I Voted!

Those who have seen my Facebook profile picture know that I have said I will be voting for Bloom County characters Bill the Cat and Opus the Penguin, representing the Meadow Party. County strip creator Berke Breathed used the two for satirizing the American presidential election process in 1984 and 88, not realizing that 2024 would produce an election that defies satire.

At the polling place today, I wrote in those names. My state's election laws forbid write-in votes, so my choice to do so made my presidential vote invalid -- the conscientious poll workers explained that to me when I told them my intentions. Of course, the political realities of my state invalidate my ballot already. Even when state government was deep, deep blue we did not give our electoral votes to a Democrat, and have not since 1964. Since I will never vote for Donald Trump, my presidential vote is irrelevant. Other matters, such as judicial nominations, I took far more seriously -- I have no intention of letting our current governor have any say in three state supreme court justices, for example.

Some might wonder if the choice to vote for cartoon characters indicates I'm not taking this presidential election seriously. Indeed, I am not.

But neither major party did either. This election has been about vibes, memes, joy, couches, accusations of fascism, the Handmaid's Tale, who is and is not weird...and a full brigade of other matters that have nothing to do with the job of President of the United States. In the last couple of days prior to the vote, dueling billionaires told their supporters that an incorrect vote might make this the last election ever. Elon Musk assured people at a GOP rally that such was the case, and Oprah Winfrey told supporters of Vice-President Harris they face the exact same danger if they vote differently than she urged them to do. I don't remember much from high school math, but I'm pretty sure opposites cancel each other out and leave you with zero. Which is coincidentally the value of such statements.

The candidates mentioned things like foreign policy, border problems and a few other actual issues, but not in any way that suggested they had substantive ideas about how to deal with them. Former president Donald Trump suggested that wages earned from tips and Social Security payments not be taxed. Ms. Harris suggested large scale lending programs to help minority men start businesses.

Neither candidate addressed the recurring budget deficits and the ticking time bomb of our national debt. Neither candidate has a plan for what to do when money runs out for Social Security and Medicare, triggering deep and painful automatic cuts enacted in bills by legislators now retired or, well, buried.

Mr. Trump is a goof and an ignoramus, a man who is for any policy that gets him cheered for by whatever crowd he is in front of. Ms. Harris ran a failed campaign in 2020 that floundered before a single primary vote was cast. She became the Democratic nominee when her party took a look at the man behind the curtain of pretended mental acuity and found him napping.

Other people are voting for one of these two candidates or one of a handful of also-rans. Many of them thought about what they wanted from a President and decided which candidate most closely matches it. Many more took a look at what they didn't want and are voting for the candidate that overlaps that list the least.

Though I am holding to a banner that suggests neither two major party candidates are worth the ink it would take to check their names, I respect any voter who thought about this election and made a decision. Every one of them put in more intellectual work than either major political party has done all year.

In 1988, Opus the Penguin became the Meadow Party VP nominee because he had gone out for snacks when the vote was taken. He took over most of the campaigning because presidential candidate Bill the Cat had joined a cult (better than the '84 campaign, when he was dead. It's a long story). The storyline is of course absurd when compared to real life.

But if you close one eye and say, "Thppt! Ack..."

The Sophie’s Choice Election

In the Norman Styron novel and Meryl Streep movie of the name Sophie’s Choice, the title character carries with her a dark secret. On being sent to the Auschwitz death camp, she was told she could keep one of her children and she sent her daughter Eva to the gas chambers.

I can’t be the first person to compare an election to the horrible choice forced on the fictional Sophie Zawistokawa. But I think this election merits it. We seem overwhelmingly likely to be forced into a 2020 sequel in the presidential election, and we will probably have to experience January 2025 through January 2029 with either a sack of raging overbronzed suet behind the Resolute desk or a President who gets told “Good boy” when he finishes signing a bill without a nap.

Much is made of how the primary voting system allows the people to speak on their candidates, taking the choice out of the proverbial smoke-filled rooms of the days of undemocratic (small D) party bosses selecting the “right person” (non-political use of the term ‘right’). But no smoke-filled room ever produced two men so completely unsuitable for the office of President or so uniquely incapable of doing the job.

Recently, Republican candidate Nikki Haley was asked if she would accept a vice-presidential spot on a ticket with Mr. Trump. She said she wasn’t running for second place (a significant overestimation of the vice-presidential role). That was smart, because saying, “My body couldn’t stand the weight loss of all of the barfing I’d do whenever I was on stage with this offal” might have looked bad. Yes, she worked in his administration, but as the Ambassador to the United Nations in New York. Not Washington. 

Even though he’s likely to win the nomination, Mr. Trump couldn’t let Ms. Haley say she wouldn’t take the job - he had to say it wouldn’t be offered. At a rally in New Hampshire, he said she wasn’t “presidential timber.” Sticking with that metaphor, Mr. Trump isn’t either. Unless “presidential timber” describes an empty shell of bark on the forest floor that crumbles when touched.

