to me. Doesn't take super villians to get people worked up over their brand of religion.

Strange situation.

It's like somebody flipped a switch, and the nation went into a self-destructive fit like a drunk whose wife has left him.

But our Syria involvement was where it truly stopped making any sense even on the surface, it's just been full of contradictions, frenemies, allies who hate us, allies who hate each other, enemies who hate each other, and enemies who want to be friends, etc.

And the government is at war with itself too.

And paranoid. We have real issues, but we can't focus on them because of all the fake issues in the way.

is us and the walls are closing in.

This is a very good analogy.

Succinct and accurate.

Like you say, it was predictable. Let's hope we (the powers that be in the west) don't make it worse. Take care.

is NOT a pretty sight.

I read that around 2003 or 2004. At the time I found some of their analysis questionable, a bit contrived. But as time goes on I see more and more what they were talking about. The extent to which financial masturbation has taken over everything, the consciously predatory attitude towards consumers, the triumph of marketing over engineering as the arbiter of quality, and asset-stripping and speculation the new road to success. All driven by the need to show a return on all the excess cash.

however, since the RATE of profit has been falling for a while now (notice I said rate, not overall profits), it's not a surprise that the "financial masturbation" (GREAT phrase, BTW has taken over the investment strategies for that pile of excess cash the capitalists are hoarding.

Capital is like water in that it will find it's own level of return. Unlike water which pools at the lowest level, capital pools at the highest rate of return. With the decline in productive sectors of the economy, the money goes into those financial instruments BECAUSE they have the highest return.

Karl Marx is questionable as an economist, but no one disputes his historical observation as to how economies evolve over time. One observation was that as the rate of productivity declines, financial fraud increases to maintain the same image of rate of increase of productivity. Thus financial fraud is the last stage of any economic system.

Such fraud is done as the petite bourgeoisie (Karl Marx's name not mine) see their income become the same was the working class (to a high degree this was last seen in the 1970s when professionals saw they income knocked down to unionized workers pay, such unionized workers had cost of living clauses in their union contracts so inflation had little affect on them, but inflation did hurt middle management and other professionals whose income were not protected with cost of living contracts. Reagan "solved" this problem by permitting out sourcing, tax deductions for companies to move to anti- union states, and other anti-union actions that lead to a steady drop in union wages, and thus all wages since 1980. This was covered up by the steady 5 to 6 inflation rate of 1980s and 1990s, which gave the impression of steady income as prices slowly rose.

In many ways we are on a course of a Marxist Revolution. We are not there yet but that is the direction we are headed unless we change course. There are signs of a course change but not enough to avoid a revolution.

It seems to me that his economic theories about the development of capitalism and the rules that go along with that development were pretty spot on. And that's actually being proven more and more every day. One thing to remember when you're thinking or believing the propaganda from the neo-liberals that "Marx was wrong" is that Marx worked over the long term.

When I was first exposed to Marx's writings as a young man, it was at the height of the post WWII recovery when it actually DID seem that capitalism had found a method to exist without the more obvious exploitation that would lead to revolution. It seemed like Marx was indeed, wrong. But what a lot of us didn't count on was the fall of the USSR. Ironically, when the USSR fell the capitalists felt free to allow capitalism to develop on it's more natural course. The course that Marx predicted.

IOW, those 50 years or so when capitalism showed a more gentle face to the workers was an aberration. WITHOUT a nation that at least talked the talk about workers' rule (Stalinism DEFINITELY didn't walk the walk), capitalism would have continued to develop just like it has AFTER the USSR.

And there may be a workers revolution, a la Marx, but that is NOT guaranteed. There are other ways that the dissatisfaction could go, i.e., Bonapartism and/or fascism. In fact if it happened tomorrow, these are the areas it WOULD go toward. One thing that Lenin showed clearly is that, without a vanguard prepared to take political power when the time comes, a workers' government is NOT guaranteed.

Thus my disclaimer, it is more to get people over the massive anti-Marx properganda that exist then anything else. Many people on reading the word Marx will turn off the message before even reading it. My comment on Marx view of the economy is designed to get around that refusal to read Marx.

On the other hand, Marx, like most economists of his time period ignore the effect of the increase use of energy, energy cheap in his time but subject to depletion. Marx did credit George with being the last hope for capitalism for George saw the problem was low taxes on wealth and the best solution was a tax on land (not buildings on the land or other improvements on the land but the value of the land based on its location.) The value of the raw land itself is the product of things beyond the control of the land owner and better go to the state as taxes then to the landowner just because he owned the land. Marx like me liked George's observations. Real estate taxes is a product of George's observations. George was almost as hated as Marx among radical capitalists; but George is ignored for he was embraced by most local governments in the US around 1900. Marx was seen as the greater enemy so George was ignored. The attack on real estate taxes since the 1980s is an attack on George, so like Marx it is verboten to mention his name. Thus I make an effort to get people to read and understand both. In the case of Marx you have to get people to read what he said by first getting them use to the idea he was right on some things by pointing out where he is claimed to be wrong by other writers. Marx's ideas and concepts are more important then his name. Thus get those concepts out, and to do so you have address the image that he was wrong in some aspects to get people to read where Marx was clearly right.

