Enh, we (will never?) need them anyways...

As loathe as I am to keep raising the same issue over and over, the one of China over-claiming the South China Sea keeps appearing on the different news sites I check. This time, Radio Free Asia has an article which contains quotes from the likes of D-VA, Jim Webb and R-AZ, John McCain who want the government to take a firm, open position which acknowledges regional alliances. In addition to their quotes which encourage engagement, the article provide a counter-point from Arizona County Sheriff Paul Babeu who questions why America has 30,000 troops sitting on their hands in South Korea while the AZ-Mexico border is understaffed with 1,200 National Guard.

What is the balance which we're comfortable with? Babeu claims 6,000 troops are needed to safeguard that border. According to GlobalResearch.ca, we have around 250,000 troops stations between 700 overseas bases. That implies we do have room to scale back overseas duties to fill domestic border ones, but the site also suggests we have 1,400,000 total military personnel, meaning we already have 1,000,000 sitting around inside our borders. What are their duties? Can they be shifted?

It feels like there's a large number of little details which will be very hard to find in order to make a strong decision to forward to our representatives. In that case, it may be best to define a framework of preferences so they can properly sort the choices in a way that reflects the desires of the people. This requires getting people to stake out a position on if they prefer using domestic troops for domestic duties first, of if they want to draw down foreign duties, even if that means idle troops. Are there regions which could be preferentially drawn down from first?

Engage your fellow netizens using the trolling rules in the eBook. Have them ask questions to clarify the parameters of revising or military expenses and allocations to have less waste and more impact. Report your results in the comments!

General Updates

Today's post is some brief fiction which was contributed to the Become a Supervillain blog. As well, I've started a Zazzle Store (http://www.zazzle.com/jotunn) with a short list of items, to be expanded as more posts are made and more artwork is created.

America's Trade Bank: Ex-Im.

As an amendment to yesterday's Russian Pork post, an article on the Council of Hemispheric Affairs appears to imply we do already have a system in place for exploring and expanding our exports: The Export-Import Bank of the United States. Its key role is financing and providing insurance to companies who are looking to begin or increase their export capacities.

This is an instance of the government spending money to make money, or otherwise stimulate the ecomony. Their recent track record in that regard doesn't seem good. However, the rationale that there are several billion customers (and all the fastest growing markets) outside our borders, it does seem like a reasonable gamble which could correct that trend of poor performance.

Ex-Im, as a government program, is up for renewal this year. The government needs to decide to keep or discard the bank. The CoHA article lists some of the common for and against arguments in a "Critics" section about halway down. I can't quite catch the import of half the statements, so I find it difficult to make a meaningul summary. Take a quick look to see fi you can untwist them back to plain english.  As best I can tell, the main arguments for each side are 1) Ex-Im crimps the performance of domestic lending institutions by competing for the same borrowers, and 2) Ex-Im is a counter-force against the effect of similar institutions in other nations.

So, do we cut away Ex-Im to save some budget and shift those borrowers back to private banks, or do we keep Ex-Im in hopes it will generate more export jobs than the private banks could? Use the eBook tips to get people talking, save the thread and e-mail your Congressman.

Threadjacking Non-Political Articles

To an extent, any individual's problem should be treated as everyone's problem. The longer that individual is stuck, the longer it's going to take for them to contribute at full capacity to the work of others. If one gear is gummed up, that can ripple through the whole machine and grind it all to a halt.

You'll often hear "The (President/GOP/Dems) need to hurry up and make a strategy to address (a specific issue)!" This is inaccurate, we all need that strategy. Instead of waiting, we should be contributing. The big difficulty arises in motivating others to participate, and before that just getting their attention focused on the problem.

Many "big stories" which are presented by the news during the election period are not policy-related. This is your celebrity news, movie reviews, sports updates, advice columns, and so on. When people go to those articles, it's highly likely they're not in the mood for politics. They want a break, some respite, or an escape from the drudgery of real life. Any attempt to hijack these kinds of stories onto a policy-related subject tends to meet very strong resistance. The audience in that case must be kneaded, massaged, or marinated onto the other topic.  Lobbing an info grenade only attracts passing attention.