President Biden is simply a different kind of awful. His reversal of what he believed to be Mr. Trump’s unfair border policies has resulted in a deluge of people crossing the border unprocessed - in numbers large enough that Senator John Fetterman equated them to “essentially Pittsburgh showing up at the border.” Pres. Biden, in a brief Q & A with reporters, said there is indeed a problem at the border, and he’s been saying so “for the past ten years.” He said - ostensibly to Congress, otherwise that reporter’s on the hook for a lot of dough - “Give me the money.” But there isn’t any money, Mr. President. You gave it away at the beginning of your term in a third Covid-relief package that brought us Saturday Night Fever-era inflation rates.

President Biden could truly serve the country by selecting a running mate that could be President, since he’s almost certain to become unable to perform his duties should he win in November. But acknowledging that Vice President Kamala Harris couldn’t do the job would require him to admit to a mistake and to piss off most of his base. No modern politician has that kind of courage, so it won’t happen. It would get him my vote, though, because I could claim I did not vote for a senescent grifter, I voted for the competent understudy. 

If Mr. Trump truly loved the country he wants to make great, he’d step aside for either Ms. Haley or Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Either of them would build on his seemingly unintentional first-term victories and have the advantage of 1) Not mounting a batshit insane revenge party and 2) Not being batshit insane. But again, he’d have to admit mistakes, see reality and act for the greater good of someone other than himself - courage and vision impossible for a modern politician.

The choice in my headline is this lousy pun: Vote for awful? Or vote for offal? On the page, the words sound the same but mean different things. The horrid reality of November 5, 2024 is the reverse: They sound different but mean the same thing: Four years of dreary rage.

Internalize

I have done internships as a part of the educational requirements for both of my professions and degrees. At one, I had a bed in the corner of the rec room in my uncle and aunt's house -- which was great, because that internship paid squat. In another, I rented a "studio" that had started life as parts of several rooms in a bungalow and had a heating system that excited no atoms or molecules into heat-energy producing motion ever.

Interning is about gaining job experience in a situation where you can fly or fall with people around you who will guide you about the falling. Political internships involve even less actual work within the field, although statements made by legislators and politicians frequently share similarities with the work of untrained 19-year-olds. They are dodgy, incomplete, marginally accurate and largely defensive about the inadequacy of the work itself.

Earlier today I read a news item that some 40 White House interns wrote a letter -- unsigned, natch -- taking the President of the United States to task for not demanding Israel stop trying to kill Hamas terrorists. Now, they didn't phrase it that way, but that's because they're young and don't know very much.

I got into a nice late middle-aged rage about the gall of young people who know so many things and who have yet to let time and experience help them unlearn them so they can know stuff that's real and true.

I wondered about the proper response to the interns, but turns out Noah Rothman at National Review has the right idea: Fire the lot of them. Yes, the letter is anonymous, so some interns who held back might be let go and it's not particularly fair they get sent packing along with their willfully blind co-workers. But it's just an internship, they're very young and have the time to get over this, and maybe it can show the folly of knowing your co-workers are about to do something stupid and not standing up to call them out on it.

One of the funniest things about these silly people is that they are writing this letter as "the fall 2023" interns. Meaning their service is about up anyway. So rather than speaking truth to power, they are more like leaving power a note to find after the custodian cleans out their desks.

Every now and again society shows us how dumb an idea it is to listen to people without experience. They may be the brightest human beings in many a moon, but without experience they, as former President Reagan said, "know so many things that aren't so."

Whaa?

Once upon a time, the Daily Caller was a slightly above-average culture-warrior web publication of the right. Since about, oh, 2016, they have been a sold-out Trump populism dumping ground, so it's not surprising that Daily Caller Chief National Correspondent Henry Rodgers would, on a flight to a speech in Detroit, ask Donald Trump his opinion on the Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce situation.

The man who cheated on his first wife with the mother of his next child -- before his last child with his first wife was born -- and who dumped said second wife when her child with him was four and is credibly accused with an affair with a porn star while his third wife was still nursing his youngest child said, he wished them both happiness, together or not, then said, "probably not."

Now, stuff like this is what I (don't) go to the Daily Caller to (not) read. So normally, I'd never know about it. Except...

The Today Show sight featured the DC story. As did AOL's entertainment section, Sports Illustrated, The Daily Mail, Yahoo's "Lifestyle" section, The Hindustan Times (?!), MSN, and so on. Once again, the people who will say they want Donald Trump gone will follow the Les Moonves model, summed up in this quote from February 2016 when he was the CEO of CBS: "It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS."

Moonves referred to the way the Trump's shameless charlatanism always draws eyeballs, whether from haters or supporters.

