No Common Thread, Except They're Dead

In the 3-4 years since I started labeling posts "Obit Dept.", I'd only done 12 posts prior to this one.  Many of those were to commemorate individuals that I knew and just had to comment (for my own desire, to let my memory of them rest in peace).  As I grow older, though, (to what else can I ascribe it?) I find that I have reason more often to comment on the lives of  recently-departed famous people, even if I don't know them. One of the critical benefits/drawbacks of fame is that the memory of these people lingers beyond their lives, for good or ill. In these obits for celebrities and the like, I will try to balance a little respect with saying That Which Must Be Said, particularly with how these individuals will be remembered (by me, it should go without saying).

Marie Colvin, Extreme War Correspondent -
I did not know Marie, though I believe I met her at some point.  Seeing pictures when she was younger, her features look familiar. She was the friend of one or more of my acquaintances, so that's just one degree of separation (or is that two?)

Marie Colvin's life story is clearly one of the bravest one could ever imagine in these days.  She had a string of having reported from the front lines of most of the worst, ugliest, most chaotic conflicts of the last three decades:  Iran-Iraq, Libya, Tahrir Square, East Timor, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, and the one that got her, finally:  Syria (I'm probably forgetting some.  For a brilliant, heartbreaking accounting of her last days and anecdotes recounted by her friends, see Marie Brenner's article in this month's Vanity Fair.) Most of her career, she was an American reporting for newspapers based in other countries, so she was not as well known here as she might have been.

In Sri Lanka, she was seriously wounded and lost an eye--she wore an eyepatch after that, which surely only added to her legendary bravura.  Those who knew and worked with her insist that she was not without fear, that she was very aware of the danger, but she always went back to the front again.  After the Sri Lanka injury (2001), she showed signs of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which should have disqualified her from further war reportage, but they (and I'm talking about her employers, the Times of London and other Murdoch rags) could not stop her, so they acquiesced--now, somewhat to their shame.

Marie's mission was to report on the brutality of war, from the point of view of the ground-level participants, particularly of the non-combatants caught in the struggle.  A noble endeavor, but one that requires taking ridiculous risks, getting the story out, then somehow getting oneself back out.

The Syrian adventure was a particularly--excessively--dangerous one, and she and her colleague companions knew it.  She was snuck into a besieged (i.e., surrounded) town through a tunnel--once she arrived, she realized that the Syrian authorities, who had forbidden journalists to go into the town, were monitoring her communications and were more or less continuously shelling targets of opportunity.  She was trapped, and she knew it. 

She stayed overnight, and that was the decision which compounded her initial risk and led to her death, when the building where they were hiding out was hit repeatedly by artillery.  Those who survived (her photographer, who was seriously injured) are certain that the targeting of the journalists (a French journalist was also killed) was deliberate.  They saw her dead, but were unable to remove her body from the quagmire.

What more can be said?  She was clearly of the old school, the Ernest Hemingway/George Orwell/Martha Gellhorn one, and the point is that the danger and bloodshed of war are still as real as ever in this time.  She courted danger one time too many; those who brought her in, and helped her get out of these jams, surely appreciated what she was doing.  I am not sure that we in our easy chairs did.

In the same Vanity Fair issue, they had a short update on Christiane Amanpour, one of my all-time favorite TV reporters.  Amanpour has a long history of war reporting; she gave it up to marry, have kids, and do the ABC Sunday talk show, but clearly it was not her cup of tea.  She's going back to the grindhouse, but she claims she's going to stay out of the line of fire.  Let's hope so.


Ray Bradbury, Sci-Fi Visionary
Bradbury died June 5 at the age of 91.  I had wondered what had happened to him; it turns out he had severe strokes which basically ended his ability to write.  In his prime, in the sixties and seventies, he was very prolific.  His short stories had a great range--some were of the old Twilight Zone style, punchy with a snappy ending that "made you think"; others were more like character studies of individuals, of human nature, in unusual, extreme circumstances.   He stands out from the other greats of sci-fi  for emphasizing the human element, for his efforts to describe his visions, and for the irony or poignancy of the way he told his stories, not for the science of them, or their prophetic nature.  I read them all, and they influenced my thinking quite deeply. 

I don't have the (cheap paperback) volumes any more, but I'll mention a few titles that stick in my memory:  The Martian Chronicles (novella in episodes), "A Sound of Thunder" (the classic short one about tourists going back in time to see dinosaurs; one steps off the path and future history is broken), "The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit" (not sci-fi at all, Latinos sharing the splendor of a fancy suit), and "The One about the Americans in the Third-World Country when the A-Bomb war wipes out their civilization and they know they're on their own in an unfriendly world" (my title).

Thank you, Ray!

Yitzhak Shamir, Prime Minister and Patriot/Terrorist
Shamir's long life story goes well beyond the beginnings of the Israeli state; he came as a youngster with his family to Palestine, then an unruly British protectorate populated overwhelmingly by Arabs.  He was part of the original settler movement, the ones who prepared the ground for the reverse of the Diaspora that came later after the Holocaust.

He became a leader in one of the more radical front groups working for the creation of Israel.  His crew helped move some Palestinians aside, blew up a hotel with some British mucky-mucks (an inspiration to the IRA in the '80's, maybe); then he went "legit" when Israel became a state.

Shamir had some things in common with Menachem Begin:  armed rebellion against the British (they hung with different "gangs"), a founding father of modern-day Israel, Likud party leadership, a stint as Prime Minister.  What he didn't do was make any peace deals, with anyone.

To spell out the obvious moral:  If you can live long enough (don't strap the suicide belt on), it's possible for a young radical to succeed, be recognized and honored, and die in one's bed.  Terrorism can be in the eye of the beholder.

Andy Griffith of Mt. Airy, NC
I probably haven't seen it in 20 years, but I remember "The Andy Griffith Show" from my youth--I was roughly contemporary with Opie (the director Ron Howard).  It was a show that was only kind of funny--Don Knotts as Deputy Barney Fyfe (sp?) was slapstick--he got most of the laugh track response;  Aunt Bee was charming in a down-home, old fashioned way;  Opie was a cute kid, and Andy?  He was just a nice sheriff, friendly, with a sense of humor, but really never said anything that one could consider "funny".  At some point I figured out (looking at a map) that Mayberry, NC was really Mt. Airy, a town with a great name, but I guess they couldn't use it.  Griffith, no doubt, was from some even smaller hamlet nearby.

The idea of the show was to make you feel good about (white, Southern) people, not just evoke a laugh.  If you have a chance to see it, you'll see how much things on TV have changed since then.  For one thing, though Griffith was in the majority of the scenes, the story was not really all about him, but about his community and his place within it--respected, admired. It would be impossibly cornball today, but there's something to be said for "not funny, but makes you feel good" vs. much of our current-day humor which "extracts laughter, but doesn't make you feel good afterward".

Griffith had a long career afterwards, in Andy of Mayberry--the spinoff, with only a few of the same characters (was Gomer Pyle's character perhaps introduced in that one?), and the unremarkable, long-lived cops-and-robbers show Matlock, which no doubt made him definitively wealthy.  I can't begrudge him it, and I'm sure no one else did, either--he was such a nice guy.


Five Really Short Mentions
Ben Davidson--the handlebar-mustachioed, chopper-riding Oakland Raiders defensive end from the '60's.  He was one of the reasons I thought the team was cool back then.  Eventually I was disabused of the notion.
Pedro Borbon--Cincinnati Reds reliever, from the glory days of the Big Red Machine. He was the closer, more or less, in a couple of years. He had a son who made the majors, was a bit wild and crazy himself in a Santeria kind of way.
Teofilo Stevenson--Cuban heavyweight boxer, he destroyed Duane Bobick in the Olympics.  I think he won twice. He could've been Muhammad Ali--he had his style, his skill, his looks--if Ali hadn't gotten there first, and if Stevenson hadn't been a stuffy Cuban Communist lackey who positively refused to defect.
Henry Hill--Like Yitzhak Shamir, another great survivor.  This guy was the reformed mobster/stool pigeon who wrote the story upon which they based the hit movie Goodfellas (based on Hill's life, or so he says).  About Hill, you have to wonder:  first, how he came to survive the mob stories of the movie, like being around "the character played by Joe Pesci" all the time; second, how come they didn't bump him off later when he came out with the story; and third, isn't the Witness Protection Plan forever?
Bob Welch--A member of the original Fleetwood Mac, their early lead guitarist and a succesful songwriter for the group. I actually liked his playing style quite a lot, and his songs were simple but charming (a formula they ditched later), but apparently the bandmates didn't care for him personally; they thought he was "a bummer", and they replaced him with Lindsay Buckingham (of "What Up With That?" fame, for you young SNL-watchers).  I remember seeing Welch hosting a rock variety show later (that would be late '70's/early '80's, I guess); he was coping, but seeming a bit rejected. The report is that he committed suicide last month; I hope he got over it at some point.

First Serious Threat to Bashar

Syria has risen to the top of the rankings of the most heinous regimes in the world.  It has disregarded U.N.-Security Council mandates to end massacres of civilians, utilizing bloodthirsty militias and Iranian forces to augment its own readiness to besiege its cities and towns and shell them into submisson. All the international spokesmen seem to agree that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad must leave power, but there hasn't been a serious (syrious?) suggestion of how that was going to come about--until the past few weeks

The international community has had difficulty developing its response.  U.N. Secretary-General Moon has taken a strong position against the depredations, but there has been considerable resistance from two nations in particular.  Russia is a trading partner and patron of Syria, and both Russia and China take the view "on principle" against interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states, no matter how ugly they may be.  Of course, the reason why they support the "sovereign right to kill our own civilians" (my term) is because they have exercised that right in living memory (Chechnya, Tienanmen) and may need to do so in the future.  The only formula the intl.comm. has been able to develop so far--either in the Security Council, or in the nine-nation Moscow discussions--is one with proposals essentially calling for unilateral disarmament and surrender of power, not something that Assad's side, which knows that so far it is still winning the military conflict, is going to consider seriously.  Instead the Assad spokesmen blame their massacres on rogue elements and international terrorists, in defiance of  reports from eyewitnesses (which they do their best to forcibly eliminate, see Marie Colvin).

