Month: December 2015

We resolved to travel far

As New Year’s Day kicked in.

Europe and domestic, too.

So where do I begin?

 

We arrived in France and Spain

Towards the end of May.

Churches, chateaux, cities new

We traveled fourteen days.

 

We flew to Boston, then we drove

to northern Adirondacks.

For four days we enjoyed the view

Then we had to fly back.

 

September we flew north again

A weekend in Vermont.

The hills were green and full of charm.

It was all that we could want.

 

October and we returned

To mountains in NC.

We were looking for the place

Retirement to be.

 

Late November and we flew

To visit in Berlin.

We saw museums and the wall.

A cold war we would win.

 

Andrea works for the state.

Matt’s still on his own.

Marlowe’s getting up in years.

To jump up makes him groan.

 

Things were great, as you can see,

But next year could be finer.

Because our big ambitious plan

Is a trip to China.

 

So best of wishes to you all.

Don’t let events oppress you.

Keep the faith as you move on

And may the heavens bless you.

Violent crime is down significantly, and interest in hunting has fallen off over the last several years, yet gun ownership has gone up.  Why?

I would suggest three reasons:

1.  Local TV news coverage:  Our local TV stations have essentially given up covering local government;  their broadcasts are devoted almost exclusively to the coverage of crime and disasters.  Under the circumstances, it is easy to understand why people would believe that violent criminals are running wild in our community, even though the statistics show that it isn’t true.

2.  National media coverage of terrorism:  You would never know that your chances of dying from a lightning strike are greater than your chances of being killed by a terrorist.

3.  Guns are a Reactionary totem:   You will recall that the bumper sticker says that “God, guns and guts made America great.”  From the Reactionary perspective, God is no longer respected in this country, and their supposed representatives don’t have the guts to stand up to the liberal agenda, so guns are the only thing left in the holy trinity upon which they can rely.

Romney won the Republican nomination in 2012 by attacking Rick Perry from the right on immigration.  If the establishment wants to stop Donald Trump, they need to do it the same way; waiting for his reactionary constituents to recoil from his extreme statements about foreigners and Muslims is not going to work, because their prejudices on this subject are nearly boundless.

There is plenty of material available.  All they have to do is use it.

I pride myself on providing purely original material, but the insight in this post comes from a book called “The Quartet” by Joseph Ellis.  Here is what he tells us:

1. Madison was responsible for collecting and editing the proposed amendments that became the Bill of Rights.
2. There was great concern in the process of ratifying the Constitution about the need to promote state militias in lieu of a large federal standing army.  This was particularly true among those who felt that the Constitution was an unwarranted step towards the centralization of power in the U.S.
3. While Madison and the other supporters of ratification rejected any notion that ratification could occur with the adoption of amendments as a condition precedent, he promised that such amendments would be considered and approved expeditiously after ratification.  The adoption of the Second Amendment, and the rest of the Bill of Rights, was a good faith effort to keep that promise to the Anti-Federalists.

If this is true, and I see no reason to doubt it, the notion that the Second Amendment was intended to protect individual, not collective, rights is historically inaccurate.  Nevertheless, the current Supreme Court has decided that the right belongs to individuals, which is an obstacle to the creation of national gun control legislation.

 

As I’ve noted on several previous occasions, Jeb’s immediate problem is to dispose of Marco Rubio and win the Romney Coalition subprimary, but he doesn’t have many plausible lines of attack.  Rubio’s most vulnerable spot is his previous support for immigration reform, but Jeb is not in a position to make that case.  Ted Cruz, however, can and will make the argument forcefully.

Cruz is competing with Donald Trump in the Reagan Coalition subprimary.  He needs to reduce Trump’s support significantly without disparaging him or his followers, whom he needs to inherit.  The most obvious person to take on Trump, given his pedigree, ideology, and available funds, is Jeb Bush.

Could the two campaigns enter into a non-aggression pact?

Cruzing in the Right Lane

Ted Cruz

Has right-wing views.

He lights the fuse.

Has little to lose.

 

Far right

Examines his plight.

Admires his fight.

Lends him its might.

 

What now?

Don’t have a cow.

Rivals won’t bow.

Stop him somehow.

Does anyone out there believe that Maduro will agree to follow democratic norms?  Me, neither.

(In light of recent events, this is the first of a series of postings on guns in America.)

As we know only too well, our country has more guns, and experiences more gun violence, than any nation on the planet that is not in the middle of a civil war. This is true even when we are compared with countries that are roughly geographically and culturally comparable (Australia and Canada).  Why?

I think there are three reasons:

1.  Standing armies and central government tyranny were linked in the eyes of many of the Patriots in the American Revolution, so the widespread ownership of guns and the use of militias is in our political DNA.  It is not surprising that some right-wingers view private gun ownership as a check against the unwarranted usurpation of power by the federal government, given the history of this issue.  You would not see that, or a Second Amendment, in other countries.

2.  The American political system gives an unusual amount of power to rural states in which gun ownership is extremely important.  I don’t think rural voters have the same degree of clout at the federal level in Canada and Australia as they do here.  As a result, it is very difficult to pass gun control legislation in the US even under the best of circumstances.

