He grew up to be president of the United States, but we know him as Gerald R. Ford, Jr.  Mr. Ford’s mother left his father (who was said to be abusive) 16 days after little Leslie’s birth.  Two years later, she married Gerald Ford, Sr. and though the future president was never formally adopted, he changed his name to reflect the shift in family.

I got to thinking about this when I saw a reference to Newton MacPherson, now known as Newt Gingrich.  Mr. Gingrich’s mother wed at 16 just long enough to get pregnant, left her husband and married Robert Gingrich, who adopted Newt, a few years later.

Mr. Gingrich is trying to usher Barack Obama into unemployment.  Mr. Obama, we all know, grew up a black kid in a white family, his African father leaving shortly after Mr. Obama’s birth.  His name, including the middle name Hussain, stayed the same, but he later wrote of the pain and dislocation caused by the absence of Barack senior.

What is it about men abandoned by their fathers being driven to seek higher office?  (Mr. Ford, it should be noted, was never elected to the presidency or vice presidency, but the drive was clearly there.)  Maybe I’m overstating the case.  Mr. Gingrich has not been elected president (nor is he likely to be), but his drive too, is obvious.  The statistical universe is limited to 44, Messrs. Ford and Obama are but two.

Still, Mr. Obama governs in the political shadow of Bill Clinton, born William Blythe III.  Unlike the other birth fathers, William Blyhte, Jr. died in an automobile accident.  Mr. Clinton’s stepfather – Roger Clinton – was an abusive alcoholic.  That father figure is similar to what we know of Jack Reagan, who battled the bottle, had trouble keeping a job and was sire to Ronald Reagan, whose political shadow looms over Mr. Gingrich (and every other American Republican).

So that’s four of 44 and starting to look statistically significant.  Who else in recent memory?  John Kennedy’s father has been compared, with justice, to some of the more gruesome characters from Greek mythology; Richard Nixon’s father was said to be tyrannical skinflint who drove his sons hard.  That’s six for forty-four.  I have no idea what it was like coming up for Millard Fillmore and Rutherford B. Hayes.

They say people get the government they deserve and that government is a reflection of our nation’s psyche at any given moment.  So what does it say about us that so many of the men who are so driven to be the nation’s father figure have fraught histories with fathers – or father figures – of their own?

Clearly, it’s not about politics, since the ideological range runs from Ronald Reagan to Newt (MacPherson) Gingrich to Gerald (King) Ford to Bill (Blythe) Clinton to Barack Obama.  The gamut also runs from Mr. Reagan, who failed to recognize his own children (long before the Alzheimer’s set in) to doting family men like Messrs. Ford and Obama.

I remember reading that one factor bringing together our founding fathers (no pun intended) was that colonial America offered few outlets for people of exceptional ability.  Academia and commerce were embryonic; the military was a vestige of an empire whose locus was elsewhere.  Even the opportunities offered by colonial government were limited, but the concentration of talent in that one realm likely had as much to do with the birth of the nation as any of Britain’s foolish blunders.

Two hundred and thirty-five years on, we seem to be a nation led by men with something to prove to absent fathers.  A sobering thought as we head into the primaries.

© Mark Floegel, 2011

Just like global warming, we’re getting used to this crap and we don’t even notice it.  It’s the effect of the 24 hour news networks, blogs (yeah, this one too) and twitter.  The entertainment business has taken over America, including our body politic.

The platforms of Republicans, either in office or just wanting, are so detached from reality that we may as well spend our time wondering whether and who Mr. Cain hit on 15 years ago as pay attention to his 9-9-9 tax plan or hear him mocking the names of Central Asian nations.

So here’s my prediction: Obama wins re-election by less than ten points, probably less than five.  Hold me to this.

Here’s why:

1 – The Republican field is now closed.  The early primaries (10 January in New Hampshire) are now too close for a new candidate to enter the race, both in terms of filing deadlines and fundraising, assembling a staff, introducing one’s self to the public, etc. etc.  One of the nine candidates now in the race (can you name them all?*) will be the nominee.