It's not going to be some kind of coalition of the western democracies either that will take action to remove "The Basher".  A Libya-style no-fly zone assistance-at-a-distance approach is not even on the table, and, if it were, it wouldn't work.  The rebel elements in Syria are brave, committed, but far from being armed enough, cohesive enough, or strategically powerful enough to combat directly against the Syrian military, which has so far held together, for a very good reason.

The top leaders of the Syrian regime are overwhelmingly from a small, Shiite group called the Alawites.  They still pay some lip service to the principles of the Baath party--remember this name from Iraq and Saddam Hussein's reign of terror?  Baath stands for unity, specifically pan-Arab unity, and helped propel Bashar's father, the equally brutal, even more devious, Hafez al-Assad, into power.   The Assad family has promoted its own and sloughed off the non-Alawite elements, particularly the majority Sunnis, whom they have had no compunction about killing, on a very large scale if necessary, in order to keep power.  (Somehow, the Baath concept of unity became "minority rule" in both Iraq and Syria, with the Sunni minority coming on top in the first and the Shiite minority in the latter.)  So, the Alawites have a very good reason to stick together:  if they fall, they can expect major reprisals, again, like Iraq, but in reverse. It's kill or be killed, as far as they are concerned. There have been defections, both at the high levels and, more frequently, among the predominantly Sunni conscripts, but the military has held together. 

So, what has changed--what can change?  A credible counterforce has emerged.  Not Syria's neighbor Israel:  much as they would love to take on Syria and thumb Iran in the eye, anything they would do would be counter-productive. It's Turkey; the Turks have a long border with Syria and not a particularly friendly one.  During the decades-long Kurdish rebellion against Turkey, Syria was accused by the Turks of giving safe harbor to the rebels.  Turnabout is fair play, and Turkey seems inclined to provide safety to Syrian refugees from the fighting, and it has clearly sided with the international community and with the rebels in calling for Assad's ouster. 

Beyond that, there was a serious danger of escalation last week, when a Turkish fighter jet performing reconnaissance was shot down by Syrian surface-to-air arms.  Whether the plane was in Syrian air space or not is an aspect upon which the two forces did not agree, but there was no doubt that the incident raised tensions and threatened to escalate to direct military confrontation.

That kind of danger would force Syria to step back--the Turkish military would likely be capable of defeating Syria's military on its own, and if the Syrians were to be foolish enough to take offensive action against Turkey, it could bring the full weight of NATO against it.   Under the current circumstances, I could see an area being carved out at and around Syria's Turkish (northern) border which would remain beyond Damascus' power, and that could lead to progressive loss of control of the north and Assad's eventual defeat.

 

Special July 4 Election Update

It's been a couple of months since my last general post on this year's election.  So, if a week is eternity in a campaign, that's a good long time indeed.  In spite of which, there is only a moderate number of new developments in that time.  The struggling recovery is up, then down, then back up--as is Europe's problem--but I look at that whole scenario as basically the backdrop of gloom and doldrums in which the entire campaign will be run.  It's a background equally for both parties, as the Republicans haven't proposed any solutions to the jobless recovery, either, but that background is not, for me, the salient issue.  For me, that is campaign finance itself (see below). 

In the meantime, other issues have popped up and then receded.  The latest to do that is healthcare;  both the Obama and Romney campaigns seem willing to let the Supreme Court's ruling stand and not make a big campaign issue out of it.  I thought there might be some mileage out of "Obamacare is a job-killer" for the Republicans because it imposes some additional burden on employers, particularly large ones. (The exit ramp I'd suggest for that issue, if it becomes a significant one, is to encourage part-time employment, with employers inventing some kind of bonus/subsidy for healthcare for those who need to purchase their own.)  It doesn't seem to have occurred to the Republicans to make that an issue, though, and the realization is gradually sinking in to our generally uninformed public that the "Obamacare is a tax" line really doesn't apply to about 95% of us. Meanwhile, of course, Romney/Obamacare is an issue that doesn't work at all for Mitt, though it may do some good  further down the food chain.  In the long run, the current bloom of states rejecting the additional Medicaid assistance to bring up their insured population will be a spectacularly bad issue for the red-state Republicans; it only works for no-hopers, someone like (Fla. governor) Rick Scott who has no electoral future (in any sane world), anyway.

Previously, and since my last election-related post, the issue of the week was the bomb bursting over the Republicans' heads in the form of Obama's executive order establishing key terms of the legislatively unrealized Dream Act.  The order would protect from deportation those youngsters who'd come here with their families and illegally overstayed but had meanwhile followed certain American Dream prescriptions like get a job, get a degree, get enlisted in the military, etc.  This was a huge win for Obama and basically locked down the Hispanic vote for 2012, a major box-checking in the To Do list for the incumbent.  Previous Obama moves have shored up support from some other key constituent groups, like women (the birth control issue from the spring), gays (Obama's opinion in favor of same-sex marriage), and college students (support for increased Federal financing)--blacks were pretty much always on board.  So the battle is being fought on Romney's most favorable turf, the interests of middle-class white men; it's a tough slog, but if Obama can successfully close the gap there, the popular vote in the re-election will essentially be won.

Some Quantitative Easing for the Mind
As we learned in 2000, though, regardless of the national Election day polling numbers, the only sure way to close the deal is in the Electoral College.  The numbers look good right now for Obama, but there are many close states.  A swing of a few percent in a few states could make things look very wrong, and there are huge volumes of money being thrown at those states, in the forms of advertising and grassroots organization, to try to produce some leverage.  By both sides, to be sure.

When it comes to putting the lights out in the EC, Obama's "two-shots-in-the-back-of-the-head" are Florida (29 electoral votes) and Ohio (18).  If he wins both of those, it's over; if he wins one, with the current alignment of state probabilities, it's close to being clinched.  The third potential bullet is Virginia (13), because every indication is that it will be extremely close.  The thing that is amazing to me, though, is that, once all the other close states are allocated according to how they are leaning or likely to go, Obama would get 272 electoral votes without any of the three!

To get to understanding this, we build up the numbers patiently.  Start with the locked-in states for both parties, which number 186 EV for Obama, 181 for Romney.  I won't bore you with the details, but if you went through it, I'm sure you'd see there's not that much doubt:  on the margin, it's states like Washington, Oregon, and New Jersey for the Dems; and Texas, Montana, Arizona, Indiana, Georgia for the Reps. Next, three states that are polling rather decisively in favor of Obama this year:  New Mexico, Minnesota, and, crucially, Pennsylvania.  That takes it to 221-181, which is where Real Clear Politics--the clearinghouse for latest electoral news and polling results--leaves it.  (RCP, I will say, does not seem too much into the race this year--they have a nice do-it-yourself electoral map, but watch out to make sure some of the other maps have been updated for the 2010 census!  One easy check is whether Florida has all its 29 EV shown...)

To complete the picture from this point I draw directly from 538.com's current assessment of probabilities in the closely-contested states.  Nate Silver's Nov. 6 forecast utilizes current polling averages, factors inherent state tendencies, and estimates the chances (based on the statistics of how significant the current gap is, and how much these numbers tend to move over the remaining four months) that the current leader will hold the state, as follows:

Leaning Romney (50.1-80% probability of his winning):  Missouri 10 EV (76.3%); North Carolina 15 EV (71.3).

Leaning Obama (50.1-80% for him):  New Hampshire 4 EV (74.5%), Nevada 6 EV (67.6), Colorado 9 EV (67.4), Iowa 6 EV (66.8).  That brings it to 246-206.

Throw in Wisconsin 10 EV (86% Obama probability!) and Michigan 16 EV (80.2%) and you get to 272 electoral votes for Obama, without the three big target swing states:  Florida (53.5% Obama probability), Virginia (60.9% ), and Ohio (64.8%).

A couple more points:  while Intrade.com has the betting on the winner of the election at 55-41 Obama vs. Romney, Silver's probabilities are 68-32; if you're playing Intrade, I'd say Obama is a buy all the way up to the low 60's.  Allocating all the states by the most probable 538.com outcome, the electoral vote would end up 332-206, which is also shown as the most probable specific outcome.   The "expected value" number Silver cites--applying the probabilities for each state--is 299-239; the difference reflects the greater number of relatively-low probability states currently in Obama's column.

My conclusion:  it's not over yet, by a long ways.  The conventions look to be pretty non-eventful; the respective party bases already well mobilized, but there are plenty of possible events that could disrupt the current pattern.  I disagree that most of them are negative for the incumbent, but some  clearly are.  One example is the gun-running-to-the-Mexican-cartel scandal that Atty. Gen. Holder is working "fast and furious"-ly to contain; also working against Obama's fortunes will be any mention of the unemployment rate or the number of unemployment benefit claims, and it seems as though there are a couple of those announcements per month.  On the other hand, I don't see the race currently to be quite as close as many would suggest.   In order to win, Romney will either need to achieve a breakthrough in Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania, or something close to  a sweep of the swing states in which he's currently trailing along with, in particular, at least two of the big three of FL/OH/VA,.

Today is Independence Day; November 6 is Independents' Day 
As is almost always the case, the prize will go to the party that can get more of the unaffiliated to show up and support it.  A true independent--one who is equidistant from both parties--is hard to find, but the large percentage of potential voters who call themselves independents (a number greater than those who identify with each of the parties) shows great variation from election to election in how many actually vote.  The courting of the independents is the true art of the party's electoral campaigns; it involves going beyond just organizing its own base; it's about drawing out into discussion those not registered for either party, figuring out which way they are leaning, and getting the ones on your side to commit.

What more can we say about this uncommitted, often uninformed, mass of some 35-40% of eligible voters?  One important fact is that Hispanics are disproportionately represented among them; the way this plays out is that, while there is a clear tendency among them to lean Democratic, their turnout is not certain, and a Democrat who ignores their interests--immigration, yes, but also jobs, education, religion, and equal opportunity generally--can be deserted by them, at great cost. 

