Candidates Implode--Two in one day!

No, I'm not even talking about Rick Perry or Chris Christie.

This time it's Scott Walker (for campaign finance shenanigans) and Brian Schweitzer (for gay and whore slurs against members of Congress). Schweitzer's verbal gaffes were bad enough that they could have been perpetrated by Rick Perry, but not this time.

This is good. I'm happy when the stupider ones eliminate themselves. Actually, these problems may not rise to a strike-out for these candidates, but they're getting closer.

Image: news.stv.tv

Short: A Batch of Hillary stories

There was a fun batch of Hillary Clinton stories yesterday--certainly the first of hundreds of stories we'll have to endure between now and when Hillary is no longer a candidate and/or president.

What's funny is that some of the non-conservative press are going after her. It's not news that some progressives loathe her, but I didn't expect to see hit pieces on sites like the Daily Beast. Now I'll expect it.

So what are the Hillary stories? Hillary laughed while talking with a reporter about one of her law cases involving a rape of a 12-year-old girl. That clearly disqualifies her for high office ... some people mistakenly hope.

What else? The Bible is one of the most influential books in her life. She's now carefully immunized herself from the gotcha accusation that she didn't mention the Bible. No points for candor, but what can you expect?

CNN gave her a sloppy wet-kiss of a profile. I could add others, but this is a good round-up for one day. If it doesn't get a lot worse, we'll be calling her President Clinton before you know it. In fact, I'm ready to put it on my prediction list (barring health issues).

Image: dailydawdle.com

Don't care about Cantor

Eric Cantor lost his primary to a Tea Party challenger, and the political world is behaving like it was a massive earthquake.

Not me. I'm shaking my head and rolling my eyes. Didn't we all know that the Tea Party was gunning to pick off as many establishment GOPers as possible? The establishment knew it too, so they ran as hard as they could. Now that the Tea Party managed to pick off one guy in the GOP leadership, what does that tell us?

The lesson is one that the GOP had already learned--you have to run hard if you've got a Tea Party challenger. Cantor didn't, and he proved the conventional wisdom. But we already knew it!

I don't know if the Tea Party is crowing over this victory and the few others they've had. However, it's not even close to the sweep that the Tea Party threatened last year. So this defeat of Cantor doesn't change the dynamic at all. We still have a lot of establishment Republicans in office, and we still have the Tea Party chafing and bragging about what they're gonna do. Yawn.

Image: brunchnews.com

How to Lose a Country in 3 Years

We, the U.S., left Iraq is reasonably good shape. There was a workable agreement between the central government and the Kurds. There was also the demonstration project (the surge) that showed how to work with the Sunni minority.

All that was lost on a clueless leader.

If you're a GOP partisan, you think the clueless leader is Obama. But I disagree. I think the clueless leader was Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. He pursued policies that shut out the Sunni population as though there would be no repercussions. That was foolish because the Sunnis had already shown a preference for rebellion over submission. 

Now the Iraqi army is deserting its positions without even engaging incoming Sunni forces. They are just running away. al-Maliki wants to declare a state of emergency, but can't get a quorum in the legislative branch to show up. Well, that's what happens when you build your plan on wishful thinking.

I don't know if a different US president could have helped prevent these losses in Iraq. My best guess is that the Iraqi leaders were stubborn in their views that they could do exactly what they wanted, and needn't share power (and spoils), nor make other compromises for the sake of unity. Any other US president also would have failed in negotiating a Status-of-forces agreement and failed to maintain US influence and US-tested moderating policies. 

So I don't think Obama is losing Iraq. Nor it is Bush's fault (for a change). Instead I think it's the short-sightedness of leaders in Iraq. Sometimes, there's no saving people from themselves. Actually, most of the time, you can't save people from themselves. Yet we try because sometimes it works. If only we knew when it was hopeless, or, more importantly, when it's worth the effort, expense, and lives. 

Image: bbc.com

Extra. Recently I was pointed to this column in National Review. It talks about the likely results of the Status-of-Forces agreement of 2008, worked out between Bush and the Iraqis. So much of what has occurred was predicted then, without any idea of what Obama would fuck up do as president. It was predictable based on the Iraqis, the Iranians, and the habits of Islamist fighters. 

Short: Moderates aren't just roadkill

One commenter told me a few years ago that I'd have to pick a side. He used a metaphor of a hapless person trying to walk the center line of a street. People in the middle don't get anywhere, and are very likely to be run over by the travelers on either side of the road.

Well, this is partially true. I get attacked by both right and left out on the comment threads. (I also dish out to both sides, so it's fair that I get incoming too.) However, I've got lots of company on that center line. From this Atlantic article:

"Moderates wrestle with, and often reject, what they see as the false either/or ideological choices that define modern politics..."

The article is full of compliments for moderates, which isn't surprising because it seems to be mostly a PR piece from a moderate lobby group within the Democratic Party. How long will it be until this group is roadkill?

Image: galleryhip.com

The Republican clown car in Mississippi

I've been reading about the GOP primary in Mississippi for senate for several weeks. Supposedly it's the nastiest race in the entire country. I think it's most inept, like the Keystone Cops.

First, we have an old Senate hand, the 76-year-old Thad Cochran. He's GOP establishment, I suppose, so the Tea Partiers want to pick him off and install one of their own. I don't know anything about Cochran's record or whether he's still a political force. He's certainly not one of the big names in the Senate. The biggest news story I read about him was that he doesn't know much about the Tea Party. That strikes me as strange, especially since he's in the politics business. Maybe he's getting a little out of touch or senile, or maybe there's some other explanation (like he focuses on other more important issues).

His opponent, Chris McDaniel, 41, wants to be another Tea Party superstar like Ted Cruz. (My opinion of Ted Cruz is that he's all flash and no serious thought, so we definitely don't need another of that kind.) Unfortunately for McDaniel, a rabid Tea Party supporter filmed Cochran's senile wife in her nursing home, which is not only in bad taste but also against the law. The supporter and several others have been arrested and charged.

It probably should have been easy to defeat Cochran... unless you ended up looking more unsavory than him. That's what this supporter managed to do. It was emblematic of the Tea Party's desire to unseat all RINOs by any means possible, and it showed how they'll cross the line without a second thought. In the primary, the Tea Party challenger didn't win an outright majority and now has to compete in a runoff with Cochran (probably, not definitely). This looked like it should have been a win for the Tea Party, and that supporter blew it. What an amazing self-inflicted wound.

Image: wsj.com

Short: The skinny on VA problems

Good introductory article on problems with the Veterans Administration (VA), including why it's not going to get better. Excellent comments starting here.

The article talks about the bureaucracy at the VA and also about the intense meddling of veterans' groups. It sounds as though the VA is a fiefdom of veterans' groups, where they dole out jobs and favors. Ugh.

I know very little about the VA or any large bureaucracy--governmental or private. I've always been a first-line worker, never a department manager, and usually worked in small organizations. I have no feel for what happens in a big bureaucracy or for why they grow so large. I'm still a happy hunter-gatherer of sorts, living out my life unaware of the huge states around me. Lucky me... maybe.

Image: thedemocraticdaily.com