2 – The nominee will be Mitt Romney.  Strange, but true.  The only other candidate who might have had a chance was Rick Perry, but he’s made every mistake in the book and added a chapter of his own.  This man never lost an election until now.  Sad comment on the state of Texas citizenry.

(The Iowa Electronic Markets, which allow people to mix politics and gambling, have Mr. Romney running away from the pack in both Iowa and the national GOP vote.  These markets have been fairly accurate in past elections.)

3 – The stay-at-home voter.  Second prediction: low-turnout in 2012.  Mr. Obama has disappointed many sections of his base.  They’ll stay home.  Many Republicans have had a three-year itch to vote against Mr. Obama, but come 6 November, they’ll have to put up storm windows or take a nap or just somehow never get around to going to the polls because Mr. Romney would not be the candidate if “none of the above” was a viable selection.

(The folks in Iowa have also established two markets for the general election: vote share and winner-take-all.  The Republicans are slightly ahead in the first, Democrats slightly ahead in the second.  A combination of the two jives with my Obama-by-a-nose prediction, but I’m not going by the markets, I’m going by the seat of my pants, as ever.)

I’m one of those people unhappy with Mr. Obama, the only successful presidential candidate I ever voted for.  I will not stay home next year, but I may cast my vote for an obscure third-partier, as I did in ’92 and ’96.  (I did not want Bill Clinton on my conscience.)

I have that luxury.  Mr. Obama will win Vermont’s three electoral votes and the networks will call that result by 7 p.m. Election Night.  No Republican will come here to campaign in the primary or general.  Mr. Obama will not campaign here.  No presidential candidate has visited Vermont since John McCain showed up in early 2000. (Another reason to live in Vermont!)

I went to see Mr. McCain.  He put on a good show, but in retrospect, what was then vaudeville is now Vegas.

© Mark Floegel, 2011

* Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Gary Johnson (yes, he’s the one you missed), Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum

The gist of the story is that when it comes to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, the White House is pinched.  On one side are environmentalists, whose support helped Barack Obama win the presidency in 2008 but are sure the pipeline will be a blow to efforts to stop runaway global warming.  Bill McKibben arranged for several hundreds of people to be arrested in front of the White House, an embarrassment to the liberal posers inside.

Lining up on the other team are several corporations, unions and the friendly nation of Canada, all of whom stand to make money from the sale of Alberta’s tar sands-derived oil into the US market.  The operative word in that last sentence – in case you missed it – is money, the currency of Washington.

Each side has its list of reasons why the pipeline should/should not be built, all of which are worth mockery/discussion, but when one reads the WaPo, one wants to keep an eye on the politics.

The politics are typical for DC.  For example, it turns out that Paul Elliott, chief lobbyist for would-be pipeline builder TransCanada, was a ranking staffer on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and when Friends of the Earth FOIAed emails between him and State Department aides, the aides were cheerleading for TransCanada.

Not to worry, State had arranged for an environmental review of the pipeline be an outside third party – which happens to be a major TransCanada contractor.  This review found “no significant environmental impact” from the pipeline (except contamination of the largest freshwater aquifer in North America and the heat death of human civilization, but not until after the corporations have been paid, so it’s OK).

In her defense, Secretary of State Clinton told the Post the whole thing had been “delegated to a deputy.”  Well done, Madam Secretary.  Ranks right up there with George H. W. Bush’s weak “I was out of the loop” on Iran-Contra and Al Gore’s “I was in the bathroom,” when illegal campaign fundraising was discussed.

So the greens have truth and justice on their side.  BFD.  The corporations have money, pots of it and an election is coming up.  (“Nice little administration ya got here, Barry.  Be a shame if somethin’ happened to it.”)

Chief of Staff Bill Daley weighed in, saying the White House would stay out of the final decision unless another agency objected to the State Department’s final determination. (“State’s gonna cook the books on this environmental thing and the rest o’ youse is gonna keep yer mouths shut.  Got that?  I’m lookin’ at you, EPA.”)  Thuggish behavior, originating at the Chamber of Commerce, rolls downhill.

