market

This market is beginning to scare me. There is a strange mood abroad, as if everyone knew this was coming and will now just work happily into their 80's with no other demands on the world. It's like that relaxed fatalism one sees in illness: a wry smile, a shrug. There is an element of disbelief in this I think but there is no anger, no outrage towards those who brought this on us through their unbridled greed and their dismissive social disinterest. In Germany, the money-changers' homes would be cinders by now. It is true that everyone is to some extent to blame but many people are just hard working, unassuming family and business people and their culpability is little. Maybe I'm just overestimating what is coming.

republican Hilary

I still am worried by this Obama thing. I have no idea what these people will do. The senate is already in an uproar. I expect they will start investigating the republicans immediately for misdeeds and generally poison the post election honeymoon. And I wonder about Hilary; she has become a tragic character, ambition thwarted by ambition. I see an opportunity for her but it is drastic for ideologues (but not for the practical). She cannot become president under the current scenario. Her only hope is some national calamity that involves the leadership. But she has a choice: she could pick a public fight involving money, patriotism and xenophobia and use it to define herself as a leader above the fray, as an American leader. When she is rejected by the runaway democrats she could switch in moral outrage to the republican party and run against Obama in 2012. The Global Poverty Act is the perfect scenario: strained American taxed for foreign countries, American soldiers under foreign leadership, treaties approving gun control (trumping the constitution), approval of the disastrous Kyoto treaty. She could oppose it, implore her party to see the error of its ways and, rejected, desperately turn to the republicans as the nation's only hope for salvation. Lieberman in drag.
Palin could run as V.P..

The Art of the Possible

Now the election. Amazing in so many ways. A guy from nowhere. A guy with no
real history. A black guy. A guy nominated because of his party's opposition
to the war only to have the war recede as a major factor in the campaign. A
guy with associations that would have sunk many campaigns single-handed. A
guy who has stimulated a new coalition that will have to be dealt with in
the future. A guy who stands for....change. Well, he is change. By his very
identity he is change. And this is going to be exciting.
Wm. Buckley once was asked why he held a certain position that his
philosophy did not seem to include and he said "reality". I think this is an
important thought in politics, the distinction between what was attainable
and what was limited by the nature of things. This is at the core of
Bismark's quote "Politics is the art of the possible." But the "possible"
as an ideal is difficult. How much should you invest in "the unlikely?" Or
the "totally outrageous?" Or the "illogical?" We are in for some really
exciting times. If Obama is the calculating guy I think he is, this could really
be incredible.
A quote from Galbraith: "Politics is not the art of the possible. It
consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."

the vote

A big day, bigger than anyone imagined last year. This terrible campaign, from primary to final, is coming to an end. All the vindictiveness, the lies, the embarrassments of a nation are winding down to one eight (mostly) hour period where the citizens judge. Not just decide. Judge. This election is especially difficult because amazingly, despite the numerous serious problems facing us, both candidates are unknowns and the vice president candidates are both symbols, not leaders. Who could have imagined that both candidates, chosen by their respective parties because of their position on the Iraq War, would spend the entire campaign debating, not the war, but the economy. And not very clearly, either.
The winner will have quite a job and the loser may find himself relieved. The economic problems are huge and expanding every day. The war is a cipher compared to them. The country's very independence depends on our managing them. (Does anyone think the initial bailout was not directly the result of the foreign holders, not the American citizens, who made threatening demands upon the government?) Our sovereignty is at stake here.There must be a systemic approach to these problems but I see no such approach in either. But we are going to life with the results today. But, first, put this deranged contest out of its misery and VOTE.