The Daily Bath

Tespid couldn’t resist watching the State of the Union Address and a few topics came up through the President’s one-sided dialogue. With all the commentary about his skill as a rhetorician in the vein of Diogenes and Lincoln, you’ve got to be careful and think through the carefully chosen words and the delivery. You’ve also got to be mindful of what was not mentioned. Still to do that you have to read and watch more than the mainstays of political commentary and popular news channels. Even the minutiae of your own life can lend a different perspective to what the President is proffering. Tespid called the first 15 minutes of Obama’s speech “the glaze on the donut”. Sugary, thick and the set of the tone for the pastry bite. Without which you might taste the ingredients of what made the core of the speech bitter, acrid and dry.

Three things Tespid wondered about were:

1) Infrastructure. Trade Routes both commercial and business, roads, airlines, bridges, ports and harbors. From the take of it, 2010 is going to be the beginning of the worst of it. In order to prevent deep damage to an eventual fall, commit to repairs and building better way stations. The business of government is business. Maintaining such is to protect the means by which everything is transported. Trade routes are the foundation of civilization. Building new one risks life and limb, protecting old guarantees the support of old money commerce. Maps and Routes, ask any old cartographer, that is the only thing any successful conquerer ever wanted. Progress lightly through clean energy after that. If the infrastructure is set, repaired and old way stations reclaimed, two to 10 years afterwards will be explosive productivity. It’s like organizing you clothes closet or the papers in your office. Once streamlined, you work faster, smarter and are more creative.

2) The President continued to harp on international terrorism and Afghanistan. What happens the day that a President mentions domestic terrorism? Does that mean the roof just caved in on the House of Representatives? His, President Obama’s approaches seemed fractured, spreading himself thin. Is there a unified approach to thread current issues?

3) Continuing with terrorism issues and the American public: What of the Patriot Act? Is that still enabled and active? That was a buzz phrase in many a quiet and loud corner during the Bush administration, especially when its renewal came up in Congress. Issues of privacy don’t seem to come up much anymore considering that everything is loud these days. It’s hard not to hear the conversation around the corner of the next block. Maybe foreclosure lending to the absence of people allows buildings to echo more than usual. 😉

Looking forward to sound bites and FOX news,

Constantine

The Daily Bath

To be brutally honest, I’m sick of CNN.

Then I changed the channel and watch HLN for a little while. Then I realized I missed CNN. The personalities or should I say characters of the anchor is a little more entertaining. Maybe its the orator in me getting critical like Diogenes with a mouth full of marbles. I listened to a few of the female anchors on HLN and was repulsed at their diction. She might as well have been on the corner slinging slang with a few passersby. It became hard to concentrate on what I was doing with my hands. With stations like that it is about the news isn’t it? Not the anchor or speaker. They are just conduits. A clip of the climate summit had a man speaking. I was amazed and became every attentive because of his delivery, tone and diction. It was not “A Fish Called Wanda” moment with John Cleese speaking in various dialects make Jamie Curtis climb the walls with erotic pleasure. It was, well, a good wake up call to pay attention to the station anchors. Needless to say I changed the station back to CNN.

I must have been sick of pulp news fiction:  Tiger Woods, the conviction in Italy and climategate. Maybe the American public is not that interested in world affair. Thus and so I read and glean the net. Oh yeah.. Nobody reads anymore . Guess I’m an antiquarian too. I just can seem to understand how TMZ runs and owns CNN. Not that its true. It just tabloid journalism seem to be the current trend in writing, style, delivery and advertisement. The one who advertises the most is the best? Are you sure? 