“Both publicly and privately, however,” the Post reads, “Obama administration officials have told environmentalists they are better off with the president in office than without him.”  Having completed its downhill roll, the thuggish behavior now lands on the environmental community with a splat.

The problem with liberal Democrats is the gap between what they say they are: defenders of justice and equality – and what they really are: servants of the corporate state.

Bottom line?  One of two things and probably both.  One: Bill McKibben and friends have scared the pants off the above-mentioned posers in the White House, so the posers allow unusually blunt quotes to be printed in the WaPo, hoping to scare him off or at least scare him into silence.  Two: in the end, the environmentalists will lose and the corporations will win.

Six months ago, I would have found this depressing, but I think I’m beginning to see the revolution at the end of the tunnel.

© Mark Floegel, 2011

I’m typing this from a place freshly ravaged by Tropical Storm Irene.  “Tropical” and “Vermont” don’t belong in the same sentence, but there they are.  Helicopters buzz overhead as they leave to drop supplies in stranded communities.  This is the second hundred-year flood we’ve had this in the last four months and yet it is not these events so recently past that prompt my dire prediction.  It’s what two events of the past week bode for the future.

Friday, the State Department ruled that the 1,700 mile long Keystone XL pipeline – which, if allowed to proceed, will carry tar sands crude to refineries in Texas – will have minor environmental impact.  Experts disagree.  James Hansen, the NASA scientist and leading expert in global warming says that should the pipeline be built, there will be no way to reverse catastrophic global warming.  One would think that’s a significant environmental impact, but the oil companies want it and what the oil companies want….

If you haven’t already learned about the tar sands, extracting oil from them requires massive abuse of forests, clean water and energy, so the tar sands as a whole is a global warming machine gone berserk.  If oil is an addiction, the tar sands are the dirty needle we heedlessly plunge into our arm.

Thousands of people – citizens – have protested in front of the White House, hundreds have been arrested.  Barack Obama likely believes environmentalists have no choice but to vote for him next year, thus revealing himself to be another calculating politician, who’d rather retire in glory as a two-term president than actually accomplish anything of value in either of his terms of office.  In the addiction analogy, he’s the clueless enabler.

Yesterday, ExxonMobil and Russia – two of the planet’s evil entities – announced an agreement that will open the Russia arctic to oil exploration by Exxon.  Exxon – with help from us – has already gone a long way toward “opening” the arctic.  Global warming has meant the retreat of polar sea ice to the point that the Ruxxons can drill for more oil, to melt more ice, drill for more oil, etc., etc.

Exxon maneuvers at its peril, as Russia is famous for shafting its partners after it’s gotten what it wants.  Maybe Rex Tillerson will end up in a cell next to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former oligarch and oil billionaire.  Might be a pleasant meditation for a holiday weekend.

Researching something else last night, I came across an article describing the dumping of nuclear waste and over a dozen vessel-sized reactors in the western Kara Sea – where Exxon just won the right to explore.  The currents in the Kara carry water from west to east; that is, from the radioactive taint all across the rest of the local ocean.  Can’t beat those Soviet smarts.

If the tar sands are the dirty needle of oil addiction, then Tillerson and Vlad Putin are the thuggish pushers who will take our money, beat us senseless and leave us for dead.

Cold turkey is starting to look good.

© Mark Floegel, 2011

Democrats are said to be happy with the antics of the former half-term governor of Alaska. The hype around Ms. Palin chokes off oxygen for serious candidates, governors who finished their terms (Jon Hunstman, Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney). Ms. Palin and fellow freak-show candidates Newt Gringrich and Michele Bachmann aid the Dems’ cause in the next year or so, tear their fellow Republicans to bits in nasty primaries, then drop out and go to work (or back to work) for Fox News. The more outlandish the campaign, the bigger the Fox contract – isn’t that the way it works?

Why would Fox News chief Roger Ailes do this? Richard Nixon’s tee vee producer came to Fox 15 years ago and built it into the propaganda wing of the Republican Party. Shouldn’t he realize that by financially rewarding greater extremes of Republican buffoonery, he merely creates a market for it and eventually even dim voters begin to realize the GOP is not making an effort to address people’s real concerns?