Henry George: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George

I don't agree with it, but at least I see it.

IMO, today many are searching for SOMETHING/ANYTHING to turn this runaway freight train of capitalism around and they've at least HEARD of Marx. So I think that Marx may get a fairer hearing amongst many than you think will happen. Of course, among the neo-liberals you're right. If they even see the name, they turn off. But that's not true with people who are NOT neo-liberal and most of the masses are definitely NOT neo-liberal capitalists.

The biggest problem, as far as I can discern, is it's not Marx who doesn't get a fair hearing, it's Lenin. And that's thanks to Stalin and his ridiculous notions about "socialism in one country" and the vanguard Party being replaced by the bureaucracy. By replacing the Party, who's inner party democracy actually DID at first represent the working class in the nascent USSR, with a bureaucratic caste that was a parasite on said class, Stalin blighted the name of Lenin and, to a lesser extent, Marx and Engels, to this day. By calling his degenerated worker's state and decidedly NON Marxist philosophy, "Marxist-Leninist" he has made life difficult for the TRUE followers of classic Marxism.

That's why I'm a Trotskyist. Trots, even the degenerated Fourth International ones, are closer to the beliefs of Marx, Engels, and Lenin than the Stalinists could ever hope to be. Trotskyism is the Marxist road not taken. But people need to be educated about that.

Without redistribution, to keep the system in balance.

Being a nerd, I consider it OBVIOUS that any unregulated positive feedback system will become unstable, and pretty quickly too. Is the government not having to continually intervene to prop the whole mess up now? Has it not done so numerous times since 1980? Has it not been one crisis after another, about every 8-10 years or so? One bubble followed by its pop, and then the next, and the next ...

During it's end stages those crises come closer and closer together and are more and more severe not giving the masses time to recover from one crisis to the next. Hence instability in the system.

Capital in the Twenty-first Century. Very evidence based and interesting stuff.

I tend to think that what Piketty has to say is obvious, once you put aside the dogmas we are all fed about the economy and just take a look at what is happening. It WAS obvious in 1980, they didn't call it "Voodoo economics" for nothing. But like Happyslug says, the important part of Marxism was the empirical analysis he did, he really kind of invented economics as an empirical study (with a nod to Smith, of course). So I will have to read Piketty for that, anyway, for the ammunition he provides.

as well as in Afghanistan. When the us withdraws from Afghanistan the same thing will happen unless the us agrees to allow Iran to operate within Afghanistan as it currently does in Iraq.

One of the consequences of the disassembly of Iraq will be that there is no regional power that can stand up to Iran, except Turkey, and Turkey will do nothing of the sort.

was when Vietnam - after North and South were combined - was the force that fought Pol Pot - when the US did little. Here, Iran has the clearer goals - they are allied with both Maliki and Assad and - in both cases against the Sunnis - ISIS and anyone else.

The situation in Syria has led to the US really having no good alternatives. In internal US politics, this will be further confused as while most may agree on the fact that there is a mess - you have people arguing that it could have been avoided had the US done far more in 2011 through now. Others would argue that we are/were wrong to get involved at all. Ignoring that Syria - like Iraq before it - has inflamed the already unstable Middle East, there is also the question of how this could impact the US political situation - especially for 2016.

I agree with Obama that we should not put troops on the ground in EITHER Iraq or Syria.That would be likely to only make things worse. It is hard to figure out how this situation could be restored even to the tense, unstable places they were before.

And it has more to do with internal politics of the House of Saud then anything else. The US is involved for the simple reason we are addicted to Saudi Arabian oil.

See my previous posts for more details.

Let them wipe ISIS out.

"Who's on first?" as Lou Costello used to ask. This needs a Glenn Beck blackboard diagram. Offer the Biden plan and back away.

That is IF they live through the weekend. Iran? Cooperating with Washington? Oh, my!

What a sorry old soldier.

The US should do what it dose best. Supply weapons and armament to help the regions recognized governments fight back this tide of viciousness before it escalates. Our operators can place drone carried weapons to the battlefield disrupting supply chains of enemy combatants. Leaving the actual fighting to those forces directly involved with this insurgency.