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Putin, like another politician we all know and admire, clearly views successful athletes as an extension of himself and his regime, so the revelations regarding the Russian doping program, and their consequences, have to be a terrible blow to him.

Here’s the pathetic thing:  can’t you imagine a President Trump pushing for a similar American doping program to prove that he’s a “winner?”  Of course you can.  In Trump’s Social Darwinian jungle, everything is permitted except weakness, and nothing matters except his ego.

             What a Fool Believes

He was born somewhere back in black Africa.

Or maybe Indonesia.

Trying hard to convince us that he grew up in Hawaii.

But we’re not so dumb.

We keep the fire lit, and Fox News Channel on.

Never giving up in the face of the facts.

We don’t realize it never really was.

 

He won’t fight Muslims today.

He keeps refusing to say.

As he makes another apology

Everybody else must surely know

It’s time that he goes.

 

What a fool believes he sees

No wise man has the power to reason away.

What seems to be

Is always better than nothing.

Than nothing at all.

 

Parody of “What a Fool Believes” by Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins.  I didn’t touch the chorus–it was perfect as is.

This morning, Presidents Trump and Putin announced the surprise signing of a new treaty designed to divide Europe into two spheres of influence.  Former NATO countries will now become American colonies, while former Warsaw Pact nations will be owned by Russia.

Trump could not be reached directly for comment, but on his way back to the Trump White House, he tweeted “ANOTHER AMAZING DEAL!  WE GET THE GOOD PARTS, AND PUTIN GETS THE LEFTOVERS!  WELCOME TO TRUMP UNIVERSITY!”

Upon hearing that European reaction to the deal was strongly negative, Trump tweeted “MERKEL AND THE REST ARE SUCH LOSERS!  WESTERN EUROPE WILL BE LUCKY TO HAVE ME AS ITS RULER!”

President Putin applauded the deal, saying “It’s always a pleasure doing business with a strong man like myself.”

The agreement will be implemented with new regulations similar to the 17th Century Navigation Acts to make sure that America always runs a surplus with its colonies and so “wins at trade”.  When asked about European objections to the deal, Trump spokeswoman Sarah Palin responded “The Germans colonized us hundreds of years ago.  Don’t you think they would do it again, if they could?  You betcha!” When subsequently advised by reporters that the Germans had never owned any colonies in North America, she said that was a lie spread by the “lamestream media.”

Palin also indicated that she was looking forward to seeing the new Russian bloc from her house.

House Speaker Paul Ryan has been directed to find funds for a new, larger Trump monument commemorating the deal in his budget.  Ryan angrily denied that he was “enabling” Trump by building monuments to him and pointed out that Trump was showing that he was “becoming a real Republican” by suggesting cuts to Medicaid to pay for the monument.

And now, we have the Rio Games.

They’ll make our election look tame.

The fans full of hope.

The Russians can’t dope.

For winners, great fortune and fame.

Historically, there have been four reasons to host the games:

1.  Our national ideology rocks!  Examples:  Berlin 1936; Moscow 1980; Los Angeles 1984.

2.  OK, we lost the war, but we’re back!  Examples:  Rome 1960; Tokyo 1964; Munich 1972.

3.  We’ve graduated from the Third World!  Examples:  Mexico City 1968; Seoul 1988; Beijing 2008; Rio 2016.

4.  Let’s have a party and attract some tourists and foreign investment!  Examples:  everyone else.

The problem is that the Olympics have become so expensive, #4 has become harder and harder to justify, and the other rationales can only work under very limited circumstances.  As a result, unless the costs can be reduced or the profits distributed differently, you may start to see the Summer Games exclusively in authoritarian Third World countries with an image problem and lots of money to spend.

To be at all interesting, a scandal has to revolve around one (or more) of three motivations:  money; power; and sex.  The e-mail issue doesn’t implicate any of them.  What is it about?  Stupidity?  Carelessness?  Yawn.

Ronald Reagan got a substantial boost from the performance of the American athletes in the Los Angeles games in 1984.  Given that the Democrats are making a concerted effort to appeal to American patriotism in the face of Trumpian gloom and doom, could the same thing happen in Rio?

Probably not, for the following reasons:

1.  The incumbent cannot benefit, because he can’t run for re-election.
2.  The 1984 Olympics coincided with a dramatic improvement in the American economy.  That isn’t happening today.
3.  The country is more polarized now than in 1984.

