Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday explained why it's legal to murder people -- not to execute prisoners convicted of capital crimes, not to shoot someone in self-defense, not to fight on a battlefield in a war that is somehow legalized, but to target and kill an individual sitting on his sofa, with no charges, no arrest, no trial, no approval from a court, no approval from a legislature, no approval from we the people, and in fact no sharing of information with any institutions that are not the president. Holder's speech approached his topic in a round about manner:

"Since this country's earliest days, the American people have risen to this challenge - and all that it demands. But, as we have seen - and as President John F. Kennedy may have described best - 'In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger.'"

Holder quotes that and then immediately rejects it, claiming that our generation too should act as if it is in such a moment, even if it isn't, a moment that Holder's position suggests may last forever:

"Half a century has passed since those words were spoken, but our nation today confronts grave national security threats that demand our constant attention and steadfast commitment. It is clear that, once again, we have reached an 'hour of danger.'

"We are a nation at war. And, in this war, we face a nimble and determined enemy that cannot be underestimated."

If the people of Iraq and Afghanistan hadn't risen up and defeated the trillion-dollar U.S. military with some homemade bombs and cell phones, and were Iran not threatening to fight back if attacked, this might be all fun and games. Except that Holder isn't talking about those wars that still sort of look like wars. He's talking about a war paralleling the Soviet Threat, a war that is everywhere all the time, a war that encompasses the murder of anybody anywhere as an "act of war," even if there's nothing warlike about the victim or the situation other than the fact that we are mudering him or her.

"I know that - more than a decade after the September 11th attacks; and despite our recent national security successes, including the operation that brought to justice Osama bin Laden last year - there are people currently plotting to murder Americans, who reside in distant countries as well as within our own borders. Disrupting and preventing these plots - and using every available and appropriate tool to keep the American people safe - has been, and will remain, this Administration's top priority."

Osama bin Laden was murdered. No attempt was made to capture him. You can defend that murder, but to call it "bringing to justice" and to get away with that characterization is to win the argument before you've begun it. This speech was advertised as a legal defense of such murders, and such a defense can hardly begin and end with equating murder with justice.

Nor can promising not to spy on U.S. citizens without proper procedures satisfy concerns with the claiming of power to kill people, including U.S. citizens. Here's Holder:

"Let me give you an example. Under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence may authorize annually, with the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, collection directed at identified categories of foreign intelligence targets, without the need for a court order for each individual subject. This ensures that the government has the flexibility and agility it needs to identify and to respond to terrorist and other foreign threats to our security. But the government may not use this authority intentionally to target a U.S. person, here or abroad, or anyone known to be in the United States."

Nor can promising to imprison people without a fair trial justify murdering people. But Holder does not do that. He promises kangaroo courts:

"Much has been made of the distinction between our federal civilian courts and revised military commissions. The reality is that both incorporate fundamental due process and other protections that are essential to the effective administration of justice - and we should not deprive ourselves of any tool in our fight against al Qaeda."

Even though al Qaeda cannot be underestimated! Most legal obeservers do not take this seriously for a minute. Here's 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama: "As president, I will close Guantanamo, reject the Military Commissions Act, and adhere to the Geneva Conventions. Our Constitution and our Uniform Code of Military Justice provide a framework for dealing with the terrorists ... Our Constitution works. We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers, and that justice is not arbitrary." Go Team!

Holder then explains, sensibly enough, why non-military courts work just fine (unless an extreme record of nearly 100% convictions worries you):

"Simply put, since 9/11, hundreds of individuals have been convicted of terrorism or terrorism-related offenses in Article III courts and are now serving long sentences in federal prison. Not one has ever escaped custody. No judicial district has suffered any kind of retaliatory attack."

