Will Republicans govern?

So, the Republicans have swept the House and Senate in yesterday’s elections.  I guess congratulations are in order for my conservative friends, and condolences to my liberal friends. 

My deepest hope is that the Republicans show up as mature adults committed to running the government rather than dismantling it.  My next deepest hope is that they don’t waste the world’s time with show trials about Benghazi, the IRS, or whatever in an attempt to impeach the President. 

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of hope for positive governance from the party that has Ted Cruz waiting in the wings like Godzilla ready to go on a rampage to control it as part of his campaign to become president. 

Bigotry today

I suppose we have always been cursed with bigotry.  Bigotry is pre-judging people, prejudice, based upon how they are in a different grouping than we are.  There is racial bigotry, of course, and although it is still with us, it is definitely less than it was 50 years ago, I know because I was there 50 years ago.

But, there is a newly very powerful bigotry in America today – political bigotry.  A recent study measured how people’s view of others is tainted.  They found residual racial bigotry, but were surprised to discover that “partyism”, prejudice based upon party identification , to have risen radically over the last 50 years. 

In 1960 about 5% of people said they would be “displeased” if a child were to marry someone of the opposite party.  Today, one third of Democrats and one half of Republicans would be displeased if a child married a member of the opposite party.  Kind of shocking.

It reflects the terrible partisan divides in the country today, and it reflects how the Congress cannot find compromises when it comes to running the country.  It reflects a fundamental problem in the country, good old fashioned bigotry, the refusal to see those unlike yourself to be respectable human beings.

This is especially sad to me because in my many years on the planet I have been both a left wing and right wing true believer, and I was wrong both times, and I was a good person both times.  Wrong because the world of the true believer is one that knows all the answers to all the problems, just apply the orthodox ideology to all situations and oppose anyone who doesn’t agree, and viola… life is simple, it’s the good people against the bad people.  But, of course, that is nonsense.

It’s really about tribalism.  Wanting to belong to the right tribe.  Racism is obvious, our tribe against your tribe.  Partyism is the same thing, our tribe against your tribe.

It is certainly no accident that more right wingers are bigoted than left wingers – right wingers are under the spell of hate radio and hate news.  All day every day they are bombarded with the evils of liberalism.  They are propagandized into a level of distrust that reaches into paranoia.  It is a very toxic environment that we live in today, and we are seeing the fruits of that toxicity in dysfunctional government.

Sad indeed.  My hope is for passionate and moderate voices in both parties, but especially in the Republican Party, to emerge.  It is not happening in this election, but it has a chance to emerge in 2016.  Shoot, Carter ran on a post partisan platform, as did W (a uniter not a divider) , and did Obama (we aren’t a red nation or a blue nation but we are one nation). 

The moderation pitch appeals to us, elects presidents, but the war drums in the right wing media pound away, dividing, dividing.

To paraphrase a great man… I have a dream:  that we live in a nation where people are judged by the content of their character, not the …political tribe they belong to.

Fear mongering

I find the elections to be pretty depressing.  We are in full campaign mode and the country is being forced into artificial panics as part of campaign strategies.

The chances of getting Ebola for the general population about the same as getting hit by a meteor, but the Republicans have escalated the fear in this country to ridiculous proportions as a way to attack a Democratic president and get out the vote. 

And the media escalates the fear, of course, because the more afraid we all are of dying, the more we will breathlessly watch the latest minutes of fear mongering on TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, etc.  Depressing to me.

Islamist extremists know that the best way to gain credibility amongst bloody minded jihadists is to compete amongst themselves to be the most brutal jihadists.  Plus, their strategy is to bait the U.S. into invading Muslim countries.  That’s what bin Laden did, and it’s what ISIL is doing.  It makes them seem important, and does wonders for recruitment into their religious wars.  I’m sure we have to respond to some degree, but the knee jerk Republican critique of anything the administration does is not helpful.  I’m old enough to remember when the political rule in the country was that politics stopped at the border, meaning the country had one voice, as much as was humanly possible, when it came to overseas military issues.  Wanting to drag the country into the civil and religious wars in the Middle East seems to be a very bad idea to me.  But, it’s election time so attack, attack, attack.

I will be glad when this election is over, but, oh yes, there is another election “right around the corner” so, fear monger, fear monger, fear monger...raise campaign contributions, get out the vote, demonize the opposition, keep the country in a continual state of agitation…depressing.

I think I may just ignore the media, even more than I have recently, until the election is over. 

Good strategy, but...?

President Obama gave a good speech last night about going after ISIL.  I am glad he refused to call them the Islamic State, because I agree with him that they are not representing Islam.  

I think there are four strands within ISIL: psychopaths who seek brutality for its own debased pleasure, young men without a future who are drawn by the allure of a purpose and a community, true believer religious fanatics who see themselves carrying out the will of God by claiming the world for Islam, and cynical and disaffected Sunnis who are joining this Sunni extremist group as a way to fight back against the Shiite tyrannies of Iraq's Maliki and Syria's Assad.  Fortunately Maliki is out of power, so this group may be able to be lured away from ISIL going forward.

So, ISIL is barbarous and needs to be stopped.  But, I repeat what I have been writing about for some time, this is a civil and religious war within Islam, it is their war.  We need to defend ourselves against future attacks on our country and against the West.  But if we become the big military force, air power and boots on the ground, against ISIL all that will happen is that ISIL will have lured the US into fighting them and creating massive flooding of Islamist Jihadis joining with ISIL to fight against a foreign power trying to stop the spread of Islam.  A direct US invasion to fight ISIL would become a massive recruitment of Muslims to fight against the West.

Instead, Obama is trying to do a tricky thing: support others in the region to fight against ISIL.  Try to help a reformed Iraqi government (we hope) to defend Iraq against the Sunni extremists of ISIL.  Try to help the more moderate Sunni fighters in Syria to fight against the ISIL fanatics in Syria.  Training, supplies, air support, intelligence, diplomacy, economic and political support - the many levers of power that the US superpower has at its fingers.  Oddly enough, our mighty military becomes ineffective if used directly because it only helps the bloody Islamic opposition rally to their cause.

So, strategically and tactically, I think Obama is making some good choices, ones that I have been hoping for.  

What I wrote of earlier is that there is no Voice that the world can rally around and be led by in this effort.  What I mean by that might be explained by comparing our fight against terrorism to our fight against Communism.

Communism had a clear vision:  the government was to overthrow exploitive and greedy capitalists and empower the people who would become free of the exploitation and become the naturally giving and sharing people that was their fundamental natures once they were no longer under the thrall of the false consciousness of exploitive capitalism.  It was understood around the world what this vision and Voice of Communism was.  The voice was Marx and Lenin, followed by communist leaders like Castro and Mao, etc.

