Speleunking the Wine Cave

If you were a gay multimillionaire hoping to change America's stereotype of gay men, could you find a better avatar than Pete Buttigieg?  He's articulate and intelligent (Harvard, Oxford), a decorated veteran of the war in Afghanistan, and good-looking – but not at all effeminate.  He's comfortably out, and happily married.  Who could ask for more?

It's safe to assume that a lot of the early money that turned a small-city mayor into a viable presidential candidate came from wealthy gays; and entirely understandable that they wouldn't be comfortable with press coverage of his fund-raising events.  Democrats being Democrats, none of his opponents is willing to say that his sexuality detracts from his "electability" — but a "wine cave" sounds like exactly the sort of place a cabal of mega-rich gays would like to hang out and be gay together.  The coding is subtle, but clear.

Personally, I have a different problem with Mayor Pete: it's hard for me to trust someone who seems to have prepared a list of accomplishments prerequisite to political power while still in high school, and then carefully checked off each item, one by one.  It makes me wonder if that person has any higher objective than power itself.  I'm not at all clear regarding why Pete Buttigieg wants to be President of the United States; and it bothers me.

It was inevitable that one of his opponents, however subtly, would have to inject sexuality into the primary debates.  I'm just sorry it turned out to be Elizabeth Warren.

Quick takes

• I can't help thinking that if the Inspector General investigated ten random FISA applications, he'd probably find the number of problems he found in the Carter Page application is about average.  The problem is that the FISA court is secret, so FBI agents can cut corners without much chance of getting caught.  Most of the fruits of FISA warrants remain secret, even after they're executed; and secrecy always invites abuse.

• The impeachment proceeding is just the latest manifestation of an epistemological crisis: apparently, Pat Moynihan was wrong, and you can have your own facts.  For godfather of the current crisis, I nominate Rupert Murdoch, who brought the spirit of British tabloid journalism to American television.  It's hard to stay involved in the ongoing "drama" in Congress when everybody's already guessed the ending.

• I'm curious to see how the Liberal Democrats fare in tomorrow's British election, with their straightforward, unequivocal support for remaining in the EU.  It wasn't that long ago that the LibDems propped up a Conservative minority government.  Might they do the same for Labour?

Afghanistan update

Last week, Our President pardoned two turkeys and three war criminals.  Then he flew off to Afghanistan, where he announced resumption of peace talks with the Taliban.  The Taliban's response: "Huh?"

Presumably, this means negotiators will take up where they left off, with the Taliban agreeing not to attack NATO forces as they fully withdraw; and to hold separate peace negotiations with the Afghani government – in China.  While this is not good news for more westernized, urban Afghanis – particularly women – the frequently innocent victims of US bombing raids won't mind at all.  Anyway, nobody seems to have a better idea.

Clearly, the Taliban must recognize that a treaty with the United States may not be worth much, given US withdrawal from the Iran pact; and it's unlikely that Taliban leaders will feel any great obligation to follow through on their own commitments once foreign troop are gone from their country.  It's also unlikely that they will see a bitterly divided Afghani government as a credible negotiating partner, given the ongoing dispute between Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah regarding who actually won the past couple of elections.

Of course, most Americans really don't care what happens in Afghanistan once our troops come home: so America's longest war finally may be coming to an end.

Too much television

I've never been inclined to binge-watch TV — even the most dramatic and convoluted fictions just can't hold my interest for more than an hour or two.

Then I got hooked on the impeachment inquiry — not for new revelations nor even for the inevitable confirmations of my preexisting beliefs.  I was hooked on the human drama: the personalities of the witnesses, and their distinctive responses to the singular circumstances of Congressional scrutiny.  It was "reality television" at its best.

The career diplomats (aka "deep state") expressed a degree of moral clarity rarely encountered in our day-to-day lives.  I felt I could trust Alexander Vindman with all my passwords and account numbers; Marie Yovanovitch's grace under fire tempted me to join in the standing ovation she received as she exited the hearing room; Fiona Hill's testimony, of course, was literally breathtaking; and the earnest courage of the less senior diplomats, who disobeyed Tr*mp's orders to ignore Congressional subpoenas, was genuinely inspiring.

The most interesting character study, though, was Gordon Sondland.  Gregarious, self-assured, and puckishly self-deprecating at times, he came across as somehow likeable as he sought to thread a narrow path between perjury charges and presidential revenge.  His role in the Congressional teledrama was, to me, Shakespearean: a "man of parts" brought down by vain ambition — and wishing he'd blown that million bucks on anything else.

Quick take

Many were amused when Lindsey Graham suggested that the Tr*mp administration is just too incompetent to hatch a plan which would force Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.  Well, Tr*mp & Co. certainly were too incompetent to get it right.  Sondland's amateurism and Giuliani's dementia made sure of that: they got caught.

I think it's just as amusing tha their incompetence – and Tr*mp's – are now the basis of the Republican defense against impeachment.  "Ukraine got the money," they say.  "There weren't any investigations."  Right.  The plan didn't work.  They got caught.

Clearly, Jim Jordan was added to the intelligence committee to provide sound bites for Fox.  I can't help thinking his greatest qualification is that he, like Tr*mp, actually believes the conspiracy theories about Ukraine, rather than Russia, being responsible for the 2016 election interference; and that it was done to benefit Democrats.  The Red Hats, needless to say, happily will believe it as well.

Next?

Virtually all the talking heads are in agreement: Our President will be impeached by the House and acquitted in the Senate.  This is based on the irrefutable fact that Republicans are so deep in his sh*t all they can do is pretend they can't smell it.  That leaves them struggling to agree on a strategy to defend him; and at the moment, it looks like all they have are Giuliani's conspiracy theories.

Our President, it appears, sincerely believes in those conspiracy theories, so you can be sure he regards "believing" them as a test of loyalty.  Needless to say, the conservative media (and the Russians) are doing a pretty good job of selling them to the loyal Republican base.  The Nazi "big lie" stratagem still works — and social media helps it work even better.

