2020

Do you remember this guy?  He's Martin O'Malley, former governor of Maryland: a traditional liberal who could have been President of the United States.  Think back to the Democratic primary debates of 2016 — got it now?  He was that "other guy" on stage with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.  I don't doubt for a moment that he would have been a stronger candidate against Tr*mp than either of his opponents.

Frankly, I wouldn't mind seeing O'Malley get the nomination in 2020, if he decided to try again — but he won't.  Neither will Oprah, who is one of the smarter celebrities out there.

Can the Democrats blow it again with the wrong candidate?  Here's a hint: they ran Adlai Stevenson against Eisenhower a second time after he lost spectacularly the first time.  Even against Tr*mp, the most unpopular president in any living person's memory, Democrats could go wrong.

The Tr*mp presidency has liberated intrinsic American racism and sexism.  Despite backlash from #blacklivesmatter and #metoo, the infection is deep, virulent, and not nearly so embarrassing to the infected as it was a decade ago.  To win in 2020, Democrats just might have to put yet another white male at the top of their ticket.  Have no doubt that the Democratic establishment is struggling with the problem of satisfying its black and progressive female voters while bringing along enough of Middle America to gain an electoral victory.

Obama won the presidency because he never seemed black enough to threaten white America.  Corey Booker has those skills and much of the same charisma, but party leadership must be wondering whether Obama used up that particular kind of appeal.  Kamala Harris could do well with Democrats on the left, but her chief appeal to the party leadership might be as a black female running mate to a "dependable" white male.

Elizabeth Warren's focused sincerity, intellect, and genuine populism might make her the strongest female contender, but too many men (like Tr*mp) find her threatening.  Kirsten Gillibrand is too strongly identified with feminism for those same men — and there are lots of them — but would be another strong contender for the number-two slot.

So what about the white males?  The geezers in contention are Bernie Sanders, who sounds ready for another run, and Joe Biden, who wishes he hadn't dropped out last time.  Are millennials ready for more gerontocracy?  Neither Sanders nor Biden is much older than Tr*mp, and Biden would have a strong shot at the presidency even if the Republicans dump Tr*mp for a less embarrassing candidate.  The most attractive candidate among the younger white men might be Sherrod Brown: progressive, handsome, and from Ohio.

With any luck, Andrew Cuomo will be too wrapped up in ethics investigations to have a serious chance at the nomination.  I've sworn off making predictions, but I see a very strong possibility that frightened Democrats will dust off Biden and let him try again.

A Question of Legitimacy

A leader is politically legitimate when citizens accept his right to lead them.  They willingly cooperate, accepting his decisions even when they disagree, because they trust his intentions will be in accord with their nation's broadly accepted laws and practices.

Congressman John Lewis will not be attending the Presidential Inauguration Ceremony on Friday because he believes the incoming President is not legitimate.  Lewis cites illegitimate means the President-elect's campaign used to secure his victory — but that is not the test of legitimacy.  What matters is whether or not the mass of the American public accepts that Tr*mp is entitled to lead.  It is not a matter of how he achieved office, but of how willing Americans are to follow his leadership.

A significant minority of the American public never granted legitimacy to Barack Obama.  They were emotionally incapable of accepting the leadership of a black intellectual, so were willing to believe he was a foreign-born socialist Muslim  A recalcitrant Republican Congress acted as if that minority's misguided beliefs were true — but Obama had sufficient public support to guide the direction of the country through eight years in office despite bitter opposition.

Whether Tr*mp will enjoy that level of legitimacy remains to be seen.  His significant deficit in the popular vote is working against him, as well as his bizarre affection for Vladimir Putin — but the emotional element is key.  To many Americans, his innate persona inspires feelings ranging from distaste to utter contempt.

It is true that most people just make do with whatever government they get, so many authoritarian governments manage to persist by coercive repression of a small number of vocal opponents.  If the opposition is sufficiently vigorous, though, even those governments fail.

Well, THAT's over...