On another topic, why is it that President Obama is showing one face to the american public and another to foreign nations? What I am finding on the net as I research is painting a very different picture of what some would like to tout. Maybe I’m just full of hackles and feathers, but he coaches Congress, piecemeals,smiles and nods the public and begs foreign ministers. I figured the century was over for trying to be the new house nigger as a contemporary professional. Keep the field hands happy by throwing them a little meat and tell them what you think the big man is doing. Just keep them from running and destroying things. If they destroy it just reconstruct it green-wise.  Keep the house hand in order by patting them on the back and tell them they are doing a good job. Just keep them out of the way of your business. Meanwhile, since “they’s all lazy negros anyway” go beg for money from the next manufacturing nation to get by.

Can’t please everybody Mr. President. I still say. 2 % of people like you, 1% hate you, 97% don’t give a damn. Don’t worry about it and get to the hard work. Reconstruction done moved North…..and that news is late.

W.H. Tespid requesting an APB for Rubber Ducky

over and out

U.S.A. Economics>Protectionism: What is hidden

Obama’s lethal game of beggar-thy-neighbour

The ‘Buy America’ policy, proposed by the most protectionist Congress in memory, is a piece of disastrous economic folly

Rosemary Righter

The talk at Davos is grimmer this year than last – grimmer, but also better focused. The causes and extent of the financial crisis are better understood, though the hunt is still on for ways to stop the rot penetrating the global economy. It helps, too, that some fancy theories have bitten the dust.

Last year’s pet Davos theme, the supposed “decoupling” of China and other emerging titans from the American economy, the idea that they could thrive independently, has been badly mugged by reality. As the US went into a tailspin, so did Chinese exports. China’s growth rate has halved, from more than 12 per cent in 2007 to just over 6 per cent; tens of millions have lost their jobs and China’s (very nouveaux) rich have lost fortunes invested in collapsing housing and stock markets.

Making the first visit by a Chinese leader to Davos, Wen Jiabao, China’s Prime Minister, insisted that his country would hit 8 per cent growth this year through “hard work”. But his main purpose was to showcase China’s readiness to co-operate in a concerted rescue effort. If China’s leaders ever bought that “decoupling” myth, they are by now badly rattled by the weight of evidence to the contrary. They know they need the US and Europe to recover, and fast, because China’s thrifty consumers, most of whom have little disposable income, cannot begin to compensate for the slump in Western demand.

They also know that the Obama Administration will not tolerate Chinese policies “that put US workers and businesses at a disadvantage”: a conveniently elastic concept that could cover anything from foul play to cheaper wages. They have been told that the new Congress contains strong “anti-trade or anti-China constituencies”. Mr Wen arrives in London tomorrow looking for a stalwart free-trade friend at court, prepared to help Beijing to weather coming storms in the US-China trade relationship.

BACKGROUND

• China says it can meet growth target

• China and Russia blame US for financial crisis

• Gold price to rocket if China sells dollar

• Playing the Davos blame game

Mr Wen deserves a sympathetic ear – provided he accepts that alliances are mutual by nature and that China courts trouble by slipping export tax rebates to thousands of its manufacturers. If this year’s Davos topic, “shaping the post-crisis world”, is not to look ludicrously optimistic a year hence, markets must be kept open even in the teeth of massive trade imbalances. But in mid-crisis, where we actually are, it is hugely tempting to pull up the drawbridge.

Growth indicators turn sourer with every week that passes. The IMF this week downgraded its 2009 global forecast – yet again – from 2.2 to 0.5 per cent. Its forecast, to cheer you up further, consigns Britain to the ninth circle of hell, with the economy contracting by 2.8 per cent this year, worse even than the eurozone’s 2 per cent and far worse than the 1.6 per cent drop the IMF expects in the US. International trade, the great engine of the boom decades, will shrink this year for the first time since 1982.

Politicians are turning protectionist on the sly, slipping manufacturers discriminatory subsidies, dressing up state aid as training, raising tariff barriers and inhibiting global capital flows by encouraging the banks that they now part-own to intervene to concentrate their lending “at home”.

Trade leadership will have to come from Britain because it will not come from the America of Barack Obama. There, “economic patriotism” is the new protectionism, prettily wrapped in stars and stripes but just as damaging to the world’s prospects of recovery as was the 1930s variety.