Similar to the "Category Shifting" mentioned in the eBook, where you subtly and incrementally slide a political thread along a spectrum of political genres until it's on the subject you want, you'll need to "Inclusion Shift" people out of the current subject, then onto politics, then onto your selected issue. The tone of the post which initiates the shift needs to simply be an open-door invitation. You need to make it look like a party could be happening inside, and just needs some potential celebrants to step forward. The key to that step is using an open inquiry which is free of claims, embellished with some feigned ignorance so others can think they'll get to rub snide responses in your face and feel superior.

As a first example, if you were in a movie review which was getting a lot of responses, and you wanted to talk about budget cuts, you could simply start by saying "Did they make their money back? I didn't go, so I don't know if any real crowds showed up." Others will likely then start spamming back at you with easy-to-find Weekend Box Office Receipts and the movie's estimated budget while ridiculing your apparent lack of google skills.

You could then "respond appreciatively", highlighting the difference between cost and income, then muse aloud if anything could have been done to make that gap bigger; using cheaper non-union actors, outsourcing the computerized special effects to India, and so on. Others, then wanting to brandish any familiarity they have with production, in order to look savvy among their internet peers and again to mock your lame nebbishness of cinematic know-how, will begin either critiquing or clarifying your suggestions, expanding on the general pool of information in the thread.

At that point, you can simply "boggle openly" at "all the amazing things Hollywood can do", and then "wonder publically" if any of it can be adapted to things the government works on as a way to increase the gap between federal income and expenditures. In order to increase their value as a contributor, others will likely begin adapting their previous suggestions in order to show off how versatile their knowledge is, use their degree, guide your seemingly frail, ill-equipped mind to the light and get the warm fuzzy feeling of being a leader.

Everyone is now writing fixes for the economy. Make a copy of the thread and forward it to your Congressman.

You're welcome.

Russia Bans American Pork

Oh... wait, the Economy In Crisis site means they banned American pork meat, not American pork spending... damn... In either case, the article describes a few facets of international trade we could focus on to help our own economy. They key one to draw out is that Russia has a trade surplus of $137 billion annually. This means they're getting more money from others than they're giving out, and are becoming richer. We, on the other hand, have a trade deficit of almost $400 billion, and as a result are becoming poorer. We sold 1.8 trillion dollars in goods and services, but then bought 2.5 trillion dollars in good and services last year. This has been a trend for decades.

If there's any wonder why we have no money, this could be a possible explanation in that, over just the past decade, we've spent five trillion more dollars than we've earned. That's the equivalent to around $1,600 per year per American. If we need to free up some money or clear debt, yes we could look to spending cuts or tax increases. Alternately, we could try selling more things to people who have money (such as Russia with their massive trade surplus, or China and Germany who also have them).

In addition to discussions on what to tax and what spending to cut, we should "encourage" each other to step back and look at what's selling the best between nations, see if we can make it to sell too, and if we already do, can we make more of it and create jobs that way.

Enh, we (still) don't need them anyway...

As a re-visitation of a previous post, the Eurasia Review has some specific incidents of escalation over control of the South China Sea. According to their notes, Phillipino fishing vessels have been fired on by the Chinese Navy, and one of the oil exploration vessels was accosted by Chinese patrol boats and forced to leave the area it was investigating. Chinese ships also allegedly cut a Vietnamese undersea cable as it was being laid by a Petrovietnam vessel. American oil suppliers Exxonmobil and British Petroleum are among those trying to explore the area. This could be one factor in the rise of oil prices, and the resulting rise in food prices.

China has stated an intent to increase its naval "enforcement capacity" by 36 ships from the current 300. Right now, the various nations in the area are trying to negotiate with China over the area which China claims as irrefutably Chinese despite extending thousands of miles from their own coast and well into the economic exclusion zones of Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei on the other side of the ocean. These are waters in which the US Navy currently operates, and likely uses as a transit space to get to and from Afghanistan and Iraq from West Coast bases. This issue can affect us, and we should be involved. Meditate for a few moments with the rules from the eBook and then hijack any trivial stories you see in your preferred news sites. Here are some examples to seed your thoughts:

• (Hopefully the last of the) Weiner Resignation Stories: "Who benefited more from all this coverage? The people of New York who get to elect a new face, or the people of China who got to annex an entire ocean away from a dozen other nations while we weren't looking? Thanks for the heads-up, (news site)!"
• New FDA Warning Labels: "Will there be any labels on Chinese goods about how annexing an entire ocean away from our allies and closing shipping is dangerous for our economic health?"
• Casey Anthony Trial: "I bet it was the Mom and Dad who chased down our oil exploration ships off the coast of Vietnam, and Casey's just not saying it out of loyalty. Er, wait... maybe that was a story about China which (the news site) isn't covering out of ignorance..."

