDGP by the Feds). This was a tacit subsidy. It meant banks could issue bonds (=borrow new money) at a much lower interest rate than the panic-driven market rate they could otherwise get. The argument was, with all the turmoil and tumult, nobody could tell the good banks from the truly bad, so they had to throw them ALL a lifeline.

The panic has more or less subsided, but the subsidy has persisted (as Reagan predicted). By now, its clear which banks are bad (Bear, Lehman, WaMu, MS, Citi, GMAC). Absent government guarantee, these zombies were or would be gone in 60 seconds just like Memphis Raines.

Then there are the "Chosen" banks. These banks have carped all along that they're fine, they're healthy, they don't need government help ... but in the interest of a strong, patriotic esprit de corps, they'll take a share of whatever the government doles out to help Uncle Sam's PR campaign.

Suuuuure, dude. Not for nothin' the definitive book about Wall Street is titled Liar's Poker. Bankers are bulldog deal-makers. They're ruthless prestidigitators. They're voracious precision-tuned, profit-hunting machines. They're self-proclaimed Ayn Rand Dollar-worshipping Capitalists ... though I'm not sure Ayn would agree.

Clearly, the Chosen banks saw the meltdown coming last fall and realized that the winning strategy was to get as cozy with the US Government as possible. Led by the ultimate opportunist Jamie Dimon (who had spent 15 years kissing and conniving his way to the helm of JPMorganChase), the Chosen banks played lapdog to the Treasury and the Fed. "See that maimed bank in Seattle, Jamie? See it? See it? GO FETCH!" And he did. Time and again. Tacit, of course, was the agreement that Hank, Ben, and Timmy would make sure his dog food bowl always runneth over and that he got a steady diet of Scooby Snacks.

Which is where the GGBs come in. The Chosen banks don't need the subsidy, but as it tuns out, they're some of the biggest beneficiaries of it. By borrowing at artificially cheap rates, they're able to artificially boost their bottom line. Deals and businesses that would be unprofitable at market rates suddenly look brilliant. Recent headlines tell the tale:

• WSJ: Goldman Flexes Its Profit Muscle
• Times of London: JP Morgan reports record revenue

Last week, the quarterly summary was published on these GGBs, the vast majority of which are bank bonds. The numbers are telling...

• The Zombies and the Chosen continue to gain huge advantage from the GGB program, issuing mountains of the stuff.
• Uncle Sam is clearly routing the business of creating these GGBs to the Zombies and the "Chosen." The list reads like a junior high BFF list. Each bank's rank in the list is exactly commensurate with the level of coziness they've achieved with the government.
• The same is happening worldwide. If you want to know the Chosen banks worldwide, look no further than the 5th through 10th ranked bookrunners in this list (see link below). HSBC and Barclays in the UK, BNPP in France, Deutsche in Germany, and Commonwealth in Australia

So much for Geithner's and Obama's promises of government non-interference in the market.

GOVERNMENT-GUARANTEED BONDS
BOOKRUNNER                         VOLUME                MARKET     #OF
4/1/2009 - 6/25/2009               (US$ MLN)      RANK   SHARE      ISSUES
JP Morgan                          13,896.9         1     21.2       10
Citi                               13,449.9         2     20.5       13
Morgan Stanley                      6,920.6         3     10.5       12
Goldman Sachs & Co                  5,113.1         4      7.8       10
Bank of America Merrill Lynch       4,535.9         5      6.9        6
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
BOOKRUNNER                         VOLUME                MARKET     #OF
1/1/2009 - 6/25/2009               (US$ MLN)      RANK   SHARE      ISSUES
Citi                               46,105.0         1     20.7       33
JP Morgan                          38,853.1         2     17.5       30
Bank of America Merrill Lynch      34,737.0         3     15.6       21
Morgan Stanley                     29,086.8         4     13.1       29
Goldman Sachs & Co                 20,896.0         5      9.4       27
Source: Thomson Reuters

What He Said: ReaganagaeR on Government Borrowing

The problem, the consequences, and the solution as he saw it in his 1981 Inaugural Address ... eerily applicable again today (especially in light of this and this type of thing):

You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why then should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?

... For decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children’s future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals.

Inflation ... distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of our people. Idle industries have cast workers into unemployment, human misery and personal indignity.