A second interesting bit comes from a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation just after the Supreme Court decision on healthcare.  They asked the question whether people want to continue the political battle about the healthcare act, or if it's time to move on to other topics.  The profile of the positions by party and tendency showed a very sharp contrast among the independents:  those who tended Democratic had almost the exact same percentage as party regulars in their preference to move on (some 80%); those who tended Republican, the same tendency in the opposite direction (69% want to continue the battle).  There is a middle group, though--generally estimated at somewhere between 5-10%, though that amount is not shown here--who do not tend clearly toward either party's position, and that group's leanings went 35-51 toward moving on, and that made the difference in the overall survey result.

I would suggest that this group--weary (and bored) of the partisan bickering--is the true swing vote in the electorate, though they may not find a home this time around.  If--and it's a big if--one of the parties could clearly convince these people that they are the reasonable ones, the ones who rise above the pettiness and the special interest corruption, that party would be in a position to gain political dominance.  In the absence of which, I think there's still a big opportunity for some movement, which I will get to momentarily. 

First, though, I need to discuss where the real action is this year--in the battle for the Senate.

The War for Congress
Pay attention to this name:  Angus King.  He could end up being the man of the moment--the unofficial King of the Senate--in January, 2013, when the lame duck session of this Congress is over and voting for control of the Senate and House for the new one will play out. King is the former governor of Maine, an independent, and the heavy favorite to win the Senate seat being given up by Republican Olympia Snowe.  Both parties are running candidates against him, but they expect King to win, and are making their plans accordingly.

To go over the facts very quickly which lie behind the contest for control of the Senate:  the Democrats currently have a 53-47 advantage (counting independents Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who will win re-election easily, and outgoing Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, for whose seat a Democrat is favored).  The Republicans would gain control of the Senate if they get a net gain of four seats, or three seats with the vote of their newly-elected Vice President, if that should happen. Control in the Senate is not the complete stranglehold on the legislative agenda that occurs in the House, but it offers the rights to name the committee chairs, to hold majorities in the committees, and to participate in executive discussions as the leader of the Senate.

The Democrats are mostly in a defensive position in this battle, because the majority of seats up for election this year are currently held by them.   This is true also of the close, competitive races:  increased by retirements of incumbents; there are a whole bundle, and many of them were held by Democrats this year.

To make any sense of the chaos, one has to assume that there will not be a wholesale rejection of incumbents among a number of Democrats who have held office for full terms and are running for re-election in contested races. These people include Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, Bob Menendez in New Jersey, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Maria Cantwell in Washington, Bill Nelson in Florida, Debbie Stabenow in Michigan, and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.  A loss by any of them would be a major disaster, crippling to the Democrats' hopes--so all those Senators are busy raising money out there and campaigning with unfeigned urgency. Next, you add to the Democrats' column two part-term Senators favored to win big--Kirsten Gillibrand in New York and (Democrat in little more than name-only) Joe Manchin of West Virginia, along with wins in open, but favored, seats in New Mexico and Hawaii.  All those wins, plus the seats they carry over and a couple more projected as easy wins, only get the Democrats to 47 seats of the needed 50/51. 

After that, the going gets dicey. Democratic retirements in the two red states of North Dakota and Nebraska put those states' seats in serious jeopardy:  the Democrats are running good candidates, but they are definitely underdogs. Indiana, which rejected long-time incumbent Republican Dick Lugar for a right-wing extremist, should be a candidate for a Democratic pick-up (the Dems are running a good candidate, moderate Representative Joe Donnelly), but T.P.'er Mourdock is leading in the polling. If I pencil those in for the Republicans, that brings them to 46, +2 so far, with seven seats remaining in doubt (current party and "I" shown for incumbents):

Missouri (D-I)--Claire McCaskill is running furiously, but independently of Obama. Iin this red-trending state; she will be an underdog to her opponent (who has not yet been named);
Nevada (R-I)--Dean Heller was appointed Senator to replace John Ensign, who resigned in disgrace; Heller is a narrow favorite against Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley;
Wisconsin (D)--Herb Kohl is leaving a seat he would have been favored to win; Democrat Tammy Baldwin (progressive, self-declared lesbian) will be an underdog if she faces former Gov. Tommy Thompson, a moderate and a strong candidate (his nomination is not yet secured);
Montana (D-I)--Jon Tester has been a moderate Democrat in the Senate, and we know how tough that is, particularly in a red state;
Massachusetts (R-I)--the high-profile race between short-timer and former male model Scott Brown, who has been able to toe a treacherous line in the current Congress to establish himself as a moderate, vs. progressive favorite Elizabeth Warren;
Virginia (D)--the most consistently close race (in the polling) of them all, for the seat being vacated by Jim Webb, between two former Govs.:  former Democratic National Committee head Tim Kaine and "Macaca" George Allen--this one is guaranteed to go down to the wire; and finally, the Maine seat (R) for which King is the favorite. 

There are 2-to-the-sixth ways (64) the first six seats named above could end up; all are definitely possible, though not all equally likely.  If I had to guess, I would give four of them (MO, NV, WI, and MT) to the Republicans and two (MA and VA) to the Democrats, which would make the tally 49-50 in favor of the Republicans.

This is where King becomes Kingmaker. If Obama wins, King's support (with Joe Biden's vote as tiebreaker in the Senate) would give control to the Democrats (and his failure to do that, to the Republicans); if Romney wins, they wouldn't need his support, unless it ends up 50-49 Dems, in which case he's once again in the catbird seat (the side he picks wins).  King has been pressured to say which way he will go; he has not done so, saying only that he might be inclined to give his vote once to a party to establish their control, then to resume an independent stance.  His history is that he was once a Democrat, broke from the party to run for Governor against a Democrat (and win), he supported George W. Bush in 2000 (!), and he has the money, influence, and popularity in his state which allow him to pick his own path.

(I have to give credit to Washington Post blogger Aaron Blake (on Chris Cilizza's "The Fix") for nailing this story- in -the- making, way back in March. )

And the House of Representatives?  There's some doubt about the outcome, but not nearly so much as in the Senate.  The Democrats need to gain 25 seats of the 435 to regain control.  Former Speaker and Minority Leader Pelosi claims to believe it will happen, but the odds are strongly against it.  Like with the electoral votes above, there are something like 175-185 votes locked in to the current parties, districts very heavily skewed to one party or the other.  The Democrats currently have few more than that minimum, the Republicans have close to their potential maximum.  There are clearly some seats that the Republicans won in 2010 that are likely pickups this year, but they are just a handful--some 5-10.  In order to win back the House, the Democrats would have to win almost all the seats considered toss-ups today, and not give up any of the ones leaning their way.  What we're talking about, really, is a landslide victory, with coattails, for President Obama; nothing else will be quite so decisive.

The Opportunity for a Third Force
My honest opinion is that there is room for a third party in the US, one that would be focused on breaking up the partisan gridlock in Congress and fighting the good fight against the special interests and excessive campaign spending. In the Northeast, it would run moderates who would challenge the Democrats (and displace the fatigued and demoralized moderate "RINO" Republicans); in the South it would run slightly right-of-center candidates who would challenge Republican extremism (and displace the fatigued and demoralized right-of-center "Blue Dog" Democrats). 

The national platform would be fairly simple:

• Reduce partisan extremism, oppose all filibusters, and produce common-sense short-term and long-term solutions to our problems of slow growth and ballooning national debt;
• Amend the constitution to eliminate the Electoral College and the pernicious effect of the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling; and
• Candidates for the parties would only accept direct contributions from individuals within the limits of the campaign laws (explicitly renouncing Super PAC's).

In the meantime, they would need to avoid the typical third-party-killing trap of running candidates for President.  There is no possibility of winning in today's system--even Ross Perot, the most successful national 3rd-party candidate in decades, got zero Electoral votes despite winning 20% of the popular vote in 1992.  To be honest, a third party which could actually win significant numbers of states and electoral votes would create an incredibly messy, possibly insoluble, chaos in the Electoral College and a constitutional crisis of historic dimensions.

Our new third party--working name is the "Fix Congress Party"--would have a few natural supporters in both Houses of Congress, and by electing a few dozen Congresspeople or Senators it could have a crucial influence in breaking the deadlock.  They might also be able to get the support of some influential people not excessively tied into the parties, like Michael Bloomberg, which was not forthcoming for the disastrous attempt to nominate a moderate third-party Presidential candidate this year. This movement would earn the respect, if not the direct support, of reasonable elements across the spectrum--I might even support it!

Curse You, Sheldon Adelson!
In the meantime, we have to deal with the ugly mess which is the clear legacy of the Roberts Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.  I just endured the quarterly deadline deluge of pleading, requests, demands for money from dozens of candidates, party organizations, and the like.  I mostly abstained from all gifts, although I am starting to give a little since July 1 in some strategically significant races (see above for clues).  What I wanted to get across to these party organizations and candidates through my abstention is that we out here in the hinterlands do not give a good expletive whether you meet your funding targets and give off the sweet smell of success to your opponents and the press covering the fund-raising reports.

To the extent our side gets a lot of money, it just encourages the other side to raise more, sort of like the nuclear arms race.  Adelson's money seems to be drawn from a bottomless well; though he has been avid in prosecuting/persecuting those who suggest corrupt motives for him, you have to wonder why it is worth so much money to him to get the outcome he wants/needs.  Let's leave it at that, though I will suggest that his financial interests could be penalized by the free-will choice of those of us who disagree with his objectives, tactics, and methods:

Sands Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas
Sands Expo and Convention Center, Las Vegas
Sands Casino Resort, Bethlehem, PA
The Venetian (Macao)
Sands Macao
Marina Bay Sands, Singapore
Las Vegas Sands Group of Companies
Ha Yom newspaper, Israel

All of these entities have very good alternatives that I would recommend.  In Nevada, his sworn enemy is Rep. Berkley, the Senate candidate I mentioned above.

Finally, if you made it this far, I congratulate you and wish you a happy, healthy Fourth.  Wherever you may be, you have a stake in our elections (even if you can't participate) and deserve to share in our patriotic gore....

A Decision of Some Surprising Greatness

The Supreme Court's decision this morning to uphold the basic tenets of the Affordable Care Act was a considerable surprise. Chief Justice John Roberts had given no indication of what he finally decided to do, which was to join with the four liberal justices and uphold the mandate for individuals to get health insurance which lies at the core of the ACA's program.