But he returns immediately to defending courts that lack basic protections, claims those protections have now been put in place, and asserts that military commissions have been successfully reformed. Among those who have not been convinced is the former chief prosecutor of the military commissions at Guantanamo, Col. Morris Davis who said in November: "a decision to use both legal settings is a mistake. It will establish a dangerous legal double standard that gives some detainees superior rights and protections, and relegates others to the inferior rights and protections of military commissions. This will only perpetuate the perception that Guantanamo and justice are mutually exclusive." Of course the question of how bad military commissions are also does nothing to advance a case for legal murder.

Holder turns next to the presidential power to imprison people that was signed into law on New Year's Eve as part of the National "Defense" Authorization Act:

"This Administration has worked in other areas as well to ensure that counterterrorism professionals have the flexibility that they need to fulfill their critical responsibilities without diverging from our laws and our values. Last week brought the most recent step, when the President issued procedures under the National Defense Authorization Act. This legislation, which Congress passed in December, mandated that a narrow category of al Qaeda terrorist suspects be placed in temporary military custody."

This legislation did nothing of the sort. For one thing, Obama unconstitutionally altered it in a signing statement as it applied to a huge prison full of largely non-al Qaeda prisoners in Afghanistan. In addition, there has been quite a bit of discussion of the power this bill creates to imprison U.S. citizens. The State of Virginia has forbidden state employees from assisting with that. Senator Diane Feinstein has introduced a bill to undo it. And, despite tremendous, often willful, confusion, the history is clear that Obama insisted on the power to imprison U.S. citizens and to do so outside of the military.

Three quarters of the way through a speech on the legality of murdering people, Holder begins to approach that touchy topic. Here is what he says:

"Now, I realize I have gone into considerable detail about tools we use to identify suspected terrorists and to bring captured terrorists to justice. It is preferable to capture suspected terrorists where feasible - among other reasons, so that we can gather valuable intelligence from them - but we must also recognize that there are instances where our government has the clear authority - and, I would argue, the responsibility - to defend the United States through the appropriate and lawful use of lethal force."

By "government" Holder means the president, whether President Obama or President Romney or President Santorum or any man or woman who later becomes president, and nobody else. That one person alone is to decide what is appropriate and lawful and feasible. If the Vice President thinks it is feasible to capture somene, too bad for him. He should have gotten a better job if he wanted to be a decider. If the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court thinks preaching against the United States is not a capital offense, tough tamales. He shouldn't dress in his bathrobe if he wants to be taken seriously. If the United States Congress objects that the president's "surgical strikes" tend to kill too many random men, women, and children, well they know what they can do: Run for president! If the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings has objections, well -- Isn't that SPECIAL? And the American people? They can shut up or vote for a racist buffoon from the bad party. Holder continues:

"This principle has long been established under both U.S. and international law. In response to the attacks perpetrated - and the continuing threat posed - by al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces, Congress has authorized the President to use all necessary and appropriate force against those groups. Because the United States is in an armed conflict, we are authorized to take action against enemy belligerents under international law. The Constitution empowers the President to protect the nation from any imminent threat of violent attack. And international law recognizes the inherent right of national self-defense. None of this is changed by the fact that we are not in a conventional war."

In reality, the 2001 authorization to use military force violates the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the UN Charter, and the U.S. Constitution. It dates to only 10 years ago. And it is already getting old, as it is becoming harder and harder to accuse people of involvement in the attacks of September 11, 2001. No international law recognizes secret global war without limitation in time or space. There is no long established tradition of this madness. There has never been any type of violence that somebody wouldn't call "defensive," but the traditional right to national military defense applies only to nations being attacked by other nations, and not in a mystical or ideological sense, but actually attacked in the geographic area formerly known as the nation. Holder says that's old hat:

"Our legal authority is not limited to the battlefields in Afghanistan. Indeed, neither Congress nor our federal courts has limited the geographic scope of our ability to use force to the current conflict in Afghanistan. We are at war with a stateless enemy, prone to shifting operations from country to country. Over the last three years alone, al Qaeda and its associates have directed several attacks - fortunately, unsuccessful - against us from countries other than Afghanistan. Our government has both a responsibility and a right to protect this nation and its people from such threats."

