déjà vu, 1968 all over again?

College students came “clean for Gene” in 1968, supporting Eugene McCarthy, a principled, poetical anti-war Senator from Minnesota.  McCarthy’s close second in New Hampshire Democratic primary convinced President Johnson to withdraw.  McCarthy kept the kid’s attention only until Robert Kennedy sensed the opportunity and announced his candidacy.  Handsome, young, and with a whiff of Camelot about him, the kids left Gene and hoped to go "all the way with RFK".  After Bobby was murdered, Hubert Humphrey was nominated in a fractious convention amid violent street protests.  The Democrats never recovered.  Humphrey was painted as a staid war-monger despite a lifetime of liberal achievements.  Nixon’s henchmen (a fair characterization for this crowd), probably ruined Johnson’s promising peace negotiations by promising the South Vietnamese better conditions after the election. Richard Nixon was elected president.  The war continued for another 6 years, with 30,000 American deaths, and untold numbers of wounded and dead Vietnamese.  
 

Today, we see students excited about Senator Bernie Sanders, who to his immense credit withstood the pressures and voted against the wrong and disastrous Bush war against Iraq. (The measure authorized force, not exactly war, but everybody knew they were putting matches in the hands of neocon chicken-hawks).  Bernie also channels the deep frustration and anger against “Wall Street”, the big banks that made huge fortunes on very risky bets that they ultimately lost, but were saved by the government, only to continue their high risk semi-demi-criminal ways.   Bernie’s people are adamant that Hillary Clinton is complicit with the war and Wall Street crowd, despite reasonable evidence that she has worked hard her whole life for peace and fairness. 

The Republicans seem to be settling on Senator Marco Rubio.  He’s no Nixon.  For one thing, Nixon had a ton of experience: as Senator – actually showing up for the job – and as Eisenhower’s Vice President for 8 years.  (Senator Cruz seems a more Nixonian character, albeit wrapped in Goldwater extremism, and could probably do Nixon’s both-arms-up-V-for-victory much better.)  But Rubio shares Nixon’s lax personal finances and coziness with big industry. 

Are Democrats going to divide and lose?  Despite a sober debate marked by a lot of agreement, in stark contrast to the rabid personal attacks among the Republican candidates who can only agree that Obama is bad, Bernie or at least his people are casting it as he-good-she-evil.   The stakes do not seem quite so high now as they were, in retrospect, in Vietnam.  But Rubio, striving to capture right wingers, echoes Cruz’s call for indiscriminate bombing in the middle east, Syria and Libya, which would put us very deep in a quagmire that could eclipse even Vietnam in horror and loss.  Domestically, the Republicans are likely to reduce corporate and social responsibility, leading to more outrages like the selfish Shkreli and disasters like the poisoning of Flint.  We must help bend the arc of history toward truth, justice, and freedom.  

Hair he is... Mr. America?

Donald Trump has managed to blurt his way to the top of a hoard of candidates vying for the Republican nomination. I like the way he is willing to say what he thinks, including about his competitors. The problem is, he apparently doesn’t actually think very much or very clearly. No "Reagan Rules" for him (never speak ill of fellow Republicans, a rule Ronnie’s handlers never followed).

He inherited wealth, went broke, and was bailed out by his bankers but he struts around like a self-made man. When you owe the banks thousands or even millions, that’s your problem. But when you owe them even more, that’s their problem. He was their problem and they took care of him.

His contribution to America is building casinos, a fancy word for grim warehouses of hopeless obsessives throwing their money away. He has no style or taste yet he claims his name alone is worth $3B and maybe that’s true because America has plenty of vulgarians.

What does it tell you about a man’s ability to (literally) face facts when he so desperately tries to hide his baldness? His “do” is structural: a comb-over-under-around that swirls over his eyes. I say dump the chump.

Fifty Shades of Pale

The bestselling book "Fifty Shades of Grey" has now been followed with a blockbuster movie, at least in its opening weekend. Will voyeuristic soccer moms keep it up or was this a quick "girls night out" fling?