Just for entertainment value, I'd love to see public testimony from Rudy Giuliani.  (I know I'm not supposed to laugh at the handicapped, but in Rudy's case, I'll make an exception.)

Quick Takes

Obliged to juggle alternative realities on a daily basis, is it surprising that Mick Mulvaney was, shall we say, a bit confused?

Let's start a pool!  How long will it be before Rudy Giuliani goes under the bus?

Vladimir Putin is the only world leader likely to bring a semblance of peace to Syria.  If that happens, should he be considered for the Nobel Peace Prize?

We all know we're not supposed to judge people by their appearances, but sometimes you just can't help it!

Saving the Republican Party

As I'm sure you've noticed, Our President is batshit crazy — and he's been getting worse.  As impeachment pressures grow, his general demeanor is deteriorating and his rants and rage-tweets are increasingly bizarre.  Up to this point, Republican efforts to rationalize Tr*mp's irrationality have been strained, but effective enough to mollify his base.  The Zelensky phone call opened some cracks in GOP unity– even at Fox News – but none large enough to do real damage.

The Erdogan phone call, however, is different.  Tr*mp's base may not understand much, but they understand treachery and betrayal; they recognize a stab in the back when they see it.  After years being told of the bravery and loyalty of the Syrian Kurds – consistent "good guys" in all the media – Tr*mp's abandonment of America's allies against ISIS has to feel like a gut-punch to his admirers.  Real damage has been done, and none of the President's arguments for American self-interest or realpolitik is likely to reverse it.

In other words, Tr*mp's chance at a second term took a serious hit over the past few days; and since a narrow win in the Electoral College looked like his best  path to victory, the situation is dire.  A serious drubbing by Democrats in 2020 will endanger Republican control of the Senate as well.  What's a Bible-thumping stooge of the plutocracy to do?

Here's an idea: sidestep that embarrassing impeachment inquiry and invoke the 25th Amendment. With all due sympathy for his "illness," dump Tr*mp and give the presidency to Pence.  Our Vice-President has kept a low enough profile over the past three years to maintain his undeserved reputation for moral probity.  He could win.

It won't happen, of course.  Pence doesn't have the chutzpah to start the ball rolling, and the sycophants, enablers, and co-conspirators in the Cabinet would be too terrified to follow through.  Still, should you happen to run into Charles Koch any time soon, pass the idea along: he just might like it.

Продовжуйте поширювати шмальц

You don't have to read Ukrainian to figure out Volodymyr Zelensky's basic approach to dealing with Our President.  The "reconstructed transcript" of their telephone conversation omits any mention of the incomparable sexiness of America's First Daughter, but nobody will be too surprised if it shows up in a later edition.  The joint press appearance at the UN offered more of the same: Did Zelensky feel "pressured" by Tr*mp?  Of course not!

In the meanwhile, it's hard to argue that Biden won't be hurt by his son's lucrative employment by an Ukrainian oligarch.  Hunter's sinecure may have had no impact on America's foreign policy whatsoever, but the optics are terrible.  The "electability" argument for Biden's nomination has suffered a severe hit.

It will be a mistake if Democrats ignore Tr*mp's numerous other abuses of power to zero in on the Ukraine affair.  Those other abuses, including the numerous instances presented in the Mueller Report, demand greater scrutiny over the course of the impeachment inquiry: ignoring them is tantamount to endorsing them.

On the lighter side, congressional testimony on Ukraine by Rudy Giuliani promises to rank among the funniest absurdist comedies in TV history, and may require creating a new category for the Emmy Awards.  Granted, one shouldn't be laughing a senile dementia – but as a (Medicare) card-carrying geezer, I'll claim special dispensation to LMAO.

Briefs

The Phone Call
Maybe I'm overoptimistic, but this time it feels different.  Unlike the convoluted complications of the Mueller Report, the Tr*mp-Zelensky phone call is easy to understand — easy for people with only casual interest in the news to think about.  It might be enough to convince Pelosi and the Red State Democrats that impeachment isn't so bad an idea.

Iran
No matter where the drone attack on the Saudi oil installations was launched, everybody knows Iran was responsible.  That, of course, is what the Iranians intended: their layer of deniability was paper thin.  They showed the Saudis how vulnerable they are, and upped the ante on Tr*mp, who now is forced to choose between tanking his re-election chances with a war nobody wants, or looking like a wimp to his base.  Yes, Our President has been having a bad week.

Israel
If Avigdor Liberman manages to keep the ultra-Orthodox parties out of the ruling coalition, he'll have done one good thing in his life.  Benny Gantz is moderate only by comparison to Bibi (and, maybe, Liberman), so if he successfully forms a ruling coalition, it won't make much difference to anybody outside of Israel – nor to the Palestinians.  Still, it does provide the prospect of Bibi going to jail.

Notes on the debate

Kudos to the ABC/Univision moderators of Thursday's debate, whose questioning of the Democratic candidates was immeasurably more professional than that of the moderators from MSNBC and, especially, CNN.  As I watched, I wondered if their professionalism reflected the older, more traditional ethos of broadcast news, rather than cable's appetite for drama.  The next debate is back on CNN, in cooperation with the New York Times.  One hopes that the Times will serve as a moderating influence – or that CNN will have learned from its mistakes.

Joe Biden was better rehearsed in his talking points this time around; but by hour two, he seemed to be tossing out talking points at random, shifting subjects midstream.  Why anybody thinks he could hold his own against Tr*mp is a mystery to me.  Contrary to popular (and pundit) opinion, I sincerely believe he is the weakest contender the Democrats possibly could nominate.  It's not his age, necessarily.  Biden's entire political history is replete with gaffes, missteps, and confusion.  Frankly, I think he's just not smart enough to win.

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders did better this time at explaining how universal health care can be funded, but they still haven't nailed it.  Sanders correctly observed that US health care is twice as expensive per capita as Canadian health care, and Warren emphasized total cost to families and the profits taken out of the system by private insurers; but neither produced the kinds of sound bites favored by TV – so the message won't go out as it should.