Yes, the majority opinion he wrote stated that the bill exceeded the Constitution's limits on the applicability of the clause which allows Congress to govern interstate commerce.  Yes, he ruled that the Health and Human Services Department could not withhold all Medicaid support to states which do not cooperate with the law's provisions, which include a requirement that states set up an exchange of health insurance programs meeting Federal standards and allow/require citizens of the states to purchase health insurance.  Yes, he gave the Republicans some political fuel by only approving the mandate's fine--to be applied to those who have sufficient income but do not get health insurance--as a form of tax, which allows Republicans to claim, justifiably, that the Democrats have created a new tax.

Those complaints are minor.  Yes, it's a new tax, but it is relatively small, only applies to people with sufficient income, and only those who choose not to pay for health insurance. In that sense, I'd say the tax is eminently fair, levied upon those who can afford it, but instead would try to get a free ride on the cost of public hospitalization.  The libertarians hate it, but it's a deal the insurance companies accepted long ago, and it makes it possible for tens of millions of Americans who could not get insurance before to protect themselves against catastrophic illness.  It will end up making our society stronger, and opposing this Supreme Court decision is not going to play particularly well nationally for the Republicans.  As far as repealing the bill, it's a nice talking point, but there is no chance:  the Republicans would need 60 votes for repeal in the Senate in 2013, and they would not approach that number even with a big Romney victory.

The remarkable thing about the decision, though, was the position taken by Chief Justice Roberts.  In his confirmation hearings, he had insisted that he supported the principle of "stare decisis", that laws and precedents should be allowed to stand unless there was strong reason to override them, and that he was uncomfortable with laws being overturned by narrow, partisan 5-4 Supreme Court decisions.  He had a golden opportunity to do one of those:  his four colleagues on the right were dead set against the bill and its expansion of Federal authority.  Until today, his confirmation words had seemed hollow, designed to do little more than just get him confirmed.  Today, though, he took a courageous stand for the principles of law that he had espoused, when it really counted.  I may consider him lots of things, but I will not accuse him of hypocrisy in the future.   His was a stand worthy of the high office that he holds.

My 62.5 Cents' Worth from the Atlantic (Part 2)

Third bit
In this month's (I should say, July/August's) Atlantic, they feature their annual list of big ideas.  The "23 1/2" ideas range from good ("Fix Law Schools") to mediocre (a lot of them, for example "Boot the Extra Point" in football), to overstated (most of them, good examples being "The End of the Checkbook" or "Ban Gasoline") to terrible ("Islamists are Our Friends", "Abolish the Secret Ballot", "Don't Treat the Sick if they're Poor"); however, there is one really great idea that I fully endorse.  In fact, I endorsed it 2 years ago in this blog, where I republished an essay I'd written about it 18 years ago.

They call it "Less Work, More Jobs";  I called it "More Jobs?  How About Less Work?" The idea is fairly simple:  Just as much as inequality in wealth, America today is marked by huge inequality of work.  There are many millions who would like, or need, to work more; there are equally many who would like to be able to hold their jobs but are overworked.   There are many possible solutions--the Atlantic piece, by Don Peck, their features editor, proposes "work-sharing", particularly in situations of layoffs--but they boil down to some people working less (preferably those who want to work less, and they are many) and allowing those who need it to work more.

The big problem with making this a realistic option for many, as I see it, is the cost of health insurance if not purchased through the employer-sponsored route.  That is, of course, a different and difficult issue to solve. As things stand, though, some sort of initiative to encourage more part-time employment could still work for many dual-income families, allowing the possibility of sharing child-rearing duties, and could even work for some single parents if built around school hours.   (and I still strongly recommend reading the post I wrote back in 1994)

Fourth Bit
The piece in the issue that has drawn all the attention is the lengthy essay by former State Department official and Princeton professor Anne-Marie Slaughter on "Why Women Still Can't Have It All".  Slaughter left her high-ranking job at State to spend more time with her family--no really, she did. As Peck does and my ancient post, she also addresses the inequality of employment in her way, though the principal thrust of her lament is that professional women just can't do their jobs and also do justice to the challenges of raising children.  Her solutions are somewhat radical--get women in charge and change the rules of society--but she also makes some suggestions for the shorter haul, like increasing the possibility to work from home, and better work-life balance for all.

I am not going to put down her aspirations and certainly not her good intentions, but I will point out a couple/three facts:  1)  Men have these issues, too,  to the extent they are committed to time with family (which seems increasingly to be the case for many men); 2) Many make the perfectly legitimate choice of focusing on career, not family, and those people will always have an edge in the workplace (even if it's just not fair); and 3) The people who really have it tough are the single parents.

Fifth Bit
The final one comes from the Atlantic itself; not the magazine, but the ocean.  I have to speak a few words of praise for the best of the many attempts to commemmorate the 100th anniversary of the episode of the ocean liner Titanic, its brief career and its spectacular end.  National Geographic's April 2012 issue has articles by respected historian Hampton Sides and a contribution by the film director James Cameron.  Cameron helped bring to fruition a hugely ambitious effort to photograph all the ruins of the ship from the bottom of the ocean (part of it 15,000 down), and the issue shows the current state of the wreck, a mosaic built from hundreds of photos spliced together.  It's something that shows our technology at its best, its most ambitious, its purest. Which is not to say its most practical use.

Court Watch

With the basketball season completed, we turn to a different court for spectator sport. Within a few hours, or possibly a few days, the US Supreme Court, in order to complete their season (they call it a "session"), will need to produce some decisions on critical cases they have agreed to consider.

The biggest is the challenge made by a large number of Republican-controlled state governments to the mandate to buy health insurance in the Affordable Care Act, a/k/a Obamacare.  Questions from the Court when arguments on the case were heard have convinced Courtside spectators that the key votes, Justice Kennedy and Chief Justice Roberts, are inclined to argue that the requirement to purchase private health care insurance, or pay a fine, has a toe or more beyond the out-of-bounds line permitted by the Commerce clause of the Constitution.  Apparently, the four consistently liberal (or Democratic) votes of the Court are expected to uphold the bill's provisions, and the three extreme right-wingers (Alito, Scalia, and Roberts) will not.

Roberts has said, though, that he does not want the Court to make major opinions through 5-4 decisions (which has been the pattern for the past decade or so), which would suggest he might be looking for a way out of the box.  From what I've read, there is precedent for ruling that a court should not decide on the validity of a tax until it is collected, and the fine envisioned by the law does not take effect until 2014.  He might therefore be able to put together a majority to kick the can down the road until then, while offering some guidance to the Congress, and the President, about what would make the mandate--something essential to the whole program of reducing healthcare costs through universal insurance--a constitutional one.

I do not dismiss out of hand the argument that there is some issue in requiring citizens to purchase a product from private providers, even if the law has provisions to ensure standards in the product offered, to control costs, and encourage competition, and even if the fine is relatively small and difficult to collect.  I think the requirement could fully pass legal muster if there were more options:  a government-provided option would be nice (!); people could post a bond guaranteeing payment (if they were rich); or there could be a (larger) fine if public hospitals take on uninsured patients who could have completed their civic duties related to insuring themselves, and the public, aginst their health costs. (Something also should be done to consider those from other countries--whether legally in the country or not--who get sick here, especially if we want to continue getting those tourist dollars, which we should.)

So, that's what I will "predict"--a 6-3 majority for delaying any judgment at this time, while offering some suggestions to make the mandate a constitutional one, with the three hardcore justices marginalized into outright opposition to any imposition on our freedom to sponge off others' responsible behavior.  Actually, I think this is the best outcome I can hope for, so wishing it were so is the best I can do.

I think that Roberts and Kennedy will be moved by knowledge that simply overturning the will of the people, as expressed by Congress, exposes them to contempt and intolerable political pressure.  President Obama will be able to attack the Court's decision and show it as an example of why he must be re-elected, to have a chance to bring more nominees who will bring reason and equity to the Court.

Two other significant cases that are likely to be decided:  the Justices are likely to uphold the Arizona anti-illegals law which requires state officials to try to identify likely immigration violators and hold them if the Feds want to deport them.  There are probably four strong votes against that decision, but a majority in favor of profiling and deportation.  Second, the Montana state law prohibiting corporations from contributing to state elections has been challenged under the understanding coming from the Court's spurious "Citizens United" decision authorizing unlimited private (and corporate) "free speech" independent of official campaign contributions.  The law  is 100 years old and was enacted because of obvious corruption issues that come from wealthy interests seeking to legislate through campaign contributions.  This is a chance to pull back a little from the extreme Citizens United decision, based on the horrors the Court must be observing in the current campaign.  I don't think they are sensible enough to do that, though.

My 62.5 Cents' Worth from the Atlantic (Part 1)

The Atlantic, for decades the Atlantic Monthly, has emerged for me as the best (non-daily) periodical of general interest in the country. Time and The Daily Beast Called Newsweek have sunk beyond consideration, Vanity Fair retains its 10-months-of-gossipy-drivel, two-good-issues format, and the New Yorker is too much the New Yorker for someone who doesn't live there. The Nation is worthy of mention, but calling it general interest is unfair to those who don't share its views--which sometimes (see Alexander Cockburn most of the time, and frequently Katha Pollitt) even I have trouble swallowing: it's basically preaching to its choir.

The Atlantic has a good mix of some short pieces, both random items and recurring features (my favorite is the hilarious advice column spoof, "What's Your Problem?" by Jeffrey Goldberg), as well as a few quite lengthy, well-researched and provocative articles going into selective topics in more depth. They might have a slightly left-of-center tendency, but that is not universally true.

A good example of that variety was a piece in the June issue on modern-day Vietnam by Robert D. Kaplan. Kaplan is listed as a Senior National Correspondent, but he is actually an International Correspondent, a person who goes to "the ends of the earth" (the title of a book from 1997 by him; I highly recommend it) and tries to both understand what is going on in these forsaken places and what does it mean for the rest of the world. Though he goes to these places to observe and report, he is, frankly, a neoliberal: a hawk who is primarily concerned about the US' geopolitical strategy and how these little players may be played to our advantage. If he's not on the CIA's payroll, he should be.