Hackers in China are watching you pee.

According to the China Daily, the US Government is struggling to keep up with the pace of computer security threats, even in the military. They allege that government systems remain compromised by an "agent.btz" virus, and that our budget-reducing measures which shift to less localized access-it-from-anywhere networking models will make the systems even easier to compromise. The China Daily quotes US General Keith Alexander as saying the Pentagon computer networks are probed by potential attackers 250,000 times every hour.

While previous posts may have mentioned that there's room in the military budget to cut, this could be one area which may be valid to increase. Do we trust the computer security around our military secrets as-is? What kind of information is at risk? What's the worst thing that can happen from an intrusion which grabs that information? Are there different infrastructural directions we can take to protect the data? Is this just the military's problem, or one of the internet as a whole? There are a lot of potential discussions which can stem from this issue.

If you feel this is important, try massaging some statements like these examples using the rules in the eBook to try and hijack the less relevant conversations everyone else is involved in:

• Wildfire Immigrant-Blaming: "Which immigrants are to blame for the wildfire of  250,000 cyber attacks per hour on the Pentagon? Can we pin that on the Mexicans too?"
• Georgia Immigration Law: "I don't see why they're bothering anyways. No one wants to move to Georgia to begin with. This year's hot destination? The Pentagon. Their network gets over 250,000 "requests" for data from hidden foreign sources every hour."
• Michelle Bachmann Fundraising Skillz: "The number of people tossing money at her is almost as high as the number of foreign hackers tossing probes at the Pentagon's networks these days (250000 an hour!)." 

Everyone gets a new car!

Today's link is from the more-local KFGO, which I found while searching for news about Brazil. The main take-away from the story is that we're subsidizing Brazilian cotton farmers so we can subsidize American cotton farmers. If ever you wanted some pork to trim, this might be it. However, the government claims it's between a rock and a hard place since having farms at all is considered critical infrastructure. This could be a good point to debate, given that rising oil prices make foreign primary goods ever more costly to ship in. It could be damaging to our economy, but is this argument convincing? More people need to engage in subjects such as this. Use the tips in the eBook and make them feel like idiots and sheepishly get back in line when they aren't engaged:

• Commentary on Father's Day: The biggest gift we give today is the millions of dollars in subsidies we pay to Brazilian Farmer Dads so we can pay millions of dollars in subsidies to our American Farmer Dads.
• Wildfires "Are The Immigrants' Fault": You'd think their pyromania would be sated when they burn all the farm subsidy money we keep sending south of the border just to keep our own farm subsidies legal.
• Hustler Job Offer To Weiner: Playboy should take a page from our government's book and pay Hustler to hire Weiner. It's a win-win, like how we subsidize Brazilian cotton farmers in order to subsidize American cotton farmers.
• Romney Claims He's Unemployed: If he wants a paycheck he should become a Brazilian cotton farmer. We give about a hundred million a year to them just so they'll let us throw money at American cotton farmers without complaining. Easy living!
• Golf Summit: I wonder if it's like the cotton farming industry where they have to pay green fees to Brazilian golf courses before they can pay the green fees at the American golf course.

Hero of the Day 2 - Mississippi Gov., Haley Barbour

According to CNN, at the recent Republican Leadership Conference, "respected party elder, Haley Barbour" advised his party to pick candidates who had solutions rather than those who preached familiar and safe ideology without any substance. Regretably, no one else cares for the idea of focusing on fixing things. CNN notes that the loudest affirmations from the audience came in response to negative attack messages, and that Presidential Hopeful, Rick Perry came out with a nice worryingly dismissive and divisive "Our opponents on the left are never going to like us, so let's stop trying to curry favor with them."