Catching up

There's been too much news lately.  As soon as you try to focus on one story, you're distracted by another.  Really, there's no time for analysis, and it doesn't help that so much of what's happening seems so totally bizarre.  It's been apparent for months that Our President is increasingly unstable, and that the opportunists, sycophants, and incompetents who make up the modern Republican Party will do nothing to restrain him.

So, I won't bother to comment on the Sharpie incident, the Taliban "peace conference," the Scottish golf course brouhaha, etc.  I'll just observe that "the leader of the free world" is out of control, and leave it at that.  Instead, I'll point to what may be some good news.

The craziness in the UK over the past week may have eclipsed the craziness in the USofA, but only because a sizable chunk of Conservative MPs broke with their leadership, throwing a monkey wrench into Boris Johnson's threat of a no-deal Brexit.  The outcome remains uncertain, but the willingness of those rebels to subordinate party loyalty to national interest was good to see.  Will they set an example for others?  (Probably not on this side of the Atlantic.)

Equally strange and wonderful was the ability of Italy's Five Star and Democratic parties to form a government, sidelining Matteo Salvini and his Leaguers.   — and, perhaps, slowing the distressing growth of ethnonationalism in Europe. Five Star and the Democrats will be strange bedfellows, but they may be able to weaken the League before they're forced to hold new elections.

As Emily Dickenson put it, "Hope is the thing with feathers - That perches on the soul."  There are a hell of a lot of hungry cats on the prowl these days, but hope flutters on.

Crazy?

Tr*mp's teleprompter comments on the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings got a lot of air time — especially the parts where he suggested he might be open to some degree of gun control — but one line kept getting dropped off: "we must reform our mental health laws to better identify mentally disturbed individuals who may commit acts of violence and make sure those people not only get treatment, but, when necessary, involuntary confinement."

Thomas Szasz

The movement to deinstitutionalize psychiatric patients was kicked off by Thomas Szasz in the 1960s, beginning with his very influential book, The Myth of Mental Illness.  Granted, his arguments for the civil rights of psychiatric patients may have had less impact than the desire of states to close down the very costly state facilities where they were warehoused; but the process was a civil rights victory nonetheless.  Now, that victory may be undone.

Granted, the Tr*mp speechwriter's chief intent was yet another reiteration of the standard Republican line: guns don't kill people, crazy people (and minorities) do.  In the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting, it's normal to think the gunman "must have been crazy" — and people with psychiatric problems are "other" enough to fit the Republican template for victimhood quite readily.

It remains to be seen whether or not Tr*mp's call for involuntary confinement will become a major Republican talking point in a debate over how to deal with gun violence.  If the private corporations currently running so many of our prisons decide to get into the business, the likelihood will increase exponentially.

Democrats

Joe Biden was better rehearsed in his talking points for the second debate, but that's all he had: talking points, delivered with a singular absence of charisma.  Primary voters who imagined him on a debate stage with Tr*mp much have felt more than a little queasy, even as they tried to figure out which of the other establishment white males were which.

 

Kamala Harris is trying to bridge the divide between the progressives and the moderates, but was visibly stressed during the second round of debates; and Pete Buttegeig's base of supporters seems to have topped out.  Unless there's an unexpected surge by Amy Klobuchar or Tulsi Gabbard, Biden is likely to remain the anointed choice of "moderates" in the party's leadership — potentially with devastating results.

Here's my nightmare scenario: Democrats go to their Milwaukee convention next July with no clear leader.  Hoping to maintain the Democratic advantage among women, Bernie Sanders releases his delegates to Elizabeth Warren, and it comes down to a choice between Warren and Biden.  Elected delegates are split, and establishment super-delegates throw the nomination to Biden.  On Election Day, large numbers of young progressives stay home in disgust: Tr*mp redux.

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One last thought: in the September debate, I genuinely will miss Marianne Williamson  — the only candidate to make a consistently moral argument against Tr*mpism.  Hopefully, some others will be more inclined to call out evil when they see it.

Shorts

Mueller speaks
It's hard to believe that those who didn't read the Mueller Report watched him on TV for five hours.  The impact of the report on specific individuals will depend entirely on the video clips chosen by their news outlets of choice.  California Republican Tom McClintock's analogy comparing Mueller's report to a flaming sack of sh*t must have had the Congressman's aides rolling on the floor when they wrote it, and I'm sure it will get a lot of play on conservative media.  Less likely to get much play in those quarters will be Mueller's uncharacteristically biting reply.

Wrestling with hate
Watching some video of last week's North Carolina Tr*mp rally took me back to 1967, when I took a date to Pittsburgh's Civic Arena for a heavyweight wrestling show.  The villains back then still included a "Nazi" and a "Jap," along with a more contemporary "Commie."  My date and I left early, not because of the wrestling, but because of the fans — who were dead serious about what they saw in the ring.  Their howls and chants of pure hatred against the "bad guys" — the others — were genuinely horrifying.

The UK's new PM
There's an excellent chance that Boris Johnson will cheerfully lead his country into economic catastrophe with a no-deal Brexit.  Since Conservative MPs are every bit as spineless as Republicans in our Congress, a no-confidence vote seems impossible.  Johnson is far more intelligent and literate than Our President, to whom he frequently is compared; but they share a similar instinct for appealing to the basest populist instincts of their electorates.

Meanwhile, on the Arabian peninsula...

Given all the craziness going on in the USofA lately, our news media have paid scant attention to the ongoing crisis in Yemen — so you may have missed it when the UAE announced that it is ending its military cooperation with Saudi Arabia and withdrawing its forces.  After four years of war, it seems that the Emiratis have concluded that fighting the "Iranian threat" posed by the Houthis just isn't worth the effort and the expense.

This leaves the Saudis in an awkward position: they actually will have to learn how to use the hundreds of billions of dollars in weaponry purchased from the US over the past ten years in order to have any hope of winning their genocidal war, and they will have to take over the task of corralling and controlling the numerous and fractious "pro-government" militias fighting in Yemen.  Given the leadership style of Saudi Crown Prince MbS – macho incompetence – there is little reason to expect the Saudis will achieve those goals.