That said, if we don’t win the medal count, you can expect Trump to blame it on the “losers” Obama and Clinton.

Consider the following lyrics:

There’s colors on the street.

Red, white, and blue.

People shuffling their feet.

People sleeping in their shoes.

There’s a warning sign on the road ahead.

There’s a lot of people saying we’d be better off dead.

Don’t feel like Satan, but I am to them.

So I try to forget it any way I can.

 

Keep on rockin’ in the free world. . .

Those words were written in 1989.  They might as well have been written yesterday.

David Brooks had it right:  the best pop culture analogy to Trump’s convention speech is Bruce Wayne/Batman.  Of course, America isn’t Gotham City, and Trump’s parents weren’t killed by criminals, but to Trump, those are just details.

Assume, for the purposes of argument, that crime in America really is as bad as he says.  He still isn’t Batman, for the following reasons:

1.  He’s a developer, not a crime fighter.  At least Rudy Guiliani has some credibility on this issue.

2.  He has no ideas on how to fight crime.  Beating your chest and projecting strength is not a crime-fighting strategy.

3.  Crime in our country is almost exclusively a state and local issue.  What exactly can the President do–call out the military to police the streets of Chicago? That’s a third world “solution,” but, in all honesty, I can imagine a President Trump trying something like it in order to prove how tough he is.

It appears to me that there are two separate threads in the Bernie or Bust movement:

1.  People who are too myopic to admit that there are huge differences between Hillary and Trump; and
2.  More sophisticated people who view a failed Trump presidency as the most likely path to the revolution.

#2 has to have occurred to Bernie.  Fortunately, if it did, he clearly didn’t give into it, because the dangers of a Trump presidency are just too great.

1.  People have come to take the current state of affairs (peace, free movement, democratic governments) for granted.  They shouldn’t.
2.  The ultimate test for the EU will be to create citizens who view themselves as Europeans–not just residents of their own countries.  The fact that young people supported Remain suggests that the European identity is making some headway, but it will take time.
3.  The biggest single problem with the EU is the euro, because saving it has become a self-defeating end in and of itself.
4.  Creating “more Europe” to save the euro, under the present circumstances, just means imposing German views about austerity that won’t work in most of the rest of the union with even more vigor.
5.  The EU will survive Brexit.  It would not survive Frexit.
6.   Instead of creating “more Europe,” the powers that be should focus more on improving the aspects of the union that have strong public support, like the single market.
7.  The best way of dealing with the euro problem, as I have said before, is for the Germans to return to the mark.  The value of the mark would rise dramatically, thus enriching the German people.  The Germans would no longer feel obligated to bail out the rest of the EU countries, or to impose austerity on them.  The remaining euro countries would have more fiscal and monetary flexibility to deal with their structural problems.
8.  It is much more likely that the powers that be will just continue with their half measures.  Declining to sanction Spain and Portugal is more evidence of that approach.  Will the next shoe drop in Italy?  We’ll see.

DNC meeting, day four.

Some women were moved to the core.

The speech was OK

Not much more I can say

At least sanity was restored.

 

The lines about Trump were razor sharp.  The rest of it sounded like a shopping list, but that’s the way most people speak.  We won’t be electing her for her oratory.

Obama is the charismatic Golden State Warriors.  Hillary would be the grit and grind Memphis Grizzlies.

The problem with Fox News isn’t its right-wing perspective;  there is plenty of room in the spectrum for that.  My issue with Fox is that the message it repeats, over and over and over again, is that white American Christians are under attack by The Other, and need to rise and take their country back to where it was prior to the 1960’s.

Is it any wonder, under the circumstances, that Trump is the GOP nominee?  One can only hope that the new leadership will see that this message is driving the GOP into a ditch, and will change its ways accordingly.

During the 2008 campaign, Hillary Clinton repeatedly made the argument that her methodical, grinding style was better suited for the nuts and bolts of governing than Obama’s flash and eloquence.  Last night, in a supreme twist of irony, she called upon that same eloquence to make the case that she was right. And he delivered, big time, as only he can.  He had help, too;  Biden and Bloomberg were excellent in their own ways, as well.

It was a remarkable night:  one to remember for a long, long time.