American democratic capitalism had a clear vision as well: capitalism was a natural expression of free peoples in search of better lives for themselves and it created a vibrant and growing economy that raised the standard of living and the quality of life for the vast majority of people, raising far more people out of poverty than any centrally controlled government ever could, and this system by its very nature fostered personal freedom which demanded and created political freedom of a democratic and prosperous society.  The voice was Teddy Roosevelt, JFK, Reagan, and a slew of business leaders, etc.  It was understood around the world what the vision and Voice of Democratic Capitalism was.

In today's ideological struggle for the ear of the world, the vision and voice of Islamist extremist is pretty clear: western society is an immoral cesspool of licentiousness and greed and betrayal, which puts riches, corporeal pleasures,  and greed above all else, and has lost any connection to God, spirituality, and cleanliness of mind and body.  It is being voiced by Islamic leaders around the world and is being responded to by young, angry, lonely, and desperate men with revenge in their hearts.  It is a vision and voice understood around the Islamic world.

So, what is the ideology and voice of the West? of the Muslims who want to be part of the modern world?  Bush said it was about freedom.  But, that was just kind of repeating the old Cold War vision and trying to apply it to the Islamic religious war against the West and western influence in Islamic lands.  

Obama said something about freedom and dignity, and those are good, but what is the story? the vision? the clarion call against the Islamist dream?  It is fine to point out how the Islamist vision is false and it is just being used as an excuse for brutality and revenge.  And that is being voiced very well by Obama and the rest of the West.   But it is not a countering dream that can call away the young Islamists into a dream of joining the modern world that exists in peace with the Muslim world.

I don't have a clear vision to state right now myself that opposes the Islamist view of the West as deeply corrupt, debauched, and spiritually vacant.  What is needed is a vision that exalts the human spirit, a sense of purpose beyond momentary satisfactions, and a spiritual connection with the world and its people, and to connect that to building a prosperous and abundant life for yourself, your loved ones, and the people of the world.  

Obama had one of the most compelling political voices in American history when he successfully ran for president in 2008, but once elected his voice collapsed and most of what he said since then has had little real effect.  He lost his Voice.  But, if he could find the inspiration, vision, and creativity in creating a clear and inspiring modern vision to offset the fundamentalist Islamist allure, he could provide what is missing, what is needed beyond good strategic choices, a dream of a world coming together against a false spiritual vision of fanatical, bloody Islamism, a world of healthy, prosperous, free, giving, caring, men and women of all stripes creating an abundant and loving world.

Has America lost its voice?

Obama's decision to postpone military action in Syria against the Islamic State might not be a terrible idea, but it seems to be a product of indecision and lack of vision rather than an expression of international leadership. If he has a world view that he is intending to implement, he needs to be able to clearly and inspiringly give voice to his vision and strategy rather than just be the pawn of his own advisors' internal battles and inability to come to a consensus. Is that what leadership is, to wait until everyone agrees and then do what they recommend?

And what of Putin's invasion of Ukraine?  Obama says that Putin shouldn't do such nasty things, but is he really voicing a clear and powerfully led western opposition to Putin? Some people attack just because there is no one there to stop them. Looks like that describes Putin. Where is the leadership in the pushback?  I understand that Obama is coordinating sanctions, but it all seems to be behind the scenes, on the quiet, some rhetoric but without a sense of command.

I am noticing that for this coming off-year election there doesn't seem to be a leader of the Democratic Party. No Democratic politicians are asking the president to come campaign with them. This is not unusual because presidents are often unpopular enough that they are not seen as a valuable campaign asset during off-year elections. But this year it seems like nobody is speaks for the Democratic Party in this election, and the country doesn't seem to have a real voice on the world stage either. 

It's the same for the Republicans, of course, there is no national spokesman that the Republicans rally around, but that is the normal state of the party that doesn't hold the Whitehouse. Unless there is an unusually charismatic and articulate opposing party spokesperson various wannabes offer different paths and visions and there is no real center to the opposition. 

So, there seems to be a vacuum in the world, and that vacuum is being filled by an opportunistically warlike Russian Putin, and by the fanatically savage Islamic State. Europe is almost completely missing on the world stage, in part I think because of their decision after the ravages of WWI and WWII to almost totally disarm. They were able to focus on social issues and leave defense to their muscular and willing military ally, America. But now America is much less willing to be the western world's military, and is trying to find a more subtle role.  And at least for the interim it seems like America is just backing away and taking as small a role as possible. 

I am all for an American leadership that is not overly reliant on military interventions. It would just be a little reassuring to me, and perhaps to a muddled world, if America would have a clearer voice with a firmer sense of leadership in a comprehensive, worldwide, collaborative approach. 

The world needs a powerful voice to lead it in its grappling with the savage aggressions happening today, to lead it in ways that give the opposition to the barbarity a vision, method, and purpose - a vision that is much more than just troops on the ground.

I think it would help calm the world down a bit.

Dealing with today's Nazis

The Islamic State (I.S.I.S/I.S.I.L) has to be dealt with.  The worst way to deal with it, it seems to me, is to try to find someone in the West to blame for its emergence.  Conservatives want to blame Obama, liberals want to blame W.  But, it's the extremist jihadists who are Islamic State.  No one forced them to saw off the heads of those they despise.  No one forced them to wage a religious war in the Middle East and declare an Islamist caliphate.  They are who they are because of who they are, not because someone else is to blame for who they are.

Roger Cohen did a good job of summarizing the mistakes of the U.S.:

"The list of American errors is long: Bush’s ill-conceived and bungled war in Iraq; a failure to deal with the fact that two allies, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, have been major sources and funders of violent Sunni extremism; an inability to seize opportunity in Egypt, home to nearly a quarter of the world’s Arabs, and so demonstrate that Arab societies can evolve out of the radicalizing confrontation of dictatorship and Islamism; a prolonged spate of dithering over the Syrian war during which Obama declared three years ago that “the time has come for President Assad to step aside” without having any plan to achieve that; a lack of resolve in Syria that saw Obama set a red line on the use of chemical weapons only to back away from military force when chemical weapons were used; an inability to see that no one loves an Arab vacuum like jihadi extremists, and a bloody vacuum was precisely what Obama allowed Syria to become; and inattention, until it was too late, to festering sectarian conflict in a broken Iraqi society left to its fate by a complete American withdrawal."

So what?  It is the religious fanatics who are acting fanatically.  They are simply taking advantage of a situation where they think that there centuries long grandiose dreams can be made real, world domination for their religion and for themselves to be Great Rulers of the world.  Ego coupled with pious rhetoric.

