Stumbling towards the decline and fall of the USA

What (Walt hears you ask) is The United States Department of Defense's Office of Net Assessment (ONA), and why do we need (and pay for) one? Well sir... The ONA was created 51 years ago by Richard Nixon to serve as an "internal think tank" for the Pentagon. Aided by outside contractors, it's supposed to look into the future of the military -- kind of like a khaki crystal ball -- and produces report [prophecies? Ed.] on the results of its research.

"Do we really need this?" Walt hears you ask. The official answer is that it is important to have a good grasp of net assessment because it is an "important part of the language spoken by leaders in the higher levels of DOD" and officers who lack familiarity "will be at a disadvantage in communicating with the civilian leadership." Got it now?

No? Does it help for me to tell  you the Director of the ONA is one James H. Baker, who has held that position since 2015, serving under the Prez, then No. 45, and now Senile Joe? One of the "ourside organizations" who assist the ONA is the Rand Corporation. Understand now? We're talking Deep State here!

According to a report prepared for the Office of Net Assessment by the Rand Corporation, the future of the Paranoid States of America isn't so bright. "The Sources of Renewed National Dynamism" looks at the US competitive position as it faces a rising China, and finds that America is stumbling towards a decline from which few great powers ever recover. 

The US of A is diminishing in power on a relative basis geopolitically, militarily, financially, economically, and technologically. Competitive pressures from within include slowing productivity growth, an aging population, a polarized political system [No kidding? Ed.] and a "corrupted information environment". Does that mean (Walt wonders) that someone is lying to us? Who could it be?

These problems are exacerbated by an addiction to luxury, failure to keep pace with technology, an ossified bureaucracy, an overstretched military and "self-interested and warring elites." Again... who are they talking about? A clue may be found in Listen, Liberal, a brilliant but obscure book by Thomas Frank (Henry Holt & Co., 2016), which Walt recommends highly.

The title is misleading. It's not a rant by an Alex Jones type, but a stinging criticism by a certified liberal of the Democratic Party, the "professional elites" and the corporate and cultural elitism, which dominates liberal politics and is responsible for the ever-deepening rift between the rich and poor in America and elsewhere.

The ONA report concludes that unless Americans can unite to identify and fix the problems it outlines, the US of A risks falling into the same downward spiral that resulted in the fall of the Roman, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires. 

Is it too late to reverse the decline? Is it too late to make America great again? You be the judge... on November 5th!

Excerpt from Listen Liberal (cited above): 

Popular attitudes toward the professions started to sour in the 1970s. "Technocracy" was the new term for describing the reign of professionalism, and its connotations were almost entirely negative.

Rule-by-expert, it began to seem, excluded rule-by-the people. It was dehumanizing and mechanical. In a technocracy, the important policy decisions were made in faraway offices that were insulated from the larger whirl of society. The people making the decisions identified far more with society's rulers than they did with the ruled, and their decisions often completely ignored public concerns.

Busing was one of the era's classic examples of failed technocratic overreach; another was the Vietnam War, a catastrophic intervention in which tens of thousands of working-classs Americans were sent to their deaths...largely because foreign-policy professionals in Washington were unwilling to listen to voices from outside their discipline, bearing uncomfortable views.

History repeats itself

I've been reading Niall Ferguson's monumental work The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (Penguin 2006), and, in the Epilogue, came across the following passage.

On January 20, 1969, it was becoming hard for Americans to feel optimistic.... American society itself seemed to be fragmenting. There were race riots in the inner cities and demonstrations in the universities; young fought old, black fought white, redneck fought hippy, student fought cop. Race was one of the main bones of contention.

What's the significance of 20 January 1969? That was the date of Richard Nixon's inauguration.

Footnote: In the very last paragraph of The War of the World, Niall Ferguson wrote (in 2006, remember): [H.G. Wells's] The War of the Worlds remains science fiction. The War of the World is, however, historical fact. Perhaps, like Well's story, ours will be ended abruptly by the intervention of microscopic organisms like the avian influenza virus, which could yet produce a worse mutation and pandemic than that of 1918. Until that happens, however, we remain our own worst enemies.