Or does he? I’m not suggesting a conspiracy, but things seem to be working out well for the interests Mr. Ailes represents.

Unless this is your first visit to this space, you’re not surprised to learn I’ve been disappointed by Barack Obama. He campaigned to the left in 2008 and has governed to the right since 2009. Of course, his apologists say, what else can he do, given the all-out efforts by Republicans in Congress to subvert and sabotage his agenda?

Here’s how it seems to be working out: Fox News drives the Republican Party further and further to the right, creating a vacuum on the center-right that the majority of Democrats seem only too happy to fill. Why not? There are plenty of votes on the center-right, the people who used to be mainstream Republicans mined them for years. More important, shifting to the right ensures Democrats that they will qualify for generous campaign contributions from corporate America – the same life-sustaining political cash the federal courts seem determined to loose in unimpounded torrents.

In last weeks Washington Post, Harold Meyerson notes that unions are no longer offering across-the-board support to Democrats, given that across-the-board support for unions is now a relic of the Democrats’ distant past. (He also notes the unions’ are preparing for their own demise.)

We’re 17 months away from the next presidential election and pundits say no Republican candidate is likely to beat Mr. Obama. Many of Mr. Obama’s 2008 supporters are as uninspired, but whom else can they vote for (if they vote at all)?

This morning’s New York Times says no president since Franklin Roosevelt has won re-election when the unemployment rate is higher than 7.2 percent (right now, it’s nine percent). Interesting statistic, but I think it misses the point. No politician from anywhere on the spectrum has seriously addressed unemployment and our unemployment crisis is almost three years old. Clearly, they know it doesn’t matter; it only affects the little people.

Again, I don’t think this is a conspiracy, but just as natural evolution eventually produces complex organisms, so political evolution, driven by the concentrated pools of cash, leads to certain inevitable ends. In this case it’s a two-party government that acts as contractor for the corporate state.

© Mark Floegel, 2011

According to active and retired officials from both nations, if the US got a shot at bin Laden, they were authorized to make a unilateral strike inside Pakistani territory. The Pakistanis, in return, would scream and holler about it for the consumption of the Pakistani public, but really they had no problems with it. The pact was renewed in 2008, when Pakistan transitioned to a civilian-led government.

It’s interesting, because it describes exactly what happened when the US figured out where bin Laden was hiding. We took him out and Pakistan screamed and hollered. The US press, which has not picked up on the Guardian piece, has spilled several barrels of ink describing the myriad ins and outs of US-Pakistani relations and how the bin Laden raid may or may not affect them. How about this for a headline: “Bin Laden Furor: It’s All Theater”?

We know that. (By “we,” I mean you, the people who continue to read these depressing commentaries and me.) We’re jaded. We expect our government’s activities – foreign policy especially – to be theater.

This particular play has several acts. Remember how then-candidate Hillary Clinton frothed at the mouth when then-rival-candidate Barack Obama said in a debate that he would order a unilateral strike inside Pakistan if he was president and learned bin Laden was there?

Is it possible Sen. Obama heard about the US-Pakistan deal in a classified briefing and decided it would be a bold stroke to “call his shot” in a televised debate? Make him look decisive and commander-in-chief-like? Is it possible Sen. Clinton (and later, Sen. John McCain) spewed froth from their lips not because Mr. Obama was reckless, but because they hadn’t thought of the gambit first?

(Sen. Clinton: “I’ll show him. I’ll use his own tactic against him. I’ll make a commercial about answering the White House phone at 3 a.m. That’ll get him.”)

(Sen. McCain: “I’ll show him. I’ll whine about it in a sing-song voice to remind everyone I’m like their cranky grandfather.”)

Aside from the Pakistanis’ lines, we’ve had the political spectrum from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to former Secretary of State Condi Rice trash-talking the Pakistanis for not knowing Osama was camped out a quarter mile from an elite military academy. (Not sure the philosophical distance between Ms. Feinstein and Ms. Rice constitutes a “spectrum” but willing suspension of disbelief is required from theatergoers.)