We are a nation that has a government -- not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the earth. Our Government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpPt7xGx4Xo
Text: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ronaldreagandfirstinaugural.html

Oh, and looking back a bit further to 1964:

This is the issue: ... Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves ... No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt1fYSAChxs

The "New" Creative Destruction

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence.
And you cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.

- Ronald Reagan, 1992 Republican Convention, quoting William Boetcker

Like Spending a Dollar to Get a Dime

That's how Louisiana Govenor Piyush "Bobby" Jindal described the Stimulus payments on unemployment on Meet the Press 2/22/09.

Leave it to a first-generation American to cast an objective eye on US politics. His parents, as most immigrant families, struggled to make a better life for their kids. They fended for themselves. They took responsibility for improving their own lives. They sacrificed. Bobby was undeniably acculturated from the outset, preferring the Brady Bunch to Bollywood, but his parents' lessons were clearly not lost.

He's not the only one, of course, but he's a nice contrast to the likes of Puerto Rico, which sees no problem asking for nearly 5% of the total stimulus, though their population is under 4 million and their economy contributes nearly nothing to GDP. Boy, it must be expensive to build down there. "100 acres of new energy efficiency industrial zones" is gonna cost us $17 billion. That would be $4,000 a square foot ... or $11 million per job created. Why don't they just hand out shovelfuls of cash to these Caribbean shits? That would probably be cheaper than one of their other requests: $500 million to give solar water heater tanks to rural families. 14 very short-term jobs there (by their own count), so $35 million per job. Apparently the current $2,000 tax credit just isn't enough for these people, even though that's precisely the price of a one-family sized tank.

Not that they're the only ones. Miami (city and county) have put in for nearly the same amount, mostly for transportation projects like the "Two hundred million dollar mile" project ($2.4 billion to extend the "Orange Line" east-west transit by 10 miles). By comparison, their pitch for $1.4 billion to expand the same "Orange Line" north-south is a bargain.

And there's:

• The "Billion Dollar Bridge" in Moline Illinois
• The $600 million 100MW solar plant in Alabama using outdated technology. Strangely, other states can use newer technology to generate the same 100MW for hundreds of millions less.
• The new digs for the chief of Oakland police, $450 million
• And a parking garage for the Oakland Airport $300 million. Who can blame them? Its just SO TIRING to walk through their current lot.
• The events center and hotel in Albuquerque, $418 million
• Not to be outdone, a similar pitch in Irving, TX (and here and here), including residential, commercial, and every other kind of -ial $1.4 billion. Where the hell is Irving anyway?
• Or a Performing Arts Center in Vegas. $375 million. Apparently they don't have enough stages in that town.
• Or $2 billion to put (outmoded) solar panels on every roof in LA

Below the $300 million mark (aka chump change), there are literally thousands of projects to replace things that aren't broken (over 1,000 fire/police station renovations) and install things that range from unnecessary (over 100 police or fire "training centers" for every village and hamlet from here to Timbuktu) to downright infuriating (dog parks; river walks; a $20 million "downtown quiet zone" for raucous San Diego; several multi-million dollar golf courses in Texas ... including a 36 hole Disc Golf course for the dusty hipsters in Austin).

I make no mystery of my opposition to each and every one of these government bailouts. Everyone has their reasons for advocating or opposing it. Here are one or two of mine:

• Today, 12% of GDP is spent servicing the national debt With our new expenditures, this will likely increase to 20%. This is an untenable level for any economy. There is no way to prevent it from reducing GDP growth (and thus standard of living) other than to bring it back down to single digits where it should be.


• The above is just to "service" (maintain) the debt. Fees and interest. To actually reduce debt means increasing taxes and reducing government spending over the 5-to-25 year horizon. Mathematically, when people and businesses have an increase in taxes without a commensurate increase in earnings, investment, savings, and/or consumption must fall. In other words, the major "drivers" of our economy must be throttled back in favor of the non-productive, non-job-creating, non-profit-generating activity of paying down government debt. GDP will necessarily fall.