We're past talking about the few ideas he brings to the table. For one, there's every reason to believe a Trump second term would focus on revenge for everyone he things wronged him and his modest adherence to actual conservative thought would wither away. For another, few if any Republican figures will work for him this time in key policy positions and the practice squad players he taps for the roles will struggle in meeting his mercurial demands.

I'm not a very good predictor. But I, along with quite a few others, think Donald Trump will probably win the Republican nomination. He will almost certainly not be president. He is a singularly unlikeable person of no character unfit for the office of President of the United States. Had he not faced another singularly unlikeable person of no character in 2016 he would have never been the President of the United States. He commands the loyalty of a large enough portion of GOP voters to surge past a crowded field. But nobody else likes him (maybe some of those followers don't either). 

And if we all -- including the outlets listed above -- stop paying attention to him, he might just disappear.

PS -- Both Kelce and Swift have been relatively apolitical but when their leanings have become visible they seem center-left. Perhaps Trump's prediction of relationship failure will spur them to try harder and, united, they can buy Mar-a-Largo and raze it.

Fight, the Power

I come now to address a pet peeve I have when watching political commercials or hearing political claims and endorsements.

Of course this is rich ground for plowing, as the next political commercial I see that is of any value beyond helping one spell a candidate's last name will be the first. But I come not to disdain their dishonesty, trickery or complete lack of substance. No, my problem today is with one word: fight.

Candidates for every office in the land promise that they will fight for their constituents. They will fight for the middle class, they will fight injustice, they will fight the forces trying to destroy the country or those who are blocking attempts to save it. Everyone fights. We, the listeners who have gone to get chips during the commercial, are meant to be impressed by the conviction and grit demonstrated by someone who will fight.

But I'm not -- although I might be if it meant any of these meatheads would literally fight each other in a ring with gloves, headgear and a hip replacement doctor on standby. No, I think saying one will fight for something is just a way of trying to convince a voter that the candidate is serious about their attempts to help them.

The problem of course, is that there is literally no way to measure the effectiveness of such a claim. A senator or representative will certainly claim they fought for or against something, depending on their party's preferred position about the something. They can fudge that. They fought, but the special interests of the other side were just too strong. Or dark money did them in. Or the deep state, the illuminati, Hollywood, the press collaborating with the other side or whatever else can be used as a scapegoat for the failure of their fight. They might even blame an actual goat. There is that diagram that shows how a goat's head fits into a demonic pentagram, after all.

And fighting, of course, can be done by making sure the candidate or incumbent got a lot of TV hits -- you know the candidate is fighting because he or she said so frequently on camera.

Lastly, fighting never gets anything done. Now, considering what Congress, say, has done may make people, including me, believe that's not always such a bad thing. But the truth is, there is legislation and work that a legislature is supposed to do. Also an executive. Also a city councilman or a county commissioner.

But passing a complicated appropriations bill is not fighting, It's work. TV hits get nothing done in negotiating a budget agreement. Clever quips and putdowns against opponents get no work done. And in fact, the work is what you and I consent to let the IRS take our money to fund. Not fighting. Fighting is against. Working is with.

We have to be careful -- a clever politician could say "work" but mean as little about it as they do when they say "fight." So I don't want a candidate to tell me he or she is working. I want them to tell me what they're working on. I want to hear what actual Article I work will be accomplished by them at the end of their term if they're running for Congress. I want to hear how they're going to update an antiquated city charter if they're running for city council (yes, that's an oddly specific request, and yes, it describes the community in which I live).

Because if a "No Fighting Allowed" was a good sign to put on the school playground, it's probably a good one to put on every frickin' campaign in the country.

Bag of Grab

-- Ted Gioia notes that the commercial promise of artificial intelligence (AI) hasn't measured up to the hype surrounding the release. As with any number of internet advances, it has proven of most use in shady schemes to steal money from people.

-- My two favored presidential candidates right now are Tim Scott and Nikki Haley. Depending on which reaction story you may read, Scott did OK or poorly. I still like his optimistic vision for a presidency that suggests we have problems to solve, not existential crises to use as bludgeons against those with whom we disagree. I already liked Haley after her two years as ambassador to the UN, but I would like her even without that after opening up Vivek Ramaswamy's goofy, insubstantial marketing campaign and showing the box was empty.

At 37, Mr. Ramaswamy is the first millennial to campaign for a presidential nomination and his debate appearance ticked all the boxes of the stereotypes held of that generation. One of the primary and, for me, most fatal problems is the idea in this quote:  "If you have a broken down car you don't turn over the keys to the people who broke it again, you hand it over to a new generation to actually fix the problem,"  First of all, "again" should appear before "turn" or after "keys." Second of all, it's hard to see the most prosperous nation on earth as a "broken down car." It's got plenty of issues, but it still seems to be running. And third of all, Mr. Ramaswamy has done zip-a-dee-doo-dah to suggest he knows how to fix a car, let alone a nation. In fact, his appearance full of snappy put-downs and radio show call-in policy positions suggest he is part of the problem and would make it worse.

