The First War

The first war in recorded history took place in Sumer (Iraq and Kuwait) about 5,000 years ago. In the Book of Genesis, Sumer is called Shinar.

As you may know the Sumerians invented war, the wheel, writing and so on. They invented the city and civilization. They built a Trump wall 155 miles long to fend off Semitic invaders. Like the wall we've built to keep out Latinos, the Sumer wall was not anchored to anything much, so invaders could stride alongside the wall until they reached the end. Then they could march around the corner. Which invaders did do,  among them the famous Abraham, a Founding Father. 

I don't know who started the first war in history or what it was about, but it must have been important.  We are still fighting it today.

The Establishment

Control of one of America's two political parties is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. That control is manifested in primaries, which is why primary elections are so vital. You might be a brainless nonentity, but if you are blessed by the Republican or Democratic establishment, you can end up as rich as Sarah Palin or Chelsea Clinton.

In the last week, we saw several  major institutions in the Democratic establishment (Planned Parenthood, for one) endorse Hillary Clinton before the first primary. Bernie Sanders, Hillary's outsider primary opponent, remarked that these endorsements came from the establishment that he was running against. Bill Clinton, the Big Dawg, immediately went on TV to claim that Planned Parenthood was not part of the establishment.

Big Dawg was lying.  Keep in mind that Big Dawg is the head of the Democratic establishment. He's made hundreds of millions of dollars. He denies the existence of the establishment as John Gotti used to deny the existence of the Mafia. Planned Parenthood, an excellent organization, was repaying the Clintons for their establishment support over the years. The chits have come due. From all sides, you now see governors, party chair leaders, Democratic columnists, etc., called into action to stop Bernie Sanders. Eight years ago the Democratic establishment failed to stop Obama, but they managed to co-opt him in part,  manning most of the posts in his administration.  This time the establishment intends to dominate the primaries and restore the proper order.

Ted Cruz Is A Natural Born Citizen Someplace

Chris Mathews pointed out that Ted Cruz is, without doubt, a natural born citizen of Canada.

Can you be natural born in two countries at the same time?

What is an unnatural birth? A Cesarean? 

Can Clinton win?

In a country where pervasive evils like sexism and racism exist (which is every country), it must be hard for certain women and people of color to determine why almost no one likes them. This brings us to Hillary Clinton.

The anchor, for good or bad, in Clinton's run for President is her lifelong bond with the Wall Street oligarchy. Most voters will overlook Clinton's Wall Street loyalties in the same way that they overlook the entire history of United States. Clinton's election problems are nonpolitical. 

My guess is that if you lived next door to Hillary Clinton, you would probably like her about as much as you do your current extremely rich neighbors. She'd be okay. She's obviously intelligent and competent--she served ably as secretary of state. When she starts to talk, you intend to like her. But what she says, even the mild trash talk about her opponents, seems mechanically calculated. Her remarks have been planned by experts and poll tested. At the moment she is moving a touch to the left, but her voice is, well, too rehearsed.  It's like the voice of a newscaster, dynamic and booming for no reason. Hillary sounds inauthentic, and she lacks moral force, like other secretaries of state.

Hillary's been a victim on the national stage, a genuine victim of ugly Republicans and a sleazy husband; how often do victims get picked to lead armies? 

The Democrats are about to nominate someone many people respect, sort of, but don't like and find false. That's the strategy chosen by the party leaders, who have pushed away a genuine Bernie Sanders. We can hope the Republicans don't find a candidate like George W. Bush, a dope voters once considered reasonably likable. I count on one thing. The Republicans will launch an attack on Hillary Clinton that will be so despicable that we will unite behind her in anger.

Amendment Two

Much as night follows day, discussions of the second amendment follow a regular cycle sustained by bad arguments from both sides of the gun ownership issue. 

Gun lovers maintain that the right to own guns is absolute.  Some equate it with the right to overthrow their elected government by force. (As if a bunch of rich gentlemen writing a constitution would be sure to include the right to come shoot them and take their property.)  No right is absolute. We do understand that it is illegal to own a machine gun without getting a special permit. In other words, the right to own a gun is limited by laws we have passed. The Supreme Court had always said so. Case closed.

Gun opponents claim that the second amendment gives only militias the right to bear arms, as if the founding fathers were so stupid they thought it important to specify that an army could bear arms. 

The right to bear arms exists, but it is a regulated right.  The only thing left to talk about is what the regulations ought to be. 

American Anger

Political polls have become more and more inaccurate because 90% of our people refuse to participate in them--and because the pollsters have no good way to reach cell phone users. Another reason is the kinds of questions they use. They ask, for example, "Do you approve of the way President Obama is leading the government?" About 30% will say no, because Obama is too far to the right and 30% will say no because Obama is too far to the left. The report is that 60% disapprove of Obama, which blurs reality beyond comprehension.

Yesterday a report came out on American anger. It seems that 49% of Americans claim to be more angry now than they were a year ago. At least that's how they remember it today. Young people support BLM--they are angry that unarmed black men get killed by the police at a rate of about one a week. Old white Reagan Democrats are angry because the Latinos they hire to landscape their yards lack green cards. The Left is convinced that the system has been rigged by our oligarchy, reducing social mobility (we now rank about 23rd in the world). The Right is convinced that the system has been rigged by the Left to enrich lazy women, African-Americans, Latinos and Muslims.  Revolting idiots in cowboy hats gathered in an armed group in an Oregon bird sanctuary to demand the release of two convicted felons. And so on. 

The most angry group, in this poll, were white women. I don't know why they were the most angry. Maybe they have noticed that their grown children are underemployed and have no future or maybe they are frightened that America's armed forces can't stand up to the puny forces of extremism, particularly in Oregon.
    

Money, money, money

Below is Paul Krugman's comment from the NY Times.

"Modern America is a society in which a growing share of income and wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small number of people, and these people have huge political influence — in the early stages of the 2016 presidential campaign, around half the contributions came from fewer than 200 wealthy families. The usual concern about this march toward oligarchy is that the interests and policy preferences of the very rich are quite different from those of the population at large, and that is surely the biggest problem."

I can't disagree with that. I'd add, though, that some have been surprised at the impact that money has failed to have on the run-up to the primaries. I noticed long ago that extremely well funded candidates in California often lost out.  Now Jeb!! has spent the most money among the Republicans (to no avail). In the upcoming Presidential election, Hillary will have one or two billion to run on, money from Wall Street and from the movie and tech industries. (Feel the Bern yet?)