Emirati forces already have been withdrawn from the port city of al-Hudaydah, where international agencies offload food and medicine to relieve the suffering of the Yemeni people.  Whether the Emirati withdrawal will result in more or less aid getting through remains to be seen.  What is clear, though, is that Our President – who admires macho incompetence – will continue to support the Saudi war effort until a veto-proof majority in Congress acts to stop him.

The Epstein Affair

It's hard to believe Jeffrey Epstein kept all those young girls to himself: he seems like a man who likes his consumption to be conspicuous, and so felt compelled to share some of his "conquests" with men he wanted to impress.  I suspect that the main function of the sweetheart plea deal he got from Alexander Acosta was to keep the names of those men confidential — men Acosta thought too powerful to touch.  Since the deal provides immunity for Epstein's co-conspirators, both named and unnamed, one does wonder just whose names were in Epstein's Rolodex.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Dan Barr may have set a new record for "un-recusing" himself from the Epstein prosecution — assuming that "un-recusal" is something that ever happened before.  While it is understandable that Our President has a problem with Attorneys General recusing themselves from investigations, Barr's instant turnaround does make one wonder if there might be more involved in his decision to take charge of the case.

It's hard to imagine any Americans over the age of twelve believing that their country provides "equal justice for all," and the Epstein plea bargain was just one more piece of evidence in support of that belief.  At the moment, Epstein's goose appears to be well-cooked — as a registered sex offender, just the trove of kiddie porn found at his New York townhouse is enough to put him behind bars for years.  The real question now is whether other powerful men will be sucked down in his wake.

Now that Dan Barr has taken charge of the case, I imagine the panic level in the corridors of power is down a notch or two.  Nevertheless, a coverup in 2019 may prove a lot more challenging than the coverup of 2008.

Choices

For quite a while now, Americans have had a sense that something has been going wrong in their country — but they're not at all sure what it is.  In 2008, they took a chance on "Hope and Change." Those voters got cautious incrementalism, and the banks that had tanked the economy got a bailout.  In 2016, America wanted change again, and got Tr*mp and his insane reality show of a presidency.  Corporate America got its massive tax cut, political polarization sharpened, and that sense of "wrongness" grew more acute.

While the super-rich might prefer a Republican candidate with a more rational approach to international relations and trade, they are stuck with Tr*mp for 2020.  Meanwhile, Democrats are sorting through two dozen contenders — but the basic choice they have to make is binary: either a return to the cautious incrementalism of the reigning Democratic establishment, or a sharp move to the left.  Those worried about "electability" have to figure out just what it is that will motivate voters this time around.  Are they still hungry for change, or sufficiently traumatized to long for the unsatisfying but predictable patterns of the past?

Joe Biden, widely considered the anointed candidate of the Democratic establishment, looked terrible in the first debate: not just old, but confused and unprepared.  Perhaps he'll do better next time, but it's hard to imagine him ever being exciting.  Still, it's not too late for some other "moderate" to gain institutional support.  On the left, Sanders would be the easiest target for Republican scare tactics, but Republicans will happily call Tulsi Gabbard a  socialist should she somehow happen to win the nomination.

Personally, I believe we should reserve our strategic voting for general elections, and cast primary votes based on our beliefs and values. If we don't, our beliefs and values might never matter at all.

"Electability"

Joe Biden had a long, successful political career in Delaware; in part because he's good at local retail politics, in part because of consistent support from corporations and LLCs that flock to Delaware for tax advantages.  With regard to legislative decisions, Biden's approach has been "go along to get along" — a habit he likes to call "bipartisan cooperation."

Joe and Clarence, 1991

In national contests, Biden has been far less successful, due in large part to a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease.  He is notoriously gaffe-prone, and not especially good at explaining himself afterwards.  Needless to say, political junkies are gleefully anticipating his performance in the upcoming debate.  With nine others on the stage, though, he won't have time to say much of anything at all – so he's likely to survive.

So far, in the current presidential campaign, Biden's missteps have not resulted in any crippling pratfalls, but they haven't passed unnoticed.  For Anita Hill, it was much too little, much too late.  Then, there was his overnight reversal on the Hyde Amendment — just a little too fast to claim he'd "evolved" — and one only can wonder how he'll defend his strong support of the pro-bank, anti-consumer "bankruptcy reform" legislation of 2005.

As for working with arch-segregationists Eastland and Talmadge, he really had no choice: they were senior legislators at the time, and Biden was very junior.  Still, it was totally tone deaf to choose them as his examples: and anyway, they were Democrats.  Couldn't he name any conservative Republicans to trot out as his examples of collegiality, like Ted Stevens or John Tower?  That's what his campaign managers would have advised — if he'd asked.

Yes, it's understandable that many long for the relative sanity of the Obama administration, but too many people had had enough of that by 2015 — and Biden is unlikely to inspire the younger voters Democrats will need to win back the Senate.  Americans wanted change in the last presidential election, and they want it even more this time around.  Biden is just more of the same.

Déjà vu all over again

Clearly, I'm not the only one who started flashing back to 2003.  Remember Colin Powell at the UN with his tube of fake anthrax?  (We geezers also remember the Tonkin Gulf "incident" of 1964.)

This time around, the pastiche of "evidence" consists of a grainy black-and-white video and a lot of "trust us" from a pack of known liars.

Apparently the earlier attacks, discussed in my previous post,  were not sufficiently impressive.  The attackers escalated a bit – enough to create some better visuals and edge up oil prices, but not enough to impede traffic through the Straights of Hormuz.  Nobody died.

Most of the rest of the world is extremely skeptical of the claim that the Iranians are going out of their way to provoke a war with the US; a war that would be a lot more damaging to Iran than Tr*mp's punitive sanctions.  That leads many of TV's talking heads to opine that the attacks were carried out by "the more radical elements in Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps" rather than its central authorities – slightly more plausible, but not by much.

