Month: March 2015

Because I have other obligations today and I’m pressed for time, I’m going to do something unusual. Instead of writing a post, I am going to give you the raw material I was going to use to write a post. The basic idea is that the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is opening an investigation into the Obama administration’s alleged meddling in the Israeli election. The State Department has apparently given grants to organizations that are actively working for Netanyahu’s defeat. The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is actually going to do the inquiry and the effort has bipartisan support. Now, they can investigate whatever they want, but it’s curious that the Senate would think there’s something out of order for the Executive Branch to intervene in democratic elections in friendly countries.

After all, the first covert operation ever carried out by the CIA was a successful effort to help the Christian Democrats defeats the socialists and communists in the 1948 Italian election. I was going to write about that effort, using the testimony of F. Mark Wyatt, a career CIA officer who played a major role in those Italian elections. You can read Wyatt’s obituary in the New York Times and Washington Post.

Of particular interest in the Wyatt interview are the segments dedicated to Secretary of State George Marshall’s role and opinion about the decision to send the CIA into Italy with millions of dollars in black bags, and how the CIA case officers managed to give away the money without being detected by the media.

So, the idea for the piece was to show what happened in Italy, use some more examples in less detail, and ask when it became naughty to take sides in foreign elections.

I should probably put all the rumors to rest and just tell you that Vladimir Putin is not dead. In fact, he’s currently cleaning my basement. I wouldn’t be telling you this, but I started to feel sorry for the Kremlin’s spokesman.

Asked to confirm that the president was in good health, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “Yes. We’ve already said this a hundred times. This isn’t funny any more.”

Poor Dmitry.

If only his boss would just hold up a newspaper with today’s date on it, he wouldn’t have to put up with all this satire.

Once Vlad gets done sorting out the broken children’s toys down there and dry vaccing the dusty corners, I’ll have him call y’all on Skype.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron has promised to hold a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU should the Tories win an overall majority at the next election due in May.  Never mind that his pledge was mainly to fend off the challenge of UKIP, and that he hopes to have negotiations with the EU in the meantime which might address some of the criticisms many Britons have of the EU. Opinion polls in the UK have been sharply divided on Brexit (with a trend favouring remaining in more recent polls), and any renegotiation of the UK’s terms of membership is likely to influence the outcome of the vote.

The fact is however – whether Murdock media inspired or not – that many Britons lack a sense of fellow feeling with their compatriots in EU. They view their security as being guaranteed in large part by the USA and look to the EU as little more than a free trade area with a lot of unwanted immigration and meddling bureaucrats which need to be cut down as much as possible. There appears to be a disconnect between the business elite – generally very much in favour of British membership – and the working and lower middle classes who are much more concerned with the impact of immigration on their job prospects and the social and cultural life of the UK – an impact they blame on the EU, even though net immigration very much predates membership of the EU.

The irony is that there are now more than a million Britons living in France and Spain whose residency status and health care could be severely impacted by Brexit. But many of these don’t have a vote, or won’t go to the trouble of voting. Some indeed, would vote for UKIP in any case.  The little Englander mentality runs deep even in some of those who have made their homes elsewhere.  Basically many in the UK want the benefits of being part of a large market without bearing any of the costs of social solidarity which the EU ideal mandates.

It is doubtful whether the implications for expatriates or neighbouring states like Ireland will have a huge bearing on any UK referendum debate. The implications for N. Ireland could be very serious indeed.  So much so that the Irish Department of the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) is setting up a specialist unit to consider and prepare for such a development – having stayed studiously neutral and silent on the Scottish independence debate. Follow me below the fold for an initial assessment of what the implications for N. Ireland and Ireland might be.
1. Northern Ireland.

The constitutional status of N. Ireland was last settled in the Good Friday Agreement which guaranteed equality of esteem for both the Irish nationalist and British Unionist traditions and agreed that the constitutional status of N. Ireland can only be changed by a referendum vote of the majority of the electorate in N. Ireland. That agreement has delivered over 15 years of peace in N. Ireland if one excludes a few riots and contentious marches in the meantime.

All military outposts and border checkpoints have been dismantled. You would hardly know you are moving from one jurisdiction to another when crossing the border and there is an increasing amount of trade, tourism and cultural exchange across that border. The Euro is widely accepted in N. Ireland and both economies are increasingly integrated. The importance of agriculture in N. Ireland means that the N. Ireland economy has more in common with the Republic of Ireland than it has with the rest of the UK. Partly because of the Common Agricultural Policy, you simply don’t get the animus against the EU that you get in England.