I believe Richard Cohen makes a key point as well when he says that any attempt to explain who else is to blame is a way of making their savagery and evil acceptable.  They are no more acceptable in today's world than the Nazi's were acceptable in the 20th century.  His summary:

"The Islamic State, in whose name Foley was beheaded, murders with abandon. It seems to love death the way the fascists once did. It is Sunni, so it massacres Shiites. It is radical Sunni, so it eliminates apostates. It is Muslim, so it kills Yazidis, a minority with a religion of its own, and takes as plunder their women as concubines. Men are shot in graves of their own making.

The Nazis are back — differently dressed, speaking a different language and murdering ostensibly for different reasons but actually for the same: intolerance, hatred, excitement and just because they can."

So, what do we do with today's Nazis? I really hate the idea of getting the U.S. involved in the Religious and Civil Wars of the Middle East, but we have to apply U.S. power to the region.  I hope Obama, and Europe, use as much financial, diplomatic, economic, military training and weapons for the least radical Muslims on the ground, maybe some air power support, intelligence support, selected special forces missions, etc etc.  And I hope we don't put ground troops into that briar patch.  

But I don't see how we can remain aloof and removed as we watch this al Qaeda offshoot, more vicious, better organized, better funded jihadist savages continue to rampage.  We are definitely on their target list.

Maliki steps down in Iraq

The good news is that Maliki has resigned as Prime Minister of Iraq. I believe the biggest culprit in the emergence of the Islamic State has been Maliki and his backers - Iran. He ruled as a tyrant who was becoming a Shiite version of the previous Sunni tyrant, Saddam Hussein. He suppressed and tyrannized the Sunnis in Iraq, and joined with the Iranians in sending Shiite jihadists into Syria.

The result was a Sunni revolt in both Syria and Iraq. Unfortunately, that Sunni revolt grew into I.S.I.S. which later named itself the Islamic State. 

Now, the Islamic State has to be stopped, both for the sake of a livable Middle East and for the sake of safety in the West and the United States.  Fortunately, a lot of the Arab world agrees that they must be stopped and, if I understand it correctly, they are against them. 

The U.S. is slowly and reluctantly using force against them, but Obama's hope all along seems to have been that Iraq would oust Maliki and move to win over the more moderate Sunnis to join in the opposition to the Islamic State.  My most desired outcome is that this is what happens, and that with U.S. assistance (and little if any American boots on the ground), Iraq can pull together more moderate Shia and Sunni forces to strengthen Iraq and drive out the Islamic State. 

I want the Muslim world to reject and renounce the Islamic State. Perhaps Maliki's resignation is a step in that direction. 

The "Muddle East"explodes

The Islamic State, formerly known as I.S.I.L., is truly terrifying and dangerous. They are so bad that what is happening in Israel and Ukraine pale by comparison. These men are religious fanatics in the worst possible sense. They literally are killing people for not being Muslims. And to say that they are killing them is to understate their treatment of their victims. 

Why?  

First, we can look to the man in charge of Iraq, Maliki. He was chosen by Bush and supported by Obama as the one Shiite who could reach out to Shia, Sunni, and Kurds alike and govern over a more or less unified Iraq. Instead, he became a Shiite dictator aligned with the Shiite Iran, suppressing and terrorizing the Sunnis.  Not surprisingly, the Sunnis are rising up against this oppression. 

Second, we can look at Maliki again, and the force behind him, Iran. They sent radical Islamist Shia into Syria and the outcome was an even larger Sunnu uprising, the battle hardened al Qaeda offshoot Islamic State of the Levant, I.S.I.L, declared itself the new caliphate to fight in Syria and, oh by the way, take over northern Iraq. 

We now have a legitimate threat of genocidal slaughter of a small religious group in Iraq, the Yazidi, and an assault on the Kurds, who have been our allies in Iraq since our invasion. 

So what?  Why do we care?

Certainly there are very legitimate humanitarian reasons to stop the Islamic State. But, perhaps more to the point, our national interests are at stake. Islamic State is in the process of taking over vast oil fields and thus becoming enormously wealthy.  And with that wealth their abilities to attach the West and America multiply exponentially. We tried to walk away from the religious Middle Eastern wars, but it looks like we can't. Imagine Osama bin Laden in charge of billions of dollars and millions of Islamist fanatics, and that is the potential future of the Islamic State.  Except the Islamic state is so extreme that even al Qaeda can't stand them. 

So, air strikes against the Islamic State on the march in order to protect the Yazidis seems necessary to me. I don't know how we stop these zealots with drones and aircraft. I think the key to it is probably in Iran and Saudi Arabia, which I think are the centers of the Shia and Sunni movements. 

Which takes us back to the start of it all, in the modern age at least, the Ayatollah Khomeini Islamist revolution in Iran. If some key Shia and Sunni religious leaders could reach out to each other and call off the dogs, things might settle down and the "Muddle East" might become less of a nightmarish muddle and be able to move toward civilization and peace. 

This is the resolution that I envision and pray for.

Syrian atrocities revealed

I have wanted the U.S. to stay out of the Religious and Civil wars in the Middle East because I have thought that all we would do was add American blood to the conflicts and we would have no way of resolving them. 

But, more and more I am appalled by the atrocities happening in the Middle East.  A defector from the Syrian military police has brought with him 55,000 photos of 11,000 corpses from Syria.  They are apparently horrendous atrocities.  The pictures were taken at the direction of the Syrian government which wanted to make sure that its orders to carry out the torture, starvation, and killing of its population were being carried out, including elderly, women, and children.  Just appalling.

Michael Gerson points out what is perhaps the worst part of it all, that the Assad and the Syrian government are keeping such meticulous records, including photos of the corpses and bureaucratic numbers identifying reports of these barbaric killings, because they are confident that they will win.  The Nazis kept meticulous records as well, assuming they were to be victorious.  They are not afraid of losing this war and being brought to trial for war crimes. 

Obama is facing some pretty tough criticism for his lack of action in Syria.  Nobody wanted or wants American blood to be added to this nightmare in the Middle East. But backing, what we can identify to the best of our ability, the responsible opposition was needed long ago, and is just now being done, as I understand it.  Too late?

The problem is not just a moral one, although the morality of standing by while mass atrocities are being carried out could be an act of immorality in itself, but rather it eventually turns into a national security issue as well.  If the slaughters in the Middle East are allowed to expand by the U.S. and the West, it is not hard to imagine that slaughters in the U.S. and the West are coming. 

So, I am torn as to what the U.S. should do.  I hate the idea of sticking our toe back into the insanity in the Middle East, but it is hard to avoid thinking that we need to get rid of Assad, and stop ISIS as well.  The nightmares are just growing.  To what degree are they accelerated by U.S. passivity?

Losing sympathy for Israelis

I am losing my sympathy for the Israelis.  It's not just the slaughter of innocents in their recent attack on Gaza (latest count is about 800 dead Arabs and about 32 dead Jews).  I have finally opened myself to the points being made by the Palestinians in this ongoing struggle.