Governor Barbour, you took a stand for the pragmatic and progressive and said what needed to be said even when no one was open to hearing it, and for that we thank you. Next time though, try some negative reinforcement that will get them to be better listeners out of spite. Maybe remind them of the criticism they leveled at Obama about being more a celebrity than a problem-solver and take it to heart before history repeats itself with a similarly ineffective celebrity Republican president.

IMF accuses America of Fiscal Pyromania. Probably Correct.

The IMF (International Monetary Fund) is an organization worked on by about ninety percent of the world's nations, and has the goal of keeping the global economy balanced and growing. They've been doing this since around the end of World War 2, so about sixty years experience under their belt. The China Daily notes that America and some European nations have been called out by the IMF for dancing on some pretty precarious ledges (specifically, the Debt Ceiling votes). The issue at stake: Credit Ratings.

You've probably heard that most governments have an "AAA" rating, and that America is at risk of "being downgraded", but not what that means in hard numbers. Whenever someone issues Bonds as a way of making money, they're given a credit rating and little review blurb by three different credit rating bureaus. The rating and review is used by Bond Buyers (usually banks) to decide how much of an interest rate they're going to add as a condition of the purchase.

An AAA rating means you're considered to have a 100% chance to repay them when required. An AA rating means the money might not be there when they want it back, or might not be enough but that it's really unlikely to happen. The Bond Buyers mitigate that minor risk by upping the interest rate a tiny bit. The problem with that is the "tiny increase" will be applied to billions of dollars in bonds.

According to this Yahoo Finance chart, the interest rate difference between AAA and AA can be anywhere from 0.15% to 0.93%. For every billion dollars of federal revenue we bring in via Treasury Bonds, that's an additional cost of 1.5 to 9.3 million dollars just because banks are scared we might not pass a Debt Ceiling vote. If America had never had more than an AA rating in the past two decades, that would have given us an additional 6 to 37 billion dollars in debt on the roughly 4+ trillion dollars in Treasury Bonds currently in circulation from that timeframe.

We're having a hard time paying our national bills now, and it will get harder if we don't tighten the belt and prevent payments from being missed. Cuts need to come, or taxes need to go up, and your Congressman needs to know where people are comfortable with them being made. Use the trolling tactics in the eBook to out people on what they think they can pay more for, or what they're willing to go without.

Who needs friends when you're this awesome on your own?

A quick google search for "NATO commitment" will get you dozens upon dozens of stories questioning the value of NATO, even if you constrain the search to just the last 24 hours. Not only do Americans question it when we contribute 75% of the resources, but even other NATO members question why they need to be involved at all.  For the most stark perspective, I've picked The Communist Party of Great Britain's opinion piece.

As we look to make budget cuts to get back from the deficit, the military has the most meat to skin from its bones. If you are able to successfully wrangle threads off stupid nonsense stories like the media does cover, you'll need to be informed so you can keep tossing in fresh points to trigger reactions. There is a lot to cover within what, why, and how we contribute to NATO. There's a lot of valid commentary to either keep or discard the organization.

Essentially, if you're against war in all its forms, you can naturally be for America stepping out of NATO and saving some money. If you're for just-cause wars, then the question becomes complicated as NATO needs to be assessed to see if it meets your personal metrics of effectiveness. Some key points to consider are:

• An alliance obligates other nations to "rubber stamp" our missions as needed. For good or bad, this creates an institutionalized bandwagoning effect, and means more freedom to take actions without causing diplomatic problems.
• But, the disparities in contributions between allies are stark enough that the American flag is all people see when a NATO mission passes through. It's not obvious that it's widely supported, so the "rubber stamp" effect is weakened.
• When left to its largely non-American devices, NATO can't even flip a divided, under-manned and under-equipped Libya. Allegedly, some contributor nations are literally "out of ammo".
• It's not that NATO is full of peaceniks, it's that most NATO nations are worse off financially than we are.
• A dissolution of NATO means a weaker US sphere of influence and less international mobility of forces. We would lose easy treaty-obligated access to European military bases, such as the Italian ones used now for Libya.