-- In surrendering to the charges brought against him in Georgia, former president Donald Trump decided his mug shot should be a ferocious scowl. It looks ridiculous. It looks like the kind of overdone response by a comedian playing a dad on a TV show when confronting his erring children, giving him the change to use his catchphrase as a non sequitur punchline. 

Dad: "Just what is the meaning of this, you two?"

Daughter: "Well I'm rebelling because you waited almost a year after knocking up my mom to marry her and then you left when I was four."

Son: "And I'm rebelling because you were sleeping with her mom before I was in kindergarten!"

Dad: "Oh, you two! I was just trying to Make America Great Again!"

(Cue laugh track for audience. Add rifle-ratchet noise if audience not loud enough)

Four-Year Saviors

Note: I actually wrote this post yesterday but it slimmed down (and cooled down) considerably once I slept on it. Taking these steps makes me an internet apostate.

A couple of things I've seen recently have reminded me of one of the flaws in how we perceive our presidents over the last forty years or so. In recent days, I've overheard and read a large number of people who plan to vote for former president Donald Trump in spite of the likelihood he will spend much of the campaign as a defendant. The rationale: Things are so bad that "Trump's the only one who can save us."

Conversely, I have friends and family who think that President Biden is doing a poor job in many areas and also believe that he is too old to be an effective president, but they will vote for him if he is the nominee to "save us from another four years of Trump." The focus is narrower, but the idea is the same: We must vote for this candidate not to be an executive as described in Article II of the Constitution but to be a savior. Article II describes presidential duties, and the word "save" or "savior" appears therein only if you cut all the letters in the article apart, mix them up and pull out the ones needed to spell the words.

The notion of voting for a savior has long roots in our national history. Many say Abraham Lincoln saved the union -- but what he did was lead those who did the work, bloody and otherwise, of defeating the Confederacy and thus enabling the end of slavery along with the end of the rebellion. It's true that without Lincoln the many who desired the end of the rebellion and of slavery would still have worked for it, but without Lincoln's conviction and leadership they may not have succeeded. But without the many who desired, worked and bled, Lincoln would have done nothing. Similar caveats adorn FDR's record, or should.

In modern times, the transformation of president into savior probably began with Ronald Reagan. People who share my political persuasion see many accomplishments and many undoings of problems left by previous administrations. People who do not share my persuasion also do not have any notion of Ronald Reagan as a savior. In any event Reagan hired and appointed the people who got those things done. Again, he and others did the work, which is probably better conceived of fixing stuff rather than saving the nation.

But by the time Bill Clinton ran, the campaign made it clear he was to be voted for in order to save us from four more years of Republican presidencies. George W. Bush would save us from Al Gore's robotic goofiness and John Kerry's stentorian emptiness. Barack Obama saved us from all of the Republican evil, which at that time was concentrated in John McCain and Mitt Romney. Later, when a guy who actually was the kind of guy McCain and Romney were accused of being, everyone let them off the hook. A great deal of savior language would be applied to then-President Obama during his terms.

Many Donald Trump supporters believed he was a bad choice but he could save us from the possibility of President Hillary Clinton. And it is at this point the idea of president as savior completely falls apart. If in fact someone voted for Donald Trump for that reason, he achieved all they asked for as soon as he took office. But once taking office, presidents generally remain in that office for at least four years and we have to deal with their (usual lack of) ability during that time. In 2020, many people who thought Joe Biden was a lunkhead voted for him to save the nation from four more years of Donald Trump. And next year, we will be implored by both parties to vote for people who will peak on day one and get worse until their term ends.

Naturally, someone in my job recognizes an entirely different Savior, but many don't. I do believe that accepting the Savior I follow would improve a lot of things, but I'm not into forcing anybody. I just wonder, though, if it's too much to ask to say, "Try voting for a President rather than a savior. Just try, and let's see what happens."

Because if everybody else does the same thing in 2024 that they did in 2020 and puts two ancient grifters on the ballot again, I'll do the same thing I did and try to make the Libertarian Party nominee President of the United States.

Maybe the Enemy is, But...

In recent days Fitch Ratings downgraded the debt of the United States from its highest standard, AAA, to AA+.  One possible consequence is a sell-off of U.S. securities, which are our instruments of debt. People buy them so the government has cash to start its tailgate bonfires, with the idea that one day, the government will buy them back at an increased price and the person who bought them in the first place will make money. Which, OK, everybody has to believe in something.

A couple of things should be noted -- Fitch Ratings says it has taken this move because of "a steady deterioration in standards of government." In the immortal words of John McLain, (no, not those), "Welcome to the party, pal!"

