Today's Lesson.

If I understand the "five economic lessons from the rock star of the recovery" correctly, the Americans are not even close to creating effective, sustainable economic policy.

1. Our economic house has not been in order for at least a decade.
2. Automatic payments to individuals (ie, entitlements)? Fuhgeddaboutit!
3. Aggressive monetary policy? Timid and untimely, at best.
4. Flexible currency? Nope, we're the global standard.
   
5. Ensure that bankers feel the cost of their blunders? ROTFLMAO.
   

War Is Peace, 2011

In my youth George Orwell's 1984 (a year still well in the future at that time) was THE epitome of the distopian totalitarian future that awaited America if we were not vigilant against the forces of Evil Communism. Perhaps its most iconic element was "newspeak" which defined concepts in terms of their opposites. In the language of newspeak, war equaled peace and freedom equaled slavery.

Imagine my surprise, then, that two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Communist ideology, newspeak is alive and well right here in the United States. Orwell was certainly correct that controlling the meaning of words was a way of controlling thought.

It's certainly allowed Americans to continue to think of their nation as a force for peace in the world even as the nation pursues endless war at escalating costs.

About As Good As Possible

Obama declares success and begins the ever so slow process of downsizing America's war in Afghanistan. "We are meeting our goals" rather than "mission accomplished" even if his claim is as hollow as CheneyBush's juvenile outburst.

For the first time since Lyndon Johnson told General Westmoreland "no more troops" in 1968 a president has challenged the logic of the war machine. Of course, it took another seven years to end that earlier war so I'm not too sanguine about present prospects but at least Obama went a bit beyond the token withdrawal that the generals were offering.

That's about as good as it gets in America these days.