Black Lives Matter doesn't matter any more!

Looks like last night was comparatively peaceful across the Excited States of America. Not so much rfioting and looting as on the weekend and Monday. I expect today we'll see images of good citizens pitching in to clean up the debris left behind by even peaceful "protesters". I predict that 90% of those shown in such photos will be white. Lifetime pct .976.

You realize, gentle reader, that all the commotion in America's cities is not about George Floyd, police brutality, or even racial inequality, about which the SJWs have been moaning for two centuries.

Black lives do not matter! At least, not to antifa types, the mostly white leftists who are the real "protesters". What we are seeing is a well-organized, well-funded, violent campaign to overthrow the government of the USA. Well... not the whole government... just the man at its head, Still-President Trump.

The bad news for them -- good news for the USA -- is that the protests-cum-riots are having the opposite effect from that intended. They have all but insured the November re-election of the Donald! (Lifetime pct still .976.) I have to admit that Mr Trump hasn't come through the Covid-19 Dempanic covered with glory. But the rioters have effectivelyl ended the lockdown by defying it, and the rest of us figure that if they can take to the streets without worrying about getting the virus, we can take to the beaches!

As well, the media hysteria about "anti-black racism" has all but totally displaced the media hysteria about the Dempanic. And in this chapter of the soap opera that is American politics, President Trump is the one who looks like a hero -- the only one standing up for law and order, while dozen of weak-willed and weak-kneed Democratic politicians fall all over themselves to signal virtue and pander to the anti-American agitators.

I am now the only one who thinks that the "protesters" will succeed in keeping President Trump in the White House. Let me share a few well-chosen words from "Seven Thoughts on the Civil War the Other Side Wants So Badly", by Scott McKay, in The Spectator, 2/6/20.

The police can handle these rioters if they're allowed to. If the police can't, in some circumstances, the National Guard certainly can. This isn't some invading army; it's the dregs of society who have been induced into the streets for free air fryers from Target. The slightest application of law enforcement muscle will put this rioting down.

[On why the areas trashed by the riots won't ever be rebuilt] At the end of the day, everybody figures this is an area where the locals were so stupid and so disrespectful that they looted and burned down the very shops that kept the neighborhood going. And who wants to do business with such people?

You don't have to go any further back than 1968 to know that when America gets its fill of domestic violence and insurrection, it votes for the most conservative candidate it can find. How do you think Richard Nixon, who was the political version of a broken-down claiming horse who had lost an election for the governorship of California just a few years earlier, rolled into the White House like a tsunami? Nixon was the law-and-order candidate. It didn't really matter what else he was; the Silent Majority gave him the job and a mandate to put an end to The Sixties.

Democrats have been trying to recreate The Sixties ever since, and the public has been trying to tell them The Sixties weren't all that awesome.
Trump is going to law-and-order this all the way home. It’s an easy play for him. Trump’s response hasn’t been perfect, but he’s going to dominate the discussion the longer this goes. Do Democrats really think they’re going to beat him without even denouncing the riots? Are they that stupid?

Of course they are. Of course they are.

Well said, Mr McKay. Couldn't have said it better myself. [You got that right! Ed.]

How the impeachment process is supposed to work

Ed. here. We no sooner posted "After years sitting on the pot, Pelosi finally...", in which Walt intimated that his understanding of the impeachment process was less than perfect, when Agent 3 passed along a guide to how the process works, by Alexandra Mae Jones, on the CTV News website. We trust Ms Jones and CTV will not mind our reposting the main part of her concise and lucid explanation.

What is impeachment?

Impeachment is the process to remove an official, and is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. It can happen at the state or federal level. In the case of impeaching a sitting president, the House of Representatives can call for impeachment to begin if they believe that the president is guilty of “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors,” according to the Constitution.

There is no specific definition of a “high crime” included in the Constitution, but the concept is essentially aimed at preventing corruption by high-level officials. Although impeachment involves a trial, it’s not a criminal process, merely one to remove an official from office. Criminal charges being brought against an individual is a separate matter.

How does it happen?