According to Mike Pompeo, intelligence sources have concluded that no non-state actor could have launched the attacks, presumably excluding the Houthis and Hezbollah; but certainly not excluding the Saudis or the Emiratis, who have purchased more than enough high-tech weaponry from the US.  As for the skill set, Erik Prince and his Academi mercenaries are conveniently located in Abu Dhabi.

Of course, there is another state actor with very close ties to Erik Prince: the Tr*mp Administration, which may see open conflict with Iran as a means to gin up nationalist sentiment and distract from its leader's increasingly apparent dementia and/or psychotic breakdown.

Yes, this is a conspiracy theory: I have no solid evidence of its validity.  It is possible that Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who turned 80 in April, is battier than Tr*mp; or that somebody else's conspiracy theory is closer to the mark.  What is certain, though, is that the whole truth remains unavailable.

The "threat" from Iran

How do you win a war without actually fighting one?  You don't.  You can, however, create the appearance of war: engage in a lot of bloviating and sabre-rattling, and then declare victory.  You don't need a real war to "wag the dog."

When I saw the first photographs of the damage done to those oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, I was, to say the least, incredulous — describing the damage as "minimal" is an overstatement.  No oil was spilled; no flames; no casualties.  Compared to the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 or the attack on the Limburg tanker in 2002, the recent acts of sabotage were flea bites.

All four tankers were able to proceed under their own power: there was no disruption of traffic in or around the port of Abu Dhabi, to the great "relief" of the Emiratis. If the Iranians truly were responsible, it's evidence that they're too incompetent to present a credible threat to anybody. Just the same, the "attacks" helped to justify the accelerated buildup of US military force in the region and the sale of $8 billion worth of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In the absence of any evidence implicating Iran, the obvious question is qui bono? — and the obvious answer is Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the Tr*mp Administration.

Then there is the "intelligence" indicating Iran presents a "credible threat" to US forces in the region.  Such intelligence always exists: what changes is its interpretation, depending on what those who control it want it to say.

Those who want evidence of Tr*mpian "collusion" with a foreign government will do better examining the Saudis than the Russians.  Everybody expects Saudi support for Jared's "peace plan" for Israel and the Palestinians (and nobody will be surprised if the plan seeks to institutionalize apartheid in the name of "economic development.")

One final note: Erik Prince runs Academi, the successor to Blackwater, out of Abu Dhabi — and he employs a substantial number of former Navy Seals.

Meanwhile, in Alabama...

Alabama's new abortion law, legally, is extremely problematic; but there's one big problem Alabama lawmakers may not have considered.  It probably violates the Alabama State Constitution.  Why?

It fails to criminalize the women who have abortions.

The ruling of the Alabama Supreme Court in Ex Parte Ritter, a case decided in 1979, is clear: "[A]ll persons concerned in the commission of a felony, whether they directly commit the act constituting the offense or aid or abet in its commission, though not present, must hereafter be indicted, tried and punished as principals."  Not merely "present" at their abortions, women are the initiators of the felony defined by the new law.  If their doctors are subject to sentences of up to 99 years, those women must be subject to the same penalties.

Other states, like Georgia, have not made the same mistake — but, needless to say, have downplayed the fact that recipients of abortions can expect time in prison.  While the religious fanatics behind the war on abortion may not be bothered by that fact, plenty of their fellow travelers will be encouraged to think twice.  Politically, jailing women who have abortions is a losing proposition.

Conservative states already are jailing women for behaviors that potentially endanger an embryo or a fetus.  Most often, those behaviors involve use of controlled substances; so they enjoy little sympathy from the general public.  Jailing a 14-year-old for aborting Daddy's baby is sure to provoke a far stronger response.

Briefs

Iran
Anybody who was paying attention back in 2003 should be experiencing an ominous sense of déjà vu about now.  One big difference is that the news media are a lot less likely to be suckered today than they were last time, so Bolton's regime change plan for Iran shouldn't go over quite as well as the plan for regime change in Iraq did.   Given the suffering US policy has created for the Iranian people, it's hard to imagine how any democratically elected government in Iran could be friendly to the US.

Trade War
Congress is less partisan about Tr*mp's tariffs than it is about most issues, although Republican opponents are not especially vocal about it.  It makes perfect political sense that a Rust Belt Democrat would back the tariffs, but I suspect some other Democratic supporters just want Our President to crash the economy in time for 2020.  The main sticking point in negotiations seems to be US insistence on changes to Chinese law, an embarrassing compromise of Chinese sovereignty.  Such changes hardly seem necessary: Xi is just as likely to ignore Chinese law as Tr*mp is to ignore American law — but a lot less likely to be called on it.

Venezuela
While plenty of Venezuelans – especially the more affluent – would love to dump Maduro, they don't seem to be especially enthusiastic about Guidó either.  It's unclear just what kind of compromise Swedish diplomats hope to facilitate, but it won't be an easy task.  Any deal will have to satisfy two belligerent incompetents: Maduro and Tr*mp.  Guidó doesn't count anymore.

Meanwhile, at the Fed...

It's been obvious that Our President values "loyalty" over competence, so nobody could have been especially surprised when he proposed two incompetent sycophants for seats on the Fed.  Both Cain and Moore, though,  turned out to be too horrendous even for some otherwise dependably sycophantic Republican senators.  Let us all breathe great sighs of relief.

The Fed is struggling with an unprecedented problem: ten years of economic growth with little to no inflation.  That may seem like a great thing, but that low inflation – combined with a prolonged but slow growth rate – has made it nearly impossible to push interest rates higher.  Yes, that still sounds like a good thing, but it's robbing the Fed of its most important tool for coping with an economic downturn: with interest rates so low, there's no room to meaningfully cut them when the next downturn arrives.

Assuming capitalism hasn't outgrown the business cycle, recession is inevitable — and given the length of the current expansion, it can't be too far away.  The Fed fights recession by significantly cutting interest rates; but with rates already so low, there's not enough to cut to create adequate stimulus.  It will be forced to try quantitative easing again; and economists still aren't sure how well that worked last time around.