Our tendencies in government have been towards crowning our president, pundityfying our Congress and turning our Supreme Court into a super-legislature. The "steady deterioration" has been going on for a long time. The leaders of our parties are people who work for jobs they can't do and, apparently, don't want. Yes, Nancy Pelosi was pretty good at getting votes out of her party's members and Kevin McCarthy has rediscovered Article 1, Section 1 and is putting on a pretty good King Josiah act. But think back to the years between the election of Barack Obama and the death of Senator Ted Kennedy.

The Democratic Party controlled the White House, House of Representatives and had a veto-proof majority in the United States Senate. Yet it took then-Pres. Obama, Speaker Pelosi and then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid until 2010 and any number of parliamentary shenanigans to get the president's number-one desire, health care passed. If you remember the 1980s, do you have any doubt that had Tip O'Neil been around he would have had some kind of health care reform passed before Mitch McConnell came in to work and John Boehner finished his smoke?

The fuss should not be that Fitch has noticed steady deterioration in 2023 -- it should be that these standards have been deteriorating for quite the while now. Plus, AA+ will still let you buy a few tanks and such on credit; it's not that bad.

To close, several opinion pieces about the downgrade seemed to give it more impact than it has - as professor Don Boudreaux notes in this piece, our government has been downgraded. We're just fine.

On Second Thought...

Yesterday I made fun of the way a woman who bought one of Hunter Biden's paintings had found herself appointed to the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad. I also made fun of the commission, since it focused on Eastern and Central European areas that have been extensively explored in movies that involve pale gentlemen with a fondness for red and nighttime.

I've since learned that a great deal of the Commission's work instead focuses on the preservation of things like Jewish cemeteries and memorials to Holocaust victims, as well as archives and documents relating to them. This is not by itself a bad thing. Large numbers of people who have come to the U.S. were victims of oppression by both the Nazis and Soviet-dominated regimes. Others had been smacked around by the dictators' predecessors.

So in essence, the commission's goals are not bad ones. When the bill containing it was sponsored in 1985 by then-Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) and signed by Ronald Reagan, there was significant worry that the totalitarian regimes of those areas would work pretty hard to destroy the past. Because that's what dictators do, just like the Taliban blowing up the Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001. Yes, we kicked their tails after they moved on to skyscrapers, but as we learned when the current administration brought back the old Saigon Helicopter Shuffle in August of 2021, American tail-kickings have an expiration date.

But...it's not the government's job -- our government's job, anyway. While the description of its mission says it's to work with the State Department to help obtain assurances from other governments that these sites will be preserved and maintained, I live among a bunch of people who can tell you what government assurances are worth. There might be a ton of private donation money and nice smiles and pats on the head. But there's no way to insure some of these governments will honor any assurances unless we hang a picture of a "Your Secret Hideout" -marked ICBM in whatever language required in that president or leader's office.

While Commission members themselves are unpaid, their travel and hotel stays and meals are covered. The Commission staff average salary is $125,000. There are other staff, of course, so the total cost is probably higher than that. When created in 1985, the Commisson received no federal funds. In 1990, after Reagan was gone but while Lugar was still in office, the Commission received its first federal appropriation. For FY 2023-2024, it has available $1.03 million to spend.

The point is not saving the government money. The points are that this is not a task for government and that even an agency begun without any government expense, created by a couple of those mean old pinch-penny Republicans, will eventually start costing something. 

Things might get so bad someone would buy an ugly expensive painting just for a chance to sit at the table and listen to chairwoman Star Jones lead the meeting.

Painting Hunter

There is a to-do because the identity of one of Hunter Biden’s painting purchasers has been discovered, and she is a significant Democratic Party donor who received a presidential appointment.

The buyer is a woman named Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali and she paid an unknown sum for one of Biden the younger’s works, priced anywhere between $75,000 and a half a million dollars. In 2022, Ms. Hirsh Naftali was appointed to the United States Commission on the Preservation of American Heritage Abroad, and whatever part of me is still libertarian just broke out in hives.

As Jim Geraghty’s piece notes, the USCPAH “identifies, protects and preserves cemeteries, monuments and historic buildings in Eastern and Central Europe that are associated with U.S. heritage. I have no idea how this works. I was under the impression that cemeteries, monuments and historic buildings in Eastern and Central Europe were all older than the United States. I was also under the impression, thanks to Christopher Lee, that the residents of the cemeteries in many parts of Eastern Europe are perfectly capable of maintaining them without U.S. assistance, as they leave their graves for evening strolls and, um, dinner.

What American heritage are we preserving? Was Dracula staked with a filed-down Louisville Slugger that needs a little varnish now and again? Is China sneaking some contraband O-neg to all the toothy crowd and underselling good old red-blooded American…blood?

Anyway, the question now seems to be whether or not Ms. Hirsh Naftali obtained this plum membership as a result of her purchase. The White House denies this, saying that Ms. Hirsh Naftali was recommended by Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. I have a simple solution to determine this. Find out where the painting is hanging. If it’s in the guest bathroom, things look a little iffy. If it’s in the house of a least-favorite in-law who might have voted for Reagan, then it’s clearly a grift.