If Hillary's speeches to the banking industry were as eyes-glaze-over boring as her acceptance speech at the convention last night, she was vastly overpaid.  Shopping lists make for lousy oratory, even when they include a few of your own favorite goodies.  Chelsea's introductory attempt to "humanize" her mother kind of fell flat.

Finale notwithstanding, I suppose the Democratic Convention will be accounted a success.  The Obamas and Bill Clinton were predictably silver-tongued; Booker and Biden wound their stumps quite nicely; Warren and Sanders were workmanlike despite some sabotage by their own supporters; Bloomberg added a nice touch; the second-tier pols didn't embarrass themselves; and "all the little people" played their roles quite well.  (The "entertainment" was awful.)

Something was puzzling me about Tim Kaine's perky, quirky stylings, and it wasn't the digressions into español.  His mannerisms are — there's no other way to put this — gay.  Go figure.

Anyway, I hope Hillary's handlers let her be sarcastic, dismissive, and generally condescending to Tr*mp in the debates.  He does have a soft underbelly, and it does require some unconstrained poking, including below the belt.  You don't beat a bully with statesmanship.

And, yes, if New York looks safe enough in the Fall, I will be voting for Jill Stein.  It has to look quite safe though — otherwise I'll get out my very large clothespin and do what I must.

This v. That

McConnell v. Obama
Mitch McConnell did not have to announce that the Senate would not consider an Obama nomination to the Supreme Court.  If he didn't want an Obama candidate confirmed, he could have held hearings and had his party reject the appointment.  He's been doing that over and over with Obama appointments to the Court of Appeals.

I doubt that he acted without thinking, thereby inadvertently blowing up a political storm.  He wanted the public conflict, and he got it.  Presumably, he hopes it will motivate more Republicans to go to the polls in November, despite the fact that most of them will have supported candidates who lost in the primaries all the while developing a pretty intense dislike for the eventual winner.

Tim Cook v. FBI
FBI Director James Comey kept his agency's conflict with Tim Cook and Apple quiet for over a year, then decided to go public when he could exploit the San Bernadino shooting to force Apple to breach its customers' security.  Tr*mp isn't the only one exploiting fear to compromise civil liberties.

Don't blame Comey, though.  He's just the public face of the administration's ongoing effort to have easy and immediate access to all your personal data.  When it comes to violation of privacy and establishment of the national security state, Obama is second to none.

The Donald v. the Pope
Dissing the Pope will not do Tr*mp any damage at all.  Most of his redneck supporters probably hate Catholics anyway, and the Catholics among his supporters are pissed at Francis for "betraying" the virulently anti-Communist John Paul and Hitler Youth graduate Benedict; not to mention failing to lead the hate parade against Muslims and gays.

Me, I'm an atheist, but I'm still more of a Christian than Tr*mp.  Oh, well.  Except for Trump winning again, I expect the outcome of the South Carolina Republican primary to be largely inconclusive, so the merry chase will continue on towards Super Tuesday.

Fast-track

I was pleasantly surprised when Democrats in the House blocked Obama's route to fast-track trade negotiation authority for the TPP.  Maybe I needn't have been quite so surprised.  After all, what had he ever done for them?

I've already explained my own reservations with the TPP here, so I won't go into them again.  All I can add at this time is that the more that's emerged from the shroud of secrecy, the less I like it — and I was especially pissed off by Obama's overtly personal attacks on Elizabeth Warren.

Now, we have to wait for Hillary, whose "people" must be desperately measuring and weighing public opinion and the views of her corporate backers, since she rarely seems to have opinions or principles of her own.  If Hillary backs Obama, I expect enough votes will swing to saddle us with all the unpleasant surprises certain to be contained within the terms of the TPP.  After all, many current members of Congress won't want to get on the "wrong side" of the "next president."

Sadly, I suspect she'll back the president, taking union support for granted.  The unions won't have much of a choice if she's running against, say, Scott Walker.