Is Mr Obama a protectionist? Instinctively, yes; he has never seen a free-trade deal he would actually vote for, and he talks about trade policy as a tool “to support good American jobs”. But as the election campaign wore on, he toned down his invective against foreign competition, and, because his economic team is basically free trade, the jury is still out.

The verdict, however, will be in very soon. At the behest of the most protectionist Congress in memory, Mr Obama may be about to repeat, at the dawn of his presidency, the same historic error that the much derided Herbert Hoover made just before quitting the White House in 1933. In the depths of the Great Depression, he signed into law the innocent-sounding Buy America Act. It required the US Government to use American suppliers in all public contracts. Less notorious than the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, “Buy America” did huge damage. It proved a disaster for US manufacturing exports and the global economy. Other governments followed suit, and it took decades to begin to reverse the closure of markets.

Now, prodded by America’s mighty steel lobby, a key congressional committee has voted, 55-0, to attach a still more rigorous “Buy America” clause to President Obama’s stimulus package. It bars federal funding of any public projects “unless all of the iron and steel used is produced in the United States”. The clause could be extended to asphalt, cement, heavy machinery, you name it. US dollars, the committee intones, must be used to create “American jobs in America, not Chinese jobs in China”.

Leave aside value for money. Pass over the detail that the US does not produce enough steel to meet domestic demand. Admit that, when economic activity evaporates as precipitately as it has this winter, “saving” jobs looks more important than ensuring long-term competitiveness. Admit, further, that all governments are in the hidden subsidy game right now, whether they boast about it, as in France, or deny it as stoutly as Lord Mandelson – whose “this is not a bailout” brings to mind Magritte’s famous “ceci n’est pas une pipe” painting.

Agree, finally, that when you are the newly elected US President and the money you are preparing to print runs into the trillions, the queue at the trough is bound to form pretty fast. But the scale of the temptation is precisely what makes Congress’s populist “Buy America” rider an irresponsible, innumerate, pernicious bit of political and economic folly.

If Mr Obama blocks this clause, he will anger the Left. If he does not, retaliation is inevitable. That will shut American workers out of “hundreds of billions of dollars of new business”. Caterpillar, to take just one example, is actively bidding for big infrastructure projects in China; it reckons that “Buy America” would kill its prospects there.

The truth politicians need to ponder is that the financial crisis has made sophisticates of us all. Most of us understand far more about how globalisation works, how the pieces hang together, than we did before everything went pear-shaped. We have made the connection between prosperity and globalisation – at the simplest level, that cheap T-shirts from Bangladesh leave us with more money for other things. We do worry about our ability to compete; we demand clear and impartial trade rules. But we can see how beggar-thy-neighbour protectionism creates more beggars – costing, not “saving”, jobs. It is time the language of politics caught up with us.

Blankeity Blank Blank…..Eureka!

After Thanksgiving I convinced myself I’d be willing to change my diet back to reveling in fruits and vegetables (Blah. blah. blah.) The month before I shed eight to ten pounds with that strategy. Thanksgiving, with its twelve pies and candies, made up for the regimens weight loss results. In the least I lost so I would not be at a severe gain  come December first.

Yet, clarity of  my mind and the morning air called for waffles, sausage and a steaming cup of CNN. Periodically I become a news junkie, but now serendipity targets time when the white house puts on a show worth prime time market hours.

The job summit was no summit. I, ignorant, was thinking it would be a panel of experts and targeted discussion or hot problem spots, stop-gap solutions, forecasts, emergency patches and heated dialogue full of wisdom. It was a press relations fill stunt run like a rally. President Obama’s attempts to gauge and drive a carefully selected cross section of a influencable population was more apparent to me than usual. Then again maybe my eyes have blinders and all I can see is the spaces between the words and read their faces like completely deaf people. Let me illustrate a comparison for you. If you have ever watched a socialist democratic presentation or a clip of communist meetings from the 1960’s you might see similar tactics and behaviors. For fiction references try watching Farenheit 451 and Gattica. Watch the way people behave during group gatherings. What happens is that the audience is carefully screened and selected to all be supporters. All of these supporters have a certain level of knowledge of the party and its representatives. Most of that knowledge is sound bites, bland factoids and party jargon that gets parrotted back to the viewers. It gives the illusion that the speaking candidate has 100% support for his/her ideas.