Umm...

Washington Post opinion writer Marc Thiessen complains in a piece today -- and don't worry that it's paywalled, the free preview is what caught my eye and sparked this micro-rant -- that Joe Biden's nationwide public address this evening is "disgracing the institution of the prime-time presidential address."

On the one hand, Mr. Thiessen is correct. When I look back at the first fifth or so of the 21st century, there are only two incidents that I can see that merit the traditional solemn, stern presentation by the president we see in such times. The first was the 9/11 attacks, and we saw former President George W. Bush speak strongly and firmly about what our nation would do to the perpetrators of those attacks. We diverted our attention from those goals and we unfortunately allowed the federal government to create our response, which is one reason why we have to let Transportation Service Administration workers get lucky with us and rely almost exclusively on hotel toothpaste because our own container must be checked and subsequently lost by the airline. His famous "with us or against us" tone made exceptions for nations which essentially grew the terrorists but also sold us a lot of oil.

The second occasion would have been President Biden addressing the nation to announce that the State Department and upwards of 70 percent of the general staff officers overseeing the United States armed forces withdrawal from Afghanistan had all been fired and their jobs would be listed on federal government websites the next morning. It would have included direct addresses to both Afghan nationals who helped the US while it was there and the families of military personnel who expected the safety of their loved ones was at least somewhere on the priority chart. Ideally it would have said, "We screwed up," although given the president's attitude about the matter it was far more likely to have begun with, "Flounder, you can't spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes..."

As you might imagine from my summary and my speculation, on the other hand I don't believe that given the recent holders of the office the tradition can actually be disgraced. The prime-time presidential address kissed disgrace goodbye and promised to write a loooong time ago. What we'll get tonight will be far more of a campaign speech for Democratic nominees for Senate and House races than any kind of address by the head of state of our nation on real matters of state.

With all that said, I think Mr. Thiessen is not too wide of the mark. If we replace "disgrace" with its rhyme "erase" and change the attitude from warning to jubilant bacchanal, I think we may be on to something...

Send the Envoy!

Finland Prime Minister Sanna Marin hosted some friends after they'd all seen some concerts, and a couple of the friends got, um, really friendly while on the wrong end of a camera. The matter has caused another headache for Marin, who has recently reminded the world that politicians don't always have fun by wrestling waitresses half their size into unwanted double gross old guy contact.

Rumors that former president Bill Clinton immediately offered to mediate any dispute, saying, "I'll put myself between the two parties for as long as it takes to get things worked out," are as yet unfounded.

Conditions

Noticed that friends have begun posting about preseason schedules for the National Basketball Association upcoming season. I'll watch another NBA game when someone from the league offers some indication that they know the Uighur people exist and are being systematically wiped out both culturally and literally by the government they won't even breathe crossways of and the only reason is cash.

Taking a Stand

I don't pretend my blog is apolitical, and I don't pretend my beliefs aren't primarily conservative with a dash of libertarianism. But in more recent years I've tried to keep political posts more about thinking and policies than personalities and characters -- and not just because 98 percent of those are, um. icky. I'm trying to model behavior I'd like to see, even if the number of people who read what I say is not large and the number of people who consider themselves guided by my opinions is even more not large.

But I really do feel I have to make a political statement: It's wrong to follow people into the bathroom with a camera, cell phone or otherwise. I am saddened to make this statement, not because I find the position a difficult one to take or because it represents some deeply divisive political position. I'm saddened because that statement should be one of basic courtesy, common sense, and a whole host of other things that have nothing to do with politics. But because of people without courtesy, without common sense and without manners, it has become a political one.

Equivalencies?

The extra helpings of disastrous screwups that are being dealt out by our current presidential administration have brought pundits to employ some truly dark language and evoke very very troubled times for our nation.

I refer, of course, to the Carter administration. Our oldest living former President set benchmarks for futility and error. Some were errors that were thrust upon him by circumstance, such as the Iranian hostage crisis, and the errors came from choosing a lousy option from a range of lousy options. Carter did seem to have a knack for picking those lousy options from the ”more lousy” end of the group, but he didn’t have very many good choices before him. Other errors he committed all on his own. He also gets dinged for not handling lunkhead relatives in the best way, such as his brother Billy.

I think the comparison is unfair. For one, President Carter’s approval of the botched raid to rescue some of those hostages signaled that he was actively interested in getting Americans out of unfriendly territory. He didn’t have a very good plan to do so, but he did think a U.S. president ought to do more than shrug when U.S. citizens — according to the Constitution, the people he works for —were surrounded by unfriendly and violent persons with more than a passing interest in doing them harm.

For another, the current president’s lunkhead relative is his son Hunter. As mentioned, former President Carter’s lunkhead relative was Billy. From Hunter we’re getting half-million dollar paintings made by a guy with zero history in the art world. From Billy we got beer. And although I was way too young to have tasted it, one look at Billy Carter tells you he knew a little something about beer.