How to Sabotage a Nuclear Agreement

An unsubstantiated rumor believed to have started on this blog, today, would have it that Paul Wolfowitz, neoliberal co-architect of the US invasion of Iraq, is currently on loan from the Jeb Bush presidential campaign to Mohammed bin Salman, de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia (see post of April 4, below.)  If true, a Wolfowitz influence would go a long way towards explaining why Saudi Arabia has invaded Yemen to restore the "democratically elected" Hadi administration to power.

First, a word on that "democratic" election.  Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi ran unopposed, in an election boycotted both by the Houthis and Yemen's southern secessionists.  His previous experience was as vice-president to the "democratically elected" Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was forced to resign by the Gulf Cooperation Council, which consists of Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni oil monarchies of the Persian Gulf.  Saleh and his loyalists now are allied with the Houthis.

In what looks most like a barefaced attempt to sabotage the agreement between Iran and its six negotiating partners announced last week, the USofA announced it would be supporting the Saudi invasion of Yemen.  (Note: Saudi Arabia is the number one armaments importer in the world, buys most of its weapons from the United States, certainly would not need any extra help if bin Salman were competent, and is unlikely to profit from whatever help is forthcoming.)

Why did Obama take exactly the wrong step at exactly the wrong time?  Did he intend to sabotage the proposed agreement by backing the Saudis and letting Kerry strongly suggest that the Houthis are Iranian puppets?  Was the intent to back out of the nuclear arms agreement while forcing Iran to take the blame?  Did he go out of his way to provoke the Grand Ayatollah?

That's how it looks to me — and I have no difficulty imagining Bibi Netanyahu, John Boehner, and all Congressional sucklers at the AIPAC teat (of both parties) sitting back with smug smiles on their faces.  Maybe there's something more subtle going on, but if so, it's too subtle for me.  What next?

The AUMF

Obama's request for Congress to give him Authorization for Use of Military Force against Islamic State, like most Obama proposals, has failed to fully satisfy anybody.  Since it is an Obama administration proposal, nobody should be surprised that it tries to skate adroitly among the holes in the ice.

Since the requested war powers would expire in three years, some of the dimmer lights in Congress may be able to convince themselves that they are regaining control of warmaking powers.  That's not the case, of course, because without Congressional approval, the prez already is making war in Syria and Iraq, and nothing in the current proposal stops him from continuing to make war wherever and whenever it seems politically acceptable — based on his torturous interpretation of the 2001 resolution against Al Qaeda.

Nothing would stop Hillary either, and she is more of a hawk than Barack.  Anyway, some meaningless piece of legislation will pass, supported by pitchfork waving Republicans and torch pumping Democrats, and Obama will have what he wants — a "bipartisan" endorsement of whatever he happens to do.  When everything gets screwed up, as it has a way of doing in the Middle East, it won't be only his fault.

State of the Union

Obama managed to sound somewhat more like a Democrat last night, and he seems to have given up entirely on his earlier "working across the aisle" mantra.  I like some of the ideas he floated, needless to say those least likely to be enacted into law by our current troglodyte Congress.  Raising the top capital gains tax rate to 28%, albeit only a modest increase, would be a step in the right direction.  "But wait," shout the Republicans, "that would stifle investment and kill jobs!"

Nah.  It's still a lower rate than the rich would be paying if they actually had to work for the income, and since corporations are so astute at avoiding paying taxes, the "double taxation" argument won't hold.  Dumping the inheritance dodge also makes a lot of sense, but I didn't hear anything about closing the "carried-interest" loophole this time around.  Oh well, it wasn't going to happen anyway, so why keep antagonizing Hillary's likely Wall Street donors?

Getting Congress to actively authorize military action against IS makes a lot of sense, because when things go terribly wrong, as they always are inclined to do, the administration gets to share the blame.  Free community college tuition sounds good, but community college tuition is cheap, generally covered by Pell Grants for the poor, as David Brooks pointed out in his NYTimes column a couple of days ago.  He is also on the mark when he observes that raising graduation rates from community colleges is a much more difficult, and a much more important, endeavor than just shuffling more failures through the system.