Several attacks? Against the United States? In the last three years? By al Qaeda and its associates? If Holder had been willing to take any questions after tossing out so many topics, someone might have asked for documentation of this. And if people, as opposed to media employees, had been allowed to ask questions, someone might have inquired how whatever actions Holder described were war rather than crime. If war, then they ought to be legal. Holder just said that attacks are legal if you're at war. But he also said he only wanted to kill people if they couldn't be captured, and he prefaced this with claims that everybody captured gets a fair trial. That would seem to suggest a crime for which they might be tried. But then why not try them for the crime in absentia and build pressure for their capture and extradition? Why not at least state what the crime is, even after murdering them? Why not at least state which murdered people were criminals and which just happened to be in the wrong place, unaware that they happened to be walking through a war? Holder goes on to explain that the president will only murder someone in a foreign country if he's decided that that country won't do it for him. This, Holder says, constitutes "respect for another nation's sovereignty."

Moreover, says Holder, we murdered important Japanese officers during World War II. Of course, the United States was at war with Japan at the time, and Congress had declared that war. The United States also committed numerous hideous crimes during that war, including the lawless imprisonment of Japanese-Americans that created the laws Holder tossed out during the first part of his speech. Holder explains that murder is not assassination when the president does it, because he only murders people he declares to constitute an imminent threat:

"Some have called such operations 'assassinations.' They are not, and the use of that loaded term is misplaced. Assassinations are unlawful killings. Here, for the reasons I have given, the U.S. government's use of lethal force in self defense against a leader of al Qaeda or an associated force who presents an imminent threat of violent attack would not be unlawful — and therefore would not violate the Executive Order banning assassination or criminal statutes."

But Obama has not so much as claimed that each person he killed constituted an imminent threat, much less convinced any independent body (sorry, Eric, you don't count) of this.

I think the speech could have ended there. But many in the United States believe such flimsy justifications for presidential killings only fall apart when U.S. citizens are the victims. So, Holder goes on to argue that U.S. citizens are fair game. The protest of this outrage, were Obama a Republican, is one for the record books in some alternative universe!

"Now, it is an unfortunate but undeniable fact that some of the threats we face come from a small number of United States citizens who have decided to commit violent attacks against their own country from abroad. Based on generations-old legal principles and Supreme Court decisions handed down during World War II, as well as during this current conflict, it's clear that United States citizenship alone does not make such individuals immune from being targeted. But it does mean that the government must take into account all relevant constitutional considerations with respect to United States citizens - even those who are leading efforts to kill innocent Americans. Of these, the most relevant is the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause, which says that the government may not deprive a citizen of his or her life without due process of law.

"The Supreme Court has made clear that the Due Process Clause does not impose one-size-fits-all requirements, but instead mandates procedural safeguards that depend on specific circumstances. In cases arising under the Due Process Clause - including in a case involving a U.S. citizen captured in the conflict against al Qaeda - the Court has applied a balancing approach, weighing the private interest that will be affected against the interest the government is trying to protect, and the burdens the government would face in providing additional process. Where national security operations are at stake, due process takes into account the realities of combat. . . .

"Let me be clear: an operation using lethal force in a foreign country, targeted against a U.S. citizen who is a senior operational leader of al Qaeda or associated forces, and who is actively engaged in planning to kill Americans, would be lawful at least in the following circumstances: First, the U.S. government has determined, after a thorough and careful review, that the individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States; second, capture is not feasible; and third, the operation would be conducted in a manner consistent with applicable law of war principles."