The two empty seats on the Federal Reserve Board have to be filled by individuals who not only are expert in monetary policy, but are creative enough to come up with new strategies to prevent a downturn from spiraling into a crash.  Frankly, I'm not sure anybody can come up with the needed answers right now — but I am sure we can do better than a pair of political hacks.

Catching up...

The Mueller Report

As Leon Festinger, father of cognitive dissonance theory, could have predicted, Mueller's report didn't change anybody's mind about anything.  When people make a public commitment to a belief, they are not likely to change their minds just because of a little evidence — and the current level of polarization in the USofA has encouraged a lot of public commitment  That leaves the choice of our next president to the people who haven't been paying attention.  Democracy: ya' gotta love it.

Biden
One thing every old person has plenty of is history, some of which one just as soon would forget.  Although I like the way Joe Biden led off by characterizing the 2020 election as a battle for America's soul, it's hard to go into battle carrying 50 years of baggage.  Maybe he's a "decent" guy, but if he did win the presidency, Biden would fill the White House with the same old gang of neoliberal Clintonistas.   I don't know about you, but I've had more than enough of the 1990s.

Impeachment
Elizabeth Warren is right: if there is enough evidence to justify impeachment, the House is morally obliged to open an impeachment hearing. That means House Democrats have to decide between morality and politics — and, so far, politics is winning.

The Democratic Primaries
Did you know Tulsi Gabbard is a Hindu?  Did you even know she's running for president? The major media really have been focusing nearly all their attention on the white male candidates: Kamala Harris got a brief spurt of publicity when she announced, but that lasted about two days — and Beto's tabletop antics get more media attention than Warren's detailed policy proposals.  The unwieldy, overloaded "debates" scheduled for the end of June can't do much to change the situation.  Will the media change their ways?  Don't bet on it.

Julian Assange

The transformation of Julian Assange from classic British twit to old-prospector-with-a-man-bun is amusing, but irrelevant; and his expulsion from the Ecuadorian embassy in London had nothing to do with either his cat or his skateboard.  Ecuadorean president Lenin Moreno, despite his name, is notably less leftist than Rafael Correa, his predecessor.  Pressured by the US, Moreno was willing to make a deal.

Meanwhile, Chelsea Manning has spent the past year back in jail for refusing to testify in secret to a grand jury — although she is willing to testify in public.  One only can hope that Assange's arrest will speed her release.  (Don't bet on it.)  At Manning's trial in 2013, there never was any suggestion that Assange helped her access the CIGINT files published on Wikileaks, but that is the basis for the current charge against Assange.  His real "crime" was embarrassing the US military and intelligence agencies — and they want revenge.

Clearly, Julian Assange is an asshole — but being an asshole is not a crime.  The real question is whether or not Assange is a journalist, and freedom of the press demands that he be given the benefit of the doubt.  That decision may be made in the UK, as Assange faces extradition, but the Brits have plenty of problems of their own right now.  Fortunately, they do have another option: they can extradite him to Sweden, to face charges of sexual assault.  If their government retains any functionality at all, that's exactly what they'll do.

Creepy Uncle Joe

Just wondering: if Joe Biden were Josephine Biden, would he be in trouble right now?

Like most other male persons of Biden's generation, I learned to maintain a substantial "personal space" — for me, it's about three feet.  When I greet another male person, we typically reach across the void to shake hands.  Two women, I've long observed, are not obliged to operate under the same constraints: women who are little more than casual acquaintances may think it appropriate to greet each other with a hug.

Of course, interactions between the sexes are subject to far more stringent restraints; but women still enjoy more latitude than men do.  Biden's "touchy-feely" approach always has violated cultural norms; but those violations never before impeded fifty years of success in politics.  His recent apologia on Twitter leaves one with the impression that he still feels his unorthodox displays of intimacy have "worked" for him.  Perhaps they have, in the past.

I find it hard to believe that Biden's behavior reflects a sense of "male entitlement," nor a propensity to abuse his "masculine authority."  I think it is far more likely that some peculiarity of his brain chemistry or his early socialization made him an outlier on the normal curve; but I also believe that, were he a woman, the current brouhaha never would have materialized.  Sexism cuts both ways.

If his recent problems dissuade Joe Biden from seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, I won't mind at all: I'm hoping for a candidate who is a lot more progressive, dissociated from Clintonian "moderation." Some have suggested that Biden is the victim of a left-wing "hit job" aimed at derailing his candidacy — and if that's true, it certainly violates my sense of ethics.  Still, if it works...

Mueller disappoints Dems

The Mueller report finds no evidence of collusion, and I can't say I'm surprised.  Here's what I wrote back in July of 2017 regarding the notorious "Tr*mp Tower meeting":

As I've previously observed, Russia never needed any help from Tr*mp and Co. to interfere in the American election — but certainly had no qualms about compromising individuals who might become part of a future Tr*mp Administration.  Given the high levels of both cupidity and incompetence on the Tr*mp team, the Russians didn't have to try too hard.

This doesn't mean Putin lacks kompromat on Our President — and I don't mean the "piss tape."  The Republican base has shown itself totally willing to ignore Tr*mp's sexual peccadillos, and paying hookers to pee on a bed isn't even a crime.  Money laundering, on the other hand, is a crime, and developers of high-end real estate are especially well-situated to participate.  Ongoing investigations of Deutche Bank just might turn up evidence that does some real damage to our Grifter in Chief — albeit most Americans can't comprehend financial crimes much more complex than bank robbery.

In the meanwhile, Our President can chalk up a victory — a victory that will make it far more difficult for Democrats to use future investigatory revelations to their political advantage.  The disappointing fact is that  Tr*mp never was a "foreign agent" — he's just one more corrupt businessman willing to make a quick buck.

College Admissions Q & A

Q.  Was anybody even remotely surprised by the recent college admissions scandal?

 A.   You must be kidding me.

Q.  Why would a coach at an important school want to take a bribe?

A.  Jealousy, pure and simple.  Resentment of the salary pulled down by the football coach.

Q.  If the kids were chronic "underachievers" even with all the private tutoring and fancy private schooling their wealthy parents must have given them, how did their parents expect them to graduate from a top-tier school?