Amid all the threats and imprecations, I have been waiting for someone (anyone!) in the US government to make the one obvious statement to the Pakistanis: “We found Osama bin Laden sitting in your front parlor. That makes you look bad. There are still high-level Al Quaeda leaders at large. If we find them in Pakistan, we’ll take them out and you will look bad again. If you find them in Pakistan and take them out, you’ll look good. So, find them and take them out. Look good.”

Is that hard? Or obscure? Or elusive to common sense?

Maybe it’s just not in the script.

© Mark Floegel, 2011

One of the authors is John Yoo, who famously wrote memos authorizing torture for the Bush administration. So, on one hand, Mr. Yoo thinks a president should not have authority to investigate if there’s even the appearance of a quid pro quo in federal contracting. On the other, in 2005, Mr. Yoo said the president should have the authority to crush a child’s testicles in front of the child’s father as a means of torturing the father to gain information.

I have a rule about never engaging in personal invective in this space. John Yoo has always been the toughest test of that rule. He does, however, illustrate the guiding principle of the Republican Party: We want what we want and we don’t care how we get it.

Consider the “deficit reduction” plan House Republicans recently passed. It would abolish Medicare over a ten-year period, give wealthiest Americans more tax cuts and increase the deficit. It doesn’t make sense, but sense is beside the point. It’s not designed to make sense; it’s designed to give the Republicans what they want – more power for the rich and corporate.

Look at the two parties’ positions on almost any issue. Democrats spend their time trying to find the right answer, a win-win or at least something fair, the greatest good for the greatest number. (Inasmuch as their own corporate masters let them. I mean, I haven’t started eating lotus blossoms.)

Trivial matters of logic or intellectual consistency do not bind Republicans. That’s why they scream about the deficit, but were silent in 2005 when Dick Cheney said, “Deficits don’t matter.” That’s why their “deficit reduction” is built on tax breaks for people who don’t need them cutting health care for old people. (Had I mentioned that already? It bears repeating.)

This is why Republicans run around calling themselves “fiscally responsible” while perpetrating scams on the public, why they say they’re “restoring honor to the Oval Office” while setting up secret prisons and torture chambers (not to mention sex-club fundraisers). They say whatever’s needed to get a short-term win. They believe if they string together enough short-term wins, it’s a long-term win. They may be right.

Karl Rove laid it out for journalist Ron Suskind in 2004: “The aide [Rove] said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ … ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’”

This is why Fox News and the rest of the Murdoch media empire exist, to prop up and repeat these fantasies at great volume. They know well-informed, discerning citizen Thomas Jefferson imagined and Ralph Nader dreams of doesn’t exist anymore, if such a creature ever did.

They know people vote for the guy they’d rather have a beer with (George W. Bush) than the guy who’s more likely to have the right answer (Al Gore). Based on the collective seats of our pants, we decide beforehand whom we agree with and then never stop to listen to the facts.

It’s fun to watch Jon Stewart put up clips of politicians and Fox hosts contradicting themselves, sometimes with a span of mere seconds. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking, “Boy! If the New York Times and the Washington Post and the networks would just hold politicians as accountable as Jon Stewart does! Then we’d be getting someplace!”

Maybe we would. Even in the unlikely universe where an epidemic of truth telling seizes the American media, it would only be a start, a first step. Things are bad. They will not get better unless and until enough people decide to make them better. For the time being, can we at least stop pretending?

© Mark Floegel, 2011

As I wrote last week, the Obama administration can’t seem to get its head out of the desert sand and make a decision about Egypt. Or make a good decision. We did send Frank Wisner over, but he’s passing out the predictable bad advice: hunker down, back newly-appointed Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman, wait until September for elections, so the civil society Hosni Mubarak suppressed for ten thousand and one Arabian nights can actually form political parties other than the Muslim Brotherhood.

