Catch-up

Email
“If there’s any chance of her getting indicted, they shouldn’t even consider her for the nomination,” said Zachary O’Neill, 21, of Escondido. “We can’t have a criminal in the White House.” (NYTimes-5/28)

Young people can be so cute.  Of course, the email "scandal" arose more out of incompetence than chicanery.  One can use two email accounts from the same device, and if Hillary wanted to keep her badmouthing of Bill quiet, that's what she should have done.  Oh, well!  Too late.

Little Marco
So he's jettisoning any vestige of self-respect and endorsing Tr*mp.  Little Marco indeed.

The TSA
From its beginning, I was under the impression that the TSA was more a PR stunt than a genuine effort to stop potential terrorists.  Hence, I am never surprised by how ineffective it is at keeping guns and bombs off airplanes.

Let's speed up the lines by installing wide portals with "scientific" looking flashing lights; let people walk right on through; and occasionally pull some swarthy actor out of the stream and pretend we've caught him with a bomb.  I would like them to find more traditional looking bombs — the ones that look like cannonballs with fuses sticking out — so as to maintain the cartoon aesthetic

Briefly

What's With Bernie?
"Surely," all the talking heads have been saying, "it's time for Bernie to cede the nomination to Hillary and unite the party!"  It hasn't happened, and if we need a figurehead for Bernie's problem with the Democratic establishment, look no further than Debbie Wasserman Schultz.  She and the DNC were looking forward to a coronation, and set debate schedules, fundraising procedures, and media connections to ensure it happened.  Well, it didn't happen, and Bernie is pissed.  Should anyone be surprised?

What's With Netanyahu?
Bibi is set to replace Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon with a nationalist, religion pandering, totally despicable psychopath by the name of Avigdor Lieberman.  It's not for the good of Israel — it's solely for the sake of maintaining Bibi's hold on power, and any chance for some belated reconciliation with the Palestinians will be destroyed.  The Army opposes the move.  We'll see what happens.

What's With Maduro?
Venezuela is in crisis.  People there can't even buy basic goods like toilet paper, but Nicolás Maduro is stubbornly refusing to accept that his own incompetence is largely responsible.  The only thing that can save the Bolivarian Revolution is a rapid jump in oil prices, and that just ain't happening.  Things have deteriorated so far that one even could justify calling in the IMF — and nobody has ever heard me say that before!

Tr*mp Speaks

The New York Times questioned Donald Tr*mp regarding how he would deal with a visit by newly elected London Mayor Sadiq Khan, given his proposal to exclude Muslims from the USofA.

   "I was happy to see that," Mr. Trump said of Mr. Khan's election. "I think it's a very good thing, and I hope he does a very good job because, frankly, that would be very, very good."
   Asked why, Mr. Trump said: "Because I think if he does a great job, it will really — you lead by example. If he does a good job, and frankly if he does a great job, that would be a terrific thing."

Those comments were characteristic of the Tr*mp style of dealing with an issue — any issue — to wit, winging it.  If only he were better at it...

Free Trade

A lot of people are bloviating about the evils of free trade.  Not me.  I'm not against free trade — just the agreements, with particular emphasis on those who negotiate the agreements.

The negotiators for the TPP and TTIP are overwhelmingly drawn from the corporate sector, and the regulations they negotiate overwhelmingly favor large corporations.  Usually there are a few pages about "labor standards" in the encyclopedic final documents, but benefits for workers are minimal and, even to the extent they exist, rarely enforced.

Workers guaranteed a living wage in Asia or Latin America or Africa do not offer the same degree of unfair competition to American workers as the quasi-slave labor forces that make out-migration of American jobs so lucrative for the world's plutocrats.  Opposition to the TTIP agreement comes primarily from European labor unions, who fear that the trade agreement could drag European labor standards down to the significantly inferior North American level.

Globalization has proceeded to a point where it cannot be undone, and moving away from greater world trade would have severe economic consequences across the globe.  What is lacking, though, is any genuine effort to use trade for the benefit of ordinary human beings, not just big business.

Bigly

Donald Tr*mp, now the Republican nominee barring divine lightning strikes and such like, says he will win the November election "bigly."  Yes, he said he'd "win bigly."

I can't say I'm sorry to see the end of the Ted Cr*z campaign.  Cr*z's loss is a loss for the Christianist bigots, the most rabid "conservatives," and the self-righteous haters long the essential "base" of the Republican Party.  The "fact" that Cruz senior was involved in the Kennedy assassination (according to Tr*mp) seemed to have no bearing on the voting — probably because equal numbers of Republicans approved of that assassination as disapproved.

I'm also not unhappy that wolf-in-sheep's-clothing John Kasich dropped out.  The wealthy donors who supported him probably will start giving to Hillary's superPAC — the corporations never had many complaints about the last Clinton administration.

I don't much care for Hillary.  I suppose a lot of that arises from my dislike of Bill, but she's also a lot more of a hawk than Obama has been.  Also, I expect that she'll follow Obama's lead on defending government secrecy and persecuting whistleblowers.  Just the same, I'll vote for her in the general election, and I'm trying to persuade other Sanders supporters to do the same.  Trump is a complete unknown in terms of real policy beliefs, and his ignorance of everything except marketing his own brand makes him especially scary.

I'm also not confident that New York will remain a "safe" Democratic state this time around, so I guess Jill Stein of the Green Party will have to do without me this year.  Okay, I'll say it:

Vote for Hillary: It Could Be Worse!   It could be a lot worse.