So, if you do support us remaining in NATO, and working with our current allies to make it meet its own ideals, you can try adapt some statements such as these to hijack threads via the methodology in the eBook:

• Rick Perry for President: "Wouldn't a Gulf Stater only really understand Mexico and Cuba? Who knows how he would plan for and react to something European, like everyone in NATO quitting as an austerity measure and kicking us out of their countries."
• Weak GOP Candidates: "Could this trend be why other NATO nations don't invest in our ideas anymore? If they don't even strongly speak to their own base, can any of these guys stop the exits other nations are taking?"
• Weiner, Post-Resignation Plans: "If he needs something to do, and his only real skill is baiting the ladies with cock shots, maybe we can get him to entice German Chancellor Angela Merkel with some sweet peen to keep Germany in NATO and get it contributing."

Can America prevent World War 3 between India and China?

The Eurasia Review has a nice long-winded breakdown of why the governments of two of the world's largest economies and populations hate each other. The American government has invested massive amounts of time and money into trying to diplomatically resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. We've sanctioned North Korea over the use of ballistic missiles. We've sanctioned Iran over having the potential for ballistic missiles. We use diplomacy often, but oddly we aren't using it at its most critical points: the (Indian or Chinese) province of Arunachal Pradesh and the Indian Ocean. Our economy is tied heart-and-soul into both of these countries. If they go to war, we are doubly damaged.

Both militaries are rapidly expanding, and allocating ever-increasing resources into the same border area. Picture any match of the boardgame Risk you played where two players massed all their forces right next to each other. That kind of "There Can Be Only One" blowout is being set up between China and India.

China is expanding troop-shifting infrastructure that will let them "zerg rush" the border province. India is massing Artillery near the province. India has both commissioned and purchased aircraft carriers to put their count to 3 as compared to China's 1. Lest that appears a pointless understatement, Carriers aren't as common as you may think. Globally, that's a major shfit. Similarly, China has established a nuclear submarine base at its southermost point, which happens to be as close as they can get to the Indian Ocean.

From the American media perspective, there are a hundred stories more critical to address than this. As mentioned in the Happy & Productive eBook, the city won't put up a traffic light until after there's been a crash. It's up to the Troll to force the issue into the conversation:

• Anthony Weiner Resignation: "I wonder if he's also resigned to letting China and India nuke each other to heck over Arunachal Pradesh. I suppose it's a moot point. Judging by the lack of coverage, everyone is resigned to that."
• Anti-Collective Bargaining Legislation: "Awesome. We're getting out of the habit of being negotiators. Maybe now no one will expect us to talk India and China down from going to war over Arunachal Pradesh. Actually, no one's talking about that anyways. The expectation probably wan't there in the first place. Nevermind!"
• Prison Radicalization: "All the evidence needed to close this case can be found by a quick five second google search for Arunachal Pradesh. Just load it up, and type it in people."
• John Edwards Mugshots: "He's smilin' like the Chinese movin' their troops into Arunachal Pradesh."
• Michelle Bachmann for President: "Her term is going to include the India-China war. I wonder if she can see Arunachal Pradesh from her house?"
• New York Same-Sex Marriage Law: "I'm surprised no one in the debate brough up custody rights case of Arunachal Pradesh. If people had read up on the details, it would have firmly shifted the vote counts..."

High Tech Troll Support for the Arab Spring

In a second bonus post of things-trolls-can-only-dream-about, Al Jazeera English has a quick video on a special... uh, "wireless internet that doesn't need the internet"... which our government has allegedly been supplying covertly to various pro-democracy groups in the Middle East. This device enables users to keep the social/viral aspects of the organizing protests running even when the government pulls the plug.

Hero of the Day - R-NY, Roy J. MacDonald

As highlighted in a Time "Quote of the Day", Senator MacDonald is taking the stance of "To heck with all y'all" in regards to either party and to the media. He seems to be opting to do his job and not simply what others tell him. It looks like the trolling of others has finally gotten to him, and he's snapped back into a PRODUCTIVE (eBook!) state. We can only hope more people follow his lead.

Godspeed, Senator MacDonald.

Enh, we didn't need them anyway...

NineMSN of Australia reports on growing unease in the resource-rich South China Sea. American allies in the region, the Phillipines, have specifically beseeched us for help in any form to contain China's run on oil and prevent interference in shipping. Our global trade makes heavy use of shipping in regions like the South China Sea, importing low-cost goods from Thailand and Vietnam, and access to oil is always nice.