How is it possible that these boneheads rise to the top of the American policy establishment? I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised; half the politicians in Washington say they don’t believe in evolution or global warming. Our capacity for wooden-headed ignorance of the obvious is astounding.

Here’s the obvious truth about Egypt:

1) Hosni Mubarak is done. (Okay, that’s real obvious, even the papers have tumbled to that.)

2) Omar Suleiman is not an acceptable replacement. (This is one the POTUS still hasn’t figured out). Mr. Suleiman represents the same repressive regime as Mr. Mubarak did. The Egyptian people will not stand for him as president, not even until September, because

3) The police state is broken. For the last three decades, Mr. Mubarak’s goon squads have jailed legitimate political opposition, fanned the flames of Islamic fundamentalism and kept the average Egyptian silent and off the streets. That’s over, because

4) The people have had enough. Inspired by the revolution in Tunisia, they took control of the streets and fought the police. Mr. Mubarak pulled the police out and sent the army in. The Egyptian Army, an institution professional and democratic in ways the police never were, refused to interfere with the protests. That means

5) Attempting to send the police back in now, whether by Mr. Mubarak or Mr. Suleiman, will lead to battles and bloodshed. If the army is forced to intervene, it will not be on behalf of the police.

6) The people know this. The biggest obstacle to revolution is always the one in the minds of the people. Once they know they can win (and the Egyptian people know it), the rest is a foregone conclusion.

So what’s going to happen? My prediction (boldly going where no White House has gone before): Mr. Mubarak will pop up in Saudi Arabia or Switzerland. Mr. Suleiman, with assurances from the US and Europe, will declare himself president and call for September elections. He may or may not declare an intent to run in these elections.

It will not be enough. The protests and strikes will continue, the Egyptian economy will remain stalled; Mr. Suleiman will find himself on the horns of the police/army dilemma outlined above.

Things will careen toward crisis and in days or weeks; the army will reluctantly step in and tell Mr. Suleiman to join Mr. Mubarak. A transitional government, with a big role for Mohamed El Baradei, will be formed and it’s on to the September elections.

I’ll admit, this is half prediction, half hope. This is what will happen if things go well. There are a number of other ways this scenario could play out entailing less democracy and more bloodshed.

I hope my first prediction is right.

© Mark Floegel, 2011

Anwar Sadat was dead, assassinated by Islamic fundamentalists in the Egyptian Army. His vice president, a man I’d never heard of named Hosni Mubarak, was Egypt’s new president.

That was long ago and Mr. Mubarak is still around. In one sense, that’s none of my business. I’m not an Egyptian, although it’s clear Egyptians haven’t wanted Mr. Mubarak around for a long time. So why is he still there?

For one thing, he rules in a part of the world where democracy is lightly regarded. Strong men take power and hold it as long as they can. A large part of Mr. Mubarak’s power-holding, however, has relied on the support of the United States, under the last five presidential administrations.

The US gives Egypt around $2 billion in annually, in large part because Mr. Sadat signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1978, in part because Mr. Mubarak has continued Egypt’s role of peaceful trading partner with Israel and bastion of Middle East peace, even though that’s been one reason for his domestic unpopularity.

It’s only one reason; the rest are pretty run-of-the-mill. Corruption, lack of democracy, growing economic inequality – I can’t say it all makes sense in the strictly logical meaning of the word, but it’s usual, we’ve seen it before and we’ve come to accept it.

What’s puzzling to me is that we have an 82-year-old dictator with cancer, who until last week had never named a vice president because he wanted to keep his flunkies competing against each other, then suddenly there’s revolution in the streets and the US government is paralyzed into mute inaction.

Why? Did we think a cancer-stricken octogenarian was just going to go on forever? I mean, there’s Fidel, but he’s sui generis.

So if Mr. Mubarak was not expected to live forever and clearly was reluctant to name a successor, why we did not use our leverage while we could to nudge him a bit. “Hey, Hosni, maybe would should, y’know, feed your people. Forget about naming your son as successor. You’re not a pharaoh. Lighten up a bit on the corruption by your police forces and political elite. It might save you – and us – a world of headaches with the Islamic fundamentalists.”