On the other hand, even if “Billy Beer” was a direct product from skunk central it’d have to be better than one of Hunter Biden’s paintings.

No!

“If these governors won’t help us beat the pandemic, I will use my powers as president to get them out of the way,” Biden said.

You twerp, you were practically alive when they wrote the Constitution and you ought to be able to find at least one of the neurons that was around back then to remember YOU CAN'T DO THAT.

JB, POTUS

The Democratic presidential candidate with the initials JB was probably not the first choice for the ticket for a lot of party members. But the candidate with the most popular support held views that the majority of the country didn't much care for, and he threatened the party leadership by supporting policies that would likely keep them out of power in the legislature as well as within the party structure. So they took advantage of a split between other candidates that more overtly promoted these unpopular views and were able to frame JB as a kind of sensible consensus candidate.

His absence from the Washington mix during the previous term helped keep him above some of the worst excesses connected to that environment. His long experience in government in both elective and appointive office gave him an air of competence and calm that contrasted with the other parties' candidates. Against promises of radical change, intensified nativism and threats to the established order that would lead who knows where if enacted, JB made it clear that any changes would be carefully thought out and made in a professional, reasoned manner. The kind of upheaval argued for by others was not for him.

Once elected, though, it became clear that JB was not really a "different Democrat" from the other candidates for his party's nomination. He made support for the policies they had sought a big part his own agenda, and expressed sympathy for views he had seemed to disclaim on the campaign trail. He was warned that this kind of action would not help stave off challenges from the other party and might even embolden their more radical elements to work that much harder for the White House. By not standing against these more radical members of his own party and their support for increasingly unpopular views, JB risked potential civil unrest and worse but he was clearly not capable of standing against their energy and persuasion -- whatever else he had been during his long governmental career, he was no leader anymore.

Even his pledge to serve just one term and campaign hard for his Vice-President to succeed him proved inadequate, and so James Buchanan watched Abraham Lincoln win the election of 1860 as the country he had so inexpertly led for four years from disaster to disaster finally fell apart into open conflict.

Of course I was talking about James Buchanan. Who did you think I meant?

No Goldilocks Moment

Writing the kind of post that really sums up what we're watching in Afghanistan would take a staff of researchers, time and a check made out to me. I have none of those, so my quick hit is this: The proper amount of time to stay in Afghanistan was either very short or quite long, with no in-between.

The initial goal was to eject the Taliban from power and take away the safe haven they gave to Al Qaeda and other terrorists. It happened pretty quickly, using a number of Afghan warlords as allies and with groundwork being laid over some time before attacks finally started. The very short time would have been to then get out and let the warlords have their way. Afghanistan would be slightly less of a hellhole and it would be one run by someone other than the Taliban. If the Taliban came back and wanted another go, then they could be smacked around some more. If that remained our goal, we stayed too long.

The other goal came to be creating a healthy nation in Afghanistan that could organically resist Taliban power and advance its people from the 8th century to maybe the 18th or 19th.  In the cities, perhaps all the way to the 1950s. For that goal, we didn't stay nearly long enough. Two of the key elements for a healthy nation are a respect for the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of democratically elected power. Without both of these, people rely on old-fashioned tribal structures rife with corruption that are trusted by no one: This judge will never respect my claim because it's being made against one of his extended clan members -- so I'll take matters into my own hands.

Between the British East India Company and the Raj period, England more or less occupied and directed India for the better part of 200 years. It never had the goal of building a nation for the benefit of its people, but those core values -- the rule of law and peaceful transfer of power -- gradually came to be built into the way the Indian people thought about running their own government. English people were not better than Indian people. English culture was not better than Indian culture. The Raj, especially in its early years, was brutal, imperialist and more than a little racist, although it was a lot safer to be an upperclass Indian widow after 1829.

But those English busybodies brought with them the idea that if everyone, even the king, obeys the law, then everyone, not just the king, can have a shot at getting rich. The English stayed long enough for the Indian people to learn and like that idea enough to try it for themselves. With the 1991 election of Narasimha Rao, they decided to ditch even the socialism imposed by Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv. Although India's commitment to democracy seems to waver sometimes, especially in some remote regions, it's been able to maintain both of those key features.

The U.S. was not in Afghanistan nearly long enough to help those key features become a part of the Afghan culture and fabric. Since the effort was intentional and since the U.S. had no desire to rule the Afghans it might not have taken ten generations, but it was definitely going to take more than one. The short-sightedness of former President Trump and President Biden, who both wanted everyone out of Afghanistan now if not sooner, made disaster inevitable. Biden's statement of not wanting to hand the Afghan war to a fifth president demonstrates the false understanding of what could have continued to work in the country had we desired to continue to build it. More U.S. troops die in training and in accidents than in combat; combat deaths in Afghanistan were down below one every two weeks. Soldiers were more likely to die on U.S. soil than Afghan soil.