An individual member of the House could simply introduce an impeachment resolution like any other bill, which would then be reviewed by a committee, likely the House Judiciary Committee. Or the House Judiciary Committee can first hold their own investigation and bring articles of impeachment against the president, and present that evidence to the House. (“Articles of impeachment” simply refers to the charges against a president).

The next step would be for the evidence to be presented before the House for a vote. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler has declared previously that his committee has already been conducting impeachment hearings, but the panel has been unable to get many key witnesses and documents from the Trump administration.

Ultimately, the full House votes on whether or not to impeach. A majority vote is needed for the impeachment to pass. If the House passes a vote to impeach, it doesn’t mean the president gets removed immediately. The case then moves to the Senate, where a trial is held.

The House appoints members to act as prosecutors in the Senate. The president would have defense lawyers to defend him. The chief justice of the Supreme Court would preside over the Senate trial. It comes down to a final Senate vote. At least two thirds of the Senate needs to vote to impeach in order for the motion to pass.

If impeachment is successful, the president would be immediately removed from office, and the vice president would take over until an election.

How often has impeachment been successful?

No sitting president has been removed from office due to impeachment so far, although impeachment proceedings have been brought against three different presidents.

Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998 both were ultimately acquitted and allowed to complete their presidential terms. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 when impeachment proceedings were brought against him for his role in the Watergate scandal, preventing the House from impeaching him.

America is still "Nixonland" (book recommendation)

A kindly old lady from Whittier CA had this to say about a Republican candidate. "I know it's against religion to hate anybody, but I just can't help hating that man." To whom was she referring? Not Donald Trump, not Ted Cruz, but... wait for it... Richard Nixon. The quote is taken from the opening pages of Rick Perlstein's monumental book Nixonland (Scribner, 2008), which Walt commends to anyone trying to make sense of this year's campaign.

Mr. Perlstein chose to write about Nixon and his times in 2008, 40 years after he was elected President, because (as the cliché goes) history repeats itself. Over and over again. The book, you see, is not really about Mr. Nixon so much as the disintegration of the liberal consensus of the Kennedy-Johnson years and the polarization of American politics. The 1968 election pitted the friends of Nixon against the enemies of Nixon. The author writes:

Nixonland...is the America where two separate and irreconcilable sets of apocalyptic fears coexist in the minds of two separate and irreconcilable groups of Americans. The first group, enemies of Richard Nixon, are the spiritual heirs of [Adlai] Stevenson and [John Kenneth] Galbraith. They take it as an axiom that if Richard Nixon and the values associated with him triumph, America itself might end.

The second group are the people who...believe, as did Nixon [himself] that if the enemies of Nixon triumph -- the Alger Hisses and Helen Gahagan Douglases, the Herblocks and hippies, the George McGoverns and all the rest -- America might end.

The [Democratic National Committee] was right: an amazingly large segment of the population disliked and mistrusted Richard Nixon instinctively. What they did not acknowledge was that an amazingly large segment of the population also trusted him as their savior. "Nixonland> is what happens when these two groups try to occupy a country together. By the end of the 1960s, Nixonland came to encompass the entire political culture of the United States. It would define it, in fact, for the next fifty years.

Let's see. 1968 plus 50 years brings us to... 2018. Who will be POTUS and Leader of the Free World then? Whether the Republicans pick Mr Trump or Senator Cruz, or the Democrats pick Senator Sanders or Secretary Clinton, is immaterial. In November supporters of both candidates, red and blue, will be utterly convinced that if their enemies win, America will end.

Talk of uniting the nation is rubbish. The cracks in American society and politics which appeared with the Watts race riots of 1965, have grown wider and deeper. The nation needs a catharsis. But will it get one? That's up to the voters, who, Mr. Perlstein says, are the real heroes of his book. Read it.

Why the chicken crossed the road

As explained by...

The Bible
And God came down from the heavens, and He said unto the chicken, "Thou shalt cross the road." And the chicken crossed the road, and there was much rejoicing.

Jesse Jackson
The road, you will see, represents the black man. The chicken crossed the "black man" in order to trample him and keep him down.