One area where Obama might get Republican cooperation is in getting fast-track authority for his Trans-Pacific-Partnership.  Will the TPP result in improved labor standards in Asia?  Maybe.  Asian standards just might improve almost to the same extent that US standards deteriorate.

All in all, though, inching to the left, however slightly, is likely to help Democratic candidates in 2016, while keeping what Paul Wellstone called "the democratic wing of the Democratic Party" at bay — and I suspect that may have been a major objective of last night's address.

Thanksgiving catch-up

There were a number of things I wanted to mention this month, but it's been a little hectic.  Anyway:

Obama acts on immigration
ICE is the largest government agency, and an extraordinary bureaucracy.  Its administrators and agents already have ignored more than a few clear "guidances" from the White House.  Who says they'll follow orders this time.  To wit, Obama has been saying for over a year that he only wants "criminals" deported, to which ICE responded by deporting any "criminal" they caught whose only crime was entering the country illegally.

Bibi and the "Jewish State"
Isn't it bad enough that we already have an "Islamic State," and to hear many on the right express it, a "Christian Nation?"  Arab Israelis already have diminished status in Israel.  The proposed "Jewish State" law would fully institutionalize that, along with the semi-formal apartheid that already exists.

Ferguson
Anybody who ever served on a Grand Jury knows that a prosecutor who makes even a minimal effort gets an indictment, because only the state's version of events is presented to the jurors.  In the Michael Brown case, apparently, the local prosecutor's version was that the police can do no wrong. Robert P. McCulloch, whose whole family was wrapped up with the police force, and whose policeman father was killed by a black man when McCulloch was twelve years old, never should have had jusrisdiction.  The conflicts of interest were just too great.

Chuck Hegel
Chuck's problem, as anybody who was paying attention must know, was that he just wasn't part of Obama's "inner circle," a very exclusive group who have the president's ear, but have not proven themselves especially adept at giving good advice.  Hegel is well out of it, but the Oval Office cabal will be with us for two more years.

Arming the Syrian "moderates"
Who's kidding whom?  All the rebels are intent on overthrowing Assad first and foremost.  They may even work together until he's gone, and only then get down to the business of exterminating each other.

Recip Tayyip Erdogan
The President of Turkey prefers to have Sunni extremists on his border than an independent Kurdistan.  Don't look to him for help in controlling the Islamic State (or in helping to secure the rights of Turkish women.)

Keystone XL

The Keystone pipeline is a purely political controversy.  It doesn't much matter, economically, whether it happens or not — albeit, some environmental concerns may have some validity.  If constructed, the general professional perspective is that it will generate between 35 and 50 permanent jobs.  Here and there, some pipeslingers will have work for a year or two, but given current crude oil prices, constructing it is not worth the trouble.

Mary Landrieu, stuck in a probably doomed run-off election, will keep pushing it.  Obama can veto it without losing any support, and maybe gain a little more support from the greenies.  The big problem for Keystone is that oil prices have dropped so low that tar sands oil just can't compete.  Tar sands oil is just too expensive.

Clearly, Obama should use his veto, unless he's still idiotically trying for "across-the-aisle" reconciliation.  That won't happen, so let him screw them every way he can.  Payback's a bitch.

Deporter in Chief vs. "Friend of Latinos"

Barack Obama, whom I have come to sincerely dislike, has presided over more deportations than any previous President — and by a lot.  Latinos in the USofA, who voted overwhelmingly for Our President in 2012, have started to re-evaluate their support, so Our President now is promising Executive Actions to protect, perhaps, five million of the undocumented.  This is the same President, by the way, who told us he didn't think he had legal authority to do so — and not so long ago.

What can we expect of him?  Based on prior experience, we can expect he'll do as little as possible, while spouting as much "inspirational" bullshit as he can.  Will he insist on legal representation for the child immigrants from Central America claiming asylum but already being deported?  Not likely.  Not much matters to him except the "optics."