I think who you sympathize with is a function of where you focus your attention. 

If you focus on terrorist activity of Hamas, then you sympathize with the Israelis who have rockets being launched at them.  Of course, Israel's Iron Dome seems to render them pretty ineffective, with very few actual casualties.  But, nonetheless, we in America can imagine rockets coming at us and can agree that it is right to stop the terrorists launching them.  So we see the Palestinians as filled with hate for the Jews and dedicated to killing them and driving Israel "into the sea."

But, a funny thing happens if you shift your focus from the terrorist Hamas, and focus instead on the Palestinians themselves.  An Israeli Jew and son of a famous Israeli general who established the State of Israel, Miko Peled, focuses on the treatment of the Palestinians at the hands of the True Believer Zionists in charge of the Israeli government.  It is not a pretty sight, at all.  He make a very persuasive case that the Zionists, led by Netenyahu, see no place for Arabs in Israel, see no place for Palestine at all, and have been dedicated to pushing all Palestinians out of Israel since its founding in 1948.They do this by making life as miserable as possible for Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank.  

John Judis of the New Republic makes the same claim making such points as:  Israel is essentially a colonial power occupying, ruling, and terrorizing the Palestinians; Israel builds settlements aggressively in the occupied territories taking more and more land from the Palestinians; Israeli settlers attack Palestinians with no real restraint from the Israeli government; Palestinians may not travel abroad without Israeli permission - what?; there are hundreds of roadblocks that hinder the movement of the Palestinians, but none for Jews; water supplies are cut off to Palestinians - wow!; Israel has cut back fishing rights for Gaza from 6 miles to 3 miles, severely reducing its fishing economy; I presume the list goes on and on.

It is certainly true that Hamas deliberately provokes Israel to commit barbarous atrocities as a response to Hamas's terrorism, so shame on Hamas.  But, you know, shame on Israel too.  

What to do?  Beliefs complicate it a lot.

First, right wing Israelis and right wing Americans both see the issue in a particular way, that is, it is a problem that can only be solved militarily - attack, defend, kill, punish, be Manly Men and show everyone Who's the Boss.  But, that has proven over and over to me that it does not provide a long term solution in many cases, and I don't see that as a way to do anything in Israel except create more and more misery, resistance, hatred, and terrorism in response the Israeli (backed by America) military killing and tyrannical rule.

Second, American politicians have all pretty well conceded that they cannot get elected if they don't show nearly full support for whatever the Israeli government wants to do.  What happens in Israel is not all that important to America or to American politicians, so rather than risk their careers they just go along with the flow and support Israeli tactics and strategies.  Even if those tactics and strategies fail over and over and over again.  In a sense, who in America really cares?

Third, there are about as many Jews in America as there are in Israel, and American policy is strongly influenced, and perhaps dictated, by American Jews.  And the political arm of the Jews in America seems to be pretty solidly fierce Zionists dedicated to the safety of Israel and see that as only possible by punishing the Palestinians.

Fourth, I can certainly understand that 70 years ago the world felt a terrible guilt about the Holocaust of the Jews in WWII, and wanted to give the Jews a homeland so they would have a place to be safe.  But, I think time has proven that they can only be safe if they make room for a safe and prosperous Palestine, fully empowered and prosperous side by side in the land that has been disputed for so long.  I know the common argument is that the Palestinians will not allow that and are dedicated to the destruction of Israel, but I no longer believe that.  I am starting to conclude that the attacks on Israel are a function of the Colonial and brutal rule of the brutal Zionists in charge of the Israeli government.

Fifth, the only real solution is for both sides to let go of the hatreds and cherished and nurtured grievances of the past and look only to now and to the future.  I am very hopeful that if the Israeli government shed the fierce Zionists who see their only means of survival as driving all Palestinians from Israel, and was run by a new brand of Israeli, like Miko Peled, who would treat the Palestinians with the same laws and ethos that it treats Jewish citizens, then the misery and thus the grievances of the Palestinians would fade away.

And then, people would not be mistreated and oppressed and would be able, and I think willing, to live in peace with each other.

It's all a question of who you focus on - the Israelis being attacked by the terrorists of Hamas, or the Palestinians being oppressed by the Zionists in charge of Israel.  

How about changing facts on the ground and have the Palestinians living in a state that gives them the same rights and treatment as it gives the Jews?

The Tea Party, Communists, and Utopianism

The Tea Party drove me out of the Republican Party some time ago.  They convinced me that they were right that I was a RINO (Republican in Name Only).  I have always been socially liberal, and for quite a while I was an economy and defense conservative.  But, W’s war and the financial collapse of 2008 made me rethink my politics and change my mind. The absolutism of the Tea Party sealed the deal.

I stopped believing in W’s war when I decided that we were creating more terrorists than we were killing, and that we were setting off a region wide Islamic civil and religious war that could consume the world.  I reluctantly conclude that the democratization of the Middle East by attacking it has been a big failure.

I stopped believing in Reaganomics when I had to admit that the lack of regulation, the cutting of taxes on the wealthy, the "Freeing of the Markets" by gutting the effectiveness of the government ended up gutting the prosperity of the middle class rather than unleashing a prosperity for all.  We need a new Teddy Roosevelt to restore the power of the government to crush the Oligarchs and free the markets back to competitiveness.

I believe it is no accident that one of the Tea Party’s guiding lights is Ayn Rand.  When I was 20 I read “The Fountainhead” and was totally captured by her image of a Truly "Masculine Man", Howard Roark – flawlessly self-sufficient, hard, tough, a real "manly man".  But, time passed and I grew up and that ridiculous caricature of manliness, a kind of comic book version of manhood, fell away, and I found that being a man was not about being chiseled out of stone, or being heartless, or denying any needs for other people. 

Fortunately, we are very human, flawed, and interconnected.   Indeed, the whole Survival of the Fittest notion needs to be replaced by the understanding of Survival of the Collaborative, that’s the way it is with wolves, bees, redwood forests, all of nature actually. 

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the high tech age that we live in, where all of the exponential advances come on the shoulders of last week’s exponential advances, and progress is made by collaborative teams rather than Lone Rangers riding in with Silver Bullets.  The idea of a future created by the hyper-masculine men dreamed up by Ayn Rand that so excites the imaginations of adolescent boys (of all ages) is best replaced by an idea of the future of synergistic collaborations of all the talents in the country and the world, men and women, young and old, all races, collaborative growth and change.

Back to Ayn Rand: she fled communism and started up her ideology of hyper-individualism.  But, temperamentally, she never really stopped being a communist.  That is, just as communism is based on an utopian view of a humanity that is unrealistically altruistic and caring, Ayn Rand’s hyper-individualism is based upon an utopian view of humanity that is unrealistically self-sufficient and independent.