Just from the issue of oil exploitation, diplomatic emergencies are sure to arise in this region during the next Presidency. As mentioned in the previous post, China is well prepared to make moves against the US whereas the US hasn't quite put the same effort into protecting itself.  Some example conversation twists could look like:

• The Libya Lawsuit: "o hay guize, can we sue the phillipines for makin us help them stop china from stealin our oilz???"
• GOP Candidate Criticism: "If they can't even sway the moderates of America to vote for them on behalf of Republicans, how will they be able to sway outsiders like the Chinese from taking Phillipino oil on the behalf Americans?
• Michelle Bachmann, Specifically: "She's on the Intelligence Committee but hasn't once brought up how she'd deal with big, obvious intrigues like China jockeying for our Phillipino oil. Does she not know it's happening?"
• Anthony Weiner Resignation Pressures: "Man, we can't even make a guy we voted in resign over something that normally gets you voted out? How we gonna make China step off the oil our Phillipino allies are workin' on when they don't even care if we die?"

China Studies America, America Studies Weiner

Economy, Jobs, and Debt are all issues which are essential to the average American. Given how globalized the economy has become, with supply chains for most businesses encompassing multiple countries, few nations are independent enough to navel-gaze without putting their future in jeopardy.

Much of this rests in buyer-seller, supply-and-demand dynamics. Being able to predict who needs what, and how much they'll pay for it will determine a nation's trade surplus or trade deficit. Deutsche Welle has an article which describes what China has been doing, is doing, and will be doing to become the largest single-nation economy. Much of it lies in monitoring America to grab the clearance sales and entice us into impulse buys.

The key points the article makes are:

1. China has more, and possibly better educated, political analysts, and they're specifically allocated to competing with America.
2. America alone could fall below China for economic (and political) clout, but not America, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, et al combined.

Since this issue relates to our future, that would debatable make it more important than the passing and temporary issues of the present. Here are some examples of how current issues can be re-routed onto this issue:

• Michelle Bachmann running for President: I don't see why anyone is surprised or excited about this. If we had asked China, any of the thousands of political analysts they have watching us for exploitation opportunities could have pointed it out.
• GOP Debate in General: Did you see the size of the crowd? Somewhere in Beijing there was an even bigger room of chinese analysts, possibly in the hundreds, taking minutes so they could plan how to skew our economy even more in their favor.
• Anthony Weiner: The funniest thing about all this, is that somewhere in China, dozens of political analysts have these images saved, indexed, and are running them through computers to look for more holes in our economic defenses as part of their job.

Unflippinbelievable; War #5 Inbound

While possibly just an exercise, and no real cause for concern, a US Warship has moved into the Black Sea which lies to the north of Syria. The article posted on the Asia Times makes a number of plausible arguments as to why the US might assist in overthrowing the current Syrian Government:

1. Russia may lose access to a Syrian-hosted Mediterranean Naval Base if a pro-US democratic government gains power, weakening any diplomatic overtures they make to Mediterranean nations and creating less of a contest for US diplomats.
2. The anti-Israel militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas would lose much support and infrastructure they gain from the current Syrian government, reducing their influence in Israel-Palestine peace talks.
3. Iran would possibly lose one of its staunchest allies and much regional influence as a result.

Relative to wars, Weinergate's pictures of penises and Palin E-mails between co-workers are pretty well insignificant. Here are a few ways to switch between subjects in other areas:

• Anthony Weiner: "If he resigns, if forced out, or just takes a break, I hope he doesn't plan any vacations in Syria what with us bombing it now."
• Palin E-Mails: "I bet she can see Syria from her house. Actually, probably anyone can. We're dropping enough bombs to light it up pretty well."
• GOP Debate: "I wonder if they'll be asked whether our forces in Iraq, Yemen, and Syria count as one war or three? Libya and Afghanistan I can tell are separate."
• Job Growth: "Maybe we should all get construction jobs. We're bombing five countries now, so there's plenty of infrastructure to replace."
• Abortion Rights: "Right now we're offering free, no-questions-asked abortions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, and Syria. The Air Force is handling them, but despite the tools being precision guided, the Mom typically dies too though. :( "