Okay, maybe now that the Democrats screwed up the midterms, he'll feel "liberated" to take some tough stances against the right wing crazies — but I'm not counting on it.  He spent too much time at the University of Chicago, home of the Hayekian homeboys, and I suspect he was infected.  May the ghost of John Maynard Keynes haunt him, reminding him that he was pretty much a pussy during the financial crisis, and since.  (Is "pussy" politically incorrect?  Sorry. My reference was to a little cat.)

.....

If the Democrats nominate Hillary in 2016, they'll be offering us just more Bill and Barack.  Let's not forget who teamed with Phil Gramm to overturn Glass-Steagle — not to mention who designed the first pro-corporate "health care reform" based on "free market" principles.  Some on the left are talking about nominating Robert Reich, who has a fantastic intellect.  Just the same, I don't think the USofA is quite ready to be led by a dwarf.  Maybe a woman.  Not a dwarf.

Elizabeth Warren, are you waiting for 2020?  I'm an old man, and I need somebody brilliant and articulate and inspiring and (sorry) kind of hot, NOW!  (I have such a crush on Elizabeth Warren!  She's my ideal woman.)

Anyway, I'm not happy — but when am I happy?  I want my new granddaughter to grow up in a caring, ethical environment.  I can't do much, but I'll do what I can.

US/China "Climate Pact"???

Far be it from me to agree with Republican obstructionists, but the alleged "climate pact" I read about in the Times this morning sounds like — well, how do I put this? — shall we say, bullshit?

The Chinese, it seems, have agreed to stop increasing their carbon emissions sixteen years from now, in 2030.  The United States, as best I can tell, has agreed to just keep on keeping on with the steps in place right now — assuming the Koch brothers don't take over the entire government in 2016, and turn the USofA into New China.

Why did Obama and Xi even bother?  Did Obama feel he needed some kind of asshole "victory?"  Did Xi think he had to suggest to the Chinese that breathing, eventually, would no longer be quite so lethal?

Shall we say, bullshit?

Please! NOT Hillary!

We have had more than enough of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).  Moving the Democrats to the "middle" (into the clutches of Wall Street) may have seemed like "a good idea at the time," but that time, if it ever existed, certainly is over.

Obama has been nothing but Clinton in blackface.  In case you hadn't noticed, Obama actually is not black.  Maybe a lot of blacks may not have noticed that yet, but it's true.  Raised in a middle-class white family and educated in a series of hoity-toity white schools, he's no more black than that asshole friend of his, Arne Duncan (who went to private schools, but occasionally played basketball with so-called "brothers".)  I don't know if the low turnout of black voters in the midterms indicates they've figured out the "not so dark" secret or not, but it's a distinct possibility.

Regardless of whether she will be elected or not, Hillary will be a disaster for progressive Democrats.  There really are progressive Democrats, and they deserve a shot at the presidency, even though they quite possibly might lose.

We deserve a clear choice in 2016.  We deserve clear policy choices, not just "tired old lady" v. "hot shot right wing demagogue," or "safe favorite of the plutocrats not aligned with Hillary."

A pox upon all their houses.  I'm tired of casting protest votes.  Give me a real choice.

Obama's Foreign Policy

Second guessing Our President on foreign policy seems to be the new national pastime, but none of the second-guessers seems to have an answer to the question, "Well, then what would you do?"  I sure don't.

McCain and Graham like to dance around like Yosemite Sam and sing their "Get tough" song, but really — invade Iraq again?  Go to war with Russia, perhaps?  Sometimes the options come down to few or none.

Arm and train the "moderates" in Syria?  First you'd have to find some, and you probably couldn't find enough to have any impact on the situation over there.  Apart from the Kurds, the Iraqis are pretty much worthless when it comes to fighting ISIL, and Haider al-Abadi looks to me like Nuri al-Maliki lite.  Okay, it would be very nice if the Kurds didn't have to rely on Soviet era weapons, but arming them with something better risks pissing off the Iranians and the Turks.  (The Iranians and the Turks?  No wonder Obama seems more than a little burnt out lately!)