(Appearances are deceiving and reality is downright maddening when you get down to the details if you don’t classify as much as quantify. All the more to know that the medium is the message. This medium is live theater. If the army talks about war in terms of the location of the front and the theater. Maybe,  just maybe I pose that the war is on television regularly. Prime Time broadcasts are not the opportunity for wiggle room. That is when you know “it”, whatever it is has happened and the methods to carry it out have already been in progress for some time. Prime time announcements are the final word. I say this because Obama has yet to have an eight p.m. sit down with the American public. He dodges and wanes in the early day when no one is watching anyway. Yes, I did get my soaps in today on CNN. Though it is a little more delicate and dance than Luke and Laura and Stefano in the hospital again.)

Consider how many times news anchors say that the Obama Administration spends a great deal of time controlling his public image.  Even down to the point of who is chosen to ask questions (e.g. plants in the audience). For all the interruptions during town halls this past fall ans summer, why have presidential forums been so void of the hard-core questions? Devoid of the anger? Devoid of the rapid heated pulse of public affairs in common open air public forums? The concept of everyman is dead when it comes to President Obama’s listening ear. Any orator can sound divine when he has a controlled room and the choir to preach to. Strength and tenacity is in responding in an impromptu way. Informed people who listen to the questions and reply to exaclty what is spoken would know. It’s a great thing when someone hears you, while it is a skillful burden to hear. (“Let him who has ears, hear”)?

>Illustrators Footnote:Catch a glimpse of North Korean television or recorded Politburo meeting in China circa 1950…..

Sounding off on the Eve

Honestly, I’ve never watched a professional be so unprepared. He doles out and feeds on scraps of what image machines build. If a crumb falls from his mouth he saves it and hides that to from view till it can be marketed successfully. His appearance, like his policy, is paper thin. For an administration that touts itself on being transparent, it would be nice not to have to wade through vacuous paper trails.

The government printing office still has a debt from the Clinton administration and Monica Lewinsky testimony not nostalgic reading memorabilia. ( That tome of literature would be a better read that Lady Chatterly’s Lover couched in a brown paper bag in your 6th grade English composition class.)

It’s not a matter of flip flopping and indecisiveness. Silobreaker, I thought, reported Obama was gearing up to downsize troops in Afghanistan while today’s press conference confirms the opposite. Apparently he is scheduling to send more.

I notice that even from the beginning his plans for foreign and domestic policy where “glossies”. Meaning that he grazed the points of the issues and couched it in complex grammar and rhythmic tones to make it seem pleasing and introspective. Dare I say to many years of taking diplomatic action from front page newspaper headlines will delude anyone into thinking that running government is easy. And that the entertainment glamour machine is the current that runs under all the cities. Sooner or later you have to realize at that level that it is never who you know that gets the job done. Passing the buck an assuming that smiles and congeniality will persuade them your way. That’s the defense of a confidence man. When will he realize it is what you know and the timing can be relative with the right strategy. Intelligence is obligated to work; if not just to keep yourself from going mad. The questions are always posed and sooner or later the networking, nee partying and state dinners all run into a blur with the alcohol and the photographs. When are you going to get down in the dirt Mr. President? Knee deep. Your photo spreads are too clean for my tastes and you always seem to skirt the issues and run in to a defensive posture when constructive and critical criticism arises. Dare I say you were unprepared from the very beginning?