Anyway, the piece on Vietnam: Kaplan provides a lot of useful information about Vietnam's path since the days when we were actually paying attention to what went on there (they ended about 1975, when we completed the pullout of our last advisers as the Communists completed its conquest of the South). After some hairy days which included invasion from China and invading--and getting stuck in--Cambodia, Vietnam has been walking the Chinese road for 25 years or so, combining Communist political dominance with capitalist economics. The Vietnamese attitude toward the US is a curious mix of love and hate: one could say they really hate and resent us, but they wouldn't say it, because they need and want us. We rate somewhere in the middle of their many historical bugaboos and oppressors.

Here's the thing: in the latter part of the article, Kaplan throws in this sentence, stated as a fact: "The United States sees the world as Vietnam does: threatened by growing Chinese power." Whoa. To be fair, he spends a lot of the article going into the more nuanced view the Vietnamese actually have toward the Chinese, who are their largest trading partner, a major military threat (in the past, and potentially in the future), rival for offshore resources, and role model in some ways.

I object instead to the blanket statement that the Chinese are a threat to us. He's been talking to too many paranoid global strategists. The Chinese may threaten our sense of unique, ubiquitous global hegemony, if we have one, as they are a major regional power. They may threaten our manufacturing in many areas; as our creditor, they could threaten economic blackmail, though they've never done anything of the sort. They are no kind of threat to our national security, our way of life, or to global harmony and peaceful development. With regard to the latter, their economic and political emergence, along with India's, is something we should welcome, one of the best developments of the last 25 years.

Second Bit
The second item, also in that issue, is a letter from an ecologist named Andrew L. Mack to Megan McArdle, a Senior Editor who reports on Business, who had written an article on the European economic crisis and the underlying problems of demographics there (low birthrate, aging population). Mack undercuts McArdle's belief in a return to "strong growth" for the region, once the demographic issue is overcome:

Perpetual “strong” economic growth is not possible, not even in theory, unless you perform the contortionist groupthink of the policy makers who have brought us the current mess. Continual growth relies on a growing population, as Ms. McArdle adroitly explains. But it also depends on unlimited and cheap resources, free waste disposal into our air and water, relentlessly longer hours at work (paid or unpaid) at the expense of leisure time, and ever greater waste. Inefficient and obsolescent products drive growth, as do canny marketers who persuade people to borrow money to buy ever more unnecessary crap. Continued growth depends on borrowing, both as formal loans, and through a plethora of investment and bond mechanisms. Most individuals, businesses, and governments within mature economies are now growing only thanks to borrowed money.

Here is the first portion of McArdle's rebuttal to Mack's letter:

Whether or not continuous economic growth is possible, or desirable, the fact remains that modern economies are predicated on the assumption that it will happen. Both individuals and governments have planned for a future in which incomes steadily rise, allowing people to enjoy lengthy retirements, advanced health care, independent living, and of course, repayment of the massive debts that almost everyone has accumulated over the past few decades. If that growth doesn’t materialize, the shock will be enormous.

In a few sentences, the dialogue between the two has captured the dilemma of our age. Continuing the compounded economic growth rates of recent decades is believed a necessary condition for social harmony, and pretty much defines what we mean when we think of progress. A very high rate of growth is needed for the impoverished nations of the Fourth World (just to keep up with populaton growth), as well as for nations like China--which has built its legitimacy on delivering it--Turkey, Brazil , Indonesia, etc. The developed countries require lesser, but still positive, rates. We are seeing now just how little tolerance there is in the US for growth rates that don't expand employment or float all the boats sufficiently. The externalities of such growth might be reduced through a clever focus on reducing waste and creating value from efficient use of resources, at least for a while.

Note the lack of confidence McArdle shows toward the idea that continued growth is possible, just an insistence that we must grow. That kind of heedless forward flight presages a cliff of unimaginable depth. With clearer understanding than most, she can see the wall of woe coming toward us. She blinks, and offers the counsel that we continue going ahead.

Three more bits from the Atlantic in Part 2.

Sports Report

NBA - Miami is within one game of winning the championship as I write today.  I did call for Miami to win it this year, which was not a big surprise to anyone, but hardly a sure thing.  The Oklahoma City Thunder is coming up a bit short in the Finals, which is normal for a young team in the last round for the first time. It happened to LeBron with Cleveland, and with the Big 3 in Miami last year, though Dwayne Wade won the championship, with Shaq behind him, in his first shot.  The Thunder clearly have enough talent to win it all, as well as the heart--as they showed against the Spurs in the Western Conference Final, or against the Lakers in the second round--it's just a matter of maturity.

Euro Soccer--The first round had some surprise results in individual games, but for the most part--with one exception, the Netherlands--the big-name team/countries made it through. Looking at my picks for the teams coming through the first round, I had five correct, one wrong (Croatia), and I abstained from guessing on the fate of the French and the Dutch.  Holland was in a very tough group and underperformed (Portugal got the spot), while France came in as everybody's surprise pick and held up fairly well (though they dumped their last game, 2-0, against a Swedish team that had already been eliminated).

Italy was the team that did better than I expected; their rebuilt squad showed some decent offensive punch--and they still have one of the best, Buffon, at goalie.  They will be a tough opponent for my surprise pick, England, in the next round.  If England should get by them, only more trouble awaits, probably in the form of Germany, and, after that, Spain.  I will earn major pointage if that call turns out right.

Baseball--It's starting to be late to be too early to draw conclusions, so I will do what I must and assess my preseason picks and the remainder of the season.  Basically, my groupings will be a combination of how good I thought they would be, how good they've appeared to be, and how good (or not) they really are.

Even Better than I Thought - Yanks, Rangers, Reds.  Yes, the Reds (my team), which doesn't mean they will go anywhere in the postseason, as their starters are not consistent enough, but I am feeling even better than I was at start of year about their winning the division (largely a function of the weakness of their chief competition).  Meanwhile, the Yanks are successfully overcoming the lack of depth in their starting rotation and the injury to Mo Rivera, which isn't too surprising considering the rest of their squad.

Really Are Good After All--Dodgers, Nationals  Which doesn't mean either will even make the playoffs, but I am now convinced of their quality.

Coming up to Where I Thought They'd Be -- Angels, Tigers, Braves, Rays.  I had all these teams making the playoffs; if the season ended today, none of them would, but their trends are good and my best estimate is that three-fourths of them will, though none is certain. 

Don't Give up on Them Yet--Phillies, Cardinals, Giants, Marlins.   Out of these, I actually picked only the Phillies to make the playoffs. Despite the standings and general belief, I still would.  I think the others are all still legitimate contenders for the playoffs, though I am not picking them (maybe the Giants, now, if the Dodgers fall off their pace).

I Am Giving Up on Them  (at least for 2012) - Diamondbacks, Brewers, Royals, Red Sox.  I had Arizona winning the division and Milwaukee in a wild card spot.  I probably shouldn't write off Botox, but I think their divisional competition/competency is working against them in the long run.

Really as Bad (or Worse) Than I Thought--Rockies, Cubs, Padres, Astros, A's, Mariners, Twins. Especially the Rockies and Twins.  Astros in the AL in '13 could break some all-time records for futiility.

Don't Believe in them Quite Yet -  Pirates, Indians, Orioles, Blue Jays, Mets, White Sox.  I don't believe any of these teams will make the playoffs, though most have been in nominal playoff slots at some point this year, and all (except the highly-touted 'Jays) have played above expectations.

I had the Tigers beating the Phillies in the World Series; I am not walking away from that prediction yet, not until I see how the Phils do when Utley and Howard are back (and that should be less than a month from now).

BCS:  Bites Crushed Sand
(a/k/a:  "dust") I considered whether to include the death of the Bowl Championship Series, or whatever the stupid college football championship thing was called, in this sports report or in a soon-to-be-posted obit dept. posting.   I guess (sigh?!) it is sports.

Of course, they didn't do the new version right:  either they should have gone to an eight-team format, with the seven games required for it being sited and filling in for six of the traditional bowl games (the seventh being the Stupid Championship Game), or the four-team format should feature the winners of four of the most prestigious bowls (either automatically, or, to give them a little of the traditional leeway and fan-engaging debate, with some choice involved about which bowl winners to include).  Instead, there will be a committee, no mention of computers, too much mention of "conference champions"--meaning, winners of those stupid, artificial, greedy conference championship games the big groupings have set up.

Still, it is improvement.  It was totally necessary with the virtual collapse of ACC and Big East football, and I hope it will bring the eventual demise of those conference championship games, and, within a few years, that they will move to one of the improved approaches I describe above.

As I said, though, at least it (sort of) fulfills one of President Obama's promises:  that something must be done about the annual BCS mess.

Wars without frontiers (2)

I don't believe I have ever removed or retracted a post once I've put it up, though I have taken a few down for editing.   I will not do so with the last post, but after reading it, I see reason both to rebut some of it and to defend some of it. 

First, a couple of severe criticisms of how I wrote the last one:
1) It clearly has a stronger feel of warmongering than what I intended.  I am not recommending an incursion into Pakistan to hunt down the Haqqanis, but I do think under certain cirucmstances it could be justifiable.  It would need to be a very outrageous and dastardly provocation, but those have actually been plentiful; it would also need to be very near to the border (again, not rare).
2)  The "Nixon in Cambodia" reference was tossed off without explanation, but is a serious reservation to consider.  Nixon's incursion into Cambodia permanently disrupted an uneasy government and led ultimately to one of the worst regimes in modern history, that of the Khmer Rouge.  Without the incursion, the Khmer Rouge might never have taken power.  An incursion into Pakistan would make an enemy of an unreliable ally, with unforeseeable consequences; it might unify its fractious political forces, or it could cause the overthrow of the current civilian government for something far worse.

Now, a couple of points defending my previous posting:
1) When it comes to warmaking, I'm with Ron Paul:  if we're going to fight awar, we should be honest and declare war, and take on the burdens which come with it.  This war has never been conducted properly; even now, its legitimacy is questionable because of the hypocrisy behind our war effort.
2) I am serious in my advocacy of war without borders against a defined enemy, but that is not to advocate a resumption of Bush's "global war on terror"; indeed, ending that is one of the key planks of my original platform of support for Barack Obama.  If our cause is right, we should be willing to wage war to end it; and the fact that our enemy is not a sovereign nation-state is no limitation on our ability to declare war.