So what if the UK leaves the EU? Firstly, a lot depends on the terms of exit. Presumably both Ireland and the UK will remain outside the Schengen Area, so at least there will not be a return to passport controls on the border between Ireland, North and south.  Presumably the UK will also seek to retain free access to the single market as an EFTA member.  However what if the remaining EU members take the view that the UK should not be a beneficiary of the single market if it does not share in the costs of the complementary social cohesion goals of the EU?

It is one thing for the EU to give preferential treatment to relatively small EFTA economies like Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland, quite a different matter to do so for a major competitor economy like the UK.  Why should, for instance, Germany give the City of London the same access to financial markets as, say, Frankfurt, when the UK no longer carries the cost of EU membership?  It could be argued that the UK is no different from Switzerland in this regard, but there are close social and linguistic ties between Germany and Switzerland that are less evident with the UK.  

Even if no immediate trade barriers are erected, there is the risk of a divergence in regulations and tax rates as time goes on. Why should, for instance a Tobin tax be imposed on EU financial institutions if no similar cost is imposed on UK financial institutions?  It is for this reason that big business in the UK is almost unanimously opposed to Brexit – the fear of a loss of access to the Single Market, or at least a loss of influence over the rules by which that market is regulated. You may see the EU progressively adopting regulations that are less advantageous to the UK.

But for N. Ireland, the fear is much more immediate. A loss of access to EU CAP subsidies would put N. I. farmers and related industries at a severe disadvantage to their southern counterparts. The N. I. economy is still hugely dependent on fiscal transfers from Westminster and there is no fear of an immediate shift in N. I. politics toward a United Ireland.  But sectoral tensions will increase and there is a danger that the fragile consensus built up over the Good Friday Agreement will start to unravel with all the sectarian tensions this might entail, especially in deprived loyalist urban areas of Belfast and Derry.

A Brexit may also lead to renewed pressure for another referendum on Scottish independence with an independent Scotland likely to seek to rejoin the EU.  Given that N. Ireland Unionist’s historical and cultural ties are predominantly with Scotland rather than England, a move by Scotland to rejoin the EU would put them in the awkward position of being tied to England rather than Scotland and still outside the EU despite their close integration with the Irish economy and dependence on the CAP..

2. Ireland

The very fear that UK big business might lose access to the single market might also prompt many of them to move at least their European Headquarters into an EU jurisdiction. Given that Ireland has close historical, cultural and linguistic ties to England and a lot of experience in attracting US multinationals to locate their European Headquarters as well as considerable manufacturing and development facilities in Ireland, I have no doubt that the Irish Development Authority will be licking its licks at the prospect of attracting a lot of UK financial services and other businesses to locate at least part of their operations in Ireland.

However the UK remains Ireland’s largest trading partner accounting for 32% of Irish imports and 15% of Irish exports and any disruption of UK Irish trade would be very damaging to the Irish (and UK) economies.  You can be sure that the Irish Government will be very focused on retaining this trading relationship as part of any Brexit negotiation – by special opt-out if necessary. Given the relatively small size of the Irish economy, and a general recognition of Irish dependence on UK trade, it is not difficult to see the EU making some provision for Irish interests in that situation.  In particular, the Island of Ireland might be regarded as a single market, whatever divergences may emerge between the UK and EU elsewhere.

At a political level the dissipation of British Irish tensions in the wake of the Good Friday agreement as exemplified by the visit of Queen Elizabeth to Ireland in 2011 has resulted in Ireland and the UK becoming close negotiating partners within the EU.  The loss of a key ally will be keenly felt by the conservative dominated Irish Government who will feel the EU centre of gravity drifting eastward and becoming ever more dominated by Germany. It is conceivable that Irish sensitivities and concerns will become increasingly marginalized in an EU context.  In some ways this could be a positive in that Ireland is much less opposed to the social market and agricultural aspects of the EU.  But overall the Irish Government will feel the loss of a major negotiating partner very keenly indeed.

The bottom line is that the Irish Government – almost any Irish Government – will try to prevent a Brexit very vigorously – including siding with the UK in any negotiations over the future of the EU, and seeking to influence how the very large Irish diaspora in the UK will vote in any referendum. Almost 1 million people in the UK were born in Ireland and 6 million people (c. 10% of the population) have at least one Irish grandparent. They do not necessarily take their voting directions from the Irish government, but many will be sensitive to any risk of a deepening rift between Ireland and the UK.