Utopians become radicals who want to tear it all down so that their utopian notions of an ideal society populated by their utopian notions of ideal people can flourish.  Of course, the tearing down part is easy, makes the revolutionaries feel really important and powerful - they bravely would rather die than give in to compromise.  But the utopias never happen, they are always dystopias instead, and then we all have to live in the nightmares that they created. 

Communism is one failed nightmare, Tea Party’s super masculine individualism and fierce independence would be another.  But I expect that the Tea Party will destroy itself before it destroys the rest of us.  We can hope.

Now that the Supreme Court has given Corporations the status of personhood with religious beliefs, what next?

Now that the Supreme Court has given Corporations the status of personhood with religious beliefs, what next?

The Religious Right Wing of the Republican Party is very happy with the five justices that decided on the Hobby Lobby case.  They see it as a victory for religious freedom because the owners of Hobby Lobby are devout Christians who see some forms of birth control as actually being forms of abortion and thus a violation of the owners’ conscience. 

The odd part of the ruling, as I understand it, is that it grants personhood to the corporation itself, because the ruling says that the Hobby Lobby corporation cannot be forced to offer insurance coverage for birth control methods that violate its religious beliefs.  It’s not that the corporation can’t be forced to offer birth control methods that violate the beliefs of the owners, but rather the corporation can’t be forced to offer birth control methods that violate the CORPORATION’S religious beliefs. 

The Supreme Court gave the status of personhood to Corporations and endowed the newly “personhooded Corporations” with the power of having religious beliefs that cannot be violated.

This is a very big mistake, it seems to me.  When the five conservative justices made a ruling in accord with their own Christian religious beliefs, they did so in a manner that could have pretty bad future consequences.  I know they tried to limit this ruling to “only” contraception, but it’s the camel’s nose under the tent, it seems to me.

Christians are not the only religion in the United States.  There are Jews, Mormons, Native American religions, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Christian Scientists, etc. etc.

Will Christian Scientist corporations eventually be able to deny any medical insurance because they don’t believe in medicine?  Will Jewish corporations eventually be able to insist on circumcision or keeping holy the Sabbath?  Will Muslim corporations be able to enforce Sharia law within their corporations – stoning adulterous women? Cutting off hands of thieves?  Genital mutilation of women?  Extreme examples, but it makes a point of the nonsense of granting personhood to corporations and honoring that “corporation’s religious belief.”

The whole idea of empowering corporations with personhood that includes having religious beliefs and giving that corporation the right to act on those religious beliefs seems to me to be a terrible step into a very unknown direction.  The law of unintended consequences can become pretty destructive. 

It is time for a big change in the Supreme Court.  These foolish men are hurting this country.

The Supreme Court FIVE decides to force us all to obey their personal religions

It seems to me that all the sanctions and punishments by the Religious Right Wing around the area of sex are against women (and gay men too of course, who are seen as kind of like women).  The Religious Right Wing wants to prevent women from having abortions, and, oh yes, prevent them from using birth control, or, more to the point, prevent them from having sex (except in the case of marriage, but even then no abortions or even unapproved birth control methods are permitted, I guess).  Wow.  

Do you think that we will see the Religious Right Wing decide to sanction and "punish" men for this same sex that "bad" women are having?  (I think it does take two to "tango")  Let's see, how could they do that?  They can't force the men to be pregnant, maybe forcing men to marry the women they impregnate with no chance of divorce until the child has been raised to adulthood?  You know, paying the piper for the dance, so to speak?

I think we'll never see the male sex partner gone after the way the female sex partner is being gone after by these righteous folks.

So, for some reason, the Religious Right Wing thinks it is OK to force women to be pregnant and give birth against their will.  

Bible thump, bible thump...ad infinitum.  I really do wish they would stick to trying to get people to join their religions rather than trying to force all of the nation to obey their religions.

ISIS pushes the religious war into a new stage

With I.S.I.S., the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, boldly and brutally conquering parts of northern Iraq, liberals are blaming Bush and conservatives are blaming Obama for the collapse of the Iraqi government.  Both are right, and both are wrong, as far as I can tell.

It is right to blame Bush because it was he who destroyed the Sunni Baath party as part of his invasion of Iraq. It was he who put the Shiite Maliki into the power to rule Iraq (who turned out to be an avid leader in the tyranny and oppression of the Sunnis). It was he who deluded himself into believing that a pluralistic democracy was possible in Iraq even when all the voting was along sectarian, religious lines.

It is right to blame Obama because it was he who supported Maliki and who deluded himself into believing that a pluralistic democracy was possible in Iraq - even if U.S. forces were gone.  It was he who pretended that it was OK for the U.S. to withdraw, and thus satisfy the war weary American voting public that this stupid war had come to an end.  It was he who failed to support the "moderate" forces fighting Assad in Syria, thus allowing the al Qaeda forces who had been driven from Iraq to regroup to fight in Syria, become stronger and reform themselves as I.S.I.S. and come back into Iraq to threaten Baghdad.

It is wrong to blame either Bush or Obama because the one who actually lost Iraq is Maliki, who decided to turn Iraq into a puppet state run by Shiite Iran, and to wage a "sectarian" war against the Sunnis in both Iraq and Syria.  

It is wrong to blame either Bush or Obama because people keep calling what is going on in Iraq a sectarian war, but it seems to me it is a full blown religious war, and as best I can tell religious wars are outside the scope of negotiation and compromise because both sides are doing the "Will of God" by slaughtering each other.  

So, if the U.S. is to try to negotiate a diplomatic solution, who is going to compromise?  who is going to share power?  who is going to create a state that allows both Shia and Sunni to rule together?

Or, if the U.S. is to send in planes or drones, who are they supposed to kill?  The Sunni blood thirsty jihadists or the Shiite blood thirsty jihadists?

And, if we don't use diplomatic or military tools to keep the I.S.I.S. nutcases from exploding the Middle East into a multiple nation wide slaughter, don't we put ourselves and the West in mortal danger of future 9/11 attacks?  

Maybe the old "balance of power" theory of the Cold War is the best hope - where neither side is so powerful that they can wipe out the other, so each side has no choice but to come to negotiated settlements.  When Bush and Obama empowered Maliki in their own ways, the Shiites became too powerful and just went for their centuries old lust for revenge and tyranny.  Not a good idea.

I don't understand why Iraq doesn't just split into three parts, Kurds in the north, Shiites in the south, and Sunnis in the middle.  Or maybe the middle is where the nutcases go to kill each other.

Tea Party delusions of autonomy

The recent success of Republican Tea Party candidate in Mississippi, Chris McDaniel, against more temperate incumbent, Republican Thad Cochran, in Tuesday's primary vote brings to light something odd about the far right wing Tea Party.

