Red State Republican monopoly nonsense Bad for Business

Brand Names to sit out G.O.P. Convention is a headline that brings up the notion that the Republican Party, the party of business, as presently constituted with over reaching rural power is bad for business! Governor Pat McCory of North Carolina endorses legislation passed by local busy bodies who have been thinking too long and hard about possible transgender encounters not likely to happen in their community but possibly could in an urban one, yet the urban community is not asking for relief.  Nathan Deal of Georgia, on the other hand, just vetoed a similar bill which passed for no other reason than rural Republicans full of their monopoly power possibilities thumbing their nose at urban Democrats just because it could. Governor Deal unlike his NC counterpart understand that business is a constituent of the party and that business has a hard enough time attracting customers to serve and resents busy bodies telling them how.

Republican's Drive to Win at all Costs Will Cost them the G.O.P.

According to Julia Azari, a professor of political science at Marquette University, a Trump victory would actually prove worse for the Republican Party in the long run than another Democratic presidency.

“Parties are not just labels, they’re not just ideas,” she said. “They’re institutions, and they’re institutions that do have people in them that have some sense of their longevity and also their integrity. Trump could run and lose, and the Republican Party could potentially move on from that. If he runs and wins, that’s really the nightmare scenario.”

Legislators should put drafts to a needs test

“We control all the constitutional offices, we control the legislature, and today, the governor has turned his back on millions and millions of people who have very real concerns about what their religious freedom looks like in the wake of a very fluid legal environment,” said State Senator Josh McKoon, a Republican.

Red states with their gerrymandered districts and restrictive voting laws lose touch with their constituent population to the point where law is made where law is not needed.  Legislators should put drafts to a needs test.  Yes you may have the power to pass a stupid law nobody wanted but would be embarrassed to vote against, but what good does it do?  Josh, stop being a busy body for the millions and millions when you represent the thousands and thousands, if that, and speak for one or two fanatics.

Obama proves American exceptionalism in Cuba

Obama proves American exceptionalism in Cuba. The comparison of Cuba's old and totally white regime in a population with well over half black people and our young president and family says it all.

Failure to Assign lead to State is Root Cause of Chaos Middle East

Pentagon Muscles Out State Department is the genesis of our failure in the Middle East. ISIS uses our preference for military solutions which inflame to further inflame the region and to feed its propaganda, recruiting and funding. It is President Obama's failure to assign the lead to the State Department and not the War Department that is the root of the chaos we see in the region. For the region we require diplomacy that values pacifying, such as pulling apart from the fight the Sunni Arabs and Shiite sects and suggesting they live separately versus inflaming with our blood and treasure to police civil war.

Antibodies to ISIS: Sunni Arab Settlements in Southeast Syria

The recent bombings in Belgium show that ISIS is very good at creating chaos and forcing the allies to react with the short term idea of wiping the swarm which incites even more chaos much like swatting at a hornet’s nest. What is not thought of by the allies is what takes the place of ISIS once a region is destroyed.  Until a long term development program of well functioning political unions is undertaken to counter political dysfunction will there be an answer.  Currently the best example is the home grown and self organized political union that is Iraq’s Kurdistan region.  Its pesh merga militia is a motivated force to make a homeland for the Kurdish people and its reconquering of Kobani in Syria is an example of how to defeat ISIS permanently.  But the Kurds are not an imperial force and can not be expected to conquer and dominate Sunni Arab regions.  In a manner much like agricultural hot houses, home grown self organized political unions must be cultivated and protected in peaceful enclaves and to make them moderate they must be prosperous.

It has been this blog’s continuous suggestion that settlements of Syrian refugees be funded and developed in Syria’s southeast border north of Jordan’s refugee camps and that these settlements be protected by Jordan’s army and allied air support.  That they be generously funded  with direct to citizen debit card payments system so that moderate self organized political unions develop by people with a free to choose goods and services market system.  Fund these settlements so generously that Syrians in Europe move back to a Shangri La in their homeland.  Not only will these prosperous settlements defuse the appeal of ISIS they give the region moderate political unions with which to occupy what the allies degrade and destroy.

Constitution loving GOP members have to scuttle the Party to Isolate the Cancer

Ross Douthat's "Profiles in Paralysis" shows the conundrum of party or ideology that Trump's success in GOP primaries represents. The party big tent policy includes conservatives of two ilks, Libertarian favoring less government and free markets versus an authoritarian one directing behaviour. It was an incompatible coalition patched together with false promises. Now the mob has grabbed the podium and loyal Constitution loving members have to consider scuttling the party to isolate the cancer so it withers without power.

