Escapades?

The Governor Mark Sanford situation is interesting from several perspectives.  First, here is a guy who, to the casual observer, had it all.  A position of political prominence, took his family to China,  Hong Kong, Macao and other exotic places, had been a member of Congress.

Father of four young sons.  Husband for at least twenty years.  What does a long term relationship like that mean?  To Mark Sanford?  To anyone?  Was he a dare-devil?  Was he so successful that he thought he could get away with anything? Did he think that he would never be caught?

Life is short.  Was he not happy?

Does he try and reconcile with his wife and re-build a relationship?  I don’t believe that will be a successful venture.  Does he join his paramour in Argentina?  And what is the record on those situations standing the test of time?  It worked for Edward the VII.

There are no winners in this type situation – ever.  Some people move on, but the scars remain forever.  Some people do not move on and endure the pain.  I’m not talking about the staff and hangers-on.  I am referring to the principals.  Mr & Mrs Sanford, four sons, Maria in Buenos Aires and perhaps two or three others.

In the very recent past we’ve seen some high profile people be humbled by some kind of sexual scandel.  Last names should be enough: Foley, Vitter, Craig, Spitzer, Edwards, ex-Gov of New Jersey, Ensign.

I don’t know if this is hubris or they don’t care but they must think that they’ll never be caught.  Sad.  So sad.

Will the Guv Resign

South Carolina governor Mark Sanford has a little over a year left on his second term.  He is prohibited by law from running for a third term.  A run for the Republican candidacy for president is clearly out of the question.

After the Republican dominated state legislature over-rode ten of his vetoes at the end of their just completed session and the state supreme court ruled against the governor about his refusal to take stimulus funds, I would say that he is the lamest of lame ducks.

Republicans would love for him to resign.  Then there would be a Republican incumbant for the next general election.

Democrats would love to see him stay in office.  It would kind of level the field come the general.

I predict that sometime before Labor Day, Gov. Sanford will quietly resign.  Some kind of back room deal will reward him with some position down the road, after everyone has forgotten.

Basiji

Is the Basiji analogous to Hitler’s Brown Shirts?

South Asia

If the United States is to be a part of the solution to the violence and terror in south Asia, there must be a coming together of large groups committed to solving the problem.

The United Nations, NATO and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization must work together to ameliorate the conditions causing the problems.  I am talking about eight different countries that are predominatly Shia Muslim.  In no specific order, they include: Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan plus the disputed India-Pakistan border region of Kashmir.

Piece-meal attempts in one country tend to fail because of cross-border tribal affiliations.  For example:  Pashtuns live in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.  Uzbeks live in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan.  There are regional,issues that need to be addressed as such.

In the short-term I feel that President Obama is best served by silence on the events in Iran.  The United States will have to work with whomever it is that emerges as the government and we do not need to create problems unnecessarily.

A long-term, adequately-funded international effort needs to begin.  While every country has somewhat different problems, increased security is needed to protect against extremist elements while infratructure and nation-building are in the beginning stages.

Bringing electric power 24/7 and education to areas with literacy rates below twenty percent is essential.  While in the end the United States needs to pull out and not appear to be a occupying power.

Iran

In Robin Wright’s Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East, she devotes a chapter to each of the countries in the region.  Chapter 7 begins

The Revolutionaries

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin, more even than death. . . .  Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid.  Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

British philosopher Bertrand Russell

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things

which escape those who dream only by night.

American writer Edgar Allan Poe

Revolutions often eat themselves up.  The turmoil, blood-letting and failure to produce the promised utopia trigger a backlash.  But in the reaction can lie the seeds of longer-term political change.

It is obvious from the events of the last eight days that the turmoil that began in 1978, that led to the capture of the U.S. embassy on November 4, 1979 has not been a revolution completed.  Khomeini got the ball rolling but a lack vision allowed the revolution to become moribund.  The populace is tired of the corruption and the inflexibility of the regime.

My guess is in the long run the current leaders are going to be on the short end of the stick.  The authorities may beat down the citizens.  The citizens may lack leadership.  But as long as there is the large amount of free-floating discontent that has been evidenced over the last three to four days, some one will emerge as a leader and the revolution will move forward.

True Story

Short, but true. I am related to this young man by marriage. I get the story second hand and will not probe for details. I have seen combat and am sensitive enough not to ask any questions.

He was a U.S. Marine. He was riding in a Humvee in Iraq.  He bent over to pick up something off of the floor. At that instant a sniper’s bullet passed through where he had been and killed his best buddy sitting next to him.

When he returned to the States he turned to religion. He had a difficult time coping. He felt that he should have died and not his friend. His aunt spent hours with him. She explained that God didn’t want him yet. He had a purpose here on earth.

That’s all I know. Apparently, this is heading for a pleasant resolution and he adjusts. And life, for the rest of us, continues.

Mad

Yeah, I’m mad.  Pissed might better state how I feel.  I recently received a lukewarm, at best, or dismissive, at most, response from my Democrat Senator from Ohio, Mr. Sherrod Brown.

I had noticed this post by digby and I followed the link to a WebMD post from almost two years ago.

I sent the following to Senator Brown earlier this morning:

Dear Senator Brown:

I received your lukewarm, at best, reply to the letter I sent you regarding ‘single-payer’ as an option in the current health care debate.

I don’t mind paying your salary, or the president of the United States salary.  I view both of you and the rest of Congress as a relative bargain, I mean, considering what most of you folks could make in the private sector.

But, when it come to the “common good” such as defense and health, I do not feel comfortable paying an outrageous salary to the CEOs of health insurance and pharmaceutical companies.  And I feel less comfortable, if that is possible, paying large salaries to the executives and boards of directors of these same companies.

