The Question of WHY

Some might think Our President's recent fiasco in Helsinki finally might penetrate some red caps and shake the fanatical loyalty of his base.  Sorry, but true Tr*mpistas are made of sterner stuff, and are capable of enduring a lot more cognitive dissonance before they succumb to doubt — so Republicans in Congress will have to find a way to squirm through to the next train wreck.

In the meanwhile, the rest of us continue to puzzle over why the President of the United States is so unswervingly loyal to Vladimir Putin.  Let's look at some of the most prominent suggestions:

The Pee Tape Hypothesis
By comparison with some other embarrassing episodes that have come to light, the tape described in the Steele dossier is small potatoes.  Even if Tr*mp was in the bed, naked, and photographed from an extremely unbecoming angle, religious conservatives would find it in their hearts to give him another "mulligan" — and the rest would call it a CGI "forgery" by "Hollywood liberals."

The Fragile Ego Hypothesis
While his reluctance to believe that Putin helped him win the presidency may explain Tr*mp's hostility to the Mueller probe, it does not explain his affinity for Putin.  In truth, he ought to be more likely to resent Russian interference if it detracts from his "glorious victory."

The Fred Trump Hypothesis
It seems obvious that Our President's hyper-authoritarian, racist, and conscience-free father was instrumental in warping young Donald's tender infant psyche and demagnetizing his moral compass.  While this helps to explain Tr*mp's admiration for the likes of Rodrigo Duterte and Recip Tayyip Erdogan, Fred never taught his son to knuckle under to a competitor — and certainly not to a competitor significantly weaker than himself.

The Arrant Corruption Hypothesis
The Nixon-era admonition to "follow the money" seems like the most  promising path to understanding the Tr*mp-Putin connection.  It remains unclear whether or not the Mueller task force has gained access to Tr*mp's tax returns, or how carefully cash transfers from Russian kleptocrats to the Trump Organization may have been laundered, but investors in Manhattan real estate never have been known for their moral rectitude.  If the corruption hypothesis is correct, it may be advisable for Tr*mp to give up the presidency in time for President Pence to issue a blanket pardon.

Corruption

The Mossack Fonseca leaks have shed some much needed light on a problem we cynics always assumed to be rampant, and the unknown leaker may be a greater hero than Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden combined.  It no longer can be denied that corruption among the rich and well-connected is endemic, and largely impervious to control.

Nobody is especially surprised that Sergei Roldugin, banker-buddy of Vladimir Putin, and Ukrainian president Petro O. Poroshenko are on the roster of the corrupt; nor Chinese Politburo members and other supposed "communists."  The involvement of the prime minister of Iceland and (sigh!) Jackie Chan is a bit more surprising.  Altogether, that one Panamanian law firm helped to hide over three trillion dollars, much of it illegal, the rest of it merely unethical.

Yes, some heads will roll, but there are a hell of a lot of other firms providing the same services as Mossack Fonseca.  I doubt there are a sufficient number of disgruntled employees out there to make a significant dent in the overall problem.  Oh, well...

Corruption

Russia.  China.  Turkey. Guatamala. Etc.

Everywhere.  Human beings, especially those who acquire any sort of wealth or power, are almost inevitably corrupt.  Probably those without wealth or power have similar inclinations but far less opportunity.  Would I indulge in insider trading if I had the opportunity?

Okay, I'd be sorely tempted, especially if I thought I could get away with it.

The Martoma trial, and the actions against seven other SAC Capital traders, are just one example of corruption right here at home.  The unusual thing about the SAC situation is that a few actual criminal prosecutions are taking place, albeit, so far, Steven A. Cohen himself remains unscathed.  In this country, you just don't go after a multi-billionaire.

On those rare occasions when the SEC goes after a bank or a big shot, it "agrees to" an impressive sounding but essentially negligible fine with no admission of wrongdoing.

Corruption.

"But wait," you say, "here in the USofA, at the very least, our corruption doesn't involve human rights violations."

Yeah, right.  Abu Ghraib.  Guantánamo.  Secret sites all over.

Then there was Brooklyn, for example, during the long Charles Hynes years.  The new DA, Ken Thompson, is working very hard to undo false convictions from the 1980s and 1990s, but a lot of mostly innocent black men still will spend the rest of their lives in prison.

Mark Twain once said that the United States "has the best Congress money can buy."  Uh huh.

I've been too depressed to write a lot lately, but I'll try to get to Russia, China, Turkey, etc. later this month.

Karzai, stoned

A rather large portrait of Hamid Karzai, affixed to a wall in some dusty town in Kumar province, Afghanistan, was the target of a few stones thrown by an American soldier.  The portrait was large enough so that the stone thrower could not have missed, according to the New York Times.  Local officials, who heard of the stone throwing, were upset.

Karzai is thoroughly corrupt, and my guess is that the local officials who complained about the stone throwing are as well.  It is fitting, I suppose, that we are leaving behind a kleptocracy in Afghanistan, shaped in our own image, but with a bit less subtlety.  I sincerely hope the stone throwing soldier is on his way back home now, and never again will have to participate in "training" the Afghan "police" in methods of suppressing popular anger against their president.