One of the Tea Party's main themes is to cut government spending, to take away the debilitating government teat and push people out into the cold cruel world and make them fend for themselves.  This is to make them tougher people, more Manly, more self sufficient, more like the ideological champion of hyper-masculinity, the woman Ayn Rand.  This is to force the United States to become the kind of fierce and independent place that the Tea Party imagines themselves to be, and imagines to be the future of an ideal America.

But, an odd thing happens when you look at some data.  When you look at how much money the federal government gives each state compared to how much money the federal government gets from each state, a funny things shows up.

The hard core Southern Red states are on the dole. They take much, much more money from the federal government than they give it.  

According to wallethub.com, Mississippi receives $3.07 for each $1.00 it gives.  That ranks them as no. 45 out of the 51 states as the most dependent on the federal government.  Here are the five biggest moochers of the states:

• 51.   South Carolina receives $7.87 federal dollars for every $1.00 sent to the federal government
• 50.   North Dakota receives $5.31 federal dollars for every $1.00 sent to the federal government
• 49.   Florida receives $4.57 for every $1.00 sent
• 48.   Louisiana receive $3.35 for every $1.00 sent
• 47.   Alabama receives $3.28 for every $1.00 sent

I don't think there is anything wrong with the federal government spending more in states than they receive, but to hear the Tea Party candidates talk, you would think that they think it is a major sin.

A Mississippi Democrat makes it very clear that Mississippi deeply needs the federal government:

“If Mississippi did what the tea party claims they want . . . we would become a Third World country, quickly,” said Rickey Cole, the state Democratic chairman. “We depend on the federal government to help us build our highways. We depend on the federal government to fund our hospitals, our health-care system. We depend on the federal government to help us educate our students on every level.”  Cole noted that the hospital he was born in “wasn’t built by the taxpayers of Mississippi, it was built with federal money that was collected from taxpayers in New York and Chicago and L.A. and San Francisco.”

And, oh yes, which are the five states that pay the most to and get the least from the federal government?

• 1.  Delaware receives $0.50 for every $1.00 sent
• 2.  Minnesota receives $0.56 for every $1.00 sent
• 3.  Illinois receives $0.56 for every $1.00 sent
• 4.  Nebraska receives $0.57 for every $1.00 sent
• 5.  Ohio receive $0.66 for evey $1.00 sent

If you click through to the wallethub.com link you will see that the conservative solid South is very much on the receiving side, and the liberal states are much more on the giving side.  Well, in a way, I guess that fits the stereotypes of each - liberals think it is good to give and conservatives want to get as much as they can get.  

Looks like both sides are getting what they want.

SEC takes on High Frequency Trading (HFT)

The good news is that Mary Jo White, head of the SEC, is apparently taking on the corrupt thievery of high frequency traders, whose methods of skimming billions out of stock market were so clearly dramatized by Michael Lewis's wonderful book "Flash Boys."  

She speaks very cautiously about the way the market is being conducted, but the bottom line is that she is looking at creating rules to make fundamental changes.

"Responding to concerns about high-frequency trading, White enlisted SEC staff to prepare rules to require high-speed traders to register as dealers with the SEC and to bring more of this trading population under the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a self-regulating organization.  These steps "should significantly strengthen regulatory oversight over active proprietary trading firms and the strategies they use," White said."

The SEC will look at ways to minimize the speed advantages of the HFT folks, and to take away the lack of transparency in the Too Big To Fail big banks' "Dark Pools" where trades are made out of sight of investors, and the investors must simply take the prices given to them coming out of the Dark Pools.

The SEC will also be looking to counter the market instability that is being created by High Frequency Trading computer programs, as witnessed by a "flash crashes" in the past, in which the market dives precipitously so fast that no humans can intervene to stop the computers from grinding out their protocols at lightning speeds.

Congratulations to Mary Jo White, the SEC, Michael Lewis, and the hero of his book, Brad Katsuyama. And to the investing public. 

Wall Street's new scam that robs us all of billions

Michael Lewis is a national treasure.  I love his deeply researched and elegantly explained books.  He has written a new book, "Flash Boys" about what happens inside the computers of the stock exchanges.  Great book.

We all know by now how the financial industry set up the Great Recession by inflating the value of homes with fraudulent appraisals, creating incentives for liars loans, and using these very bad home loans to create extremely complicated and deliberately hard to understand mortgage backed securities and other derivatives, all of which ended up creating an economy built on bad credit and greed, and created an unstable situation that imploded, costing the middle class trillions of dollars and millions of jobs.  Of course, nobody responsible for the catastrophe went to jail, they made billions, and they are still out there, still doing what they do, which is focusing on the only thing which is important to them - making fortunes for themselves, and creating new ways to rob billions of dollars from the middle class.

"Flash Boys" shows us how they have created a new scam to rob us all.  This time it is High Frequency Traders who are the stealthy thieves.  They have robbed billions from pension funds, mutual funds, money market funds - the moneys that are the investments and savings of us all.  How?

I didn't realize that there is no longer a single Wall Street market where stocks are bought and sold.  Apparently there are over 40 actual places where stock transactions happen.  They are massive computer banks where the transactions take place.  They take place at computer speed, i.e. in thousandths of a second.  

Since they happen at computer speeds, they are only understood by people who create them, computer people and those that manage their activities.  So what?  Isn't it obvious that when you hit "enter" to buy a stock it creates a computer transaction?  Sure, but what happens in the few thousandths of a second between when you hit enter and you end up owning some stock?  What happens is what the book is about.  It turns out a lot happens.

As I understand it, the purchase is sent to a stock exchange somewhere, and the purchase finds a selling price and completes the transaction.  For a small investor, that is pretty much the end of the story, I guess.  

But for an institutional investor, a manager of a pension fund or a money market fund who buys 100,000 shares of a stock the story is much more complicated.  They send out an order to buy a huge amount of stock, it goes into one of the stock market computer banks, where the order is noticed by the computers of High Frequency Traders (HFTs).  Once they see what the big investor wants, they capitalize on their super fast computer processing programs to get ahead of the sale, buy stock at the lowest price available, and turn around and sell it at a penny or so more to the big buyer.  The big buyer buys it at a fraction higher than they should have had to pay because the HFT stole money out of the pocket of the institutional buyer.  And of course all of this happens in very tiny slices of seconds, microseconds, and is invisible to the buyer.  This is called "front running", getting ahead of the purchase to buy low and sell high in pennies.  

So what?  It's only a penny a stock, right?  No, it is billions of dollars stolen from mutual funds, pension funds, the portfolios of the middle class.  It is a computer generated form of "insider trading", acting on information that one has before others can know it. It is a foolproof way to suck money out of the transaction without actually making an investment and taking a risk. It's theft. 