Wars without Frontiers

I was listening to my friend Norman Goldman's radio show the other day, and his guest host Dennis Sirota made some rather inflammatory statements, to the effect that the Obama administration is destroying the constitution by "summarily condemning and executing American citizens" and "indiscriminately killing Pakistani civilians with drones". 

Sirota was engaging in gross exaggeration, but hyperbole is the talk radio host's stock in trade.  Does Sirota have a point, though?  Are the actions of the American forces in targeting leaders of hostile forces, in countries like Yemen and Pakistan, illegal by international norms?  And what should be done about that?

To my mind, there is a relatively straightforward approach that would largely legitimize acts against our enemies, and, yes, even some unfortunate collateral losses to noncombatants.  I have no idea why it has not been used. It is well past time that the United States declared war. 

For some unknown reason, there has never been a proposal of a declaration of war against al-Qaeda. It's kind of late for that one;  it should have been declared in the late '90's, when Osama declared hostilities against us, or when al-Qaeda bombed our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, or when it attacked the U.S.S. Cole off the coast of Yemen, or, most obviously, when it conducted mass murder of civilians on 9/11.  Now, the remnants of al-Qaeda are on the run, hardly worthy of a proper declaration of war. 

The Taliban are a different story, to some extent, mostly because they continue to be active. We would have been fully justified in declaring war on the Taliban when they ruled in Afghanistan and permitted al-Qaeda to operate against us from there.  Since then, of course, there have been countless aggressions and atrocities they have committed against our forces or against Afghans which would justify a declaration of war.  In particular, they have rebuffed our offers, and those of the government we consider legitimate in Afghanistan, to join peace talks.  Conducting a proper War against the Taliban could bring them to the table of Peace, which is what we all want. 

Surely a resolution to declare war against the Taliban (we may as well include the remnants of al-Qaeda, while we're at it) could get the required support in Congress; it might even be a rare occasion for bipartisanship.  What is holding us back?  Just some archaic notion that we can only declare war against another sovereign state.

Once that nicety is taken care of, I don't see anything particularly criminal or unconstitutional about the way the US is actually conducting war.  I have discussed drone attacks before, and I don't see anything particularly immoral about that form of bombing--if we are in a war; in fact, it causes a lot less collateral casualties than many other forms of aerial attack.

One final point:  under the "rules of war", it is allowed for military forces to cross a border in "hot pursuit" of an enemy.  Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's recent comments about how he is losing patience with the Pakistanis providing safe haven to the Taliban suggest to me that the way may being prepared for such an incursion, in which American/NATO forces would cross into uncontrolled Pakistani territories, brushing aside Pakistani border patrols if necessary, to take the Taliban out in their havens.  This could be the October surprise the Republicans--justly--fear.  It would surely make relations with Pakistan boil over and could have other ramifications, and it is bit too "Nixon into Cambodia" to make me feel comfortable.  That being said, I could not say--war having been declared--that it would be unjustified or illegal; it might even be successful--either by weakening the Taliban or convincing them to enter into peace talks. Oh, and it would probably clinch the election.

In The Wake of Wisconsin

Tonight's recall election in Wisconsin is going to have major ramifications, which we will analyze as the evening goes on and the results come in.  They will come in one of three packages:  1) Walker rebuffs the recall threat easily, which will highlight the danger President Obama faces in November from big-money blitzes and ill-will, in Wisconsin and nationally; 2) The result comes down to a tight finish, but Walker survives: that would suggest the prevailing theory, that Obama will not have it easy but should be able to ride incumbency and the weaknesses of his opponent and its party to survive; or 3) Walker loses, in any form or fashion:  Wisconsin will go big for Obama in November, the Republicans are going down, and the questions are how big? and Can the Democrats recover control of Congress?  (8:00 p.m., polls just closing)

I do not actually think I am overstating the importance of this classic "by-election", because it tests a lot of the real themes of this year's election:  the influence of unlimited money, the degree to which the parties can rally their relative voting bases, the leanings of those few true independents who decide close races, and, in particular, the ability of focused campaign efforts to swing those purple states. 

If It's Really About Jobs...
Walker should lose, as Wisconsin's economy has recovered worse than most, but in fact his approval ratings have recovered somewhat. 

If the national election is really about "jobs, jobs, jobs", they may as well just cancel the whole thing.  After watching the Sunday morning talk shows this week, it's clear that neither party has a clue what it will do.  Romney's plan is a Bowles-Simpson Lite one:  revenue neutral, "everything on the table" (meaning nothing), large unspecified cuts.  He gives general support for Paul Ryan's plan without getting too specific.  Obama's plan is to take the tax increases and spending cuts that are specified in the agreement/non-agreement and rewrite them, depending on what he can get support for.  The way things are looking, Congress-wise, that will be approximately nothing, either in the lame duck session or thereafter.  He will advocate investments in infrastructure and the like, but that will be stalled or eviscerated.  So, fellow Americans, don't count on any change in the jobs situation after the election; instead, there will be a whole lot of debate before the election which will break new ground in misinterpreting unemployment statistical trends, and a whole lot of money spent to no good purpose: A few jobs at media companies will be saved by the engorged political advertising spend, at least for a little while.  .

Of course, there are other reasons to care about this year's election.  Mostly they have to do with the tone of civil society, and with the military/foreign policy sphere, in both of which a President can wield real power.  Romney's brand of car salesman flim-flam could be effective, Reagan-style, in defusing the intense polarization present, or it could morph into a Nixon-like 1% vs. 99% open civil strife situation.  I'm thinking that he would want the former, but the latter is more likely.  From a social sense, the other big factor is the power of the President to nominate federal judges, and in particular, Supreme Court judges.  I have the feeling that the swing vote on the Court for the last decade, Anthony Kennedy, might be about ready to retire from the wars; whenever he does, there is going to be unparalleled partisan warfare when his replacement is nominated, regardless of the President nominating or the Senate composition at the time.

As for the military-industrial complex, Romney gives plenty of reason for concern.  Where Obama's policy has been little short of brilliant, Romney has zero experience and his statements show little depth of understanding or any of the nuance required for successful foreign policy.

The Lessons of Wisconsin (9:53 p.m.)
We still don't know what the final percentages will be--the exit polls which had a very close race were apparently wrong--but Gov. Walker's win seems clear, by a margin somewhere in the range of 7-9 percent.  This is very close to the six-point margin in the average of final pre-election polls cited on 538.com.  The result is closer to scenario 1) than scenario 2) above.  Hence, the following conclusions:
1)  Huge money moved support back to Walker, through the combination of ads and a massive turnout campaign by the Republicans.  This effort will be duplicated in the general election, and Obama's forces will be desperately hawking money in every corner from now until November. 
2) Organized labor continues to lose political ground against the forces of large wealthy entrepreneurship. Romney will embrace the latter; will the labor movement and Obama unite effectively, or not?
3)  Wisconsin will be a hugely tempting gambit for both parties, but the election will be decided in Ohio and Florida.
4)  Obama better stop listening to his cautious advice, get out of the White House, and involve himself personally.
5) Exit polls, and polls in general, should be treated with a fair bit of skepticism; I'm tempted to suggest there may have been a bit of "David Duke Effect" of people saying they supported Obama and voting, privately, for Gov. Walker.

The Coverage, and Other Electoral News
I have to say that CNN's coverage was pathetically bad; what I saw of Fox News' effort was frankly more impressive.  After all this time, there seemed to be little understanding of what drove the results.  A good example was the very interesting, but inconclusive, exit poll results on voters' approval or lack of approval of Gov. Walker's attempts to break the public employee unions.   It was a remarkable cleavage issue:  the 38 and 37% who strongly approved or disapproved went 90-10 on the recall vote, the 12% each way who mildly approved or disapproved broke 65 to 70% in the same direction.  So, Dana Bash said that this issue was not the topic of debate in the final days, instead it was "specifically on general issues".  What is that supposed to mean?

As for the New Mexico primary held tonight, I couldn't even find anything on CNN's web site.  It is not final, but looks pretty predictable--the Albuquerque district Representative, Martin Heinrich, will take on the former Representative of that seat, Heather Wilson, in a very close Senate contest.  As for the seat Heinrich vacated for the Senate run, the leader in the Democratic primary appears to be Michelle Lujan Grisham, who leads one of the most progressive candidates for major office in the nation, Eric Griego.  Lujan Grisham is a distant relative of Representative Ben Ray Lujan of our district.  The Lujans have been major figures in New Mexico politics, in both parties, for several decades.

New Misdeeds, Same Street

President Obama must be in a bit of a quandary whether to say anything about the new round of recent screw-ups in our biggest bank/investment houses. He needs their money for his Super PAC, and this time around, it's going to be harder to win them over, but it must be so tempting--and fitting with his Romney-bashing attacks on "vulture capitalism" (Rick Perry's phrase referring to Romney's business activity, to be fair), to say something topical and incisive about J.P. Morgan Chase's so-stupid-it's-almost-criminal screw-up and the gross inequity around the Facebook IPO. It's probably better if one of his surrogates connect the Wall Street dots and put Mitt in the center of the box.

The Leviathan, Beached 
As I read somewhere, and the writer was correct, Jamie Dimon of JPM-Chase "had a good crisis"--of the major banks, his came out of the 2008-09 disaster looking the best.  Morgan/Chase swallowed up a failed mortgage company, Washington Mutual, but did not choke on it (like Bank of America did with Countrywide), and it repaid its TARP money fairly quickly and resumed profitability. Dimon had been a major critic of Dodd-Frank "over-regulation" and of the "Volcker Rule", which was designed to prevent big banks like Dimon's from taking big chances with its funds.

Then, three weeks ago, Dimon had to eat his big words. His trading office in London  had run huge trading positions (so large, their trader was internally referred to as "the Whale"), supposedly hedging against possible investment losses with the company's capital, but these turned sour and he had to acknowledge some $2 billion in losses (the number has since grown, and the company has compounded its errors by selling too many of its profitable holdings to help maintain the profit record).  Dimon survived bitter shareholders' attempts to get even and reduce his compensation or remove him as chairman, but the aura of professional competence he had cultivated over decades is pretty badly shot, as is his argument that the big banks don't need such restrictions.