Our choices were fairly clear: Pure national interest, which means kicking the Taliban's ass, leaving and then kicking it again if they ask us to. Or nation building and humanitarian concerns, which means committing to thinking beyond one's own four-year term and what polls say. We tried to split the difference -- which, King Solomon would have pointed out, doesn't work when dealing with children and other living things.

The Men on the Moon

This being the 52nd anniversary of human beings first landing on the moon, and also the day in which yet another billionaire used his money to finance a private flight beyond the edge of the atmosphere, there were of course complaints. These focused on the way that the government spending on the Apollo program was not spent on alleviating poverty and hunger, and that the billionaires spent their money to get themselves into space rather than fixing earthbound problems like poverty and hunger.

Some of these critiques throw figures around that decry the massive dollar amounts spent on space exploration and space travel, although the comparisons usually overlook the fact that the government has spent immensely more money on programs to eliminate poverty and hunger. Which, by the way, still remain. Articles around the internet will counter the comparisons by quoting figures; others will point out that the billionaires both a) spend quite a bit on programs helping folks in need and b) got their money when they created products and services that lots of people wanted to buy and use. In other words, if you don't want Jeff Bezos spending his money to fly into space, don't use Amazon and give your money to him. 

The thing that struck me this time was the idea that the money spent on the space program was somehow unavailable to alleviate poverty seems to treat these funds like they were stuffed into the Apollo 11 capsule and dumped out onto Mare Tranquillitatis. Money spent on the space program was, um, spent on the space program. Things were bought. Things were built. Things were designed. The people who bought things, built things and designed things were all paid for their work -- and as we have been reminded of in recent years, among those people were women from minority groups who played significant roles in the project. I may have it wrong, but I am willing to bet that the money space program employees were paid kept them from being hungry and kept them out of poverty -- and the money paid to those employees today does the same thing.

In fact, those joy-riding billionaires' rocket planes were also designed, bought and built and I'll go so far out on a limb as to say that the people paid for doing so were probably kept from being homeless as a direct result of the money they received. In fact, I think they're probably kept from being homeless right now.

This probably oversimplifies things but it really seems sometimes that the main gripe of people who level their accusations at governments and people who spend their money on traveling to space is that they didn't give any of it to the people griping. But other than in movie reviewing, griping never has paid much.

Definitions

Writing at National Review, Andy McCarthy unpacks what happened at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 from a legal perspective and discusses the various labels that are applied to it. The piece is detailed and should be read in its entirety; I don't know if it's behind the paywall or not but if it is bookmark it and come back later.

In short, McCarthy says that the folks who stormed the Capitol building, made it inside and made themselves at home and a nuisance for several hours are guilty of rioting -- but not of insurrection or treason. And, he says, despite the words used by the Attorney General, the Justice Department agrees -- because it's going to ask for one of the lead ruffians to get about a 3-year or so sentence for pleading guilty. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, points out that if someone really tries to overthrow the government, their term behind bars ought not to be shorter than the President's term in the White House.

I appreciated the analysis because it helped me put some of my own ideas in a proper framework. The thought that the riots qualified as an "insurrection" is ludicrous. They were a big problem, caused partly by inadequate preparation on the part of law enforcement and partly by then-President Trump hemming and hawing about telling the same people he had just stirred up to simmer down and go home. But an insurrection? How? Although one particular bit of government business -- the certification and recording of the electoral votes from the November 2020 election -- was delayed, it was not blocked and no other government function was impeded. Some Capitol Police where assaulted and a female protestor was shot and killed -- these are awful things, but they are not an insurrection against the United States.

It's reported as overheard in more than one news story, but not verified, that one of the protestors who reached the U.S. Senate chamber said something like, "Well, we're here. Might as well form a government." I'd say that's usually the kind of thing loony enough it causes roofs to cave in, but it's not like that room hasn't heard worse before.

There was literally zero chance that the people in the Senate and House chambers and those roaming the rest of the Capitol could "form" any government that would be accepted by existing governmental officials, bureacrats, elected officeholders, law enforcement personnel, military service folks, and so on. If that statement was really uttered aloud, did the speaker really think that Chuck Schumer would have said, "Well, we'd like to go back inside and sit in our comfy chairs and argue with each other, but there's a guy with buffalo horns on his head who took mine and some dude waving a flag with Trump on Mount Rushmore took McConnell's."

In the immediate aftermath my desire was to have this event investigated, proper and appropriate charges filed, remedial steps taken to prevent a repeat and then to have everyone shut up. Not because I'd like it swept under the rug but because between a Justice Department that shouts, "Treason!" but sentences, "Trespassing" and supporters of the former president who say, "They were just taking selfies and got a little excited," there's not anybody saying anything worth listening to anyway.