"The evaluation of whether an individual presents an 'imminent threat' incorporates considerations of the relevant window of opportunity to act, the possible harm that missing the window would cause to civilians, and the likelihood of heading off future disastrous attacks against the United States. As we learned on 9/11, al Qaeda has demonstrated the ability to strike with little or no notice - and to cause devastating casualties. Its leaders are continually planning attacks against the United States, and they do not behave like a traditional military - wearing uniforms, carrying arms openly, or massing forces in preparation for an attack. Given these facts, the Constitution does not require the President to delay action until some theoretical end-stage of planning - when the precise time, place, and manner of an attack become clear. Such a requirement would create an unacceptably high risk that our efforts would fail, and that Americans would be killed."

The Constitution doesn't describe this sort of madness at all, so how could it possibly include such a requirement? The appeal to "defensive war" cited by Holder above itself requires more than awaiting the moment an attack becomes clear. It requires awaiting an actual attack. Law enforcement does not require that. Diplomacy does not require that. Ceasing to occupy, bomb, and pillage people's countries, motivating hostile terrorism, doesn't require that. But defensive war does.

"Some have argued that the President is required to get permission from a federal court before taking action against a United States citizen who is a senior operational leader of al Qaeda or associated forces. This is simply not accurate. 'Due process' and 'judicial process' are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process."

The president alone can give you due process without ever explaining it to anybody else. Who knew?

"That is not to say that the Executive Branch has - or should ever have - the ability to target any such individuals without robust oversight. Which is why, in keeping with the law and our constitutional system of checks and balances, the Executive Branch regularly informs the appropriate members of Congress about our counterterrorism activities, including the legal framework, and would of course follow the same practice where lethal force is used against United States citizens."

Why "would"? This is not theoretical. Informing a handful of Congress members, and no doubt forbidding them to repeat what they are told, does not create Congressional oversight. It just creates a Bush-era excuse for lawlessness.

Historians of the future, if they are not imprisoned for saying so, will trace the end of America's democratic experiment to the fearful days immediately after 9/11, what Bruce Springsteen called the days of the empty sky, when frightened, small men named Bush and Cheney made the first decisions to abandon the Constitution in the name of freedom and created a new version of the security state with the Patriot Act, Guantanamo, secret prisons and sanctioned torture by the U.S. government. They proceeded carefully, making sure that lawyers in their employ sanctioned each dark act, much as kings in old Europe used the church to justify their own actions.

Those same historians will remark from exile on the irony that such horrendous policies were not only upheld by Obama, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and professor of Constitutional law, but added to until we came to the place we sadly occupy today: the Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, publicly stating that the American Government may murder one of its own citizens when it wishes to do so, and that the requirements of due process enshrined in the Constitution's Fifth Amendment, itself drawn from the Magna Carta that was the first reflowering of basic human rights since the Greeks, can be satisfied simply by a decision by that same president.

Yesterday will thus be remembered as the day we gave up. No more clever wordplay (enhanced interrogations, "patriot" act, targeted killing, kinetic operations) but a simple declaration that the U.S. government will kill its own citizens when it wishes to, via a secret process we, and our victims, are not allowed to know or contest.

Brevity in Our Freedom

Like most of the Bill of Rights, the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution is beautiful in its brevity and clarity. When you are saying something true, pure, clean and right, you often do not need many words: "... nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." There are no footnotes in the Fifth Amendment, no caveats, no secret memos, no exceptions for war, terrorism, mass rape, creation of concentration camps, acts of genocide, child torture or any evil. Those things are unnecessary, because in the beauty of what Lincoln offered to his audience as "a government of the people, by the people, for the people," the government would be made up of us, the purpose of government was to serve us, and the government would be beholden to us. Such a government would be incapable of killing its own citizens without care and debate and open trial.

