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This has been one of those weeks that’s both exhausting and rewarding for a father. My wife Sally got sick on Monday, but fortunately I was home because, as you may remember, Monday was Martin Luther King Day.

The downside of Sally getting sick – besides the sheer unpleasantness for her and the frustration of watching one’s favorite person suffer – was that I had to do everything around the house all by myself all day on Monday. I mean, yeah, that’s pretty much what Sally does EVERY day, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s a lot of work and that the average non-househusband doesn’t necessarily understand what goes into Mommy’s day until he’s had to do what Mommy does routinely. And yeah, doing all that housework and kid-wrangling was exhausting. But it was also rewarding, too, both because it was great for my kids to see me in the lead domestic role for a change and because I think I proved to myself once and for all that I really could BE a househusband if I had to be. That isn’t to say that I hope we win the lottery, so I can start staying home and watching Oprah (I did watch her Monday, and she IS crazy!), but at least now I feel like I could… if I had to.

Meanwhile, the wider world continued to turn. Either in reaction to events on the ground or especially in spite of the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations, our President has decided to increase the number of troops in Iraq for… well, I think for however long the Army and Marine Corps can continue the surge before exhaustion. Though a number of generals have come out in support of the plan – for reasons I don’t understand given that ALL soldiers are supposed to be apolitical, the standard excuse amongst them these days regarding why they didn’t push harder for more troops and more and better planning prior to the invasion – the generals have also made a point to repeatedly note that the active duty components of our armed forces ARE very close to the breaking point.

Either way, it continues to frustrate me personally. First off, the President’s acknowledgement of the need for a surge is a vindication of his pre-war detractors who repeatedly called for more troops and better planning, only to be pushed aside in favor of yes-men who would do what was asked without actually thinking about it. I think we can now ALL agree that the plan that was executed was, in fact, a complete fucking disaster even though it didn’t have to be. And yet, even as we admit that we need to surge, the evidence shows that we aren’t going to surge enough to be successful. For that matter, at this point it’s doubtful that we even CAN surge enough to be successful. Had we tried at the beginning of the war to invade with 250K troops, stabilize the country ala standard Army doctrine, and then drawdown forces in a new, stable Iraq, we might have had a chance. I don’t say it would have been easy, or necessarily even likely, but it at least would have been possible. But now we’re in a position where the Army and Marines are both already exhausted even as the fight itself has gotten tougher.

Bottom line: Bush’s failures have emboldened those who would see themselves as America’s enemies. To succeed, it’s reasonable to assume we need MORE troops than standard doctrine calls for, but those troops are not available. So now, here we are, trying again for some ridiculous middle ground approach that I sincerely hope will work but which I cannot honestly bring myself to believe in.

I think that the base problem here is that we’re still affected by the misunderstandings of the Vietnam War. It seems to me that those who want to surge now are the same ones who didn’t want to leave Vietnam in the early 1970’s. These people didn’t want to “lose” in Vietnam, and they don’t want to “lose” in Iraq. Never mind that they can’t tell us what victory should have looked like in either case.

By any reasonable measure, the US won Vietnam. Yes. That’s right. Read it again. I really did say that we won the war in Vietnam. And we did. That’s because the purpose of the Vietnam War was to prevent the spread of global Communism, and the decisive battlefield of the war was the economic and political landscape of Eastern Europe. By that reasoning – the only reasoning that makes any sense because it’s the only reasoning that ties into America’s national interests – we won the Vietnam war in 1998 when the Berlin Wall fell. A casual look at Vietnam today will confirm the US’s success there. Today the country is the newest member of the World Trade Organization, it’s one of Asia’s fastest growing market economies, and it’s rapidly liberalizing its political processes. Yes, that’s what victory in Vietnam was supposed to look like. It took more than 35 years, but sometimes one has to take a long view of history to understand what’s happening and why.

As any number of modern day Vietnamese will tell you, the events of the battlefield didn’t matter a lot to the outcome of the war. In the end, that war – like all wars - was a means of pursuing political aims through additional, non-political means. When military action fails, a “defeated” power is still left with political and economic means to pursue its objectives. That’s why we say that it’s possible to “win the war but lose the peace.” Because it is. Vietnamese Communists won the war but lost the peace. But wow! When you put it that way, it sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? I mean, those same people just want what’s best for their nation. That’s why they’re liberalizing. I doubt seriously that they’re upset about the way it turned out.

And that’s the essence of a political victory. Maybe there’s a lesson there.

We already see the makings of “post-war” Iraq today. There are interest groups there competing for political and economic influence in the new country. So now, in the absence of a battlefield solution, one must look to other means to achieve victory. Iraqis already understand this. Therefore, the idea that the US is somehow going to “win” the war is a loser. For the US then, we must define victory in a way that makes sense and meets the basic needs of the nation. It’s that element that the current policies are missing, and honestly, until that changes, it’s going to be hard to see how good things can come from what we’re doing over there.

