Charlie Rose

Gelles  12/17/2011 07:48 AM Report

This Time Magazine Man of the Year annual review is followed (in Los Angeles) on the Friday night Rose Show, with a NY Times review of the year by Charlie and three guests, Jill Abramson (the editor), Tom Friedman and David Leonhardt. They, too, focus on the Arab Spring, as the year's primary story.

They wonder how much the Arab awakening to what they want by way of political democracy was prompted by Bush and Chaney's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Obama's follow through now underway (which John McCain disparages for its weakness).

Everyone says wait for history to decide if the protests needed our sacrifices in their region. The connection I make is very direct and strong, is Chaney-like. Not too many Americans make it now -- we all suspect the eventual fate of Arab democracy is likely to be a mixture of modernity and religious legacy that delivers less than dreams are made of.

And what about our own fate?

Insecurity and acts of terror are one fate. Recovery, peace and progress are another. If we do not switch to full employment budgets based on restoration manufacturing and adoption of output based money, I see under-achievement as reward. Unintended under-achievement -- on account of our political legacy -- a curse no that different from other peoples'.

Gelles  12/16/2011 07:31 AM Report

Ron Paul is the dumbest damn fool in the room. Jon Huntsman is the wisest. Jon and Ron, quite a ticket -- not outside the Republican party, but at its very head. An interesting picture reminds me of FDR and John Nance Garner. And then there's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez. Better go back to sleep before I sprout another head even dumber than what's there now.

Gelles  12/16/2011 07:07 AM Report

How about "Debt"?

Our own Shark came up with that one!

I like it because DEBT is the monster we need know more intimately.

..... PROTEST has been registered against the indignity of powerlessness of the masses in North Africa among the Arabian military dictatorships; and

..... against the extreme economic insecurity visited on more than 99 % of the citizens of our nation by these same 99% themselves!

..... ..... BUT MAYBE BOTH HERE AND ABROAD THE PROTEST OUGHT TO HAVE BEEN AGAINST DEBT. Powerlessness and economic insecurity were not the agents. They were the unwanted punishment. DEBT, or rather DEBT-BASED MONEY, was the agent that cracked the whip, broke the bones, inflicted pain, and deserves to receive the stake driven through its heart.

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Closing debtors prison a century or more ago, was not enough.

..... Allowing unpayable debt to exist -- when the law was there to turn debt's teeth into an accommodating help -- where it is stretched and re-organized to fit real economic situations -- and that law (called equity) was never asked to serve, has been the sin against which PROTEST should be at war!

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Shark, turn your lasers on full force against rigid forms of DEBT that have done us in when we were poor and also when we were not.

The deficit in demand that has thrown us out of work is a surplus of rigid debt that has no place in economics unless there's money enough around for debt to be repaid with money left over to reward our work and fuel our jobs.

IGNORANCE ON USING USING CIVILIZED DEBT and not allowing debt to act the role of wrecking ball, is the monster in our lives. I would make it our business to understand that. And such understanding I would make man of the year and woman in charge. Protest may get our attention. Debt has us by the throat. Let us turn our protest cannon on the tiger monster and change that unruly beast into a kitty cat.

http://outputbasedmoney.info/.crs.htm <<=== where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average -- because debt and woe are gone and the lake is full of water. We do the work, drink the water and manage supply to meet demand, demand to meet the need and death to meet our maker in heaven not in hell.

Okonkwo  12/16/2011 06:54 AM Report

I found these two guys to be very superficial, making at many times inconsistent comments about the Arab spring, OWS and Iran or Syria protests. The guy from Time appeared unprepared for contradictions with the other interviewee and when Charlie tried to press him on some comments he winced a lot.

I am sure they are experts at what they do, journalism, but honestly they are not competent commentators at the new movements. Their opinions about Twitter, Facebook were also vague in how these social media networks impacted uprisings in Tunisia, where one of them said it is a remote place with no connection and the other says a cousin took digital photos on phone and posted them on the web - let us try inviting new minds to such fora, old folk have seen their time!

finalfantasytown  12/16/2011 02:54 AM Report

Great idea to break the war

SharkswithfrikingLazers  12/16/2011 02:43 AM Report

Occupy Movement in hibernation?

Not what I hear on NPR--after the sea ports now.

On Saturday: http://occupywallst.org/article/occupy-20-d17/

SharkswithfrikingLazers  12/16/2011 02:35 AM Report

This award profiles a person, couple, group, idea, place, or machine that "for better or for worse, ...has done the most to influence the events of the year."[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Person_of_the_Year

I would have liked to hear the final four or five that lead up to "The Protester".