• There is a strong inverse relationship between the amount of debt a country has and the long-term value of the currency. Currency values are determined by supply and demand, just like everything else (pay attention, Tim and Barry). Any schmuck who didn't sleep through Econ 101 knows that supply and demand meet at a price which "clears the market." For currencies, that "price" is the NPV of all future interest payments one can get by owning the currency minus inflation. In other words, the interest rate now, plus the PV of expected interest rates into the future, adjusted for inflation, determine the current exchange rate. All of this is a round-about way of explaining what most people just accept: the interest rate drives the exchange rate. So what drives the interest rate? It is a consensus opinion about the credit-worthiness of the country. Just like a corporation's bond issue, the US government has to offer an interest rate which compensates investors (=holders of dollar assets) for expected inflation plus the risk that the US economy goes tits-up. Inflation expectations and default risk have been low, so interest rates have been low. This thanks to Paul Volcker and the Reagan economic team (including Greenspan) who realized that a high interest rate stifles investment and savings. It thus stifles financial stability and economic growth. The inflation component drives people to put their money in other currencies and thus other economies instead of ours. With the current gratuitous increase in debt, coupled with the decrease in long-term growth due to inflation and taxation, this risk is increasing significantly. Interest rates will necessarily increase.

Call me crazy, but personally I'm a fan of financial stability and economic growth.

PS: I'm amazed by the notoriety Rick Santelli of CNBC has garnered by refusing to accept the Washington line. The snarky childish response from the White House, referring to him by name, is a little Putin-esque. Last I checked, we still had freedom of speech around here.

Happy Reagan Day!

Obama keeps telling us he's the second coming of ... err ... Reagan. Lou Cannon and NPR merrily joined the mantra last week. In that case, it would serve him well to begin delivering messages along the lines of these Reagan Quotes:

Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets

Sometimes I think that government fits that old-fashioned definition of a baby: An alimentary canal with an appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."

We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.

I have a special reason for wanting to solve this [economic] problem in a lasting way. I was 21 and looking for work in 1932, one of the worst years of the Great Depression. And I can remember one bleak night in the thirties when my father learned on Christmas Eve that he'd lost his job. To be young in my generation was to feel that your future had been mortgaged out from under you, and that's a tragic mistake we must never allow our leaders to make again.

It is not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work -- work with us, not over us; stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.

Growth, prosperity and ultimately human fulfillment, are created from the bottom up, not the government down

There can be no security anywhere in the free world if there is no fiscal and economic stability within the United States.

there has been a fourth branch added to the traditional three: a vast bureaucracy ... of enormous power which determines policy to a greater extent than any of us realize, very possibly to a greater extent than our own elected representatives. And it can't be removed from office by our votes

Government growing beyond our consent had become a lumbering giant, slamming shut the gates of opportunity, threatening to crush the very roots of our freedom. What brought America back? The American people brought us back -- with quiet courage and common sense; with undying faith that in this nation under God the future will be ours, for the future belongs to the free.

This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness.

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.

Buy! Sell! #1: Prediction Markets Intro

Back in the Nineties while we were still undergrad pimple-poppers, I came to know a coke-laced gambling-addicted, insomniac who traded junk bonds at night while the rest of us studied, drank, and slept. Then there was my roommate who bounced back and forth between joining the Freemen, the FBI, and the Kosovo Jihad.

Who am I kidding ... it was NYU ... everyone was popping pills. But I digress.

The 3 of us could hardly come from more different backgrounds and had our own wacky ideas but had remarkably arrived at the same spot (philosophically, geographically, and temporally) on many levels. I've always appreciated the reassurance of their conviction, even when we were all leaning against a heady wind. Not immaterially, we all shared a deep and long-standing respect for Reagan.

It was the insomniac who first introduced me to prediction markets. What started as a nighttime obsession became a side job became a career, but from day one he never could leave work at the office. Between the office elevator and the subway station he'd be on his cell placing bets on anything and everything that the future might hold. Watching sports with these guys was mentally exhausting. With every point or foul, there was a flurry of cell phones as they all speed-dialled their brokers with a new futures order. Ten thousand at niner and an eighth on Shaq to drink water instead of Gatorade in the fourth! Hedge that with a short on Schumacher to pit before lap 30 at seventy-five spot naught! Rah! Lift that offer you cocksucker! How's the wife? Did she recover from last night yet? Remind me to buy you a drink next time we're in Vegas!

As is the tragedy of evolution, humans hardly even make trading decisions anymore (thanks a mil, modellers!), much less have a broker on speed dial for such interaction. Going going gone the way of the Yellow River dolphin and the open-outcry pits.