If our government gives that soldier a hard time for exercising a little free speech, then we are no better than Afghanistan — or China, or Russia.  Barack Obama has not been, exactly, the civil liberties president.

There is a movement in the British Labour Party to get back to its socialist roots.  Wouldn't it be nice if there were a movement in our own Democratic party to get back to its liberal roots?

(I guess the real liberals just don't have enough money.)

Voter Fraud

Well it appears that there well may be some voter fraud going on out there, despite the protestations of Democrats.  The problem for voter fraud blowhards on Fox, though, is that the fraudsters are not Democrats.

On the heels of voter suppression claims, which are getting varied responses in various states, this does not look especially good for the GOP.  On the other hand, most people haven't heard about it.  Few are paying attention.

The most significant problem with our voting systems, in my opinion, is that they are left to the states.  I've met quite a few of my State Senators and Assemblymen, and quite a few of them are either self-aggrandizing assholes or just pure, out-and-out, morons.  Honestly, I don't think a majority are corrupt.  Most of them are just too stupid to get away with corruption for more than a week or two — but they still feel obliged to take orders from those few who actually are smart enough to be corrupt.

It follows that a particular state's voting laws will favor the inclinations of the power brokers in that particular state, no matter what the state's political leanings.  There are a few extra restrictions on states (and/or counties) with histories of particularly blatant racism but, generally speaking, the power brokers have their way.

Every couple of years, we hear about a tossup — elections that must wait for the absentee ballots to be counted before a winner is decided.  It happened in my Congressional District in 2010.

Now, when you stop to think about it, it's a hell of a lot easier to perpetrate voter fraud by absentee ballot than by showing up in person and risking years in federal prison.  What are the Republican — or, for that matter, the Democrats — doing about that?

My mother died in 2005.  My guess is that she's still on the voter rolls, because expunging dead people from the rolls costs the state money — and states don't have a lot of money, and state politicians rather would spend it on winning the votes of living voters instead of my deceased mother.

I will not cast my deceased mother's vote, even though I know how she would have wanted to vote before she developed dementia and died — and even though her vote might help fight off an especially repulsive onslaught on my Congressman by Karl Rove and the billionaires of Crossroads GPS.

Why should I?  One way or the other, it's pretty much all in the bag.

The Iowa Caucuses

Well, happy new year. Maybe. 2011 kind of sucked — earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown for the Japanese; total fuckup for the Eurozone; continued suppression of the working class in the US (albeit with some vague rays of hope); general craziness, with only minimal hope of non-authoritarian governments, in the Middle East; droughts and floods in Australia; more of the usual shit in sub-Saharan Africa; slowing economic growth in China; Putin being Putinesque in Russia; etc., etc.

Now, our American news media are wasting our time by devoting tons of time and space to the Iowa Republican caucuses. Does anybody remember who they selected last time? Mike fucking Huckabee! Why would anybody take Iowa Republicans seriously? As of tonight's network news, Santorum is surging there.

Anyway, back in the summer of 1976, I pulled off the interstate for want of a vodka gimlet in Harlan, Iowa, and found myself in a bar that turned out to be the hangout for local government officials. I can say with more than reasonable certitude that they were not evangelical Christians, but they still held Jimmy Carter in very high regard. Harlan, they said, was "Carter Country." I stayed for several days, and had a hell of a good time.

Jimmy Carter is the kind of man we all would like to have as our president. Sadly, our disgustingly corrupt political system cannot accept a genuinely good man at its helm. The presidency did its best to corrupt Jimmy Carter but, fortunately for him, he did not win a second term. He's been spending the rest of his life making up for the damage he was forced to do in those four sad years. Yes, he's the best ex-president in American history, and if his beliefs about redemption are correct, I'd imagine he's redeemed by now — but he still keeps trying, harder and harder.

Iowa doesn't matter — nor does New Hampshire. It's all just a show. Even without the Citizens United decision, it still would be all about the money. Obama has been sucking up to Wall Street just as hungrily as he did four years ago, and any Republican who wins their nomination will be just as deeply in Wall Street's pocket.

Let's all sing along with the chorus from Les Mis: "We want a revolution — now."

Kabul Bank Bailout

It's no secret that Our Friends in Afghanistan are blatantly, shamelessly, and thoroughly corrupt. Last fall, just one more example of Afghan public corruption hit (with minimal impact) the US news media. I am embarrassed to say that while my rage meter certainly registered, my soul, at the time, was too deadened to support even a moderately angry blog post.

Now I'm just sitting here groaning. According to a report by NPR, the USofA is likely to take on a bailout of Kabul Bank, which got itself in trouble by lending money to the brothers of both Afghan president Hamid Karzai and vice-president Mohammed Fahim, along with other well-connected individuals. None of those borrowers seem to have any noteworthy ambition to pay those loans back, so the ordinary Afghan depositor will lose most of his savings unless somebody steps in to prop up the bank.

Guess who is expected to step in? (If you guessed anybody other than the American taxpayer, you were wrong.)