President Obama can not make a decision because he takes no time to research the depth of complexity involved in the subjects themselves. his knowledge base seems void except to be an orator whois more in the vein of a rallyist. A so-called champion for laborer rights who has graduated from the bull horn to reenacting the mannerisms of Malcolm X and the intonations of black preacher to “move the crowd”.

Strange how this is the age of the charismatic motivational leader. (Please excuse my allusion to Jim Collins book.) Always selling their soul to be the representative of a cause. Is it attention or the need to be the poster child or face of a corporation. I say it is conceit. Honestly, Obama got elected for being black at the right time and right place. Seriously, any black of a certain appearance that can oakie doke white population into being comfortable with him and that he has some modicum of a clue about government they too would be elected. Though I didn’t delve deep it was enough to read and listen to heavy weight journalists clue in during the election months that Obama was not knowledgeable enough to get to the core nature of the job. The reason I did not have to corroborate with other services and people is that they were blunt about there observations. When you have 30 minutes for political topics and you hammer it in one sentence. Your audience should know that the premature decision puts us all at risk.

I can honestly agree with being black at the right time and right place thank to a former professor who told me to use my double minority status to my advantage. I learned to know when I was thrown a bone because I was a different color. You don’t throw bones at talent, you just watch ’em spin till they produce something they don’t want to part with. Then you move in for the kill.

I wish Obama would be more informed like what I understand former president James Carter to have been in the 1970’s. I still wonder if it was knowledge or sheer interest in culture that led to his success in the Middle East.

Dearest me, looking into a job like the Presidency, it seems politicians concentrate on the election and leve the rest to learn as you go. They try to keep approval rating up in the mean while to get elected for a second term. Then try to do something anything as a signature mark on their last days.

I’m often struck at the glamour machine or entertainment news like approach to the white house this starving season. As if watching President Obama as a song and dance man, grin and pass a new painting of himself on the cover of Rolling Stone will stop the bile building in our stomachs for lack of substance to sustain us. I know the stereotype of the grinning nigger or the dancing minstrel to the point of knowing the light fare of the President’s life that has covered all media services has insulated a vote of no confidence in him, by me permanently. Flipside. if it is not the news media that chooses to present this side of him. Is this all the white house chooses to put out? Which tells me that truly that is all there is.

Photogenic. gregarious. Practiced physical stance. Threats of violence by black community leaders if he is not elected. Rallyist. Fame hunter.                      … I still think this is an FX presidency with all the Hollywood money that poured into his campaign. The figure I saw on the screen election winning night looked too caked of makeup and had different facial proportions. He was too strict in his tone and words compared to other news clips along the campaign trail. The stage set itself  it seems. Especially considering it had theatrical support to pull off this play. Only when the first death ensue will I call it a true tragic opera. The curtain is open, I’m still in the theatre watching but turned off because the character list is lengthening in the side stages that I can not see.

I am not a voyeur, but I am still a kid and watching entertainment. Suits, stains, makeup, sound, still shots, costumes  and the atmosphere in the theatre can all be intoxicating in and of themselves. Orchestration like that takes time, talent and support. Uncomfortably funny and too open is the thought of who and why. Maybe I’m just old enough and finally see differently now.

Aside: Dad once told me to think big when it came to living on this planet. This is between his discourse on Masonry and the Moors.”Be a people manager” I think that is what he called it. Learn how to control and direct groups of people. For instance, move them from place to place. All I could whisper in my mind was “Mustapha Mond” in Alduous Huxley’s Brave New World.

Comment: I have to point out this dead white men theory of how history developed needs redevelopment in the news. Marking the step of time by individual enterprise is a validation of our culture’s religious practice of selfishness and conceit. Change the news up for a day and find me a movement and discuss it in depth. Not just the birthers either.

Aside: Has Mr. President slept in Abraham Lincoln’s Bedroom? And I wonder, what did the ghost say?

…..A little oddity that some African American revisionist historians tell is that Lincoln was a mulatto as well.