Baltimore Police Department
Give us five minutes with the chicken and we'll find out.

Richard Nixon
The chicken did not cross the road. I repeat, the chicken did not cross the road. I don't know any chickens. I have never known any chickens.

Ernest Hemingway
To die in the rain.

Martin Luther King Jr.
I envision a world where all chickens will be free to cross roads without having their motives called into question.

Grandpa Simpson
In my day, we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Someone told us that the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough for us.

Aristotle
It is the nature of chickens to cross roads.

Karl Marx
It was an historical inevitability.

Bashir Assad
This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.

Ronald Reagan
What chicken?

Machiavelli
The point is that the chicken crossed the road. Who cares why? The end result of crossing the road justifies whatever motive there was.

Sigmund Freud
The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.

Bill Gates
I am about to release Chicken Coop 10, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your checkbook. And Explorer is an inextricable part of the operating system.

Albert Einstein
Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?

Bill Clinton
I did not cross the road with that chicken. However, I did ask Vernon Jordan to find the chicken a job in New York.

Walt
Because the chicken lacks any reasoning or decision-making capabilities, it seems unlikely that the chicken's action was spurred by any particular motivation.

Canucks too polite for their own good?

While recovering from minor surgery, Walt has had ample time to catch up on two political scandals which have been rocking the Canadian canoe this fall. I refer to the saga of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, now at the end of Act I, and the ongoing Senate expenses scandal, which yesterday got close to directly implicating Canuck Prime Minister Steve Harper.

What Walt has learned about Canadians is that they are not just ultra-polite, but very forgiving, even when it comes to the grossest misconduct by their public officials. The forelock-tugging deference shown by those sheeple to VIPs is beyond amazing.


In neither case -- the Ford affair or the Wright-Duffy-Harper scandal -- has a single criminal charge been brought or a civil lawsuit commenced. In America, ravenous lawyers would have been all over the miscreants like pit bulls on poodles! In Canada, "the police are investigating; let justice take its course" is good enough for a citizenry that, in other countries, would have taken to the streets.

And get this! His Honour Mayor Ford and the Honourable Senators Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau are still in office! Apparently Canadians have no provision in their laws for recall elections. As for the Senators, they weren't elected in their first place -- just put in their positions at the trough courtesy of Prime Minister Harpoon.

What about impeachment, I hear you ask. My legal advisor, Agent 3, isn't sure if such a procedure exists in Canadian law. But, he says, he is unaware of any Canadian or provincial parliamentarian ever having been impeached. And the possibility of impeachment has not even been mooted.

Well then (I am still listening to you) why don't Mayor Ford and the three unjustly enriched senators -- Conservatives every one! -- do the honourable thing and resign? Errr, no... Resigning out of shame or as a matter of principle is something they do in Britain, maybe, but Canadian politicians follow the Nixon/Clinton precedents of not jumping until you're about to be pushed...and maybe not even then.


So the state of play today is this. The three Tory senators who have been found to have defrauded Canadian taxpayers of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegitimate "expenses" have been suspended from the Red Trough ["Red Chamber", surely! Ed.] for the balance of this parliament. But they get to keep their perqs, medical and dental coverage, life insurance, and a generous pension plan paid for by...you know who.

Mayor Rob Ford still has an office (albeit a smaller one, barely big enough to accomodate his girth) in Toronto's city hall, and he still has a staff (also smaller) and a salary (not smaller). Plus he still gets to represent Toronto at various ceremonies and functions (but not the Santa Claus Parade or next year's Garrison Ball, Walt guesses), but will no longer be involved in day-to-day running of the city. That leaves him lots of time for appearances (presumably remunerated) on radio and TV not just in Toronto or Canada but also the USA where he has become an instant celeb -- kind of like Lindsay Lohan, only bigger and uglier.

Agent 78 says that in China they'd all have been shot. But not in Canada. Pity.

Presidential debates as reality shows

Did you watch the Great Debate last night? Why??!! Did you expect to learn something about economics? Were you genuinely unsure who to vote for and thought the debate would help you make up your mind? Or did you tune in just for the entertainment value?