Even if we weren't mired in deficit and debt, propping up the Karzai government — in any way — is pure and simple stupidity. In the context of our total debt, an extra billion may seem like chump change — but it's a billion given away to criminals. Okay, they may be our criminals, but they still belong in jail, not in overpriced US condominiums.

Excuse me, Mr. President, while I stick my fingers down my throat. Since your choice seems to be between bailing out some more thieves and pulling out of Afghanistan, and since I have 99% certainty regarding which choice you will make, I'm feeling violently ill.

McChrystal and Marja

If General Stanley A. McChrystal actually makes a success of the Marja invasion — which is to say, actually keeping it rather than just conquering it — I might become a convert to the Obama plan for Afghanistan. One thing McChrystal already is doing which I find quite encouraging is redefining Afghans for the troops.

Typically, when an army invades a country, the inhabitants automatically become "the other." Military training encourages such thinking, which makes it possible for soldiers to kill efficiently without excessive guilt. McChrystal is making a concerted effort to teach his troops to discriminate between enemy fighters and civilians, minimizing civilian casualties. His effort to help the troops understand that "the population is the prize" is almost completely novel in the history of warfare. Will it work? We'll see.

I'll also be interested to see McChrystal's "government in a box, ready to roll in" when hostilities subside. If he truly has managed to locate enough non-corrupt Afghan administrators and policemen to run Marja without alienating and antagonizing the locals, that would be another genuinely novel accomplishment. Will he be able to come up with more, to govern the other towns in the Helmand River Valley that will need to be pacified? What will keep them honest, right there in the midst of Afghanistan's most important opium growing region, once NATO forces have moved on?

Frankly, I'm not especially hopeful — but I suppose there's no choice but to give McChrystal a chance.

Corruption!

I don't have much to say about yesterday's elections, although I suspect that John Corzine's tenure at Goldman-Sachs didn't do him much good. Hell, even fat-cat Mike Bloomberg didn't do as well as everybody who counts the money expected.

Actually, I was thinking about the non-election in Afghanistan. If there were something less prestigious than "third world," I guess Afghanistan would qualify, and if there is a country more corrupt, well...

Okay — so what is corruption? In Afghanistan, the men with wealth and power buy and coerce their way to more wealth and more power. Hmmm... does that sound a little familiar? And if your Supreme Court says that strong-arming the political class with vast infusions of money is not corrupt — that, in fact, it is free speech — does that make it any less corrupt?

Obama told Karzai he has to clean up the Afghani government. Yeah, right. Let's see if Karzai takes any action against his brother — or, if family ties are too strong, Abdul Rashid Dostum, or Muhammed Qasim Fahim. Wake me up when it happens. I need a long nap — a very long nap.

You also can wake me up when the government steps in to stop Goldman-Sachs from buying tax exemptions — at deeply discounted prices — from Fannie and Freddie.

Face it: capitalism and corruption are inseparable, and it doesn't matter if the source of wealth is opium or derivatives, nor if the country is first world or third. All hail the plutocrats!

Blagojevich and the law

Strange as it may seem, I'm beginning to feel a little sympathy for Rod Blagojevich. Granted, he's not the kind of person I ever could imagine getting to like. Apparently he's a foul-mouthed bully who abuses his staff, so inflated with hubris it's a wonder he can fit through the courthouse doors.

It's easy enough to mock the hairstyle that looks like it was copied from a Japanese cartoon, and there's been some snickering at his ethnic name even in the most PC of media. Topping it all off, he's enough of an asshole to say potentially incriminating things on his office phone when he already knows he's under investigation.

But what, exactly, has he done? What, for that matter, has he tried to do, or suggested he might like to do?

Oh, that's right. We're all supposed to be terribly offended because he may have offered political favors and appointments -- including Barack Obama's vacated Senate seat -- for sale.

Well, face it, America -- our government has always been for sale, starting from when the founders instituted property requirements for voting. In the 19th century, Mark Twain observed, "We have the best Congress money can buy." If anybody thinks the reforms of the Progressive Era put an end to that, that person has no grasp of either history or politics.

How do you suppose somebody gets to become Ambassador to Lichtenstein? It's certainly not based on diplomatic skills or comprehensive knowledge of Lichtensteinian culture. How did lobbyists for major corporate interests wind up in charge of the federal agencies responsible for regulating those same corporate interests? What really is the difference between a large political contribution and a bribe?

Okay, I'll answer my own question. It is a difference of style, not of intent. Rod Blagojevich, as I'm sure you've noticed, is sorely lacking in style. His idea of a wink is a smack across the side of the head, and his idea of a nudge is a flying tackle. His is not the world of subtle, unspoken understandings. He likes his understandings clear and straightforward, clean and honest.

I believe Blagojevich sincerely believes he's done nothing wrong, and that is why he was so careless in his telephone conversations, and why he refuses to resign. He was just doing what American politicians have done for well over two hundred years -- so how could that possibly be unethical, much less criminal?

Ah, you poor sucker -- too open, too innocent, too honest!

Too bad.