A.  They were paying full tuition — of course they were going to graduate.  It's much harder to get into a top school than it is to graduate from it.

Red-baiting returns!

Anybody who came of age during the Cold War will remember "red-baiting" — the practice of tarring liberals and their ideas with the brush of "communism."  Needless to say, "communism" and "socialism" were used interchangeably; so even a popular socialist program like Medicare (1966) was attacked as a threat to "democracy" by "the red menace."

Red-baiting died down somewhat with the collapse of the Soviet Union, but if you're too young to remember it at its worst, don't worry — because it's back, and likely to play a major role in the 2020 election cycle.  It was the central thrust of the President's recent speech to CPAC, and most of his party already is on-board.

n truth, totalitarian communism has more in common with monopolistic capitalism than with democratic socialism.  In one, a tiny elite controls the government, which controls business and industry.  In the other, a tiny elite controls business and industry, which controls the government.  The Soviets needed more democracy; the United States needs more socialism.

The new red-baiting may be a good sign: an indicator that socialist ideas have become thinkable again.  The “Green New Deal,” “Medicare for All,” and free higher education are mainstream ideas today, and steadily growing more popular.  There is reason to hope that red-baiting will be far less effective in today’s politics than it was in the past.

Ilhan Omar

Let's get one thing straight: criticism of Israel is not the equivalent of antisemitism, and criticism of AIPAC is even less so.  It has been years since the American Israel Public Affairs Committee could be said to lobby on behalf of the State of Israel.  Today, it lobbies on behalf of Israel's Likud Party and, more specifically, on behalf of Bibi Netanyahu.

“It’s all about the Benjamins baby!”
It's true that AIPAC itself makes no political contributions: it merely "suggests" that favored candidates for office enjoy the largess of wealthy Jewish (and Evangelical) supporters – and those supporters write substantial checks to favored candidates and their superPACs.  (I can't help thinking that part of the problem with Omar's remark was that "Benjamin" sounds like a Jewish name.)  Pelosi forced an apology for that one, even though much of the uproar was motivated by prejudice against Muslims.

"Allegiance to a foreign country"
Dual loyalty is a "Jewish stereotype" that, frankly, I'd never heard of before.  I do remember people questioning whether John F. Kennedy would be more loyal to the Constitution or the Pope, but somehow I missed the part about Jews and Israel.  (Granted, my Hebrew school taught more Zionism than Hebrew, so I guess it's plausible.)  Notwithstanding all that, "allegiance" was a very poor choice of words.

Congressional support for Israel, not limited to Jewish members, is more a conditioned response than a true allegiance.  The US has supported Israel since 1948, usually with ample justification; but Netanyahu's Israel has become a different country.  The Palestinian "territories" are governed like the bantustans of apartheid South Africa, and Bibi is forming political alliances with open racists — not just the closeted ones.  This is happening with the encouragement and support of American conservatives, not all of whom are Jews.

The rebuke of Ilhan Omar seems to be intended as a warning to other young, progressive Democrats who might have the temerity to suggest American support for Israel might become a little more conditional.  I hope they don't knuckle under: it really is time for a change.

Cohen

I listened to the Michael Cohen's testimony on and off, and caught the highlight reels later on.  You'll have heard much of the endless commentary.  What I don't understand is why nobody, Cohen included, is not mentioning the most obvious reason to believe him: if he's caught lying to Congress again, they'll throw the book at him.

In his heart of hearts, I'm sure he's still a sleazebag – but he's in no position to misbehave.  It would be very surprising if the Southern District of New York didn't have a laundry list of charges they still could bring; they had a reason to ask for a longer sentence than the one recommended by Mueller.

Cohen's performance was impressive   He seemed a lot more intelligent than he was back when he still was a Tr*mp mouthpiece., butI guess that's easier to do when you don't have to do riffs on the lies of an idiot.  Now he'll have three years of otherwise unproductive time to work on his book.  Maybe I'll read it.

Extra brief briefs

• National Emergency: He lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but this weekend he's golfing at Mar a Lago again.
• The Green New Deal: Market forces will not address climate change, so radical action is required.  More to come.
• Blackface: If you can't recall any stupid, insensitive things you did when you still were in your twenties, you're still in your twenties. Northam should not resign.
• Amazon: The company plans to add 5000 jobs at its New York headquarters – most likely more – with no bribery required.  Other cities and states should take note.
• Brexit:  The question nobody seems to be asking is cui bono – which powerful individuals and corporations in the UK will profit from a "hard" Brexit?
• Ilhan Omar: Antisemitism?  What she forgot to mention was that AIPAC doesn't represent Jews, or even Israel; it represents Likud.
• Howard Schultz:  Just what we need! Another messianic billionaire!

Venezuela

Venezuela is a mess — and in a list of countries that could benefit from a coup d'état, Venezuela would be pretty close to the top.  That said, it should be their coup d'état, not ours.

The Venezuelan economy was not destroyed by socialism: it was destroyed by incompetence. Venezuela's oil fields were nationalized in 1976, but by the late 1980s they once again had fallen under the control of foreign multinational oil companies, with profits going primarily to big oil and Venezuelan plutocrats.  Hugo Chavez came to power in 1999, on a promise of returning oil profits to the people — and he did.  There were massive improvements in education, health care, and other social goods.  The main beneficiaries were the poor.

That's when the incompetence kicked in.  Valuing loyalty over expertise (sound familiar?), Chavez replaced virtually everybody who knew anything about running an oil company with a political supporter.  As time went on, maintenance was neglected, equipment wasn't replaced, corruption flourished, and production fell steadily.  Persistent US economic sanctions (the oil companies were really pissed!) didn't help at all.

The Bush Administration organized a coup attempt in 2002, which accomplished nothing but alienating most of Latin America — even though the Bush team at least tried to be sneaky about it.  When Chavez died and Nicolás Maduro took over, oil revenues continued to fall, and so did the fortunes of the Venezuelan people.  Maduro seems to have no goal other than to stay in power.

