The Banks Are Not Lending, Oh My!

While one wishes the banks would be more motivated to ease credit (and they aren't), what does one expect? Hungry lions dont choose salad and brie on crackers from the menu. Banks who have been near to failure plus been reamed pretty good by the Feds and media should be expected to return to what we expected of them all along - rigorous, by-the-book lending. Lamentable, but what else could happen from the banks? As usual, there are larger questions such as the nature of business institutions and national loyalty, the cooperation of business institutions with national interests (let's say, national survival), the boundaries between a democracy and facism, and the old bugaboo, the role and powers of transnational corporations.

Not the least in this list of questions one is compelled to look at the definition of business ethics relative to the behavior expected from a real person: imho, they are not the same. Business ethics and cooperation-with-government is a subject that bears thinking about and this blogger will do so and blog about his "discoveries".

GOP Update - April 20, 2009

IMHO. The GOP appears to have settled down somewhat. The sideshows have lessened in intensity and wierdness: Steele, Bachmann, Limbaugh, Beck et al have shot their best it seems and have quieted a good deal. GOP steady heads are openly facing Limbaugh and are naming him for what he really is - an entertainer. Interestingly, the younger generation in the form of Megan McCain are presenting the most credible and appealing GOP face. Megan is urging the GOP to become current and in tune with current issues (gay and lesbian lifestyle, global warming). Realistically, it is important that the GOP get with it - the American two party system is a good one, and DEMS will not be in power forever. So, it is important to feel the GOP will be a sensible party with realistic ideas.

America Tortures: Participation of Medical and Health Professionals, and absolving the Abu Ghraib Guards

April 18, Jacob Heilbrun, a HuffingtonPost analyst (Psycho: Bush's Willing Medical Torturers), covered a Warrick and Finn article (Washington Post) that examine the ethics of American legal and health care agents who have participated in alleged torture of captured and imprisoned Al al Qaeda suspects. Readers of this blog can go to the original sources and form their own opinions. But, personally, I see a dilemma here for the President who appears to want both a graceful distance from the alleged acts of torture, and not make formal charges against American lawyers and doctors, but at the same time POTUS wants to get close enough to the acts to examine them and gain clarification for a consistent future policy.

While I agree with POTUS' wish not to punish in the current case, this position seems to create a dillemma: what about precedent events where America has judged and punished torturers, even its own citizens? For example, what about Nazi war criminals and the American guards involved in the Abu Ghraib mess? Are we to retroactively pardon them if we give a pass to the current torture agents? Doesn't seem we can post-humously resurrect Nazi war criminals. And wasn't this and other war crimes and torture issues were long ago clarified -torture is criminal - medical [professionals] and even military in general are expected to obey conscience and ethics when it comes to causing superfluous pain and suffering, i.e. torture. Why else were the American guards at Abu Ghraib imprisoned? But what exactly is the official, current policy? Is there a current ethical standard?

It seems unfair to prosecute only the human tools who find themselves, by threat of punishment for disobeying orders or policy, without also punishing their superiors. For this reason, I feel the punishments given to the American cell guards at Abu Ghraib are unfair. What were they supposed to do in the face of pressure and example from special (Blackwater) contractors to whom part of the Iraqi war had been outsourced? It seems if punishment was to happen, it should have started at the very top of the command chain and then proceeded downward with equal punishments for all. Likewise, if top command were not sent to jail, then no one should have been gone to jail.

In the case at hand, if the actual torturers at Gitmo and elsewhere are to receive absolution, then the Abu Ghraib imprisoned/censured personnel should immediately be freed and/or their military records cleared of wrong doing, and they receive honorable discharges with any back pay due. If this is not done, there are Abu Ghraib sentences yet to be handed out to top ranks.

Military Technology Advancement:: Gadgetry, Video Warring, New Pyschological Casualties

Picture: american military is bogged down in a romantic, over-estimation of military gadgetry. We expect our laboratory military gear to miraculously topple over our adversaries so we can go home to Mom and apple pie. Our increasing reliance on video-guided and controlled-from-afar drone technology to erase "enemies" in a puff of hi-definition screen mayhem that is not exactly real but not exactly fake. Soon there will be self-guided bullets (Wired, April 13, '09). But, all this advancement in killing technology along with the removal of the killers from negative feedback" will have perhaps unyet realized psychological problems. Even though we know real people are being killed, we don't hear them scream nor smell burning bodies. One should not expect this warring-from-afar to leave desk jockeys unaffected.

Pirate Shooting in Somalia - The Vampire Press and Post-Killing Morbidness

While one is relieved the American captain is safe, and impressed with the President Obama's measured contemplation and final use of American military, the American media is exhibiting a (expected?) morbid fascination with the killing - the tools, the strike delivered unknown to the pirates, the absoluteness of the quick and deadly. One thinks: are these media heads wishing they could be on the receiving end of such quick and deadly lightning from heaven? Is that coming next - interviews with the newly dead pirates assisted by well-known Mediums and clairvoyants? Imagine this conversation from some media center - "Hey there, Mr. Pirate, tell us how you feel about leaving this orb so unexpectedly? Did it hurt? What'd you have for lunch that day? How are you being treated now? How many, exactly, virgins are in your quarters right now? What's the scoop on Gabriel? How 'bout them Seals, huh?"