It's Diplomatic Delusion that Considers Libya a Sovereign State

Libya is a region of tribes in an artificially drawn boundary held together with terror funded by oil money.  Currently there is a competition in Libya for a successor strongman with oil money as the prize. Rather than consider a recent Department of Defense proposal for airstrikes to contain the nascent formation of an ISIS, a laughably myopic example of a war department’s intent to use the only tool in its box, we should be to work with the U. N. to direct money paid by outside oil companies to go directly to the tribal leaders of the various regions of Libya. Make it for them to distribute this public good to their clansmen in their way and to bypass the purposely hollowed out and dysfunctional central government that Qaddafi left behind. It’s a plan that recognizes that the prize is oil money and that the ISIS cover is just a tool to recruit mercenaries to consolidate wealth and power.

Proud of Obama's Intelligent Steady Stewardship which will be sorely Missed

"Proud of Obama's Presidency, Blacks are sad to See him Go" is a reminder that despite his FDR big government philosophical orientation he is a President to be proud of. History is sure to look kindly on his administration for breaking the impossible color barrier and more importantly for an intelligent, steady stewardship of our country which will be sorely missed.  

Is Obama Practicing Realpolitik?

In a series of interviews with The Atlantic magazine published Thursday, Mr. Obama said a number of American allies in the Persian Gulf — as well as in Europe — were “free riders,” eager to drag the United States into grinding sectarian conflicts that sometimes had little to do with American interests.

Then in a State Dinner Guest list, deconstructed:

Mr. Obama’s favorite dinners are small gatherings of intellectuals, often held outside Washington, that last into the small hours over dry martinis and wine. He returns the favor with invitations to the White House.

Guests include: Deepak Chopra, author; Amy Gutmann, University of Pennsylvania; Robert Kagan, Brookings Institution; James Yong Kim, Dartmouth College; Henry Kissinger, Kissinger Associates; Jhumpa Lahiri, author; Bette Bao Lord, author; Joseph Nye, Harvard; Amartya Sen, Harvard; George Shultz, Hoover Institution; and Strobe Talbott, Brookings.

Libya Fragmenting Among Warlords Looking for Oil Riches. Airstrikes to fix it?

Pentagon Offers Plan to cripple ISIS in Libya with Airstrikes is the moronic War Department suggestion you would expect for dealing with an artificially drawn tribal nation now fragmenting among warlords looking for oil riches. The solution is not a military one. It's a political one where the individual tribes through their tribal leaders are funded with Libya's oil spigot directly and not through the nonexistent central government that Qaddafi spent a lifetime dismantling.

Loyal Opposition has to Take a Bullet for the Country

Republican are wringing their hands as Trump heads toward their party's nomination over the conundrum of where a win in the election would betray our Constitution, democracy and heritage. If he turns out to be the nominee then they have to take a bullet for the country.

The Allies' Fight Against ISIS Can't Just be the Swarm of Locust.

Boko Haram Faces a Crisis it Sowed makes clear that it is not ISIS. It lacks the political intelligence to organize even something as rudimentary as a master - slave system to feed their army, though the comparison is interesting because it shows that The Allies can't just be a swarm of locust. They have to replace with a functioning political unity those regions of Iraq and Syria where they displace Daesh.

Xi Jinping's Power over Hong Kong Threatens Golden Goose China should Emulate

Paul Krugman has this perfunctory way of dismissing the Nobel Laureate economist Milton Friedman and his monetary economic analysis when espousing exclusively  Keynesian solutions. China for example has pretty much followed the big government directed spending dictum prescribed by Keynes since the financial crisis of 2008 and yet now find itself in a recession where too much was invested in unwanted assets and a leadership that appears to be at its wits’ end as what to do about it.   They need an expertise to best allocate resources to provide the maximum public good.  It's the missing element in Keynes’ theory and it will take a catharsis for China’s authoritarian government to understand that their few experts don’t hold a candle to the swarm of individual players trading freely among themselves in a system with a rule of law that protects property rights. It already exists in Hong Kong but Xi Jinping's assertion of his power is strangling the golden goose that all of China should emulate.

Trump Voters telling Evangelical Leaders to Stay out of Politics

"What Wouldn't Jesus Do?" is a lament of Donald Trump's take over of the evangelical voters despite his less than Christian attributes of adultery, avarice and hate.  The Christian hierarchy politicized religious values and now sees The Anti-Christ grabbing their flock. It's a clarion call to go back and separate church and state as proscribed by our founding fathers so that church leaders get out of the political arena and concentrate their influence on their parish instead.