Juan Guidó recently claimed the presidency following an encouraging phone call from Mike Pence; and John Bolton cheerily applauded the impending privatization of Venezuelan oil.  Guidó comes from a far-right political party that represents only a fraction of Maduro's opposition, but a lot of Venezuelans seem willing to take what they can get, provided it's not Maduro.  Even many of the poor are deserting the Chavezistas in the face of economic catastrophe.  The oil barons are licking their lips.

If Guidó does come to power, at least Venezuelans will get an influx of sorely needed economic aid.  Hopefully, he can do it without the American invasion Our President says is "on the table."  Maduro is right when he says it could turn into another Vietnam: numerous past US interventions in Latin America have left us few real friends south of the border. Of course, Tr*mp might invade just to distract attention from the Mueller investigation.

We'll have to wait and see — probably not for long.

State of the Union

I'm sure we're all looking forward to Our President's State of the Union address, wondering how he'll manage to put a positive spin on recent events, and ready to count how many standing ovations he gets from the Republican side of the aisle.  They'll do their best to look enthusiastic, I suppose, despite the damage he's done to their party — not to mention their country.

I confess that the shutdown lasted twice as long as I expected: it turned out that McConnell was more adroit at ducking the blame than anticipated.  Eventually, though, there were enough pointing fingers to poke him into action.  Plutocratic fingers, of course, are especially pointy — and McConnell's first and foremost goal as Leader has been to keep the dark money flowing (and dark.)  It's not unreasonable to suspect that some of those extra-pointy fingers started poking pretty hard.

I won't presume to predict what will happen when the temporary funding bill expires.  Will the Congressional conference committee toss Our President enough crumbs to save a smidgen of face?  Will Tr*mp decide a "state of emergency" will shore up his base and distract attention from the Mueller inquiry?  Will some brand new craziness emerge over the next three weeks?

I don't know about the first two options, but number three seems like a safe bet. The state of the union, as I'm sure you've noticed, is wack.

The Creep

No, not that creep — albeit the creep you're thinking of may be poised to accelerate the creep I'm thinking of: the creeping accretion of presidential power.

Every American child learns about the three branches of government, and the idea of "checks and balances."  Formulated by the Founders as a check on tyranny, it seemed like a pretty good idea at the time.  What they failed to foresee was the advent of the professional politician, and how that development would throw their plan for checks and balances into disarray.

Politicians hoping to win reelection do their best to avoid any action that might stir controversy: they much prefer to leave such actions to the President.  The last time Congress used its constitutional power to declare war was in 1941, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor; and all our current conflicts – in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia – are unconvincingly based on the Authorization of Military Force against al-Qaeda, enacted in response to the 9/11 attacks.

 Congress also allows the President to act without its approval in cases of national emergency, but national emergency has never been well-defined.  Until now, presidents have used it primarily to impose economic sanctions on specific governments and individuals — actions Congress could have initiated on its own had it been so inclined.  In those instances, Congressional inaction may have been motivated more by laziness than by political peril, but still served to accelerate the creep of authority from the Legislature to the Executive.

Currently, Our President is very likely to use his emergency powers to build his wall, diverting the needed funds from Army Corps of Engineers projects currently budgeted to help victims of recent hurricanes and wildfires.  Most congressional Republicans seem ready to allow it, even though doing so would mean ceding fiscal authority to the executive — thereby compromising the single most important legislative check on executive power and further eroding what remains of our putative democracy.

Congress does have the authority to stop it, under the National Emergency Act of 1976; but that would entail Mitch McConnell, that most professional of professional politicians, letting a challenge reach the floor of the Senate.  He won't.

And the creep goes on.

Meanwhile, elsewhere...

Preoccupied with the chaos of our own national politics, it's easy enough to ignore the political chaos going on elsewhere.  Despite the best efforts of Our President, America certainly can't claim a monopoly on dysfunction; so let's take a moment to check in on a couple of our friends overseas.

If the test of a true compromise is that neither side is happy with it, Theresa May's Brexit deal passes with flying colors, unable to gain majority support even within her own Conservative party.  It is scarcely less contentious among Labour and Liberal MPs; only UKIP remains committed, and that minority party of xenophobes and neo-imperialists appears to be in rapid decline.  In the meanwhile, it looks like the UK is headed for a hard Brexit – with no negotiated exit plan – at the end of March.

Most economists agree that a hard Brexit will damage the British economy, but most Britons, like most Americans, pay scant attention to economists: typically, economic arguments just aren't visceral enough to sway the average voter.  Brexit is an ideological controversy that somehow managed to detach itself from party politics; and since the political parties are divided, no coherent approach to addressing it has emerged.  While a second Brexit referendum seems like the only logical approach to resolution, it probably would further divide the British public.

Nevertheless, the British deserve a new referendum, given that the first one was largely based on lies.  This time, the choice is more clear: between a hard Brexit with none of the advantages of EU membership, and remaining within the bloc, accepting the restraints membership entails.

Meanwhile, in France, Emmanuel Macron has been gobsmacked by the yellow vest movement, a genuinely populist, virtually leaderless series of protests by working class citizens — despite the best efforts of Jeanne-Marie LePen on the right and Jean-Luc Mélanchon on the left to jump out in front and lead the parade.  Even though the protests are dying down, the sentiments underlying them remain strong.

Macron was supposed to be France's savior — the new leader of a new party that would sweep away the old dysfunction.  When he turned out to be yet another entitled rich boy with strong corporatist tendencies, the French were sorely disappointed.  Unlike our own entitled rich boy, though, Macron has been smart enough to make some concessions.  Will they be enough to salvage his political career?  Probably not.  His tax cuts for the ultra-rich seem firmly entrenched.

*     *     *

Chaos notwithstanding, the multi-party democracies of Western Europe at least hold out the possibility of compromise and change.  In the US, though, it seems that our entrenched two-party system only can generate more division and more chaos.  The next two years of divided government are bound to be what the apocryphal Chinese curse calls "interesting times."