Attached is a link to WebMD that shows some of these unconscionable salaries that, just for CEOs listed, total 14.9 billion, yes that is billion, for a five year period.

http://blogs.webmd.com/mad-about-medicine/2007/08/ceo-compensation-who-said-healthcare-is.html

Below my electronic signature is a copy of the ‘linked-to’ article.

Respectfully,

“Capitalism,”  “for-profit,” “the economic model” – what ever you want to call it, is just wrong when there are upwards of 50 million of our fellow Americans without health insurance and the insurance companies are allowed to cancel anyones existing insurance FOR ANY REASON WHAT-SO-EVER.

Double-Standard AND A Hypocrite

RawStory has this up

Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign, considered a possible contender for the GOP’s presidential ticket in 2012, has confessed to an extramarital affair.

I may not think the Dem senator from Nevada, Majority Leader Harry Reid,  is a strong leader, but he’s faithful to his wife.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said at the time that Ensign’s criticism exhibited a clear double standard.

“I don’t think they’ll ask [Vitter] to resign because, of course, he’d be replaced by a Democrat,” he added. “It’s easier to ask Larry Craig to resign because he’d be replaced by a Republican.”

Sen. Ensign has not resigned.

Of course the douche-bag won’t resign.  He’ll be like Vitter and drag his wife to the presser to show how they’ve gotten past this little affair.

GOP Refuses to Fund War Spending Bill

Voting against the International Monetary Fund is more important than supporting what Republicans have been telling us is the highest, most untouchable priority in all of American public life.

Effective Governing

I don’t even think there is a need to link to this.  The stories are legion and widespread about the U.S. government’s inept response to Hurricane Katrina:

From Wiki

The storm weakened before making its second landfall as a Category 3 storm on the morning of Monday, August 29 in southeast Louisiana. It caused severe destruction along the Gulf coast from central Florida to Texas, much of it due to the storm surge. The most severe loss of life and property damage occurred in New Orleans, Louisiana, which flooded as the levee system catastrophically failed, in many cases hours after the storm had moved inland. The federal flood protection system in New Orleans failed at more than fifty places. Nearly every levee in metro New Orleans was breached as Hurricane Katrina passed just east of the city limits. Eventually 80% of the city became flooded and also large tracts of neighboring parishes, and the floodwaters lingered for weeks. At least 1,836 people lost their lives in the actual hurricane and in the subsequent floods.

Here it is, June 2009, almost four years later and New Orleans still has large swaths of vacant lots where homes used to be.

Contrast that to this.  I am reading Robin Wright’s Shadows and Dreams: The Future of the Middle East.  I will quote extensively from Ms. Wright’s book.

Hezbollah’s fourth phase began on July 12, 2006, a scorching hot summer day along the dusty Lebanese-Israeli border.  At 9:05 A.M., as hezbollah fired rockets in other directions to divert attention, a band of Shiite guerrillas scrambled across the fortified security fence into Israel’s northern farmland.  The militants found their target on a secluded stretch of road near a peach orchard.  In a lightning strike on the small Israeli border patrol, they fired rockets that blew up two Israeli military Humvees, killed three Israeli troops and wounded two other soldiers.

The Hezbollahs then nabbed the two injured Israelis . . . and fled back across the border.

The raid changed Hezbollah and the Middle East.

Indeed it did.  Israel responded quickly and forcefully.  Thirty-four days later, August 14, 2006, the war was over.

Politically, Prime Minister Olmert’s new government paid a huge price.  The initial overwhelming enthusiasm for the war slipped steadily.  In a sharp public rebuke, a survey after the war found sixty-three percent of Israelis wanted Olmert to resign.  A year later, Olmert’s support had plummeted to less than three percent.

But the Israeli war machine did catastrophic damage to Lebanon’s infrastructure.  Roads, bridges, houses, apartment complexes – complete devastation.

Just hours after the United Nations cease-fire took hold [Hezbollah leader] Nasrallah appeared on television to give the last and perhaps the most important of his nine wartime speeches.  With meticulous precision, he detailed Hezbollah’s plan to reconstruct Lebanon.

“You will not have to ask for anyone’s help.  You will not have to stand in lines or go anywhere,” he promised people stranded in the cutoff south.  “Today is the day to keep up our promises.  All our brothers will be in your service starting tomorrow.”

In a telling signal to his movement, Nasrallah added, “Completing the victory can come with reconstruction.”

Within twenty-four hours, Hezbollah bulldozers were roaring down streets of the dahiya, clearing away rubble.  Trucks delivered crates of food – peppers and peaches, sardines and cheese, as well as “victory sweets.”  Trucks ferried in water.

Within two days, Hezbollah teams with clipboards were dispersed in southern towns doing house-to-house assessments , cataloging damage, knocking on doors to check on what people needed.  In the dahiya a high school was converted into a reconstruction center.  Signs on the wall directed Lebanese who had lost their homes.  One line was marked DAMAGED: the other DESTROYED.

Within four days, Hezbollah was doling out $12,000 – in crisp American bills – per household to pay for one years rent and to buy what Nasrallah called “decent and suitable” furniture.  With 15,000 destroyed housing units, the total was well over $150 million dollars just for compensation, before rebuilding even began.

By the end of two weeks, Hezbollah had divided the dahiya into eighty-six zones.  Each zone had a four-person engineering team assigned to develop plans for rebuilding.

It might be useful to recall the picture of President Bush flying over New Orleans in Air Force One looking out the window at the devastation below and compare it to Lebanon’s “roll-up-the-sleeves-and-get-to-work” attitude.

Perhaps capitalism is so greedy that it cannot have any empathy for those that are the victims of a natural calamity.