Entertainment value is important in the Excited States of America nowadays. Last weekend, as poll after poll showed that Mitt was not inevitable after all, the pundits were saying that the lamestream media would have to start hyping Romney to give at least the appearance of a horserace, for the sake of ratings over the next five weeks. Who wants to watch a contest where the result is already known?

Walt suspects that the majority of those who tuned in did so with minds already made up, cheering either for the candidate sitting in the red corner or the one in the blue corner. And what they wanted to see was a good scrap during which one or the other would get knocked down for the count, or slip and fall out of the ring, or commit some horrible gaffe which would lead to effective disqualification.

I think I've pushed the metaphor far enough. My point, if you missed it, is that the debates have become just another TV reality show. Perhaps they have been so ever since the sweat dripped off Nixon's face and caused 1000s of grossed-out voters to pull the lever for the dry and clean-shaven JFK. The crook who said he was not a crook thus became the first contestant to be voted off!

The first show in the 2012 series of Big Big Brother was not on a par with Superbowl or a WWF cage match. There was no knockout or even a TKO, but in Walt's estimation you had to give the match to Mitt on points. It wasn't so much that Mitt was hot but that the Prez was not so hot.

Obama talked about policy in more detail than an insurance salesman, but pulled his punches on Romney’s business experience and the spycam "47% video". One correspondent called Obama's attack, or lack thereof, "muted and strangely reticent".

Rudy Giuliani was quoted as saying Obama’s unease showed. "This is the first time in four years, since he debated Hillary Clinton, that anyone has really challenged this man, and he fell apart," said the wily pol, describing Obama at times as "totally befuddled".

To put it another way, it was not so much a debate as much as Mitt taking a drive in the country with Obama tied to the fender.

Does this mean we should rush to the bookmaker's and get our bets down before the odds change? Is it, as Republican Senator John Thune said, "a whole new ball game"? Hardly! Mitt picked up a first down last night, but the goal is still a good 60 yards down the field and the media wind is against him.

Note from Ed.: I have extracted from Walt a promise signed in blood that he will ease up on the sports analogies. What with the NHL season looking likely to be cancelled in its entirety, I think he is suffering from withdrawal.

Canadian government could fall over election dirty tricks

The lesson of Watergate was (supposedly) that in an election in a democractic (note small "d") country, the contesting parties are supposed to play fair. Rigged elections are for places like Russia, Egypt and Zimbabwe. But in the democractic west, dirty tricks are to be punished in the courts and at the polls. Anyway, that's the theory.

Canada -- a democractic and fair-minded country if ever there was one -- had a general election* last spring. On only the third try, "Call me Steve" Harper's Conservatives finally got the majority of seats in the House of Commons, something they'd been lusting for since Walt's little boy was a little boy.

Mind you, the result was pretty close, with the Tories winning 165 of the 308 Commons seats. 11 seats fewer, and they might be sitting on the Speaker's left. And of the Cons' 165 seats, at least 11 were won by narrow margins, often in tight three-way contests against the Liberals and NDP.

Suddenly all this matters, because the validity of the results in 34 ridings has now been called into question because of -- you guessed it -- dirty tricks.

The Mounties and Elections Canada, the government agency in charge of rigging elections ["running", surely! Ed.] are looking into reports that "robocalls" -- automated telephone calls -- falsely advised voters that the location of their polling stations had changed. In other instances, voters received harassing late-night or early-morning calls that purported to be from an opposition campaign office.

Another lesson learned from Watergate (and recent US elections) is that dirty tricks work only if you don't get caught. Unfortunately for whoever was making the robocalls, many people now have "caller ID" on their phones. And some had the wit to write down the number from which the robocalls originated.

It has now been revealed that the calls were made by a company based in Edmonton, Alberta -- Canada's version of Texas and, like Texas, a hotbed of conservatism. And sure enough, the company, RackNine Inc., frequently works on Tory campaigns. But who was their client, and who actually ordered the calls to be made?