How about arming and training the western Ukrainians?  It yet may happen, but didn't we fight enough proxy wars against Russia last century?  And think how successful those were!

As you know, I'm not a big fan of Barack Obama, but as far as foreign policy goes, I suggest he's muddling through as best he can — and no worse than anybody else could manage, under the circumstances.  Let's all just take a step back, and let him muddle.

Race in America

It's not pleasant to be black in America, especially if you happen to be young and male.  It's not even especially pleasant to be a Harvard educated, dark complected President of the United States raised in a middle class white household who won office with a ton of Wall Street money.  The die-hard racist elements in American society don't make any particular distinctions.

 Black Americans were jubilant when the Hawaiian was elected and re-elected.  It seemed like some sort of turning point.  It wasn't.


I suspect the biggest problem is that so many white people (and Asians as well) think young black men are just too damned scary.  George Zimmerman thought Trayvon Martin was so scary he just had to follow him and shoot him.  Police officer Randall Kerrick thought auto accident victim Jonathan Ferrell was so scary he just had to shoot at him twelve times, hitting him with ten bullets.  There are plenty of other examples, so we don't have to speculate on why police officer Darren Wilson just had to shoot Michael Brown six times — twice in the top of the head, suggesting that he might already have fallen down face first after the other four shots.

So why are young black men so scary?  Well, part of the answer is that a lot of them want to look scary.  They want to look like those thug rappers, perhaps, or they want to look scary so other people will just leave them the hell alone.  Maybe, sometimes, it works.

Sometimes, though, it doesn't.

Stuff

Latest NSA revelations

Today's Times article, published despite NSA objections, confirms many more of our "paranoia is heightened awareness" suspicions.  I think it was especially interesting that Our Government coerced some companies into installing backdoors in their privacy software.  I'm pretty sure that GnuPG encryption still is safe, though, and it's not as hard to use as some would have you believe.  Anyway, if you want to discuss your secret terrorist plans without NSA interference, try it — but remember to do your composition and encryption offline, and to securely delete your original before you go back online.  Your hardware might be hacked.

Obama and Syria

It seems Our President did not have much success lining up support for his proposed attack on Syria at the G-20, and he's having even less success at home.  Americans, you see, are just not into it, and the ones against it for reasons more substantial than just hating Obama have some questions to ask, like, what if you bomb them now and they do it again later?  What if you make it easier for Al Nusra to come out on top?  What makes you think that sending missiles against Syria will have any impact at all on Iran, except to make nuclear negotiations more difficult for Hassan Rowhani?  Let's hope Congress, for whatever stupid reasons, says no.

Jobs

The unemployment rate is down to 7.3%, almost entirely because the labor-force participation rate is so low.  The new jobs being "created" by the "job creators" are nearly all "McJobs," and median family income remains roughly $4000 less than it was in 2008.  Sadly, the government we have is not going to do anything about it.  Some people just have too much goddamned money, and much too much of it goes to 501(c)(4)s, and from there to our "representatives" in Congress.

Representative democracy!!!

Granted, David Cameron is a prime minister leading a coalition government, but it still was something of a triumph for representative democracy when Cameron actually felt the need to go to Parliament for approval before joining Obama in military action in Syria.  Granted, the vote opposing involvement in Syria was non-binding, but one suspects Cameron feels pretty much bound.

Now it's time for Obama to go to Congress.  Unless my admittedly deteriorating memory totally has failed me,  Obama ran, in 2008, against the imperial presidency claimed by his excellency the W.  Ah, how soon he forgets.

We cannot know how Congress might vote.  Knee-jerk opposition to Obama in the House might hurt him, but those same oppositional assholes really hate those Muslim types, and don't care very much which bunch we bomb.  Which prejudice will prevail?

Personally, I'm horrified by what the Syrians (not to mention the Iraqis and Afghans) are inclined to do to each other, but I don't think lobbing a few missiles would make much difference, and I'd lay odds a couple of missiles would be less accurate than currently claimed, and blow up a bunch of women and children.

Go to Congress, Barack.  Share the blame.

