Decelarating

So not too much new going on. That's actually a good thing, since we've been pretty busy since early May. This weekend we've got a Cubs game (possibly our last of the year) and then just relaxing on the agenda. Not too bad.

Christy and I went to the Elton John/Billy Joel concert on Tuesday. Overall it was OK, but I just was not in the right mood for it. I was still tired from the weekend and really would have rather just gone home, watched the Cubs game, and went to bed early. I have been trying to be healthier of late and decided not to drink. I find that I can enjoy a concert sober only if I am really, really into the music and that's only true of a handful of artists for me at this point. And of course with that in mind this concert decided to be the longest one I have ever attended - over 3 and a half hours. Good for getting your money's worth but bad when you're looking at the setlist online and just counting down till it's over. But we mainly went for Christy and she seemed to have a good time so that's all that matters. I have seen Billy Joel before and would see him again but I most definitely will not be going to any future Elton John concerts. Musically, he was fine but man he is just not exciting at all. He's sitting for every song. Obviously he has to do that since he's playing the piano, but it doesn't make it any more exciting for the audience. Then after each song he would stand up, wave his arms a little bit, clap for himself, then sit back down. Repeat. No banter with the crowd at all. By comparison, Billy Joel had the energy of a teenager.

I've been following the health care debate pretty closely. Being a Blue Cross employee, obviously it will affect me more than just about anyone else other than the people currently uninsured that will get insurance. I'm going to refrain from going in depth on it right now because it's still such a work in progress. Suffice to say that on one hand I'm very glad that it's being pushed off till the fall because it still needs a lot of work, and on the other hand I'd be a lot happier to see Republicans take a more constructive approach to the debate instead of continuing to play the socialist card again and again and again.

The only other interesting thing I came upon is a story about the CIA and LSD tests. My brother turned me on to the "Stuff You Should Know" podcasts from howstuffworks.com and one of them was on the CIA's testing of LSD on unsuspecting Americans in the 50s and 60s. This story would seem to be the stuff of conspiracy theories but thanks to the Freedom of Information Act it's now all been verified. I'd advise you to either read the article or listen to the podcast the next time you have 20 minutes free. Frankly (as mentioned in the podcast) I'm absolutely stunned they haven't made a Hollywood biopic about George White (one of the main ringleaders). Of particular interest is that the second stage of their experiments occurred in San Francisco and was one of the main contributing factors to the birth of the counter-culture revolution there.

Moving On

So, a quick scorecard for the last couple posts:

Post (largely) on a book about the Iraq War - 1 comment (unrelated to Iraq)
Post on retirement - 1 comment
Post on Michael Jackson - 21 comments

Seems about right. I'll have to remind myself of this the next time I find myself complaining that Hollywood makes too many mainstream popcorn movies. Does my writing completely suck or do you guys really not have any opinions on these things? Or has Weir become my sole readership? That's a distinct possibility. Weir, maybe I should just start e-mailing you directly. Although, ironically, your commenting frequency is better than your e-mail response rate.

Moving on . . .

I got the quarterly results of my 401(k) in the mail the other day and was astonished to see that it actually made money! Wow, who knew that they could do that?

Moving on . . .

So tomorrow is Christy's shower at our place and I will be . . . elsewhere. I had orginally planned to go out of town somewhere but seeing as we have traveled 3 of the last 4 weekends that doesn't seem too appealing to me any more. So instead I'm going to be hibernating at the movie theatre in downtown Evanston. As of right now I'm planning to see 3 movies: The Hurt Locker, Harry Potter, and Transformers 2. I look at that list and immediately think about the law of diminishing returns.

Moving on . . .

We finally got a Wii and I've been doing the Wii Fit for about a week now. Overall I like it but it is definitely a blow to the ego the first time you step on and a high-pitched, chirpy little voice cheerfully informs you "that's overweight" as your on-screen representation balloons in the mid-section. I really like the Yoga stuff even though it massively exposes how horribly inflexible I am. But I was never gonna go to a class on my own so I suppose this is the only way it was ever going to happen. I also just got Punch-Out last night and it is everything I thought it could be and more. Call me crazy but I've always thought that Punch-Out would make a great movie. Certainly it would have to be campy and cartoony (I'm thinking something in the vein of Hellboy 2) but can you tell me that Soda Popinski, Bald Bull, and Super Macho Man wouldn't make great characters? 10 years ago Matt LeBlanc would have been a good Mac; not sure who would play him now. Forrest Whitaker would definitely have to play Doc.

