AUGUST 1, 2014

     It's happened.  Republicans lost a vote in the House of Representatives on Thursday even though they have a majority there. They lost because their majority split in two--moderates versus more conservative, Tea Party types.

    This will make Republican politics more fun to watch, though probably less fun for actual, role-playing Republicans. "Got an ID card?  No, not those ugly orange ones. Ours are bright red," and so on.

     And if the GOP vote splits in the primaries, won't the Democrats have a better chance of winning back the House, which the GOP now controls?  And in 2016?  Three national candidates instead of two?

     On a good day, politics can be more fun than cards.

 

AUGUST 8, 2014

     I wrote the the other day about how difficult, maybe impossible, it is for the great powers to make or keep the peace.  I didn't need new proof, but the headline in today's Washington Post is, "Obama authorizes possible Iraq strikes."  Please, sir, not again.

   The story says the U.S. is already dropping food and other good things there and that's fine.  But please, nothing lethal.  That's how these blood feuds start. You got us out of Iraq once, please don't make an encore necessary.

     Enforcing our ideas of law and order in other peoples' countries seldom works well.  Please know this.   

 

 

 

 

 

AUGUST 7, 2014

         Yes, the Middle East is a war zone again--Arabs and Israelis shooting at one another with the Israelis seeming, to this amateur eye, better trained for the job though outnumbered.

   You want to think this can be settled but the odds are certainly against that.  If two peoples are willing to kill for a territory, the odds on peace seem slender.

     The odds against some kind of international peacekeeping force seem equally long.  The warmakers would do awful, barbarous things the peacemakers simply couldn't.

     I've been reading about the Middle East all my adult life.  I may not have much time left, but I"m afraid it does.

Fwd: JULY 24, 2014

JULY 23, 2014

     Quivers in Ukraine.  A passenger jet was shot down mysteriously. Today there are reports of two military jets downed.

     

    These are reasons for worry, of course.  We always have those, but these are not enough, I think, to fear that World War III will break out next Tuesday.

 

     Vladimir Putin, and whoever succeeds him in his job, will presumably worry more about keeping Russia dominant in what used to be the Soviet Union than about scuffing with the United States.  Barack Obama seems a moderate with no haste for a World War III.  Let's hope his successor shares that view.

 

       History courses emphasize wars;  they're dramatic, but we have had times of peace and enjoyed them.  Let's work to have more.

 

JULY 22, 2014

The headline in today's Washington Post is straightforward "Obama makes his most unequivocal remarks yet in favor of D.C. statehood."  Now as an experienced Washingtonian--lived here more than forty years--let me tell you what that presidential endorsement actually mean--zip, zero, squat.

     Londoners vote in British elections; Parisians, in French ones. Washingtonians? Our betters, as they must see themselves, allow us to elect a mayor and to vote for president--we are too few to matter much there.

     But in the legislative branch, nothing.  The District is allowed no senators--states have two apiece--and no Congressmen--states have from one to dozens depending on their population. The District has one token delegate who is not allowed to vote.  Fair, hunh?

     Efforts to change this require Congressional approval and Congress has always refused, jealous of its power and unwilling to amend the Constitution so as to share its power with us.

     I do not exepect this to change in my lifetime.

Fwd: JULY 9, 2014

 

     It's been kind of  a quiet, lazy summer so far, which if fine with this quiet, lazy reporter.  

 

   My childhood baseball team--grownups aren't allowed to support them, they're too awful--are in last place in their division by, I think, nineteen games.  Only recently they had closed to within ten, but they've gone back to work.  Need to ask which team?

    And it has nothing to do with work, but strawberries are coming back!  Formerly wonderful, they changed to beautiful but tasteless.  In recent years they've

started tasting like the real thing again. 

     So life goes on and getting old is sometimes even kind of fun.

 

Fwd: JULY 3, 2014

      I saw a political column about Hillary Clinton's unofficial presidential campaign.  One struck me as about right.  Many more and we'd all be saying, "Why is she running so hard?"  The job she seeks, after all--president, we assume--isn't available to the voters until the year after next.

      In the meantime she wants, I assume, to look like the right woman for the job. She would be the first woman president, of course.  Barack Obama was the first black eight years ago.  If he could break one barrier, you can presuably break the other.

     Avoid overconfidence is my advice.  Remember that the Democrats had a sure frontrunner once before, Edmund Muskie.  He disappeared and never saw the White House.  Neither did the man who beat him, George McGovern.

     Buy hey, go for it.  It's a fun ride mostly.  Ask your husband.  And if you win, Lord knows what lies ahead.