In fact, the Volcker Rule is not yet finalized, let alone effective (that would be a couple years down the line, to allow a transition), but JPM's maneuvers apparently would not even have violated it--in the form legislated, banks were allowed to "hedge" with such poisonous concoctions. 

My conclusion is that these big, ugly monsters are "too big to manage"--basically Dimon admitted that he didn't know what they were up to in London, even though formal approvals are on record.  Chase, Citi, and B of A should be broken up into two large shards each:  a commercial/investment bank--allowed to have trading operations houses and trade for its own account--and an international consumer bank, which, because of the FDIC insured deposits and brokerage/mutual fund operations, should not.   One would be high risk/high return, the other would be very large, with more predictable, though cyclical, profitability.  The alternative would be to require penalty-level FDIC premiums and Tier 1 capital requirements at such high levels that the big monsters would choose on their own to split up.

Facebook's IPO:  Should the Deal Have Been Face Down?
Facebook's stock was over-hyped, over-distributed, and over-sold, but worst, it was privately trashed by its lead managers to key institutional investors in the days prior to the Initial Public Offering (or in this case, it should be called "Insiders Peddle Offal").  With IPO's, especially tech stocks, we are used to the hype, the excessive number of shares offered, the price being unsustainably high, but we still expect that the lucky ones holding the shares on Day 0 will be able to take profits on Day 1 (unless they are blocked from doing so).  There was a period of a few hours when it was up from the initial price, but it didn't last through the first day, and has gone down since. So, a few who got the secret word--that Facebook's future revenues will not be all they were cracked up to be--managed to dodge a bullet.  I hope they're grateful.

CEO James Gorman of the lead investment bank Morgan Stanley has been quoted this week as saying that investors who expected Facebook to rise were "naive".  He is right, but I would classify his comment as defecation in  the same place he feeds. I don't think there will ever be another IPO of this magnitude;  from now on, there will be the semi-public offerings to insiders, but the mass offerings are a thing of the past:  having been bitten, the public won't bite.

There will be ramifications for Morgan Stanley, or for others who may have provided information that was not publicly distributed.  I'm sure Mark Zuckerberg has reason for litigation against those who were supposed to be serving his interests; dozens or hundreds of second-stage investors (after the venture capitalists, before the IPO) got the shaft and will be looking for revenge.

That Facebook's business model is a bit lacking is not too surprising, though.  It's not a place to go shopping; and the curse of the Internet is that those who use it most are basically just looking for what they can get for free. Still, I figure any medium that has access to some 1 billion eyeballs has to have some value; the question is what that should be.  Not the IPO per share offered price, though; that was the truth that was not dealt out face up, which is what the "public offering" part is supposed to require.

It's Still "On Wisconsin"!

In a little more than a week, Wisconsin will have the electoral climax that has been building since the 2010 election of its Republican governor, Scott Walker.  Walker's opponents gained the necessary signatures for an unusual recall election, and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett won nomination to run against Walker.

Walker's recall is not because of misconduct in office, but because his politics don't suit a large number of Wisconsinites--and not just a little, they really hate them. Basically, he has taken on the public unions and tried to break them, something he promised in his 2010 campaign.  Progressive forces from inside the state have appealed to national forces--particularly labor unions, but also political action committees--to take on Walker, and the battle has been joined, virtually continuously, for some 18 months now.  (See my post from February, 2011--little has changed except the position on the timeline.)

A week from Tuesday, Walker's fate as governor--whether he can complete his term, or be removed from office immediately--will be determined.  The race is very close, and there are very, very few undecided voters.  Recent polls generally show Walker leading Barrett, but usually within the margin of error. In this battle, Wisconsin's politics have become the most polarized of any state's. The result will depend on the ability of the two competing forces to turn out their supporters at the polls.  Or to somehow suppress their opponents' supporters:  the Republicans' camp has tried both to make voting more difficult in Wisconsin, and to bury undecided voters with TV ads.

The Democrats' forces have behaved somewhat curiously in the short campaign since the primary, just a month or so ago.  There was some bitterness in the contest for the right to take on Walker, but generally the domestic forces have unified for the greater good.  I have personally been deluged by appeals for money since then:  the strange note was from some groups, like moveon.org or Daily Kos, to complain about the absence of support from the Democratic Governors' Association and the Democratic National Committee.  Both of these groups have since come around and contributed, but it seems that they don't want to commit too much capital in this contest, one that may be a bit of an uphill battle.  If it is so--and Intrade.com quotes the chances of Walker surviving the recall now at 93%, up from 80% or so a few weeks ago-- it is because the Republicans have so much more money, and that they are extremely fired up.

The big question is whether President Obama will make an appearance to help motivate the Democratic ground forces for a final push in these days.  If the calculation is that the President does not want to further inflame an already heated political environment, I think that is a mistaken one.  Everyone should realize that this is not going to die down after the recall vote, and that the winning party is going to have great momentum going into the general election.  Wisconsin has been going consistently Democratic in recent elections, but consistently very narrowly so.  The loss of its 10 electoral votes from the Democratic column would be a serious blow in a Presidential race that is far from safe (there is also an open Senate seat, with the Democrats slight underdogs to hold onto it).  Obama may lose some political face if he goes and Walker still wins, but he has more than face to lose next week.

I previously compared this contest to the Spanish Civil War, and how it both previewed World War II and allowed the forces to try out their weapons.  The Fascist forces won the Civil War because their opponents were too disorganized and too outgunned; the Democrats should take heed.

Euroinflammation (2)

Re-reading my post of last weekend, I realize I need to elaborate a bit more.  Clearly there are many possible outcomes at this point; the G-8 countries' announcement emphasized those nations' (four of which--Germany, France, Italy, and the U.K.--are in the European Union) intention to favor stimulus over austerity, and to try to save Greece's participation in the Euro.  The current deal will have to be re-negotiated; for one thing, it requires a referendum in Ireland (by that country's constitution), and the Irish will be glad to cock their snook at the central continental bankers whom they blame for the severity of their recession five years ago.

So, there will be an attempt to find a more favorable formula, which might--if it is sufficiently strong and sufficiently timely--could interrupt Greece's progression toward rejectionist parties and increased unrest.  I suspect that behind that announcement, though, there may be a feeling--which is fully justified--that Greece is too far down the path, and that its continued participation may need to be sacrificed to allow the remaining members to pull together, more strongly, and do what must be done to strengthen the Euro for the rest.  Greece's economy was too weak, its observance of the required norms for entry to the Euro a sham from the beginning, and the biggest thing that country had going for it, Euro-wise, was the distinction of having invented the term a couple thousand years ago.

Regardless of Greece's "Eurovian" fate, the next move across the continent will be a loosening of some restrictions on government spending to allow some reflation of their nations' economies.  The current approach is turning out to be an unmitigated political disaster, toppling the governments of Spain, Italy, France, Netherlands, and threatening to do something similar to both the U.K. and Germany.  We in the U.S. bemoan our weak recovery, but Europe is heading toward a double-dip recession if it doesn't do something fast, or maybe even if it does.

Chicago and NATO: To Be, or NATO Be?
Thankfully, the tension that was NATO coming to town has ended, and nobody got blowed up. It seems there were a few folks who talked a bit too openly about doing some dirty deeds, and there were a few unforunate scenes, but there was neither a massive police riot nor a massive anarchist one, and we can move on.

NATO is an organization that hasn't had a very clear mission ever since the Iron Curtain came down.  Since that time, it has been a useful device for the US to bring to bear multinational forces for its own international objectives, no matter how ill-defined.  This meeting showed that clearly, even if it brought no clarity on any long-term purpose for the organization.

The agenda for this meeting was fairly limited and produced some canned agreements.  The first was to unite around the principles of the US' accord with Afghanistan for phased withdrawal by the end of 2014, with some presence, and lots of aid, thereafter.  Shades of the later stages of the Vietnam War, to be sure.  The second was some sort of agreement on the US' turning over responsibility for the missile defense of Europe from those nasty Iranian missiles to NATO.

This latter seems like a perfect NATO project:  standing united in a blustering effort to camouflage ineffectiveness. The whole game with this one is to add force to our will to stand up to Iran:  if they can't hit Europe, then they can't threaten to do it and thus hold the Europeans hostage for the ransom of allowing Iran to build nuclear weapons.  Oh, that and to irritate Russia.

Only the last part makes any sense, and only to an unreformed Cold Warrior (there are plenty of them, in the US and in Europe, too).  Iran doesn't have missiles that can threaten Europe, they would have no interest in attacking Europe anyway (Israel would be a much more inviting, and close, target), and even if they could it would make no strategic sense as they are far and away the weaker country and would be devastated in the retaliation that would surely follow.  Oh, and the anti-missile missiles have probably something like a 25% chance of successfully intercepting an attack, if there were to be one.

Other than that, it's a great idea.

Euro 2012
Now we must move on to more important matters, namely European football.  The European championships in June and early July will provide a bit of much-needed economic stimulus to the host countries, Poland and the Ukraine, and a brief burst of well-channeled nationalism for all participants.  The format is 16 teams in four groups playing a round robin; the top two in each move on and play an elimination tournament of eight.

Following my "inflammatory" theme, the Ukraine has irritated many with its political prosecution (persecution, perhaps even torture) of former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko.  It's not quite Moscow Olympics 1980, but there was some serious annoyance about the choice of this country, made back during its democratic "Orange Revolution" some years ago; politically things have gone downhill ever since.