So far no-one has stepped forward to say "I am the one." Just by coincidence, though, a Conservative staffer named Michael Sona resigned from his junior position in the office of a Conservative MP. Neither his reported departure nor whether there was a connection to the robocall controversy could be confirmed, owing to Sona's virtual disappearance. What is known is that during the election campaign, he was working for the Conservative candidate in Guelph -- one of the targetted ridings.

Kneedipper MP "Pusillanimous Pat", speaking in the Commons on Friday, said it would be unacceptable for the Conservatives to scapegoat a junior staffer for the matter. He called for a public enquiry to get to the bottom of the affair, because "the facts as we know them to date would indicate a well-orchestrated, widespread conspiracy from the top, not some rogue punk out in the boondocks."

Liberal MP John McCallum said he hopes the investigation by Elections Canada will be a deterrent against the proliferation of "US-style political tactics". "Even if it’s just one seat, it’s important," he said. "I’m not saying this would make a difference in terms of a Liberal majority government, but in a democracy those who practise dirty tricks to subvert democracy should be caught and punished."

And it was McCallum's fearless (but "interim") leader, Bob "Ray" Rae, who brought Watergate into it. "We are entering into a kind of Nixonian moment in our political culture, where all kinds of dirty tricks seem to be possible, all kinds of dirty tricks seem to be encouraged," said the white-haired boy.

Who, then, was the mastermind of the robocall disinformation campaign? Here's all you need to know. The Conservative Party of Canada is led by the aforementioned Stephen Harper -- the Prime Minister -- who under that bland exterior is the meanest, surliest, dirtiest Canadian politician of the last half-century.

Harpoon's mentor (and former Tory PM) Brian Mulroney was described as a street fighter. Harper, by comparison, is an alley fighter. And he is the ultimate control freak. Not one freakin' thing goes on in his party or his government that he doesn't know about and approve.

The Liberals are demanding an emergency debate on the issue in the House of Commons on Monday. Will it do any good? Will Elections Canada or a public enquiry succeed in pinning anything on Harper? Walt's prediction: no. Lifetime pct .985.

* From Ed.: Do you know when the Chinese have their best elections? Just before bleakfast.

"This goddamn guy...is an ape!"

The following -- no kidding -- is a transcript of a telephone conversation between President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger. It is quoted in The Teeth May Smile but the Heart Does not Forget: Murder and Memory in Uganda, a thoroughly worthwhile book by Andrew Rice (2009, Metropolitan Books, New York).

Nixon: I'm getting tired of this business of letting these Africans eat a hundred thousand people and do[ing] nothing about it.
Kissinger: And...all these bleeding hearts in this country who say we like to kill yellow people.
N: That's right.... Isn't it awful what these--that t his goddamn guy at the head of Uganda, Henry, is an ape. [Nixon refers to Idi Amin.]
K: He's an ape without an education.
N: That's probably no disadvantage. I mean, you figure that asshole that was the head of Ghana [Kwame Nkrumah] had a brilliant education in the United States.
K: That's right.
N: I mean, so, let's face it.... He's a prehistoric monster.
K: Yeah.
N: Let the British know we're going to help. The idea that we're going to stand still on the ground that any African government that...overthrew a colonial power thereby becomes lily white by our...standards and thereby beyond criticism is ridiciulous. The damn double standard is just unbelievable."

But the USA didn't help. It didn't send troops. It didn't do anything! Three months after this conversation, Kissinger presented President Nixon with a policy memorandum recommending that, with no vital American interests at stake, "no decisions need to be taken concerning Uganda, particularly aid levels." [My emphasis. Walt.]

According to Rice, Nixon scrawled his initials next to the word "approve".

There was no American action in Uganda. The Americans did send an expeditionary force into Somalia but withdrew PDQ. Click on the "Somalia" tab for references. There has been no meaningful American action against Comrade Bob Mugabe, the despot ruining Zimbabwe, in spite of the heartfelt pleas of the Zimbabwean diaspora.

What do the three countries -- Uganda, Somalia and Zimbabwe -- have in common? Why is the USA not much interested in doing anything to relieve them of rule by warlords, dictators and despots? Answer: they have no oil. And anyway, they're African. Let them go on eating each other.