Seriously, dialog was offered but rejected by the pirates, and unfortunately for the pirates deterrent force was used. Plus the pirates sought to illegally profit in the worst way from food and supplies going to help their own folk. The lesson given here is how the new Administration (President Obama) will operate - an open door for discussion, but please take advisement - don't act out and push matters causing the President to bring in the Marines, Seals, etc.

Hope the Navy Seals don't succumb to media pressures to join this circus and be interviewed - interviews are so un-Seal-like and cover-blowing. Killing is not something to be proud of - prayers for the dead pirates and their families. Hope the blowback from the pirates will not make us regret this action. But, "thanks" Seals for rescuing an innocent American ship captain. SF.

TARP, and Bailed-Out-But-Still-Gaming-Us-All, Dreaming-and-Scheming Banks

The American banking system is like an intransigent child prankster: never giving up, constantly dreaming and scheming. Now the banks' schemes have to do with extreme (usery) rates and fees, and come-on gimmicks (false advertising and hidden small print traps) to bilk the public...who (us) expected cooperation from the banks after we (us) saved their rear ends. Our government, supposedly, is asking what's up with all this (Consumerist, April 13, 2009: ). The usual culprit banks are busily at work cheating the public, and being investigated, in this time of economic distress - Bank of America, CitiBank, Wells Fargo, etc.

The TARP system seems not to have anticipated these practices. But why not? After all, the whole TARP program was/is to rescue the public, and the bank system itself, from unregulated greed and shady practices. Time to get this issue of extreme fees under control.

The GOP Today - Resigned, Near-Dead, But Still Tea Bagging...So, It Isn't all Bad, Right?

In the past month or so, the GOP world seems to this blogger to have settled down, and actually a good bit settled. But "settled" has a special meaning when describing the GOP: the GOP circus has not only lost some of its appearance of clowns on tricycles, but the GOP has largely disappeared from view. The GOP is simply moribund, gone, kaput, worn out...and all those descriptors of a group gone underground from embarassment and with nothing to say that is relevant, helpful or connecting with the public. The GOP congressional faction has seemingly resigned from participating in national government; but even that gesture has been futile with nearly universal mutiny of the ranks from the GOP line urging rejection of Stimulus help. A core of GOP governors, interestingly the poorest states in the union, even tried to resign from the Stimulus Program but their state legislators voted against such idiocy given the especially dire economic condition of the sedition-inclined GOP states. This association of the GOP stronghold with the poorest states is nothing to be proud of, but we can see the GOP trying even to make hay of that mal-linkage at the expense of poor people.

There is truly a perception that the GOP is working against itself despite all its effort to get things together. Charles Homan ("Culture Shock" in the conservative movement, Washington Monthly)aptly describes the spinning, out of control misfirings of the GOP as a mishapen version of former conservative elegance ala William Buckley:

"Operating forever in the shadow of National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr., they had spent half a century honing their rhetorical chops on the romantic notion that an argument, framed eloquently and forcefully enough, could change the course of history. Worse, these arguments tended to be advanced in right-wing publications that made little effort to attract a general audience, devolving into an exercise of limited interest to anyone not already locked inside the echo chamber."

I prefer less coddling words: the GOP is lost in a kind of political "mannerism" where they remember the postures but have lost any idea of the meanings and contexts of their awkaward and jerky mimicry of conservativeness. The result is the derangment of Limbaugh, the Innanity of Hannity, the Dreck of Beck, and Michelle Bachmann's stupid utterances accompanied with her really strange, vapid and pat-on-back-expecting-look-at-me-daddy false smiles. The GOP sputterings are not down-to-earth, nurturing oatmeal but dry sawdust and dull nails.

Right now,the only GOP action is a half-hearted call to insurrection, the New Tea Party movement. But as usual with the GOP these days, their knack for stepping ankle deep in nasty stuff and then gladly, gleefully, as if they are doing something terribly witty, shoving said covered foot deep into mouth, saw them lose all seriousness with the GOP talking head labeling of their own movement as "TEA BAG" event!!! OH MY!!! A reaching of new and atmospheric heights of silliness and cultural disconnect. OH MY, twice said!

(On second thought, for a sec, at least the GOP can claim they didn't know what TEA BAGGING means; but really... what occured was a kind of Freudian brain-fart, a confession of having perused rather risque material without a clue to what was going on. One can only imagine what other misinterpretations the GOP is guilty of. Maybe we were treated to an insight on the major problem with the GOP - they see really kinky stuff as normal, and interpret good stuff as the devil's work. This is terribly embarassing for them. It all adds up to a dischordant, disconnect with reality. A stumbling along with incoherent mutterings and occasional references to glassy eye of newt, bad unicorn horn and unpleasant dragon's breath. OH MY, again! And a "help them, Lord." (And help us get out from their insanity, too, while YOU are at it, please, and thank YOU.)

However, this Ship of Fools (GOP) must sail on; maybe they will eventually realize they are dead in the water because they forgot to raise anchor. Until then the GOP rows furiously only pausing their Sysiphian efforts to pat themselves on the back as the GOP vessel sits smiling at rest, dead in the water.