As we head into the weekend, I think we've gone 10 days now without a celebrity death. Let's hope that streak is still alive come Monday. Also, I'm thinking of doing another roundtable, so either comment or send me an e-mail if you'd like to be a part of it. Better yet, regardless of whether or not you'd like to participate in it I'd love to get some ideas for questions so that I don't have to come up with them all myself and force people to write about things that no one cares about. I'll still be the one selecting the question (this is still a blogtatorship) but I think it'll be more interesting that way.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Happy Non-Sports Day!

As we sit here the day after the MLB All-Star game, we are in the midst of the only day in the entire calendar year with no televised event from any of the four major pro sports leagues (MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL). That means that today is a particularly difficult today for husbands across the U.S. to get out of doing the umpteen number of projects around the house they've been promising their wives they would do this last year or so, and bachelors will need to find some other thinly-veiled excuse to drink on a Wednesday. I will be "celebrating" by going to Home Depot (to get what will hopefully be the last supplies to put the finishing touches on the nursery) and Sam's Club (to get supplies for Christy's baby shower on Saturday). Seems pretty fitting.

I saw this article on Yahoo the other day. You don't really need to click on the link (not that you were going to anyway). The title is "Swearing Makes Pain More Tolerable" but in a Freudian slip moment I initially read it as "Swearing Makes Palin More Tolerable." Indeed it does . . .

Last week saw the passing of Robert McNamara (former Secretary of State) at the age of 93. Few people took a break from the Michael Jackson coverage to notice. I'd just like to take this opportunity to recommend (again) that everyone see the 2003 McNamara documentary The Fog of War about the lessons learned from Vietnam. It is an absolutely fascinating film and gives you some great insight into how things that seemed so certain at the time turned out to be dead wrong. There are obvious parallels to the Iraq War (and really just about any war) and it makes you wonder if 20 years from now we'll be seeing anyone from the Bush administration being as forthright as McNamara is here. Regardless what you think of him, he is definitely worth listening to.

Speaking of passings that no one noticed, how about poor Bill Mays? My brother gets the award for funniest joke in bad taste that I've heard this year. Written to me via e-mail: "Ed, Michael, and Farrah; it always comes in 3s. But wait! Billy Mays will throw in one for free! Only if you act RIGHT NOW."

Anyone who might be keeping tabs on my movie and book lists on the right may have noticed that I finally finished another book: The Gamble by Thomas Ricks. It's only the 2nd book I've finished this year, which is way down from my average of 1/month the last couple years. I blame 1) my obsession with playing Donkey Kong on the el; 2) my Kindle New York Times subscription; and 3) my Economist subscription. In any case, The Gamble is a "sequel" to his 2006 book Fiasco. That book covered the events of the Iraq War from 2003-2005 while the new one covers 2006-2008. The first question most people ask about the books is "Are they partisan?" In my opinion I don't think that they are. Sure, Fiasco was extremely critical about the handling of the war and that was controversial in 2006 but at this point you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who holds the position that the war was run well during that time. This book is definitely more optimistic but that's not saying all that much. You get a lot of great details into how the idea for the "surge" came about, how Petraeus came to be in charge of it, and how the tide slowly started to turn. However, you aren't left with a whole lot of optimism that the situation is not going to start deteriorating quickly after we've pulled out of the major cities (i.e. as of 6/30/09).

The conventional wisdom about the Surge is that it worked because we finally had enough troops there to do the job. That's true, but it's misleading. The real change was one of strategy: we moved from having a small number of large forward operating bases (FOBs) just outside the city limits to engaging in classic counter-insurgency strategy by having lots of small bases located within the cities in neighborhoods. Once it was decided to adopt that strategy, the generals (namely Odierno and retired Gen Keane) estimated how many troops would be needed to accomplish it and discovered that they needed 30,000 more.

In military speak, the "center of gravity" changed from seeking out and destroying insurgent and terrorist cells to protecting the local population with the hope being that once trust was gained with the people and local tribal leaders that they would assist the military in helping apprehend "unfriendlies". And indeed that is exactly what happened. After an initial spike in violence as the troops moved into hostile areas, casualties dropped dramatically and the focus of attacks increasingly became U.S. forces instead of locals.