Counterterrorism and The Administration

CIA Counterterrorism Expert: Obama and Holder ‘At War’ with Agency

Monday, August 31, 2009 7:59 PM By: Kent Clizbe

In the early days and weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, a small cadre of men (and a few women) with vast amounts of intelligence experience reported to the Langley, Va., headquarters of the CIA. These unsung heroes then were dispatched across the globe to run operations against the al-Qaida conspirators who leveled the World Trade Center and struck the nerve center of the U.S. military.       The FBI, a domestic law enforcement agency, did not have the ability or skills needed to track down and strike the attackers overseas. The Pentagon, with F22s, nuclear aircraft carriers, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and battalions of the best armor in the history of mankind, was like an elephant attacked by a mouse — mighty, but helpless in its mammoth rage.       Our best hope was in the hands of the gray-bearded intelligence professionals who fanned out across the world. Supplementing the skeleton crew of staff officers left in the wake of President Clinton’s anti-intelligence scourging of the CIA, the volunteers went to the Middle East, Asia, Europe, Africa, South America, to the most remote and isolated outposts in the world. Sometimes they worked with friendly forces, and sometimes they worked alone. They focused like a laser beam on one thing: Stop the next attack. Their mission: Seek and destroy the terrorist planners, facilitators, trainers, financiers, and their infrastructure wherever they were.       Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, CIA officers, both the contractors and the overextended staff officers, launched dozens of initiatives. The CIA Counterterrorism Center’s motto, “Deny, Disrupt, Destroy,” became the reason for our living. We left our families for months on end and sacrificed personal and professional lives to fight the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Google “Jihadists in Paradise,” for an unauthorized account of one of my contributions (I have been advised that I can neither confirm nor deny).       As I did my part in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa, my family tried to maintain a semblance of normalcy at home. My son was in eighth grade in September 2001. I did not see him graduate the next summer. I was home less than six months for each of the first three of his high school years. Even with my nightly phone calls, his attitude and grades plummeted in my absence. He went from a happy, engaged, charming 13-year-old with straight A’s and a focus on the future to a sullen, uncommunicative, high school flunky. I put my successful and lucrative executive recruiting business on hold for eight years. Finally, after five years of constant travel, my family sacrifice account was overdrawn. Coming home was an option for me, and I took it.       Others did not take that option, and they sacrificed the quality of their marriages, participation in their children’s and grandchildren’s lives, the profitability of their businesses, and more. Personal and professional issues festered and rotted while they fought to keep America safe and prevented further attacks on our homeland.       In contrast, where was Eric Holder? Before leaving President Clinton’s employ, he orchestrated the pardons of several Puerto Rican separatist terrorists. Then in 2003, as a partner in the Washington law firm of Covington & Burling, Holder’s client, Chiquita Brands, admitted paying to support terrorist death squads in Colombia and paid a $25 million fine. During the time my friends worked to disrupt and destroy terrorist networks threatening America, Holder’s firm represented — for free — 16 terrorist detainees at Guantanamo.       Has he made any personal or professional sacrifices since his country was attacked in 2001? If he has, it is difficult to find them. When the special prosecutor comes calling, maybe someone from Covington & Burling can represent my colleagues for free, like they did for Lakhdar Boumedienne and 10 other terrorists in Gitmo.       The Holder/Obama Global War on the CIA (GWCIA) has only just begun, as it debuted with “grisly revelations” of revving drills, gunshots in the next cell, and threats against a terrorist’s children. The GWOT is not for the faint of heart, nor the queasy. No war ever has been. There may be slight improprieties stashed in the CIA’s closets, but the liberal-appeasing GWCIA is foolhardy and dangerous.       Mike Spann, was the first to die in the GWOT. He won’t have to worry about the Holder/Obama GWCIA. But others in the agency are very worried. While we sacrificed to achieve incremental victories, Holder and Obama plotted and schemed — not against those “evil-mongers” who killed our countrymen, but against those of us hunting the terrorists. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. The odor is not from Langley, Mr. Holder.   Kent Clizbe is a former member of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. In 2001, in the aftermath of Sept. 11, he returned to the CIA to serve multiple counter-terrorism deployments. In 2005, he was awarded the Intelligence Community Seal Medallion for his anti-terrorism work.       © 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