The details are fascinating and the story is wonderfully told by Michael Lewis.  There are extra twists and turns and ways for the HFTs to steal money, and it is worth the read if you are interested.

There are a few big problems with this activity.  First, of course, it is immoral thievery from us all.  

Second, their activity adds nothing positive to the financial system.  It does nothing to help sellers and buyers get together and generate the financial system of capitalism.  Rather it games the financial system to create fool proof ways to suck billions out of the transactions of buying and selling at the heart of the financial world.  

Third, and perhaps worst of all, it becomes something that the smartest kids end up doing, making fortunes as thieves rather than going to the moon or cleaning up the environment or transforming the world in positive ways.  They end up being gamers of systems where they can very cleverly find loopholes and flaws in the systems of money, and they brilliantly find ways to suck wealth out of the financial system, rather than become those who create wealth by creating new and better goods and services.  

It is a national tragedy.  It is a continuation of the crisis of greed that created the housing bubble that popped and ruined so many lives, which we are still digging our way out of.

And, oh yes, another big problem with the HFT created stock market?  It has created an unstable market, one that is too volatile, one that periodically crashes uncontrollably, one that becomes chaotic beyond the ability of even the super smart HFT gamers and their super sophisticated incredibly complex programs to keep sane.  There have already been "flash crashes".  More to follow.

If I understand it correctly, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating HFT activity.  It will be interesting to see if that goes anywhere.  There are billions of dollars the HFT folks stand to lose if the game is up.  It won't happen easily.

Democracy is in the middle road between communism and fascism

I hate to cite Robert F Kennedy Jr as a source of a good speech because I have long thought of him as a dangerous extremist crank, especially for his crusade against vaccinations with the dangerously false and discredited claim that there is a connection between vaccinations and autism.  In years past, massive deaths were the result of contagious diseases, which can come again if people turn against vaccinations preventing contagious diseases.

That being said, RFK Jr made a pretty interesting speech to the 2014 Goldman Award ceremony (environmental prizes).  It's 12 minutes long, and more combative and extreme than my tastes, but interesting none the less.

I would summarize his main point as being that the destruction of the environment is kind of like the canary in the coalmine when it comes to democracy.  That is, when corporations have so much control that they can pollute with impunity, the loss of democracy is already happening and democracy itself will perish.  

He warns against the forming of an oligarchy in America, and it seems to me to be a good warning to pay attention to.  Citizen's United has allowed unlimited money to be pumped into the political system by the super wealthy, and the result is big business, big finance, big agriculture running amok. The politicians dance to big money's tune, regulators are captured and neutered by big money, and democracy is endangered.

The best line of his speech is where he says that the domination of business by government power is Communism, and the domination of governance by corporate power is fascism.  Freedom, indeed true free market capitalism, and democracy itself are in the middle road between Communism and fascism, between domination by government and domination by Corporations.  

As to environmentalism itself, I believe the worst thing that ever happened to the environmental movement was when environmentalists decided to focus on predictions of catastrophic global warming rather than simply focus on reduction of pollution.  I think it was a tactical decision based upon the assumption that the general public would only be moved to action if they were terrified of catastrophe.  But, pollution itself has been opposed by both liberal and conservative people for decades (except for those who are in the thrall of the polluting corporations, of course).  But when rivers burn, water tables become toxic, air pollution stinks and becomes visible, seas stop supporting life, etc. those are motivation enough to incite environmental protections.  

There is large opposition to the hypothesis of man made catastrophic global warming that will have devastating effects in the future, but finding real, individual examples of pollution and calling for specific action seems to me to be a much more effective way of cleaning up the planet.  

Iraq elections April 30 - a Sunni Saddam in the making?

When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 a friend of mine asked the question - was Iraq Iraq because Saddam was Saddam, or was Saddam Saddam because Iraq was Iraq.  In other words, was it necessary to be a vicious tyrant to rule Iraq, or would Iraq be able to be run by a more moderate, more democratic, more pluralistic leader after Saddam Hussein was removed.  It was the key question, of course.  George W thought Saddam was the problem.  My friend thought Iraq was the problem.  It's looking like my friend was closer to the truth than George W was.

Dexter Filkins might be the best reporter on Iraq.  He's been there since the beginning.  He is on the ground, knows everybody, fearlessly puts himself in ridiculously dangerous situations, and tells us what is going on.  He wrote a very interesting article in The New Yorker: "What We Left Behind." It's about 25 pages, but it is a fascinating history that reveals where Iraq is now, and who Maliki has been, and is becoming.  Hint - tyrannical Shiite crushing Sunnis.

His main point is that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is becoming more and more dictatorial, less and less pluralistic, and has turned Iraq into a Shiite tyranny fully dedicated to the persecution, destruction, and oppression of the Sunni minority.  Or, he is becoming the mirror image of Saddam Hussein, not as bad - yet - but perhaps on his way.  Filkins doesn't say it that directly, but that's how it looks to me.

Maliki is looking to be re-elected April 30.  Some fear that if he wins, he will never leave, rule for his lifetime, and pass the throne to his brutal son, Ahmed Maliki.
    
It was always a tough thing to do to establish a new government after Saddam.  The CIA helped identify and raise Maliki to power.  They thought he would be a Shiite who would be tough enough to defy Iran.  He said all the right things about bringing Iraq together, but he had a lifelong history of being a Shiite soldier fighting Sunnis. In a nation of "super-duper" bad guys, he seems to be a more reasonable choice.  Filkins says that Maliki fears that at any moment the Sunni Baath tyrants could return and once again crush the Shiites.  Could be true, I suppose, but that mindset certainly doesn't lead toward a unified Iraq.  

American officials in Iraq were apparently appalled at the low class hanging of Saddam, and saw it as a portent of an Iraq divided in religious wars going forward.  It was Maliki's doing.  

Plus the doings of Iran, of course, who are Shiite brothers pulling some powerful strings in Iraq.  Iran's goals, according to Filkins were to bleed Americans and support the Shia in Iraq.  Successful goals, it appears.

Obama also comes in for some serious criticism by Filkins and American diplomats for supporting Maliki at a point where we could have supported Alawi, the leader of Iraquya, a pro-western secular coalition.  He writes:

"In parliamentary elections the previous March, Maliki's Shiite Islamist alliance, the State of Law, suffered an ebarrassing loss.  The greatest share of the votes went to a secular, pro-Western coalition called Iraquya, led by Ayad Allawi, the persistent enemy of the Iranians.  "These were election results we could only have dreamed of" a former American diplomat told me (Filkins).  "The surge had worked.  The war was winding down.  And, for the first time in the history of the Arab world, a secular, Western-leaning alliance won a free and fair election.""