But I still think the war will come to an end soon. First off, even with the new, beefed-up Army and Marine Corps, US forces are near exhaustion. And then, too, no one wants to run in 2008 on a platform that includes Iraq. For example, what the Hell does Barack Obama know about Iraq? And he’s a frontrunner! Plus, Congress has been making some noise lately, and before that gets out of hand, I think Bush will try to declare victory. And then too, bottom line, the purpose of the war was to prevent the spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction from Iraq to terrorists, and that goal has been accomplished. Yes, it was already done before the invasion began, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was done. So I think the war is ending and hopefully fairly soon. If I was a betting man, I’d say we’ll see some changes come the late fall.

But what the Hell do I know?

By the way, while we’re talking about politics, Vegas bookies are now taking bets on who will be elected President in 2008, and as of last weekend, you could get Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack at 40:1 odds. People, that’s a real good bet. Vilsack is a popular Democratic governor from the mid-west in a race that has recently been won by mostly governors from non-northeastern states. Consider: Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush the Younger.

My guess is that the race will come down to AZ Sen. John McCain vs. either Vilsack or DE Sen. Joseph Biden. Given that belief and the 40:1 odds, well... 40:1 is pretty good odds for a guy with a really decent chance of making it to the Finals.

You heard it here first.

Comics You Should Be reading

The Killer: Long Fire, Issue 2 of 10

Written by Matz

Illustrated and Translated by Luc Jacamon

Published by Archaia Studios Press, 30 pages for $3.95

In issue #1 of The Killer, we watched as our hero/assassin started to come apart at the seams. Left by himself for nearly ten days with nothing to do but reflect, the Killer starts to take the kind of introspective journey that all evil men fear. Here in Issue #2, that process accelerates so that things start to really go wrong. The Killer has had to make some significant sacrifices in his life in order to become proficient at his work, to the point where he’s become a man with nothing. No friends, no interests, no connections. Nothing. He’s exhausted from a lifetime of watching his targets and watching his back, and without anything good in his life, he struggles to find any meaning in anything, so that by the time he says, “The only people I really know are those I’ve whacked,” it’s a sad moment in the life of a sad man. And yet, that makes him more dangerous – both to himself and others.

This issue displays a few of the really great elements of this story. First, as I alluded to in last week’s review, I’m really digging the fact that ASP has become committed to publishing really novel-sized graphic novels. This book is an example of that. This is a ten-issue series, told thirty pages at a time. In most American comics, either we’d not yet have gotten to the point, or we’d be rushing to get to the finish by this point. Or both! Here we got straight into the main conflict in Issue #1, and now with Issue #2 we’re seeing the complications. And we’re seeing real characterization. What makes this guy tick? That’s the story. And that’s why it works. In a way, this has become a kind of a milieu story that explores the mind of an evil man rather than the landscape of a strange planet. It’s a fascinating landscape.

The other thing I love about this story is that it’s got brutality with a purpose. I’ve heard some famous filmmakers talk about the brutality of their films as though it was one of their characters. Well, that’s exactly what we DON’T have here. Instead, here we see brutality that’s a servant of the plot. It’s a complication. If we don’t see all the horrible shit that this guy has done, then it’s impossible to understand his mindset. So this book is gory, but it doesn’t celebrate gore. Instead it celebrates the things that get readers hooked into characters: actions and motivations.

I’ve no idea how ASP is doing financially these days, but I do know they get consistently good press. And I think that one of the reasons for that is that they almost NEVER put out a bad book. They’ve certainly never put out a book that didn’t at least LOOK terrific, and The Killer is no exception. The fact that the book was produced for a major European publisher and was then solicited in the States by a publisher with a reputation for quality means that I wasn’t surprised that the book has great art, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a joy to behold. And again, with the art we see terrific pacing. There are a TON of panels on every page, which gives this story a sense of action and motion that most American comics are missing. And then too, as the Killer starts to unravel, the art becomes more jumpy and erratic. It jumps from viewpoint to viewpoint, expressing visually what most creators would have to rely on narration to get across.

Bottom line: The Killer is an A+ project. To my mind, it’s the best thing on the stands right now. It’s just as smart as anything from Vertigo, but it’s got better art. How can you not like that?

Stray Voltage

It’s the Economy, Stupid

Wow. First off, let me just tell you how surprised I was by the amount of feedback I got on the football coverage last week – and it wasn’t positive. Yeah, okay, I’m a Titans homer. I can admit it. Except, of course, that I don’t live in Tennessee. But still… I like the Titans. I do. And I guess it showed.