American Crusades: What happened in the rose garden?

from Kate Greenaway’s drawings

In one or two traditions Jesus Christ is known as the rose. In the Rosacrucian tradition he is known and the red rose I would think. {i.e thus rosa translated as rose and crux as in crucifix or cross.}  The House of Roses is also known as the House of York. The House of York has produced and bred one or two Kings in the longevity of the British Isles. Now you may understand better the previous post about Kings, roses and progeny a little better.

From what I dare to conclude, the monarchy never left. As in the people who are bred and born to lead. Nee sometimes purely take over. What has changed is the systems by which people are managed. Believe me.. Life is nothing but management systems. Its in the plumbing where the resources get developed. Thus another reason to be concerned with water. But, back to the secondary topic. One)If  kings, queens, princes and princess are in power and St. Mark has always been correct about not wrestling with flesh but with dominions and potentates, may I please ask a deceptively simple question: Where are the real maps? How far does one potentates power extend into anothers kingdom or queen’s hierarchy?

Is management (lower and mid-level) a matter of negotiation, persuation, dialogue, false empowerment and dictation or search and seizure?

Is there such a thing as a power map or should I state sphere of influence map? Power risk and assensment map? Hmmm. We might need one of those in our office.

Second) Here is a tribute, rather tax offering to the king in this kingdom. Robin Hood would have my numnums if you understood how subverse this reverberates. Considering the economy and many people ignorance that historically the maintenance of a democratic republic is by capitalism. Periodically monopolies have arisen ini the history of the United States to save economies. At later dates they have been tactically dismantled by trust busting. Take a look at Franklin Delano Rosevelt’s Presidency, term on the U.S. Supreme Court and Terms as the U.S. Congress. I say that because he did have complete control. A “small”  historical journalism reference is the writing of “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair. His was the age of “muckraking” journalism. That style ripped any ethics issue of a politician and industry apart. If I remember correctly “muckraking” was a term coined by FDR. They were at his throat constantly. When domestic national security issues begin to arise as a result of homelessness the level of investigations and surveillance will rise. We are in the second year of the depression. Carefully recall if you are old enough that when the Great Depression began and the McCarthy Era, everyone was investigated and basically prosecuted for their affiliations. There will be no excuses. 

The other issue is that being a member of the U.S. government by nature of the preamble of the U.S.A. Constitution (for the people and by the people and for the general welfare)

I take issue at wondering were the money is going concerning any funds leaving the United States. I may not be the one balancing the checkbook but I think it would be clever to track what is posted on the U.S.A. State Department’s website or The White House’s site as to investature of not only money, but time and effort. Matching that up with television and print news services may finally bring the importance of world events and world history to the common citizen in this country. If you are bringing home the bacon, please be kind enough to let the rest of us know how to prepare the eggs, toast and set the table when you arrive. It’s nice,nifty and neat when the head salesman comes out to ask for product support, It is excellect and sign on the dotted line when not just the company has a cabinent to support him, but when the whole town where the factory is (a factory among  maybe roughly 192 in various ventures) sponsors the meeting by catering, giving accomodations, providing extra hands to cover all the other work (also from a neighboring town) and a few small business chip inwith vocal support…. Sometimes that loan becomes a grant that never has to be repaid. Especially if you track your progress and offer to teach the stretegy to another factory.

Look at that… you just strategized never to be allies in the U.N.

FYI: If I understood correctly, according to a world economic news report, three consecutive quarters(?) of economic decline depending on the GNP(?) means the endof a recession and beginning of a depression. I may be wrong, so please forgive me.