Law 'n' awduh

"You don't get the amount of law enforcement we can afford, you get the amount of law enforcement we can tolerate."
Sid Heal, Technology Consultant

Sid, who appeared on the PBS Newshour tonight, is a pretty bright guy.  I guess he was supposed to come in and defend police use of high speed license plate scanners, but the guy has a talent for nuance.  The woman from the ACLU, to her surprise, wound up kind of agreeing with him.

There was more law 'n' awduh news tonight.  Whitey Bulger was convicted on all but one count, still claiming the FBI hadn't been protecting him for the past couple of decades.  Well, they sure as hell were not looking for him, at least until the involved agents were retired or dead.

Then, again, AG Eric Holder gave a speech to the ABA suggesting that low level drug offenders might be diverted from mandatory minimum sentences.  It's a nice idea, and might divert attention from Holder's (to wit, Obama's) war on leakers and whistleblowers, but the administration assumes Congress will bog down trying to change the law.  Probably, that's entirely correct.

It seems the USofA has 5% of the world's population and 25% of its prisoners but, what the hell?  It appears we can tolerate a whole lot of law enforcement.

Finally, a federal court decided that New York City's "stop and frisk" program is pretty much racist.  I agree.  New York City's next mayor definitely should get rid of Kelly, but really ought to revisit the idea of congestion pricing.  Congestion pricing doesn't have much to do with law 'n' awduh, but I still think it's a good idea.

Are you "comfortable" now?

At yesterday's news conference, Our President suggested we all should feel "comfortable" with the NSA's collection of vast amounts of our personal data.  Needless to say, he blamed Edward Snowden for our discomfort.  Well, that's true, I suppose.  If we'd never found out how extreme our surveillance state had become, I guess we wouldn't have been all that bothered by it.

Under current circumstances, though, I am bothered by it — and the president's promise to jiggle the system a little to achieve a better "balance" between security and privacy doesn't reassure me at all.

Odds and Ends

Lac Megantic

For those of you who like conspiracy theories, here's a sweet one:  the oil/rail "accident" at Lac Megantic, Quebec, was engineered by supporters of the Keystone XL pipeline.  Transporting crude oil by rail, some will start saying pretty soon, is just too dangerous.  We have to have that pipeline!

How did an experienced railroad engineer and his staff happen to walk away from a train stopped at the top of a hill while leaving the brakes unlocked?  Well, maybe they all were drunk.  Or, maybe, not.  Needless to say, the oil companies will claim "mechanical failures."

I have no evidence to support this conjecture, of course, but you conspiracy theorists usually don't need what they call "evidence."  You understand (believe) that "evidence" is easily suppressed.

Weiner and Spitzer

I have not lived in New York City since 1970, but I try to stay in touch.  I am entertained by the Weiner campaign, and don't think his election would make things any worse than they would be under Christine Quinn, John Liu, Bill Thompson, or even Bill DiBlasio (who is a pretty good guy.)

On the other hand, I think Eliot Spitzer is a hell of a good candidate for Comptroller.  He's totally overqualified, and just might dig out the corruption that everybody assumes is part and parcel of City government.  Who cares about a few hookers, as long as they weren't paid on the public dime?

Egypt

Of course, it was a coup!

I don't agree with McCain too often, but this time he's right.  It was a coup, and all that military aid — the vast majority of the aid the USofA sends to Egypt — should be cut off.  Hell, they've already got most of this year's aid, so "officially" cutting it off won't make a difference until next year.

Maybe, next year, the military will restore something resembling  "democracy," and we can go back to bribing Egypt to continue maintaining the alleged "peace" with Israel.  In reality, the so-called "peace" between Egypt and Israel is not likely to be broached by either party, even without USofA funding.

War is too damned expensive, unless you're the official military protector of the multinational corporate establishment.

Obama

Maybe, someday, we'll have a black president.  Some say Clinton was "the first black president," but black Americans haven't had a real champion since Lyndon Johnson — and our last noticeably liberal president was Richard Nixon.