However, aside from the danger of the peace settlement in N. I. unraveling somewhat, a Brexit may not necessarily have disastrous consequences for the Irish economy, depending on the terms of exit negotiated.   Indeed, I would venture to suggest it could have very much more serious consequences for the UK economy, especially if the EU decides not to cut the City of London any slack in the Single Market.  It could also be very damaging for the political cohesion of the UK as a whole, with English anti-EU sentiment out of step with much more complex and nuanced attitudes in Scotland and N. Ireland in particular.

But sin scéal eile (that’s another story) as we say in Ireland.

Until Nancy LeTourneau itemized the Republicans’ errors since the 2014 midterms, I only had a vague sense of how extensive and comically inept their record has been.

*Completely bungle their own attempt to tie funding for the Department of Homeland Security to repeal of President Obama’s executive orders on immigration.
*Politicize the response to negotiations with Iran by not informing President Obama of the invitation to PM Netanyahu to address Congress.
*Fail to over-ride President Obama’s veto of their bill to approve the Keystone Pipeline.
*Send only token support to the 50th Anniversary commemoration in Selma, AL.
*Sign a letter to the leaders of Iran that basically undermines the President’s negotiations.

It’s like the GOP won the midterms and thought they were James Dean for a day.

Then I guess they had to crash.

I do enjoy it when our enemies forget about us for a half-hour or so and dedicate themselves to attacking each other.

Radio host Glenn Beck announced recently that he would quit the National Rifle Association completely if they re-elected Grover Norquist, whom he accused of being sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, to its board. And during his radio show today, Beck announced that because of his comments, the NRA was now investigating Norquist’s alleged secret Muslim-ness.

For years, Beck has accused Norquist of being associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, citing his past ties with Islamic-American groups such as CAIR, his prior attempts to build a coalition between conservative Muslim groups and the Bush Administration, and the fact that his wife is a Palestinian Muslim. Norquist also happens to sit on the board of the NRA, as a prominent and powerful Conservative should do.

These Muslims sure are a suspect crew.

Paranoia is a hell of a drug.

When I started watching HBO’s The Jinx, I never expected it to make such compelling television. I certainly didn’t expect the program to do what multiple police departments had failed to do, which is to prove that Robert Durst is guilty of committing one of the two murders he is suspected in but hasn’t admitted to committing. Of course, Durst has been acquitted of killing a man in Galveston, Texas, despite the fact that he chopped up his body, put the pieces in garbage bags, and threw them in the bay.

If there is one main factor that makes The Jinx so interesting, it’s the enthusiastic participation of Durst in the production. In fact, the show was basically his idea. He sits for multiple interviews. He goes on location shoots. He discusses the details of all three murder investigations, as well as his legal defenses, his childhood, and the figures in his incredibly powerful family. And, yet, he probably never suspected that he would enable the show’s sleuths to find evidence that compellingly ties him to the death of Susan Berman. But that’s what happened, as was shown in last Sunday’s episode.

I’m not going to recount all the details here. The short version is that shortly after Berman was killed, the Beverly Hills police received a letter in the mail that was written in block letters and said that there was a “cadaver” at Berman’s address. The only real clue in the letter was in the spelling: “Beverly” was spelled “Beverley.”

That clue remained dormant, however, until recently:

Then, in last Sunday’s penultimate installment, Berman’s adopted son Sareb Kaufman found a long-forgotten letter from Durst to Berman with the address written in block capitals, just like the cadaver note, and the Beverly in Beverly Hills misspelled in exactly the same way, with an extra “e”.

It appears that no one from the program told the police (or Durst) that this letter had been found prior to the show airing on Sunday. But the evidence is so damning that the Los Angeles District Attorney immediately announced that they are reopening the investigation.

I have no idea how Robert Durst will explain that he sent the cadaver note or if this piece of evidence alone will be enough to convict him. If you’re familiar with the case, however, there really isn’t much doubt.

What I don’t understand is how a man can attend UCLA for any period of time, as Durst did as a graduate student, and not know how to spell the name of the adjacent city, Beverly Hills.

Berman, of course, was the daughter of one of the mobsters who founded Las Vegas, while the Durst family manages Freedom Tower at the new World Trade Center.

Suffice to say, The Jinx is not your ordinary television entertainment.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the Cape May street scene.  The photo I am using is seen directly below.  I will be using my usual acrylics on an 8 by 8 inch gallery-wrapped canvas.

When last seen, the painting appeared as it does in the photo directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

This has been a busy week leaving little time for painting.  For SPP number 500 I would have liked something more momentous but at least the initial layer of paint is now complete.  (Note especially the front steps.)  I’ve finished the roadmap of things to come.  It gives an indication what this painting will look like in a few weeks.  Now I can start painting with some detail.  That will be for next week’s cycle.