Full disclosure: I have not read 50SoG. I understand that it depicts adults agreeing to "play rough" in sex, using bondage, dominance/submission, and maybe even some pretend or mild sadism/masochism. The keywords here are "adults” and “agreeing" (note that only adults can agree; children need their guardian to agree, legally). Compare this to scandalous dramas in the past, such as "Lolita", brilliant book and movie by geniuses Nabokov and Kubrick, where a young schoolgirl is the object of an old professor's lust. That his lust is inappropriate is integral to the story. (That she proves more, ahem, experienced than him...is twisted for sure.) Or the movie "Manhattan", where a middle aged nebbish Woody Allen's girlfriend is 17 years old. (That she proves more mature than him does not mitigate the fact that the obtuseness of the "relationship" is never even hinted at). The blockbuster movie “Pretty Woman”, where an improbably beautiful and delicate prostitute is cast as Cinderella, swept off her feet and away from her hovel by a Wall Street buccaneer, is disturbing but at least it depicts adults (behaving badly).

50SoG is not beyond the Pale.

4th World Cup Star for Germany (Don't Cry for Argentina)

Many of us Americans watched the 2014 World Cup in Brazil with fascination, and a little hope that maybe the US would break out of their "Group of Death" and into the "win or go home" knockout round.  Miraculously, and due largely to tremendous play by the Americans, probably also an injured superstar on Portuguese' team, and a little luck, the US did advance, only to be promptly sent home in the next game. 

So, are we improving?  Do we have reason to hope for future success?

Let's look at the German National Football League System.  And mind you, there is a synergy between "German" and "system".  We in the US have a few National Soccer League teams and a few college teams and local teams.  They in Germany have 2,344 divisions with 33,633 teams, all bound together through rules dictating relegation and promotion.   I like the relegation and promotion system, which professional teams in the US could learn from, but even baseball is not so organized in the US.  American football has no official "farm teams" (aside from the college SEC) and nothing even approaching this level of organization.

So the answer is: NO.  No other country in the world ever has any chance and it is only by a miracle that any team has ever, or will ever, beat the Germans.  Nobody else could ever care so much and spend so much time and energy to develop their team so, so...systematically.  The future of the World Cup is all black... and gold, and red.     

Statistically Signficant "Stuff" Happens

The modern version of perfection is "5 nines", or 99.999% reliability.  This is another way of saying 0.001% failure, or 1 failure in 100,000, and 10 in a million.  Pretty good if you're making a thousand or ten thousand of anything, in which case you will probably never have a failure attributable to your product.  But if you make millions of cars, you will have dozens of failures. 

General Motors sold cars with defective ignition switches that led to the deaths of many people.  General Motors sold a lot of cars with many defective components that led the deaths of a lot other people.  Every car company sold many cars with many defective parts that led to the deaths of many people.  The difference is that GM is very big and uses so many common components among its numerous car "platforms" that their mistakes reach the level of statistical confidence. 

If big and a small manufactures make mistakes that kill people at the same rate, they will also make their families unhappy at the same rate.  But the big numbers will make the lawyers happy.   Statisticians will probably be sanguine.

Memorable Days

We honor on Memorial Day the people who sacrificed to protect our freedom.  That's the standard construction.  Rightly so.  But those who object to war also serve and sacrifice, often even more.

I remember getting my draft card in 1974, in the closing years of the Vietnam conflict (war).  Although it was #50 or so (out of 365), reflecting below-average luck, I knew that the true odds of ending up humping through the bush and risking death, even if I were "called up", were actually pretty low.

Does anyone know anything when they are 18 years old?  I operated mostly on suspicions and hunches.  But I can tell you honestly, it would have been far harder to object than to go along with what I thought was a "bad" war (now I doubt there ever was a "good" war).  Enlisting would have required much less courage than resisting what I knew, or suspected, in my gut, even then, was wrong, wrong, wrong. 

You get what you pay for

The US spends about $700 billion annually on its military.  That is about $2,000 per American man, woman and child.  That is more than all our allies and most of our potential enemies put together.  What do we get for that?

This cost would be worth every penny if it helped us avoid World War III, because even in strictly simple economic terms war is far more expensive.  And during the half-century following WWII, keeping the military big and sharp almost certainly helped keep the cold war from heating up.  But now we should ask whether it is still worth the cost, and is the cost sustainable?  

Europe and Japan were in rubble after WWII.  They cleaned up and caught up in the subsequent few decades.  Now, an American visiting these countries must honestly marvel at their advanced state: stable politics, excellent culture, livable cities, wonderful infrastructure, inclusive and affordable education, universal health care, etc.  In a market economy, one nation cannot spend substantially more than the others on something that does not bring it any advantage.

In the community of nations, in the global neighborhood, are we the nutty family driving up-armor Hummers, buying assault rifles, and wondering how we can afford braces for the kids, or save for their college, or plan our retirement?