Here are the groupings and some brief commentary:
A--Poland, Greece, Czech Republic, Russia--a very weak grouping; Czech should be favored, Russia will be the villains (but sometimes villains win), and a real opportunity for Greece to salvage some national pride.
Even Poland, which has usually had weak performance in these international tourneys, might be able to make it through.
B--Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Portugal--a ridiculously tough grouping, with three of the top five ranking teams in the world! Pity poor Denmark, not a half-bad squad but should have no chance here.  Germany always gets the results somehow, so the game between Netherlands and Portugal (on the last day of the first round, June 17, in Kharkiv) shapes up as the most critical of the whole first round.
C--Spain, Italy, Ireland, Croatia--Spain is the favorite, the defending champs both in Europe and the World Cup holder.  They will be under a lot of pressure but still have the guns, and a fairly weak set of opponents. Italy is rebuilding, and expectations will be relatively low.  They will either fail miserably or make it to the finals, but I would expect the former, so I'd pick Croatia--another very unpredictable team--to be the other making it through besides Spain.
D--Ukraine, Sweden, France, England--It will be interesting to see if France has got it together again after their disaster in South Africa with the World Cup.  England is looking strong with a good mix of youngsters and veterans and should be able to win this group.

My prediction:  England defeats Germany in the semifinal and somehow wins over Spain, in a mild shocker. It is informed by the Champions League results discussed below.

Chelsea:  King for the Day 
I don't know if there was ever a European champion which finished as low as Chelsea did in its domestic league this year (6th), but the Blues certainly rank up there for the most unlikely route to victory.  Time and again through the qualifications they trailed and looked the lesser team in their matchups: vs. Napoli, vs. Benfica, vs. Barcelona, and then, in the final, vs. Bayern Munich.  Somehow, destiny was on their side this year as it was not in previous Champions League tourney runs, and their victory last weekend completes a remarkable decade of unprecedented success for the team. 

I didn't read the German reaction to the game, but I am sure it was a lot like the Barcelona players' and fans': frustrated, angry, and bitter.  Yes, somewhat inflamed. Bayern had 30-something shots, 15 or so corner kicks, to Chelsea's five (maybe), and one (according to the official stats, but I'm sure I saw another). Several times I heard it from the broadcasters--Bayern is the better team--just as I heard it during the Barcelona series.  Nonsense:  Bayern failed to win the match (Barcelona actually clearly lost it), so Chelsea picked it up, like found money.  Based on quality of squad and beauty of style, the final should have been between the two great Spanish teams, Barcelona and Real Madrid, but Barcelona came out of its match with Chelsea proud, but looking somewhat stubborn and stupid (they failed to make necessary adjustments), and Real Madrid came out a bit unlucky (losers in a penalty shootout, as their conquerors Bayern would do in the final).,

There were several Chelsean elements in common between the two-game match vs. Barcelona (the replay a 2-2 tie, after the 1-0 Chelsea win at home) and the final against Bayern Munich, apart from the obvious one, that being the Italian-inspired style of play that coach Roberto di Matteo employed: lay back, let them hammer away futilely, then break free from defensive discipline and score when the moment is right.  The key elements were Ashley Cole in a critical defensive role, Petr Cech playing great in goal, Frank Lampard contributing key linkages, and Didier Drogba as the principal "actor" (as the German coach said it, mis-translated--he meant "performer").  Drogba scored the goal in the first Barcelona game and played a key role on the perimeter in the second.  In both the second Barcelona game and the final, he made a defensive blunder and giving Chelsea's opponents a penalty kick--which, each time, they failed to convert!  (Missed by two of the greatest players in the world, Leonel Messi of Barcelona and--former Chelsea player--Arjen Robben of Bayern Munich.) Then, Drogba scored a huge goal two minutes before the end of regulation time against Bayern, and he made the last, winning penalty shot in the last act of the finale.

Only a longtime Chelsea fan like myself can fully appreciate the long, often-painful 10-year road which the team has traveled to get here, providing the definitive vindication of the billions that our moneybags owner, Russian kleptocrat Roman Abramovich, has spent to fulfill his dream.  This is not the best Chelsea team of this period, but it is the one that pulled down the ultimate prize.  Chelsea Rule OK! For a day, anyway....

Euroinflammation

This week's stock market results show us yet again evidence why Americans need to care what happens in Greece.  Of course, this illness (which I'm titling "Euroinflammation" and will label future posts as such) has several variations and extends well beyond the well-known Grecian Formula.  Portugal has it bad; Spain and Italy are infected.  It's all about bad economics, poor taxation enforcement, unfavorable demographics, and xenophobic protection of the nations' workforce from lower-cost (and higher-reproducing) foreigners.

That is part of the problem; the real problem is the uncertain, insecure nature of European Union and Euro monetary governance. German Premier Angela Merkel is quite happy to nominate herself to answer Dr. Kissinger's caustic question, "Who do you call when you want to speak to Europe?"  Unfortunately or not, the other countries are reluctant to confirm her nomination. They did it her way at the last--or I should say, the latest--last-ditch summit meeting to save Greece from default, disgrace, and departure from the Euro. Once again, though, that deal is coming apart.

The Greeks had to have Parliamentary elections, and the results were worse than settling nothing:  they settled any thought that the Greeks might be able to assemble a government to get them through the crisis.  Parties refusing the deal shot up in the results, enough to make it impossible for either of the "respectable", deal-respecting leading parties to have a chance to get a majority together.  Neither could the leading refusal party, but I suspect that it (Syriza) will be the beneficiary of yet another round of voting, which will be necessary since the Greek President dissolved the new Parliament, as he was constitutionally authorized to do.

Civil order in Athens is tenuous; I suspect the forces that would repudiate the deal will continue to grow; now that Greek voters have seen one rejectionist party emerge as a major force, I would expect it will attract a lot more support from responsible voters who choose national irresponsibility (the other significant rejectors are the Communists and neo-Nazis). I expect that party would eventually lead a government which will attempt to restore order by rejecting austerity and threatening to leave the Euro (unless the other Euro countries come up with a much more palatable approach than the current formula).

I'm not sure how that brinkmanship will work out, but I see one possible conclusion in the form of Greece leaving the Euro, permitting massive devaluation of the "new drachma", and then a shocking rapprochement with their traditional enemy, Turkey, something that could actually work out.  The Turks are feeling their oats, smarting from rejection by the EU (not formal, but clearly signalled), and they might see a benefit in working things out with their near neighbors, "one people separated by religion", as I've heard them say.  Remember you heard that one here first!

What will happen to Europe and the Euro, once Greece puts itself on the rack?  The debt servicing for the other weaker Euro countries will worsen dramatically, and Germany--now without France's support--will feel ever more heavily the pressure to authorize a Eurobond, a step that should have been taken months ago.  In order to preserve their shaken union, they will need to strengthen it.

The Week That Was

The big news of the week was President Obama's statement that he, personally, thinks that same-sex marriage should be allowed.  Obama had been under some pressure to make his "evolving" views known after Vice President Biden had come forward in a "Meet the Press" interview and said something similar.  Obama hastily arranged an interview with Robin Roberts of ABC-TV and said what everyone had thought he believed.

The Internet was abuzz in the aftermath; the reaction overwhelmingly positive. This is the kind of statement--I wouldn't classify it as an "action", because it does not have any immediate legislative, executive, or judicial implications--that is likely to help his standing with the younger generation, which he needs to do for this campaign.  Further, it should help loosen the pursestrings of some big-money contributors, another big need as we go towards the Season of Super PAC's.

Electorally, though, it could make his task more complicated rather than easier.  The support he will gain from the gay community, he was largely already going to get, though here will be a gain in intensity.  On the other hand, there are some swing states where his stance is likely to hurt him:  North Carolina, for sure, which had just voted fairly decisively just days before in favor of an anti-same-sex "Defense of Marriage" referendum; but also it may hurt his chances to win Iowa, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, all of which are key Presidenial battleground states in 2012.

We shall see.  Maybe I am too pessimistic.  Public opinion has moved rather dramatically in favor of allowing same-sex marriage nationally, and if that continues, Obama may yet find that he is on he right side of the issue politically, as much as he is hailed for being on the right side of it historically. Certainly, it gives more credence to his campaign's newly-minted theme, "Forward".

As for his major-party opponent, Mitt Romney was boxed in by his previous stance against same-sex marriage and the expectations of his party.  He seemed disinclined to attack Obama's position directly, though, as the attention brought forth an old embarrassment:  he featured prominently in a mild but distasteful gay-bashing attack in his prep school, holding down and shearing the hair off a presumed homosexual classmate.  Romney apologized for any and all of his childish mischief, not addressing the specific allegations directly.

 Overreach to the Rescue
The Indiana Republican Senatorial primary this week helped demonstrate why the Republicans' greatest obstacle to regaining control of the government is their own excess.  A "constituionalist" Tea Party favorite, state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, took the primary nod over six-term incumbent Senator Richard Lugar. The event changes the seat from a safe Republican hold to one in which there's a real chance for a Democratic pickup, just what they need to improve their chances of holding their majority. Moderate Democratic Representative Joe Donnelly, who gave up his seat to run for the Senate, now looks both confirmed in his wisdom, and the likely recipient of a flood of contributions from Democratic funders across the country.

The country is likely to be the worse for Lugar's loss, especially if Donnelly finds the task too difficult. Lugar was no moderate, but he was well-informed and responsible on foreign affairs. Mourdock, a two-time House primary loser, opposed Lugar's willingness to consider bipartisan solutions to national problems.  Indiana went narrowly Democratic in 2008, but that is now viewed as a bit of fluke; the question is whether a moderate still has a chance to win statewide office there.

In Wisconsin, this week's primary determined the Democratic opponent for the recall election for Governor Scott Walker coming up next month.  It will be Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett.  Barrett, like Donnelly, will be the recipient of huge inflows of monetary support (and, in this case, campaign workers) in an effort to turn back the tide of Tea-flavored reaction. The outcome of this power showdown will be indicative both of whether the Republicans will have a chance to win the state in the Presidential contest in November (which would be a crucial success) or the open Senate seat there, as well as a testing ground for the weapons which will be rolled out nationally in November.  Sort of like how the Spanish Civil War was a preview for World War II.

A Final Note
Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson (who was elected as a Republican) won the nomination of the Libertarian Party this week.  Johnson made an early run in the Republican nomination contest last year, but he found little support or respect (he was excluded from most of the very many party debates) and pulled out of it well before the first primary.  Johnson may draw some votes from both parties, as his libertarian views include support for drug legalization and a program similar to Ron Paul's for cutting both domestic and military government spending.  If he can get some wealthy supporters' monetary backing, or a berth in a debate (unlikely), he could make some waves in the general election.