I don't think these guys knew that the academics had not fully conceptualized prediction markets yet. I know they didn't give a rat's ass. But intellectualized it was; then automated; then commercialized; then specialized. Corporations (especially HP and GE) started to steal the idea to help them in their sales prediction, as well as new product and marketing campaign creation. Who needs employees at all anymore? But I digress.

Now come vanity markets such as Bet2Give where you put real money in, but any winnings are automatically donated to charity. This conveniently avoids the legality question of betting on the future. As their FAQ says If you bet wrong and lose, your money will still go to worthy causes... but chosen by others. Hmm... I wonder if I can place a bet on how long it'll take the IRS to figure all this out?

Will bets on future events become an asset class in the same way bets on future cash streams or future prices have?

So I'm in. I'll be trading the future and reporting back on my riches ... all of which will be routed to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation for this first round.

There's a twist. Prediction markets are still young, and as such, they're very thin. Not a lot of activity, and not a lot of options available to reflect the nuances or breadth of one's comprehensive view of the future ... aka one's portfolio (of bets on future events) in market lingo. As such, I'll be publishing several "model portfolios" here from time to time under the "Buy!/Sell!" series title.

Iranians vs. Iran ... Rick Steves and the Shahab-3

As I've said before, I really appreciate Rick Steves' European shows on PBS. When I found out he also maintained a blog (who doesn't these days?) I was instantly hooked! He gives hidden insights and sneak previews, but also shows the entertaining soft underbelly of his job (grumpy tourist office in England, stupid rules in Turkey). When he mentioned he would be going to Iran to separate the real from the rhetoric ... well, honestly I was nervous. This has been used frequently by the peaceniks among us as a euphemism for their peace-at-all-costs world view.

All told, it was a courageous and a valuable thing he did. We'll all be better off if we can humanize this conflict a bit. I agree with him that individual-to-individual contact can lead us all to greater understanding of each other. I share his hope that understanding breeds compassion and even solidarity.

But Rick showed his liberal underpants a bit. While his aim was to present an "even view" of the country, his result was to give glibly cursory coverage to the hate-mongering propaganda spewed forth by the insaniac Iranian government. Does he really mean to suggest that "Death to America" is just a cute figure of speech? I give him kudos for covering every smile and "we love America" he observed from the Iranian citizens. However, by over-emphasizing these, he showed he could not resist the temptation to counter-balance the White House's predilection for fear mongering. with opposite-but-unfortunately-equal myopia.

Here's my take on the Iran:

• To quote Reagan, "People do not make wars; governments do." In this context, the meaning is that the conflict does not really involve the common citizens of either country. On both sides, they're more interested in living their lives comfortably and being left alone than geopolitics. He went on to say, "A people free to choose will always choose peace." I saw this firsthand in the early 1990's in the former USSR - the people never did hate Americans. Had no reason to, except the fear preached them by their government. And they were just as afraid of their own government as ours. Rick did a good job of demonstrating that (many) Iranians are no exception.
  
• To repeat Reagan: "People do not make wars; governments do." His statement has a second meaning: Governments do, indeed, make wars on behalf of their countries. Acknowledging my first point (and Rick's) does not repudiate the fact that the Ayatollah Insane-y and the rabid Ahmadi-nejad army could cause great harm to life and limb in the US, Iran, and most likely anyone else who has the misfortune of getting their attention. Sanctions, containment, diplomacy, saber rattling, and outright aggression may well be necessary in response to their actions.

The fact that an American can traipse around Iran (with government minders) gathering smiles and hugs from children and grandmas alike calls attention not to the power of peace or the senselessness of war ... but to the tragedy of it. I'm quite sure the average middle-class, non-fundamentalist Iranian (if there are any left in that place) is as anti-war as his American counterpart.

However, that (mythical ?) average Iranian does not have his finger on the "launch" button of the new Shahab-3 nuclear-capable intermediate range missile. Nor does he have the key to the national purse. He has no vote on whether his own dire, hopless, poverty-stricken existence is worth the billions being wasted by the government on their nuclear program.

It is FOR, not AGAINST these people that aggression against their government may be necessary.

I'll let Reagan wrap up my argument: "We can not play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent." We must engage Iran with respect, but from a position of strength. We don't need to be the world's daddy, but we do need to ensure our own safety.