3.  There is a clear correlation between right-wing Christian evangelicals and passion for gun ownership that doesn’t exist in more secular countries.  The theological basis for this is unclear to me, but there is a reason why the bumper sticker tells us that “God, guns, and guts made America great.”

 

Reasonable people can disagree on this point, but I would go with Jeb!, because he wasn’t a terrible governor, and he comes across as being a fundamentally decent and thoughtful guy who wouldn’t be in a huge hurry to engage in foreign adventures.  In other words:

1. He sounds more like his father than his brother; and
2. The qualities that make him a lousy candidate in today’s superheated political environment could actually make him a tolerable President.

Marco occasionally displays some flashes of insight about the workings of the world in the 21st Century, but his obvious ambition and opportunism turn me off.  Elect him, and you have no idea what you are getting, other than a man who literally sweats both the large and the small stuff.

The senator from my home state

Holds views that I find less than great.

He lusted for power

Said this was his hour

I think that he’ll just have to wait.

In the ongoing maelstrom, it seems to have escaped everyone’s attention that the Republicans have a potential candidate with all of the right credentials.  This man:

1.  Is a proven winner of elections;
2.  Is beloved by the entire party, and by some Democrats, as well;
3.  Has as much swagger as all of the present GOP candidates combined;
4.  Has a long record of defying Obama;
5.  Believes in peace through strength, not negotiations; and
6.  Is impeccably right-wing on economic issues.

There is just one small catch:  he is the Prime Minister of Israel.  Surely a way can be found around that obstacle.

Draft Netanyahu!

During the last Democratic debate, Bernie Sanders jabbed Hillary on the issue of campaign contributions from big banks.  She responded by wrapping herself in the 9/11 flag in a fundamentally ridiculous way that rightly prompted scorn from commentators on both sides of the aisle.

The issue of bank size is important and is worthy of a more sophisticated analysis than that.  The principal questions, and my responses, follow:

1.  Why did the big banks grow during the financial crisis?  The government, in the interests of stability during a very unstable time, encouraged (some would say compelled) acquisitions of troubled institutions by stronger banks.  The alternatives (using even more taxpayer money on bailouts, or letting the banks fail and living with the unpredictable consequences) were even less palatable.

2.  What exactly is the problem with having big banks?  Normally, the concern with size would revolve around the concentration of economic power, but no one is suggesting that, say, Goldman Sachs has anything like a monopoly on financial services.  The real issue is the amount damage the banks can do when they fail.

3.  Are there any advantages to having big banks?  Absolutely.  Big banks can diversify their holdings, thereby reducing the likelihood of failure.  Big banks have more ability to operate and make money on a global basis, as well.  Financial services are a major source of wealth in our economy.

4.  Can the banks be broken up without new legislation?  To my knowledge, no, and the prospects for any such legislation in a Congress with a Republican House majority are abysmal.

5.   Are the protections against big bank failures in Dodd-Frank adequate?  No one will know until they are tested.  The only thing you can say at this point is that they address the issue in a logical way, and could conceivably work, if properly implemented.

6.  What, if anything, would Hillary’s Wall Street contributions mean in a Clinton Administration?  The more honest answer to the issue raised by Sanders would have been that any senator from New York would be obligated to protect the interests of her Wall Street constituents.  In any event, recent history strongly suggests that the vast majority of the Wall Street contributions in 2016 will go to Republicans, not to Hillary.

7.  If it is legally and practically impossible to break up the banks, what is the point of being concerned about this?  There could be some legitimate concern about influence being applied relative to the writing and enforcement of rules.  That’s about it.

In my opinion, the best course of action is to continue to implement Dodd-Frank and see what happens.  In other words, I don’t agree with Sanders on this point.

In a previous post, I suggested that Carly Fiorina adopt Mrs. Thatcher as a role model, since Reagan isn’t really workable.  Here are the reasons it won’t happen:

1.  Mrs. Thatcher was a career politician and was clearly motivated by conservative ideology.  Fiorina is a businesswoman whose primary interest is in dealing with money.
2.  Whether you liked her or not (I didn’t), you had to admit that Mrs. Thatcher governed with a certain joie de vivre; she visibly enjoyed the cut-and-thrust of political battle.  Fiorina just comes across as a humorless beancounter.

As I understand it, the NRA basically believes that Second Amendment rights are absolute, because any measure of regulation creates a potential slippery slope. This logically means that Islamic extremists in our country have the same right to buy and use guns as everyone else.

Imagine a scenario in which young Muslim men carrying AK-47s are seen on TV standing guard over mosques throughout the country in response to threats from right-wingers. I strongly suspect that there would be a sudden spurt of support for gun control measures, even among GOP voters, and contributions to the NRA would decline dramatically.

Hey, it worked with the Black Panthers in the 1960’s.  It could work again.

Ross Douthat’s Sunday NYT column discussed the similarities and differences between the ongoing conflict in Syria and the Spanish Civil War.  While the analogy is by no means absurd (it occurred to me months ago), Douthat’s (correct) conclusion that the situation is likely to remain a stalemate for some time to come is evidence that the more appropriate analogy is to the Thirty Years’ War, as I suggested in a post in, I believe, August.