Obama didn't support Allawi because he thought the Shiites and the Iranians would oppose him.  The deal that America brokered was to dump Allawi, get Sunni radical Sadr to back Maliki by giving Sadr control of "several government agencies", and take Jalal Talbabani as president, a man who is pro-Iranian, and to neutralize Iraqi intelligence.  And, oh yes, America was to leave entirely after 2011.  I suppose Obama thought that getting America out fast was a higher priority than worrying about Shiite oppression and Iranian control over Iraq. Campaign promises, you know.

The trouble with a complete withdrawal of American troops from Iraq is that it leaves Iraq with nobody to act as brokers to conflicts, nobody is there for factions to talk to, nobody there to act as a brake on Maliki's war on the Sunnis.  Diplomats in Iraq dissented from the deal and predicted that America was creating a dictator to fill the gap after they left.  

One of the first things Maliki did after the American withdrawal was create a new office of Commander in Chief, giving him personal control over the military and police, according to Filkins.  

Then Maliki purged the National Intelligence Service of Sunnis.  

Amazingly, Maliki got their high court to give Maliki "exclusive right to draft legislation."  No more pesky politicians getting in his way with dumb things like laws.  Also, it is against the law to criticize the head of government, an old Sunni Saddam law resurrected for the new Shiite ruler.  

Plus plenty of personal ties to Iran, proven by Iraqi support of Iranian flights into the Syrian civil war in support of the Shiites in that war.  Maliki's defense of his actions in Syria is to say that this is what he must do to fight Al Qaeda.  


And, of course, scores of billions of petro-dollars are corruptly going to Maliki and the new Shiite rulers.

Filkins makes a fundamental point about Maliki, Iraq, and the Middle East.  

"When Maliki and the other exiles returned to Iraq in 2003, they quickly concluded that they couldn't establish an Islamic state, because the two sects had fundamental differences over the nature of Islam...faced with two options.  One was to build a state that united the country's sects and religions around a democratic idea."  But this was a forbidden idea in the minds of the fanatics.  "The Islamists were left with only one option that would keep them as Iraq's leaders: to step away from the Islamist project, and go for the sectarian project".  

So, the Americans leave and the Shiites take over, Saddam part two, this time a Shiite.

His final observation, from a diplomat, is: 

"The whole point (in the Middle East) is that the leaders need to do political deals.  We make them so strong that they no longer need to do political deals.  So we undermine any chance at stability.  It's destroying Iraq.  We're strengthening the guy who is creating the problem." And without an American presence, America created a country that can't work without American presence to help them make deals. The only trusted middle man was us, according to Ambassador Crocker, and we aren't there anymore.

Why do we care?  Why did we ever care?  It was supposed to keep America and the West safe, but it looks to me like all our invasion really did was kill Saddam and put the formerly oppressed Shia in a place where they could oppress the Sunni. And, oh yes, ignite a Sunni/Shia civil and religious war that is engulfing the entire Middle East.

W started it, Americans got sick of it, Obama abandoned it.  And I think all we seem to be learning is what my friend said in the beginning - Saddam was Saddam because Iraq is Iraq, and now Maliki is becoming Saddam-2?  

I hope not.

The road to serfdom, part 2

In the '40s Frederich von Hayak wrote the Libertarian's clarion call for smaller government, "The Road to Serfdom."  His basic point was that tyranny was the natural consequence of a government that was too powerful and controlled too much of people's lives.  With a tyrannical government the people become modern day serfs serving at the pleasure of monolithic Socialist or Communist government rulers.  Indeed, the Soviet Union was a prime example of a helpless populace under the foot of a tyrannical centralized government.

Today, the Robert's Supreme Court seems to be sending the United States on a different path to serfdom - a tyranny that will be the natural consequence of a plutocracy that is too powerful and will control too much of people's lives. They infamously passed "Citizens United" by a 5-4 vote, and today they now pass McCutcheon 5-4 to extend even further the reach of the billionaire class to influence elections, policies, regulations, and laws of our country.  

The reasoning on the part of the conservatives is that money is speech and free speech is protected by the first amendment.  That is the problem with ideologues - they become absolutists.  Free speech is certainly protected, but not absolutely.  The most famous limit of free speech is the notion that nobody has the right to yell "fire" in a crowded theater because the resulting panic and stampede will kill people.

I believe it is the same in this case.  Backing candidates with contributions is a fine and democratic principle.  But when the upper tenth of a percent of the population is given unlimited ability to buy politicians and buy elections and buy regulations and buy laws, we the people are robbed of our democracy.

I don't think you have to look too much further than billionaire Sheldon Adelson, casino magnate and Republican donor, to see the problem.  He apparently is pushing to kill online gambling.  No secret as to why a casino owner wants to ban online gambling.  It certainly has nothing to do with the benefit of the country, and it has everything to do with the benefit of Mr. Adelson.  

Right now, Republicans are celebrating these billionaire empowering Supreme Court decisions because they are getting most of the campaign financial backing from the plutocrats.  The worm may turn, of course, and hard core lefty billionaires may predominate in future times.  But none of that is really the point.  

The point is that the Supreme Court is turning our democracy (rule by the people) into a plutocracy (rule by the rich).  

Serfdom under plutocracy or serfdom under communism is about the same either way.

The odd thing is they are turning us into serfs in the name of freedom. 

Putin, just another Krushchev?

I wrote earlier that I could understand, at least a little, Putin's thinking in Ukraine - he wants the old USSR border countries under his control as a military protective border zone, and he sees himself as an important historical figure setting the course of history between east and west.  

But really?  Didn't the collapse of the USSR mean anything to him?  If we were to observe just Putin we would think that authoritarian rule is an intrinsic part of Russia.  Following in the footsteps of the old USSR he is closing down the free press, imprisoning and killing political opponents, and invading neighboring countries.  I guess he misses the good old Cold War where Russia, or more importantly Russia's leader, was really, really important.

The idea when the Soviet communist empire collapsed was that the world was no longer under the threat of crushing totalitarian Communist tyranny.  So, now, Putin wants the world to be under the the threat of crushing Putinist tyranny.

I just finished the book "Ike's Bluff", a history of Eisenhower's foreign policy in the '50s.  It was clear that his Russian adversary, Krushchev, was a weak man in charge of a weak country who used bullying and threats to dominate.  All Krushchev really had was nukes and a lot of military, but the rest of his empire was unsound and weak.  Indeed, Krushchev did everything he could to keep scrutiny out of the USSR because the weakness of his hand would be exposed.  

I think it is much the same for Putin.  He is a weak man ruling a weak country who has to strut around with his shirt off and frighten people.  He doesn't want anyone to look behind the curtain to see how vulnerable and disfunctional Russia is.  

I've got an idea.  Why doesn't Putin decide to live in peaceful harmony with his neighbors?  Then he wouldn't have to assert control over the former USSR border countries as protection from attack.  

And who knows?  That would make him a really important historical figure.