However, what really surprised me was the amount of folks who expressed a definite preference for coverage of the economy. Yes, a certain amount of my readership has said and continues to say that the numbers a bit mind-boggling, and I can understand that, but a larger portion of the audience seems to really WANT to hear what I have to say about the economy and about Iraq, and I have to admit that I’m surprised. But I’m surprised in a good way, which is why I’ve gone back through the last few weeks to try to put together a package that makes some sense.

I have to admit that I pretty much quit following the economy during my hiatus. I did that for a couple of reasons. First, the end of the year is justifiably called “The Silly Season” on Wall Street. Most traders take that time of the year off, which means that even small numbers of transactions can move the markets in big ways that are both unpredictable and not worth reporting. In my opinion, it takes a few weeks after New Years is over for the markets to settle back into a rhythm that makes sense. Plus, it also takes a few weeks for retailers to figure out what really happened during the Christmas season, and that season is a big deal.

And then too, I follow this stuff a lot and felt like I needed the break. I get the feeling that most of you aren’t really following the markets too much, except in as much as you’re following this column, and I’m following the markets. But I spend time trying to figure this stuff out both because it interests me and because I need to decide what I want to write about each week. And that meant that, like everything else, I needed a break from it.

So bottom line, I wasn’t paying attention at the end of the year, and so our End of Year Results were a surprise to me. They shouldn’t have been, but they were.

See, this is what you get when you aren’t paying attention. In the first place, I’d forgotten all about the end of the year dividend payouts, especially since I wasn’t even really thinking about them when I designed this portfolio. But I should have been because we’re heavily into Value stocks, and Value stocks tend to pay dividends. Why? Any stock price is essentially just a measure of what folks’ think the is the value of a company’s future earnings. As such, investors track price/earnings ratios, meaning that they pay attention to stocks’ prices vs. corporate earnings. And Value Stocks are by definition priced low relative to their earnings. That’s why they are supposed to be a good value. Stocks like that tend to be stocks that represent mature companies without readily apparent growth potential. Thus they have (or tend to have) fairly stable stock price. And they therefore often pay a dividend.

Although Value Stocks have performed well recently (and historically), a lot of investors do not like to invest in them because they see dividends as corporate wastes of money. Or, to put it another way, if a company isn’t willing to invest more in itself, then why should I invest in it?

That’s fine thinking when either a company has strong growth potential or the economy is rock solid and so nearly everybody is growing. However, this economy has been somewhat unpredictable, and as a result Value Stocks have been doing well. That’s why we invested in them. We anticipated that others would continue to do so and therefore move prices our way. Plus we knew the overseas stocks would do well because we expected the US Dollar to fall. But we forgot about dividends.

Good thing they didn’t forget about us!

That Year-End disbursement for our International Value Fund was so huge I had to check it three times, and then I had to check my personal investments to make sure that my family had made that money too! But hey, sometimes you just guess right, and that’s what happened here. In this case, if you’d held the Vanguard Int’l Value fund ALL YEAR (we didn’t), you’d have made a whopping 27%! But we broke 19%, and that ain’t bad. On Wall Street, that’d probably earn you a promotion.

Other than that, everything is about as expected – and hopefully self-explanatory. The sole exception is our Bond Funds, which I should point out aren’t doing much. Thanks to the monthly interest payouts, we’re at least treading water, and I still think it’s worth seeing what will happen in the hopes that we’ll actually make a little money, but I‘m disappointed. I’d hoped by now to see better movement in interest rates. We haven’t seen that yet, and so we’re honestly lucky to even be breaking even. But so far the bond idea hasn’t been a winner.

One final note market-related note: on Wednesday, Marvel issued a Press Release saying that they’d signed Gwyneth Paltrow to play Pepper in the new Iron Man movie. I hadn’t realized that Iron Man will be their first self-produced film, but it will be and with Paltrow and Robert Downey Jr cast as Tony Stark, it seems like they’ve got a likely winner.

I’m also personally glad that they’re not footing the bill for Ghost Rider. Although the trailer looks cool, I think Nicolas Cage is insane, and his turn as Ghost Rider looks just one step short of an Elvis impersonation.

So what the Hell happened to the Chargers? Holy shit! I am sooo disappointed. I even had my #14 Dan Fouts jersey on during the game and everything. Damn. I hate that.

And I felt BAD for Ladainian Tomlinson. That guy played well. Certainly well enough to win. If not for a stupid kick-returner, a couple of stone-handed receivers, and perhaps the dumbest cornerback in the NFL, he surely would have won.

Then again, on further review, I have to admit that I really do want to see Brady vs. Manning III. But if the Colts don’t win, I’m going into hiding.

And that’s about it. I hope this week’s edition satisfied your need to read my political and economic rantings. Folks seemed to be missing those, so I tried to get back the basics.

Until next week, stay safe.

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Dan Head is a utilities analyst and occasional freelance writer.