If we can serve as a global role model of freedom and respectability, we achieve dual success of furthering our own self-interests while at the same time elevating the world's lowliest and most suppressed. To that end, we should be willing to expend our own treasure and flex our own muscle. It's a long-term proposition, which makes it politically dificult. Greatness is not for the short-sighted.

Photo credits:
Rick Steves in Iran: Rick Steves Blog (http://www.ricksteves.com/blog/index.cfm?fuseaction=archives&month=6&year=2008)
Iranian Missiles: Sepah News (http://www.daylife.com/words/Sepah_News) via AFP

That "other" airport in DC

There are two airports in DC: Dulles and Reagan. If you're gonna be a socialist idealist and insist on the name "National" then you better also call that big NY airport Idlewild, not Kennedy.
In fact, if you're gonna go there, then go all the way. Please memorize the following:

• Orchard Field, not O'Hare
  
• North Beach, not Laguardia
  
• Great Western Aerodrome, not London Heathrow
  
• United Airport, not Bob Hope Burbank
  
• Aéroport de Paris Nord, not De Gaulle
  
• Orange County, not John Wayne
  
• Pan American Field, not Miami International

Happy Reagan Day!

Ronald Reagan, our 40th president was born on this day in 1911. In this election year, whatever one's positions or parties, what's clearly needed of the next Prez is back-to-basics leadership. Understand your values deeply. Believe in them steadfastly, but not blindly. Follow them courageously. Communicate them tirelessly. Engage (or re-engage) your fellow Americans ... and the rest of the world. Make it clear that they are responsible for themselves first and foremost. The next president, no less than every other American, needs to live and act with dignity as the best way of communicating their values. Rather than spending your their breath telling us how Reaganesque they are or aren't, I wish the candidates would just quiet down and listen to him... "Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things." "There are no easy answers but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right" "when people have the right to make decisions as close to home as possible, they usually make the right decisions." "We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions" "If we love our country, we should also love our countrymen." "Freedom is something that cannot be passed on in the blood stream, or genetically. And it's never more than one generation away from extinction. Every generation has to learn how to protect and defend it" "I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there's purpose and worth to each and every life" And, if you happen to be philosophically aligned with him, you might remind yourself: "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem … Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them ... I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves ... Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty" "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" "Sometimes I think that government fits that old-fashioned definition of a baby: An alimentary canal with an appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other" "Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." "growth, prosperity and ultimately human fulfillment, are created from the bottom up, not the government down" "Millions of individuals making their own decisions in the marketplace will always allocate resources better than any centralized government planning process" "there has been a fourth branch added to the traditional three: a vast federal bureaucracy that's now being imitated in too many states and too many cities, a bureaucracy of enormous power which determines policy to a greater extent than any of us realize, very possibly to a greater extent than our own elected representatives. And it can't be removed from office by our votes" "Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets"

What would Reagan say to the people of America Today?

He's already said it. Let's listen in as he speaks to us via actual quotes from twenty, thirty years ago ... "Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement ... My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes ... How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin ... " "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem ... I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves ... Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty ... Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free ... Above all, we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have. It is a weapon that we as Americans do have. Let that be understood by those who practice terrorism and prey upon their neighbors ... " "History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap ... Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong ... If it's to be a bloodbath, let it be now. Appeasement is not the answer ... We can not play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent ... I am totally unwilling to see this country fail in its obligation to itself and to the other free peoples of the world ... We have done what we had to do. If necessary, we shall do it again ... When our citizens are abused or attacked anywhere in the world on the direct orders of a hostile regime, we will respond so long as I'm in this Oval Office ... [They] counted on America to be passive. [They] counted wrong ... " "There are no easy answers but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right ... You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness ... All great change in America begins at the dinner table ... We have found, in our country, that when people have the right to make decisions as close to home as possible, they usually make the right decisions. ... We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions ... I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there's purpose and worth to each and every life ... " "If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism ... Whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears; to your confidence rather than your doubts. My dream is that you will travel the road ahead with liberty's lamp guiding your steps and opportunity's arm steadying your way ... My friends: We did it. We weren't just marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger. We made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all. And so, good-bye, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America. "

All in All, Not Bad at All

Ronald W Reagan would be 96 today.

We miss you, Gip.

I miss you.

"Ronald Reagan belongs to the ages now, but we preferred it when he belonged to us." - George W Bush

All in all, not bad at all . . .

Quite simply: thank you, Gip, for putting us back on course.
We miss you already!