With the excuse all tyrants proclaim, protecting the nation, on or about September 30, 2011 a U.S. drone fired a missile in Yemen and killed American Citizen Anwar al Awlaki, born in the United States and tragically devoted to al Qaeda. About a week later, the U.S. murdered al Awaki's 16 year old son. The U.S. had shot at the elder al Awlaki before, on May 7, 2011 under Obama's orders, and under the Bush administration. Before the U.S. government killed his son, attorneys for al Awlaki's father tried to persuade a U.S. District Court to issue an injunction preventing the government killing of al Awlaki. A judge dismissed the case, ruling the father did not have standing to sue. This was the first time in our nation's history that a father sought to sue to prevent the government from extra-legally killing his son. The judge in the case surrendered to his post-9/11 fear and wrote that it was up to the elected branches of government, not the courts, to determine whether the United States has the authority to murder its own citizens by decree.

Fear Shaped by Lies to Compel Compliance

In his speech, Attorney General Holder said things no honest man would ever believe would be said by the highest law officer in the United States.

Holder said "that a careful and thorough executive branch review of the facts in a case amounts to 'due process' and that the Constitution's Fifth Amendment protection against depriving a citizen of his or her life without due process of law does not mandate a 'judicial process.'"

Holder thus also declaimed that the victim also has no right to a defense, no right to speak on his behalf, no right to examine and refute the evidence against him and no right even to know his life will be taken under the decision of a few men in Washington. Indeed, Holder made clear that the government's decision to kill overshadowed the right to self-defense in saying "An individual's interest in making sure that the government does not target him erroneously could not be more significant. Yet it is imperative for the government to counter threats posed by senior operational leaders of al Qaeda, and to protect the innocent people whose lives could be lost in their attacks."

Holder said he rejected any attempt to label such operations assassinations, invoking the same airbrush of lawfulness that fueled the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials and the Holocaust. "Assassinations are unlawful killings. The U.S. government's use of lethal force in self-defense against a leader of al Qaeda or an associated force who presents an imminent threat of violent attack would not be unlawful."

Sluts All

So while the popular media remembers yesterday as the day Rush apologized for calling someone a slut and Republican candidates ignored the wave of history to carp about birth control, historians will look back on March 5, 2012 as the day America gave up on its experiment with unalienable rights, rights that are natural, not given, rights independent of governments, what our Declaration explained to an unsure forming nation as "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

The economic news is looking better lately. But after previous false starts - remember "green shoots?" - it would be foolish to assume that all is well. And in any case, it's still a very slow economic recovery by historical standards.

There are several reasons for this slowness, with the most important being the overhang of household debt that is a legacy of the housing bubble. But one significant factor in our continuing economic weakness is the fact that government in America is doing exactly what both theory and history say it shouldn't: slashing spending in the face of a depressed economy.

In fact, if it weren't for this destructive fiscal austerity, our unemployment rate would almost certainly be lower now than it was at a comparable stage of the "Morning in America" recovery during the Reagan era.

Notice that I said "government in America," not "the federal government." The federal government has been pursuing what amount to contractionary policies as the last vestiges of the Obama stimulus fade out, but the big cuts have come at the state and local level. These state and local cuts have led to a sharp fall in both government employment and government spending on goods and services, exerting a powerful drag on the economy as a whole.

One way to dramatize just how severe our de facto austerity has been is to compare government employment and spending during the Obama-era economic expansion, which began in June 2009, with their tracks during the Reagan-era expansion, which began in November 1982.

Start with government employment (which is mainly at the state and local level, with about half the jobs in education). By this stage in the Reagan recovery, government employment had risen by 3.1 percent; this time around, it's down by 2.7 percent.

Next, look at government purchases of goods and services (as distinct from transfers to individuals, like unemployment benefits). Adjusted for inflation, by this stage of the Reagan recovery, such purchases had risen by 11.6 percent; this time, they're down by 2.6 percent.

And the gap persists even when you do include transfers, some of which have stayed high precisely because unemployment is still so high. Adjusted for inflation, Reagan-era spending rose 10.2 percent in the first 10 quarters of recovery, Obama-era spending only 2.6 percent.