How about "Debt"?

Gelles  12/16/2011 02:23 AM Report

The issues of global deflation and/or inflation, and monetary and fiscal tools to deal with poverty and restoration of the middle class, which are important if world war and global warming (or other man-made environmental disaster) are not our fate, have not been really raised in electoral debates or recovery politics.

It might be nice if they were. But the issue of Iran and Hugo Chavez is a potential blockbuster -- something right out of the 9-11 play book. I'll not be surprised if the 2012 election turns on it.

Gelles  12/16/2011 01:41 AM Report

It's Thursday, December 15,10:15 pm. The Republican Debate in Sioux City, Iowa, hosted by Fox News and the Republican Party, is over. Obama will likely face Romney or Gingrich. Ron Paul opposed American power or purpose to maintain any leadership role of the global economy in the future. Michele Bachmann may be a candidate for VP.

What about human rights abroad and equality and recovery at home? Republicans want market capitalism, not progressive politics, to be our guide. But both Romney and Gingrich want America to lead and less advanced political economies to respect our values, such as they are (or are not.)

Among other things, in the debate it was hinted that we will face a Tehran-Caracas rocket and nuclear warhead axis in due course and short order. Many would attack Iran to prevent this. Ron Paul sees such an axis as possible and acceptable. After all, we never attacked the USSR. Diplomacy worked. Diplomacy can work.

The majority at the debate disagreed with such a soft, Obama-like, approach. They wanted sanctions and undeclared real war, as necessary. They see such war as where we really are.

If we do destroy Iran's war preparations, we will have ample opportunity to use diplomacy with China and Russia to prevent world war. I see this solution as preferable to nuclear proliferation beyond its present dangerous state.

finalfantasytown  12/15/2011 11:54 PM Report

Wow, the world is so messy. But don't worry because 2012 is the holy year because it is dragon year based on Chinese culture. Dragon is holy.

ShalomFreedman  12/15/2011 01:55 PM Report

Stengel repeatedly says at the 'risk of being naive' and then says something which is in fact very naive. Stengel and Anderson speak like cheerleaders without providing any real facts and figures about the realities they are talking about. Egypt is a country on the verge of absolute bankruptcy. Its so called 'liberalization' policies are now scaring away one of their major sources of resources, tourism. Foreign investment is turning its back on Egypt. The democratic revolution is bringing into power a regime which does not bode well for the Copts, or for the liberal forces however small they be.

There is no doubt vast dissatisfaction in the world today. In the West I would think that a good part of this relates to the economic downturn, the joblessness, the uncertainty. As for the fall of authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. That is fine, except on the condition that there do not come into power far worse, Islamist anti- Western regimes.

REMant  12/15/2011 11:26 AM Report

I certainly can't argue with the selection, but wouldn't it have made more sense to have selected the "Persons of the Year"?

When considering anything Time, Inc does, I believe it is still necessary to keep in mind that from the time Henry Luce founded it, it has been virtually synonymous with neoconservatism. Life printed a large photo showing Dewey in an issue just before the 1948 election with the headline "Our Next President Rides by Ferryboat over San Francisco Bay." I would also mention that like the infamous Gallup telephone poll that year, Arabs who speak English would certainly have to be considered a self-selected group.

Since, as I understand it, the majority of voters leaving Putin's fold voted for the Communists, not the reformers, I would guess if there is a "revolution" it will, like those in the Arab world, see the collapse of the moderate middle or nationalist party, which I think United Russia represents, and the division of the country once again between polar opposites, with the potential for civil unrest.

Pollster Peter Hart says Americans are mad as hell. Arguably, however, they can't be too mad if the Dems among them are still interested in re-electing the president and the majority of Republicans are interested in electing either a former Reaganite or a Bushie, unless they are simply mad at each other, which won't get us anywhere.

In 1968, the issue at the Chicago convention was primarily the war, altho it extended to "the establishment" generally, and the Dems nominated a candidate, however good his liberal credentials, pledged to continue it, while Nixon, pledged like Ike and Korea, to end it. Of course he didn't do that, but no one was certain of that in 1968, except I suppose those in Chicago's streets. I tend to think any such protest will again be in the Dems' bailiwick, which may not augur all that well either.

In that connection, I would like to point out the rather astonishing statistic that Ron Paul has received more money from active duty military personnel than all of the GOP candidates put together, or Obama, and he has won the majority of GOP straw polls. However, it would seem that Republicans will spend another four years in purgatory, especially if Paul decides to run as an independent, say, with Huntsman.