So why the pessimism? Well, one of the least publicized aspects of the Surge is that one of the principle reasons for the decline in violence (at least initially) was due to the U.S. military deciding to put members of the Sunni insurgency on the payroll to get them to stop fighting. From the book:

This may have been the biggest gamble Petraeus took as the commander of the war in Iraq. He was going behind the back of the Baghdad government to put its enemies on the American payroll. Strikingly, he didn't seem to think he needed to get clearance from the American government, either. When asked about how he had gotten the president to agree to the program, he indicated that he hadn't asked Bush about it. "I don't think it was something that we needed to ask permission for. We had the authority to conduct what are called security contracts, and that was how we saw these."

In other words, the insurgents (particularly those not religiously motivated) were happy to lay down there arms as long as they were being paid to do so. They were paid ostensibly to keep security in their own neighborhoods, but of course the truth of the matter was that with them no longer creating the violence there was not a lot of security forces needed.

All of the strategic steps taken during the Surge were with one goal in mind: creating enough temporary stability to allow the political process to move forward. And quite simply that has not happened. 5 years since the first Iraqi elections and there is still not an agreement in place for territories to share oil revenue; an item that was one of their top priorities. Maddeningly, as the violence got better the politics have actually gotten worse. With the situation not as dire, a lot of the politicians have decided that instead of forging compromises they can afford to take harder lines and be more demanding. The bottom line is that right now Iraq is not a melting pot so much as it is oil and water. As a group the Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds simply don't like each other much, and it's just very hard imagining them co-existing peacefully without the U.S. acting as constant mediators.

And in case you are not utterly sick of me rambling on about this subject, here are some other quotes from the book that I found interesting:

“The surge may have bought transitory successes . . . but it has done so by stoking the three forces that have traditionally threatened the stability of Middle Eastern states: tribalism, warlordism, and sectarianism.”

"One of the lessons of the twentieth century, noted David Kilcullen, the counterinsurgency expert, was that “there has never been a successful counterinsurgency that took less than 10 years.”

"A senior intelligence officer in Iraq described the long-term American goal as 'a stable Iraq that is unified, at peace with its neighbors, and is able to police its internal affairs, so it isn’t a sanctuary for al Qaeda. Preferably a friend to us, but it doesn’t have to be.' He paused, then pointedly noted that his list doesn’t include democracy or the observation of human rights."

"The Americans have imposed power sharing on Iraq’s factions, he said, and that should worry us for several reasons. First, it produces what looks like peace but isn’t. Second, in such situations eventually one of the factions seeks to break out of the arrangement. 'Thus,' McCreary wrote, 'power sharing is always a prelude to violence,' usually after the force imposing it withdraws."

"'I don’t think the Iraqi civil war has been fought yet,' he said. 'I suspect Sadr is recruiting and amassing weapons and resources for that day we pull down our troop levels to the point where he can make a grab for the seat of power in Baghdad. I’m sure his boys are infiltrating all levels of the Iraqi army and police, and he is smart enough to wait until he realizes we are drawn down to a point where we can’t effectively stop him without a massive rebuild of troops, . . . a point where the American public will not stomach another buildup.'"

"The less the Iraqi generals need American support, the more they might be inclined to take control of the government, so one reason to keep a substantial number of troops there, said Biddle, was to deter them from launching a coup. One nightmare scenario, he noted, leads eventually to a Shiite general who takes over explicitly as a Shiite out to suppress the Sunnis—and who has at his disposal a military and an economy more effective and efficient than Saddam Hussein’s ever were. 'Imagine an Iraq-Iran axis with their oil wealth, a modern equipped army, in cahoots with each other,' he said."

"The role of Iran remains problematic. At this point it appears to be the biggest winner in the Iraq war, and perhaps in the region—both in the short term and long term. As former Iranian president Muhammed Khatami boasted to the scholar Vali Nasr, 'regardless of where the United States changes regimes, it is our friends who will come to power.' In other words, all Iran really has to do is stand back and collect its winnings as Iraqi Shiites take power and realize they have few allies in the region aside from Iran."

"Iraqi counterparts would candidly say they were just waiting for the Americans to depart so they could revert to their old methods of population suppression. Older officers 'would sit and tell us they wanted to go back to the old way underneath Saddam and were just waiting for the U.S. to leave,' reported Maj. William Arnold, who in 2007 advised a battalion of the Iraqi 9th Division (Mechanized), a particularly significant unit because it was part of the only armored brigade in the Iraqi army and so would be key to launching a military coup d’état. 'We felt that those guys would listen to us just because they were using us as a checkbook.'”