Why did government spending rise so much under Reagan, with his small-government rhetoric, while shrinking under the president so many Republicans insist is a secret socialist? In Reagan's case, it's partly about the arms race, but mainly about state and local governments doing what they are supposed to do: educate a growing population of children, invest in infrastructure for a growing economy.

Under President Obama, however, the dire fiscal condition of state and local governments - the result of a sustained slump, which in turn was caused largely by that private debt explosion before 2008 - has led to forced spending cuts. The fiscal straits of lower-level governments could and should have been alleviated by aid from Washington, which remains able to borrow at incredibly low interest rates. But this aid was never provided on a remotely adequate scale.

This policy malpractice is doing double damage to America. On one side, it's helping lose the future - because that's what happens when you neglect education and public investment. At the same time, it's hurting us right now, by helping keep growth low and unemployment high.

We're talking big numbers here. If government employment under Mr. Obama had grown at Reagan-era rates, 1.3 million more Americans would be working as schoolteachers, firefighters, police officers, etc., than are currently employed in such jobs.

And once you take the effects of public spending on private employment into account, a rough estimate is that the unemployment rate would be 1.5 percentage points lower than it is, or below 7 percent - significantly better than the Reagan economy at this stage.

One implication of this comparison is that conservatives who love to compare Reagan's record with Mr. Obama's should think twice. Aside from the fact that recoveries from financial crises are almost always slower than ordinary recoveries, in reality Reagan was much more Keynesian than Mr. Obama, faced with an obstructionist G.O.P., has ever managed to be.

The last time US President Barack Obama met Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, it was obvious that the two men distrusted and despised each other. This time (5 March), their mutual dislike was better hidden, but the gulf between them was still as big, especially on the issue of Iran's alleged desire for nuclear weapons.

There is something comic about two nuclear-armed countries (5,000-plus nuclear weapons for the US, around 200 for Israel) declaring that it is vital to prevent a third country from getting a few of the things too. Particularly when that third country, Iran, has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and still abides by it, while Israel has always refused to sign it. But never mind that.

What divides Obama and Netanyahu is a question of timing. Obama's "red line" is the point at which Iran "possesses" a nuclear weapon, which would not arrive for a couple of years even if Iran actually intends to make one. (American and Israeli intelligence services concur that it is not working on one now.)

Netanyahu's "red line" comes much sooner: whenever Iran has enough enriched uranium to build a bomb, whether it does so or not. It is, of course, quite legal for Iran to enrich uranium (which it says is solely for use in civilian nuclear reactors), while an unprovoked attack on Iran would be a criminal act under international law. But that didn't stop former president George W Bush from invading Iraq, and it wouldn't stop Obama now.

What worries Obama are three other things. First, the American public simply isn't up for a third "war of choice" in ten years in the Middle East. As retired general Anthony Zinni, former commander of US military forces in the Middle East, warned three years ago: "If you liked Iraq and Afghanistan, you'll love Iran."

Secondly, this is presidential election year in the United States. If Israel attacks Iran, the oil price will soar and kill the economic recovery Obama is depending on for re-election. However, if the US fails to back Israel, American Jews will turn against him and kill his re-election chances anyway.

Thirdly, the attack would not destroy Iran's uranium enrichment plants. Israel has been threatening to attack them for years, so the Iranians have buried them deep underground. Israeli and American hawks claim that an attack could delay Iran's capability to enrich large quantities of uranium for three years, but Meir Dagan, former head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, thinks three months is optimistic.

Even if it were three years, Iran would be back to where it is now by 2015 - and an Iran that had been attacked by Israel and the United States would be determined to get nuclear weapons as fast as possible. As Gen Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said recently, Israeli attacks on Iran "would be destabilising and would not achieve their long-term objectives."

If Prime Minister Netanyahu and his fellow hawks truly believed that Iranian nuclear weapons would mean the extinction of the Jewish state, then their wish to attack Iran would be defensible, but they don't. That's just for public consumption. What's actually at stake here is not the survival of Israel, just the preservation of the huge strategic advantage Israel enjoys as the sole nuclear weapons state in the Middle East.

Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister, let the cat out of the bag in a recent interview with Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman for the New York Times Magazine. "From our point of view, a nuclear state offers an entirely different kind of protection to its proxies. Imagine if we enter another military confrontation with Hezbollah, (and a) nuclear Iran announces that an attack on Hezbollah is tantamount to an attack on Iran. We would not necessarily give up on it, but it would definitely restrict our range of operations."

Big deal. Israel lost its last military confrontation with Hezbollah in 2006 even WITH a monopoly of nuclear weapons, but it suffered no lasting harm as a result. If Israel is not facing an existential threat, but just the potential loss of some strategic leverage, then launching an illegal war of aggression against Iran makes no sense at all.

But there is also a deeper motive. Netanyahu and his allies really think that an attack on Iran would bring the Islamic regime down. As Barak told Bergman: "An Iranian bomb would ensure the survival of the current regime, which otherwise would not make it to its 40th anniversary in light of the admiration that the young generation in Iran has displayed for the West. With a bomb, it would be very hard to budge the administration."

So what Barak and his fellow hawk Netanyahu are actually demanding is American support for an attack whose real aim is to bring down the Iranian regime. The thinking is delusional: the notion that the Iranian regime will collapse unless it gets the bomb is held by both Israeli and American hawks, but there is no concrete reason to believe it.

Here's the good news. The economic pie is growing again. Growth in the 4th quarter last year hit 3 percent on an annualized rate. That's respectable - although still way too slow to get us back on track given how far we plunged.

Here's the bad news. The share of that growth going to American workers is at a record low.

That's largely because far fewer Americans are working. Although the nation is now producing more goods and services than it did before the slump began in 2007, we're doing it with six million fewer people.

Why? Credit technology. Computers, software applications, and the Internet are letting us produce more with fewer people.

In theory, this is a huge plus. We can live better and have more time off.

But as Tonto asked the Lone Ranger, "who's 'we,' kemosabe?"

The challenge at the heart of the productivity revolution - and it is a revolution - is how to distribute the gains. So far, we've been failing miserably to meet that challenge.

True, some of the gains are widely spread in the form of lower prices and higher value. My 3-year-old granddaughter gets more out of an i-Phone in five minutes than my 98-year-old father ever got out of reading the daily paper (putting to one side their relative capacities to process the information).

But many of the gains are distributed narrowly in the form of profits to owners, and fat compensation packages to the "talent."

The share of the gains going to everyone else in the form of wages and salaries has been shrinking. It's now the smallest since the government began keeping track in 1947.

If the trend continues, inequality will become ever more extreme.

We'll also face chronically insufficient demand for all the goods and services the productivity revolution can generate. That's because the rich save more of their earnings than everyone else, while middle and lower-income families - with fewer jobs or lower wages - no longer have the purchasing power to keep the economy going at full tilt. (Before 2008 they kept up their buying by sinking deep into debt. This proved to be an unsustainable strategy.)

Insufficient demand - as everyone but regressive supply-siders now recognize - is a big reason why the current recovery has been so anemic and the pie isn't growing faster.

So while the productivity revolution is indubitably good, the task ahead is to figure out how to distribute more of its gains to more of our people.

One possibility: higher taxes on the rich that go into wage subsidies for lower-income workers, combined with job sharing.

We also need better schools (from early-childhood through young adulthood, followed by systems of lifelong learning) so everyone has a fair shot at a larger share of the gains.

Finally, the benefits of the productivity revolution should be turned into more abundant public goods - cleaner air and water, better parks and recreation, improved public health, and better public transit.

Regressive right wingers want Americans to believe we've been living beyond our means, and can no longer afford it.

The truth is just the reverse. Most Americans' means haven't kept up with what the economy could provide - if the fruits of the productivity revolution were more widely shared.

