1. “The ludicrous, destructive, curiously enduring myth of U.S. isolationism.
Of all the received ideas that clog America’s foreign-policy discourse, none is more at variance with reality than the threat of so-called isolationism. We have never been more engaged with every corner of the world, yet we have never been lectured more often about the consequences of “retreating within our borders.” The more countries we attack—Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen—the more dire warnings we get about national introversion. The specter of isolationism has never looked healthier.
A case in point was George W. Bush’s 2006 State of the Union address, a venue he used to tell a spine-chilling tale. With his foreign policy exploding all around him, Bush warned against an even more disastrous alternative: there were those who would “tie our hands” and have us “retreat within our borders.” From the tenor of his talk, he seemed to think that Americans were about to burn down both the Pentagon and Department of State, beat defense intellectuals into postal workers, and force every house in the land to set up a little steel foundry in the back yard—just like in the Great Leap Forward—while learning to live on grubs and wild mountain honey.
Of course, this is absurd: as many pointed out in response to this scaremongering, there are no isolationists in America—not in either political party, not in the media, and not in the academy. (The i-word is often used as a synonym for unilateralism. Here I am assigning only its most common meaning: a tendency to ignore security threats beyond territorial borders and disengage diplomatically, politically, and economically from the rest of the world.) Nevertheless, the menace of a return to geopolitical autarky is carted out whenever our sclerotically narrow foreign-policy consensus gets an unwelcome jolt. This habit of mind did not end with the exit of George W. Bush.
…
All myths survive for a reason, and the longevity of this one is easy enough to figure. As Bacevich explains, “Isolationism survives in contemporary American political discourse because it retains utility as a cheap device employed to impose discipline. Think of it as akin to red-baiting—conjuring up bogus fears to enforce conformity in the realm of foreign policy.”
Will our elites ever unlearn this cherished campfire frightener? As William Appleman Williams wrote in 1959, this myth “not only deforms the history of the decade from 1919 to 1930, but it also twists the story of American entry into World War II and warps the record of the cold war.” Fifty years on, our foreign-policy discourse is choked with the same spurious folklore, and we should not be surprised if Obama starts making noises about imaginary isolationists to justify his expansive vision of the U.S. military’s mission. With American grand strategy badly in need of recalibration, it is long past time to get rid of the ridiculous myth of isolationism.”
http://www.amconmag.com/blog/ostrich-america/
2. “BP Platform Blow-Out was covered up in Azerbaijan: Wikileaks
The Guardian reports from US State Department cables released by Wikileaks that the oil and gas giant, BP, experienced a platform disaster in the Caspian Sea off Azerbaijan in September, 2008, very similar to last summer’s Deep Water Horizon platform explosion. BP was reported to have covered up the details of the catastrophe even from its own partners.
If the corporation had been more public about the problem, would the US have looked more closely at the Gulf of Mexico operations and possibly forestalled the destruction of so much of the Gulf environment? Or, alternatively, why didn’t the US State Department blow the whistle itself on the platform explosion and cover-up? There has been USG collusion with BP on all sorts of levels, from coddling its safety violations, to neglecting to publicize its disasters even when private cables detailing them are being shared with Foggy Bottom.”
http://www.juancole.com/2010/12/bp-platform-blow-out-was-covered-up-in-azerbaijan-wikileaks.html
Specifically, Stockman told Dylan Ratigan that Bush’s advisers forecast a $5 trillion surplus over 10 years. But “two unfunded wars and a Fed engineered housing bubble later”, we’re in a $ 5 trillion cumulative deficit. So Bush made a $10 trillion mistake.
Stockman said extending the Bush tax cuts won’t stimulate the economy, the fact that the tax cut extensions will expire on the eve of the 2012 elections will panic politicians and force them to renew them yet again, and that “we’re destroying the economy on Uncle Sam’s credit card.”
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/12/reagans-omb-director-bush-tax-cuts.html
