Economic Outlook

Although the Times still is publishing an extra section to cover election "news," and a lot of young people in urban centers haven't figured out that you're supposed to organize and get active before bad things happen, the dust is beginning to settle.

Somebody seems to have assured Wall Street that our next president will not be starting any trade wars, so the markets have stabilized.  Given Tr*mp's anti-regulatory instincts and the promise of even more tax advantages for the rich, a bit of a bull market certainly isn't out of the question.  Economically, it looks like Republican-as-usual on the horizon.

The narrow Republican majority in the Senate means that Obamacare, such as it is, will be safe for a while — although steady defunding seems inevitable.  In a way, it's a shame: the total elimination of Obamacare could pave the way for genuine national health insurance down the line.  The biggest beneficiaries of the ACA were those newly qualified for Medicaid, and it's pretty clear that letting market forces determine health spending continues to be unworkable.

I wonder how successful Tr*mp can be in moving expensive infrastructure projects past the deficit hawks.  They even might balk at a substantial expansion of border controls.  Forget the "wall" altogether: if there is any real progress towards seizing remittances to Mexico, invest in virtual currency exchanges — or, perhaps, organized crime cartels.

The biggest damage will be done to the fight against climate change — but even there, it seems to be too late to save the coal industry.  Hopefully, though, the industry's last gasps won't be a prelude to our own.

oh shit...

Well, it's over.  I guess we have no choice but to wait and see what happens next — for example, who actually will be running the country.  We are in for some interesting times.

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.