"Gen. Odierno said in my last interview with him in November 2008 that he thinks Iraqi commanders have improved and that they no longer will automatically revert to Saddam-era viciousness. 'I think two years ago that was true. I think maybe even a year and a half ago it was true. I think a year ago it was a little less true. I think today it’s less true.'”

"When you got to know them and they’d be honest with you, every single one of them thought that the whole notion of democracy and representative government in Iraq was absolutely ludicrous.”

"'We’re thinking in terms of Reconstruction after the Civil War,' Miller added. That may be a historically insightful way to think about the duration of the American presence in Iraq, but it probably is not a good sign politically, given that Reconstruction was a failure, giving rise to the Ku Klux Klan, a terrorist organization that for the next century violently intimidated American blacks and any whites who might seek to help them exercise their civil rights. Nor have Americans signed up for a century-long mission in Iraq."

"The heart of the Iraq matter still lies before us, Crocker maintained in both my interviews with him in Baghdad in 2008, and he likely is correct. 'What the world ultimately thinks about us and what we think about ourselves,' he said, 'I think is going to be determined much more by what happens from now on than what’s happened up to now.' In other words, the events for which the Iraq war will be remembered probably have not yet happened."

A Post on Retirement That I Don't Have a Good Title For

Sometimes, the federal government has a pretty good sense of humor. One of the best and longest running jokes they've come up with arrives in my mail annually when they send me an update on how much I have paid into Social Security and what my projected benefit will be when I retire. The fact that as of right now should I and others in my age group actually receive said benefit amount at retirement the entire country would be bankrupted is what makes it such a good joke.

The Economist did a special report on ageing a few weeks ago. I found this passage particularly enlightening:

When Otto von Bismarck introduced the first pension for workers over 70 in 1889, the life expectancy of a Prussian was 45. In 1908, when Lloyd George bullied through a payment of five shillings a week for poor men who had reached 70, Britons, especially poor ones, were lucky to survive much past 50. By 1935, when America set up its Social Security system, the official pension age was 65—three years beyond the lifespan of the typical American. State-sponsored retirement was designed to be a brief sunset to life, for a few hardy souls.
Now retirement is for everyone, and often as long as whole lives once were. In some European countries the average retirement lasts more than a quarter of a century. In America the official pension age is 66, but the average American retires at 64 and can then expect to live for another 16 years.

Though the report was well written, it essentially took 20 pages to say the following: we are all going to have to work longer. And for proof of that, you don't need a whole lot more than the preceding paragraph. Our current social security scheme only works when one of two conditions are met: 1) an ever increasing population; or 2) a constantly expanding economy. Number 1 has pretty much stopped already (we have population growth only because of immigration) and if nothing else I think that the last year has taught us the folly of being completely dependent on number 2. We have a surplus in Social Security right now because with the vast majority of the baby-boomers still working we have many more payors than payees in the system right now. Also from the Economist: "In 1950 the OECD countries had seven people aged 20-64 for every one of 65 and over. Now it is four to one—and on course to be two to one by 2050." A two to one ratio simply is not sustainable for paying social security in the current manner. Right now the average U.S. worker makes ~$40,000 per year, and the social security tax is a flat 6.2%. Thus, at 7-1 it means that we can afford to pay each retiree the equivalent of 43.4% (7*6.2%) of the average salary (43.4% of $40,000 = $17,360) and still be solvent. At 4-1, the figure drops to $9920 which is not great but at ~$800/month could provide a decent base for someone who presumably no longer has a mortgage or car payment, will have all their medical expenses paid by Medicare, and who hopefully has some private pension saved up to supplement. But at 2-1 we're now down to $413/month. Try living off of that

This is yet another great example of a problem that is actually very simple to understand, but almost impossible to solve; at least from a political standpoint. The math is quite easy. You either need to increase the retirement age (and thus increase the ratio of payors to payees), increase the social security tax rate to get more money per person into the system, or decrease the benefit amounts. How many Congressmen you suppose are lining up to sponsor legislation for any of those 3 ideas right now?

I think that probably the best solution, although far from ideal, is to take an arbitrary age (like 60) and say that if you're older than that as of right now you will still get your benefits at 65. But they will be reduced from their current levels. However, if you opt to work an additional two years, you will get your full benefit amount beginning at 67. For people aged 55-59 it's reduced benefits at 66 and full at 68 and for people 50-54 it would be 67 and 69. For everyone under 50 though, the retirement age will just be raised to 70.

Of course, the absolute best solution from an individual standpoint is to see to it that you can take care of your own retirement savings and then you can retire whenever the hell you want.