If not that, why not make friends with a legitimate Egyptian democrat, so when Mr. Mubarak’s tawdry reign comes to an end, we can have an ally ready to build a more benevolent nation, rather than fight a rearguard action against the Muslim Brotherhood.

Omar Suleiman, who was named vice president last week, has been accused by at least one DC journalist of wrecking the chances of a Palestinian unity government at Washington’s behest.

So meet the new boss, same as the old boss and unacceptable to the crowds in Tahrir Square, but not in Foggy Bottom. But not to worry, the State Department is sending Frank Wisner, veteran of AIG and Enron and noted second-generation spook (his dad took out Iranian democrat Mohammed Mossadegh in ’53). That’ll make everyone happy, no doubt.

This is not all Barack Obama’s fault – he was on also on a college campus when Mr. Sadat was killed, but he’s the guy who sent Mr. Wisner and who waited until Tuesday evening to say – tepidly – that it’s time for Mr. Mubarak to move along. Since then, nothing. This is the lesson of history the government of the United States – whether run by Democrats or Republicans – has failed to learn. The colonial era is over. We don’t call the shots anymore. We can’t just wave wands or CIAs and make the world the way we want it. (We never could, really.) That doesn’t mean things can’t work out to our advantage, but we can’t get there by force and subversion. We have to think ahead, consider tomorrow’s consequences of today’s actions – or inactions. We have to be open and honest and try – for once, please – to live up to the ideals of our founding documents.

© Mark Floegel, 2011

It’s an old Vermont weather proverb and reads like one, too. I can see the crusty old dude by the potbellied stove with the gumboots and plaid mackinaw draped over the back of his chair.

Alert readers will remember I referred to the proverb a year ago this week, writing how the cold ain’t so strong as it used to be. (Forgive the use of “ain’t,” but I’m in Vermont geezer mode now.) As I wrote last year, the season for below zero temperatures in Vermont runs roughly from New Year’s Eve through Valentine’s Day. So far, not only are we not below zero on the Fahrenheit scale, we’re not achieving it often on the Celsius scale (32 degrees F for those stuck in the ‘70s). It snowed for Christmas, then it melted, then it snowed again and now it’s melting again.

I’m eccentric; I know that, but just as I feel I haven’t had my summer without a few scorching days and sleepless, humid nights (no problem there the last few years), so I also don’t feel I’ve had a winter absent a week or so of bone-numbing cold. Also good for keeping down the population of northward-migrating insects.

Same week, different number. Wednesday, President Obama was quoted by the New York Times saying departing spokesman Robert Gibbs has served long hours for “relatively modest pay.” I think the key word here is “relatively.” Mr. Gibbs makes $172,000 a year. The census bureau says median household income for the District of Columbia (what a coincidence!) is right in the middle of the American scale. That number is $53,685 per year, which means Mr. Gibbs has three households?

I think the president means “relatively” in the sense of Einsteinian relativity, in which he, Mr. Gibbs and the rest of the west wing staff are sucked through a black hole and land in Weimar Germany, where it takes 172,000 dollars (or Deutschmarks) to buy a loaf of bread. That must be it.

In another case of “don’t hear what I say, hear what I mean,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) says when he called Mr. Obama “corrupt” he didn’t mean, like… y’know… “dishonest.” He meant “corrupt” like a computer drive that won’t boot up properly. How could anyone misunderstand that?

Back to numbers. This morning, Mr. Issa’s fellow Congressional reps are reading the US Constitution on the floor of the House, as a tribute to their tea party supporters. Or at least the “amended” version, that leaves out language counting African Americans as three-fifths of a human being or that women couldn’t vote or that we once prohibited the consumption of booze.

Finally, I’m sure you’ve heard a new edition of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer (two books, one binding) replaces the “n-word” with “slave,” ostensibly because schools are passing the books by rather than let the kiddies see how we used to talk (or in the case of the Constitution, count).

Come back to the raft, Huck honey.

© Mark Floegel, 2011