Regressives growl about America's borrowing and tut-tut about future federal budget deficits. The reality is the world is willing to lend us vast amounts of money because we're so productive. And the productivity revolution is making us ever more so.

The ongoing economic crisis has negatively affected the livelihoods of millions of Americans, but the effect it has on children and youth is especially tough to bear. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2012), the unemployment rate is 8.3 percent as of January 2012. Of course, we already know this number is low-balled at best. For example...

U.S. Census data reveals that from 2009 to 2010, the total number of children under age 18 living in poverty increased to 16.4 million from 15.5 million. Child poverty rose from 20.7 percent in 2009, to 22 percent in 2010, and this is the highest it has ever been since 1993. Racial and ethnic disparities in poverty rates persist among children. The poverty rate for Black children was 38.2 percent; 32.3 percent for Hispanic children; 17 percent for non-Hispanic White children; and 13 percent for Asian children. The National Center for Children in Poverty reports that 17.2 million children living in the U.S. have a foreign-born parent, and 4.2 million children of immigrant parents are poor. It is reported that child poverty in immigrant families is more closely related to low-wage work and barriers to valuable work supports. The Population Reference Bureau (2010) reports that 24 percent of the 75 million children under age 18 in the U.S. live in a single-mother family. The poverty rate for children living in female-householder families (no spouse present) was 42.2 percent in 2010; 7 in 10 children living with a single mother are poor or low-income, compared to less than a third (32 percent) of children living in other types of families. A staggering 50.9 percent of female-headed Hispanic households with children below 18 years of age live in poverty (48.8 percent for Blacks; 31.6 percent Asian, and 32.1 percent non-Hispanic White). Single-mother headed households are more prevalent among African American and Hispanic families contributing to ethnic disparities in poverty.

The number of those affected speaks for itself. Poverty is color-blind.

Our Forgotten Solders:

And so it would seem, nothing is sacrosanct in this degenerating environment. Even our brave soldiers returning home from battle are mystified at what has happened to their country while they were gone. Most are completely blown away to say the least! Images such as this, the military routinely sweeps under the rug, because It's not exactly a moral booster for "enlistment" purposes.

In addition to the complex set of factors influencing all homelessness -- extreme shortage of affordable housing, livable income and access to health care -- a large number of displaced and at-risk veterans live with lingering effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance abuse, which are compounded by a lack of family and social support networks. Although this obligation is not being met, A top priority for homeless veterans should be secure, safe and clean housing that offers a supportive environment free of drugs and alcohol. Having a father who still suffers the lasting affects of PTSD (a most honorable combat veteran who served during WWII and Korea), I can relate to the importance of providing a safe, supportive environment.

Also, In a 2009 article published in USA Today, it was reported that veterans stayed in shelters longer, on average, than non-veterans. The median length of stay for single veterans was 21 days, while non-veterans stayed for 17 days. Most homeless veterans -- 96% -- are alone rather than part of a family. Among all homeless people, 66% are without families. The 136,334 veterans who spent at least one night in a shelter during the year studied amount to one of every 168 veterans in the USA and one of every 10 veterans living in poverty.

I would add, many veterans became financially devastated while serving our country in foreign combat zones. To me, this is especially unacceptable when we consider the sacrifices they made.

There is a better way for us to move forward. Issues such as poverty, corruption, collapse, homelessness, war, starvation and the like appear to be "symptoms" born out of an outdated social structure. Our principal focus should include recognizing that the majority of social problems which plague our nation at this time are the result of institutional corruption, corporate monopolies, austerity political policy and a flaw of irresponsible management from the top down.

We need to find optimized solutions, and we must to do it now! And if that means marching in the street to get it, so be it. Our allegiance should be to each other in the grand scheme of things and we should not rely on traditional political platforms or parties to do it for us. No one should be left behind. The path forward is self-evident, we must tackle the challenges ahead and make sure all basic resources are affordable and available to everyone, not just a select few at the top of the food chain.

We Are One Humanity.