Comey

Obama appointed James Comey Director of the FBI in yet another of his misguided attempts to "reach out" to Republicans.  Like all his other attempts, this one too came back to bite him in the ass.  Nobody wants to say that Comey was motivated by animus towards Clinton or Democrats in general, but the animus was pretty evident in his earlier summary of the email investigation.

Is it possible Comey's latest actions are nothing more than arrant cowardice in the face of blustering Republican Congressman?  Maybe.  I'm willing to let Comey decide for himself whether history records his actions  as malicious or merely craven.  One way or the other, his reputation is shot.

Malheur Siege Acquittal

Am I wrong to believe that had the Bundy brothers and their supporters been Muslims they would be starting 35 year sentences in federal prison about now?  How incompetent was the prosecution?  How much impact did the well-armed protesters outside the courthouse have on the jurors?  Is everybody tr*mping crazy?

If Cliven and his boys aren't convicted in Nevada, what little confidence I have left in our legal system will be gone.

Elsewhere

The Levant
So Erdogan is supporting our Kurdish allies in Iraq, where he's not wanted, while killing them in Syria, where he is wanted?  With friends like that...

Yemen
The role the US is playing in Yemen is not quite the same as the role Russia is playing in Syria, but the parallels are too close to ignore.

Venezuela
Thanks to the drop in oil prices and the incompetence of the Maduro government, the class war in Venezuela is heating up; but the US blew its leverage back while Chavez was alive.

Nigeria
Nobody is sure exactly why Boko Haram released 20 of the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls.  Meanwhile, President Mohammedu Buhari is having marital problems.

The Philippines
Rodrigo Duterte is a prime example of what you get when you elect an insane populist president.  One wonders if Xi Jinping will manage him any better than Obama can.  Not likely.

Briefly

That tape
I've been wondering who might have been the source of the "Pussygate" tape, why it was not released during the primary season, and how it came to be perfectly timed as an "October surprise."  It's hard to believe that the timing was purely coincidental.

DDoS
Now, the internet is threatened by our baby monitors, thermostats, and refrigerators  Aside from the threat to the internet, we might be well advised to consider the threat to our baby monitors, thermostats, and refrigerators.

Recovery?
The pundits wonder why, despite the much vaunted economic "recovery," so many people continue to report economic insecurity.  The obvious answer is job insecurity, with so many new jobs defined as temporary or 1099 independent contractor, and unionization efforts effectively blocked in most states.

The Revolution
Even a Tr*mp presidency would do nothing to constrain the inside-the-Beltway echo chamber of "experts" who control American foreign and economic policy.  There is no revolution.  There will be no revolution.  Sad.

Pussygate

I suppose we should not be surprised that it took a sex scandal to bring low a presidential candidate who is, in so many other ways, thoroughly despicable.  America, the eternally adolescent, is unfazed by mere hatred and calumny.  America requires misbehavior that can be expressed in dirty words.

Many of Tr*mp's supporters, of course, are happy to accept that a vast "establishment conspiracy" has plotted against him, and that his "locker room talk" was just an innocent example of "boys will be boys."  After all, talk radio has fed them similar conspiracy theories for many years.  Others, predictably, don't see sexual assault as disqualifying.  When you get right down to it, some Tr*mp supporters really are deplorable.  (Not half, though!  It's not nice to deplore people for their intellectual disabilities!  Or am I being too "politically correct?")

As for the Podesta emails, they've been largely ignored partly because much of the public finds them too hard to understand.  The rest of us just shrug and say, "So what else is new?"  Looking forward to a Clinton presidency, I anticipate the same old absence of transparency and the inevitable tack to the right.  The revolution has been postponed once again.

The Second "Debate"

The presidential debate in St. Louis would have been just as informative and moderately more amusing had the candidates been dressed in clown suits and armed with seltzer bottles, although that format might have done even more damage to hard-working birthday clowns already suffering from the latest "creepy clown" panic.  If Tr*mp hoped to get past his latest predatory image, he didn't do himself much good by stalking around the stage striking intimidating poses.  Clinton looked like she would have preferred to be anywhere else — and who could blame her?

The "town hall" format was meaningless, because those few "undecided" citizens who got to ask questions were largely ignored.  Tr*mp almost immediately accused moderators Martha Raddatz and Anderson Cooper of being "against" him, even though they did a competent job of concealing their disgust.

One interesting Clinton tactic was an effort to tie Tr*mp to Vladimir Putin.  Granted, Putin might prefer to deal with an internally weakened USofA under a President Tr*mp, but it is hard to accept that Tr*mp has invited or encouraged Putin's interference in the American election: sociopaths do not automatically stick together.  In truth, I see more of the paranoid stylings of Erdogan or Duterte in Tr*mp than the icy manipulations of the Russian leader.

Most Americans will breathe a sigh of relief when this election is over, but the disruptive and destructive impact of the election will not end soon.

*            *            *

We lost one of the best with the death of Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson. His efforts to review and correct the injustices of the past were unprecedented, and should serve as a model for law enforcement officials everywhere.

Musings

Hey!  Didja hear?  Tr*mp is a pig! (So, what else is new?)  And Clinton sucks up to bankers! (Uh huh.)  And Putin's hackers are trying to help Tr*mp!  (My goodness!)  And Gary Johnson is burnt!  (Oh, really?)  And Paul Ryan wishes he could crawl into a hole and never come out!  (Do it!)

Where did they find a houseful of "uncommitted" voters for Sunday's debate?  Guantanamo?  Mars?  Just how ignorant does a person have to be to remain "uncommitted" at this point?  I suppose the committee could have found plenty of people who hate both their guts — and that could make for a pretty interesting "town hall."

I take a little solace from Clinton's comments on why she opposed CAFTA — the labor protections were not strong enough.  The truth about trade is that no significant tariff barriers have been in place for many years, and the main impact of the TPP would be to facilitate corporate lawsuits against governments to roll back labor and environmental protections, and to extend monopolistic corporate patents and copyrights.  Free trade is here to stay.

Enablers

Christie
Obviously Chris has abandoned all hope of continuing his political career, as signaled by his approval of a 27¢ per gallon gasoline tax increase for New Jersey.  Maybe Tr*mp will allow him to be a talking head on that new news network — albeit neither loyalty nor gratitude seem to figure much into Tr*mp's "temperament."

Giuliani
Rudy was a racist when he served as Mayor of New York City; but these days he's a louder racist.  It's cute how he's out there insisting Tr*mp is a "genius" who can fix the tax code because he's exploited it so well.  (Needless to say, Tr*mp's tax proposal would leave the outrageous breaks for commercial real estate developers intact.)

McConnell & Ryan
Mitch and Paul still seem to have difficulty gagging out support for "their" presidential candidate, but somehow they manage to do so no matter how embarrassing he becomes or how often he contradicts orthodox Republican policy.  Tr*mp may be inconsistent, but he sticks with cutting taxes on the rich — and that's what matters.

Cruz
I guess Ted has come to decide his wife must be ugly and his father really did help plan the assassination of JFK.  How else to explain his endorsement of Tr*mp?  Surely an individual of such high and noble ideals could not have succumbed to political pressure.