 
The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week.  See you then.

Earlier paintings in this series can be seen here.

One problem I had with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State was that I never had the feeling she was committed to making an effort to move climate change off the back burner. John Kerry has his flaws, but he has consistently pushed the administration to make climate change a priority. In a recent statement leading up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, Kerry adopted the one of the principal slogans from the People’s Climate March in addressing the need to take action now on climate, while attacking the “immorality” of climate deniers.

Sec. of State John Kerry accused climate deniers of gambling with the well-being of future generations in a speech Thursday to the Atlantic Council.

“It is just plain immoral,” Kerry said. “And it is a risk that no one should take. We need to face reality. There is no planet B.”

Follow me below the fold for relevant excerpts of his remarks yesterday at the Atlantic Council as Part of the Road to Paris Climate Series (posted online at the US Department of State’s website):

(cont.)

[C]limate change is an issue that is personal to me, and it has been since the 1980s, when we were organizing the very first climate hearings in the Senate. In fact, it really predates that, going back to Earth Day when I’d come back from Vietnam. It was the first political thing I began to organize in Massachusetts, when citizens started to make a solid statement in this country. […] And the reason for that is simple: For decades now, the science has been screaming at us, warning us, trying to compel us to act.

And I just want to underscore that for a moment. It may seem obvious to you, but it isn’t to some. Science is and has long been crystal clear when it comes to climate change. Al Gore, Tim Worth, and a group of us organized the first hearings in the Senate on this, 1988. We heard Jim Hansen stand in – sit in front of us and tell us it’s happening now, 1988. So we’re not talking about news reports or blog posts or even speeches that some cabinet secretary might give at a think tank. We’re talking about a fact-based, evidence-supported, peer-reviewed science. And yet, if you listen to some people in Washington or elsewhere, you’d think there’s a question about whether climate change really is a problem or whether we really need to respond to it.

So stop for a minute and just think about the basics. When an apple falls from a tree, it will drop toward the ground. We know that because of the basic laws of physics. Science tells us that gravity exists, and no one disputes that. Science also tells us that when the water temperature drops below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, it turns to ice. No one disputes that.

So when science tells us that our climate is changing and humans beings are largely causing that change, by what right do people stand up and just say, “Well, I dispute that” or “I deny that elementary truth?” And yet, there are those who do so. Literally a couple of days ago, I read about some state officials who are actually trying to ban the use of the term “climate change” in public documents because they’re not willing to face the facts.

Now folks, we literally do not have the time to waste debating whether we can say “climate change.” We have to talk about how we solve climate change. Because no matter how much people want to bury their heads in the sand, it will not alter the fact that 97 percent of peer-reviewed climate studies confirm that climate change is happening and that human activity is largely responsible. I have been involved in public policy debates now for 40-plus years, whatever, since the 1960s. It is rare, rare, rare – I can tell you after 28 years-plus in the Senate – to get a super majority of studies to agree on anything. But 97 percent, over 20-plus years – that’s a dramatic statement of fact that no one of good conscience has a right to ignore. […]

We will see large swaths of cities and even some countries under water. We can expect more intense and frequent extreme weather events like hurricanes and typhoons. We can expect disruptions to the global agricultural sector that will threaten job security for millions of farmers and undermine food security for millions of families. We can expect prolonged droughts and resource shortages, which have the potential to fan the flames of conflict in areas that are already troubled by longstanding political, economic, religious, ideological, sectarian disputes. Imagine when they’re complicated by the absence of water and food.

These are the consequences of climate change, and this is the magnitude of what we are up against. And measured against the array of global threats we face today – and there are many. Terrorism, extremism, epidemics, poverty, nuclear proliferation, all challenges that respect no borders – climate change belongs on that very same list. It is, indeed, one of the biggest threats facing our planet today. And even top military personnel have designated it as a security threat to not just the United States but the world. And no one who has truly considered the science, no one who has truly listened objectively to our national security experts, could reach a different conclusion.

Unfortunately, as we know, all too many people, whether because they are acting in good conscience on deliberate misinformation, or whether they have Ten to Twenty Trillion Dollars worth of reason for denying that the effects of burning fossil fuels are altering our planet’s ability to sustain human civilization as we know it beyond recognition.

McKibben leads us inexorably to the staggering conclusion that the work of the climate movement is to find a way to force the powers that be, from the government of Saudi Arabia to the board and shareholders of ExxonMobil, to leave 80 percent of the carbon they have claims on in the ground. That stuff you own, that property you’re counting on and pricing into your stocks? You can’t have it.

Given the fluctuations of fuel prices, it’s a bit tricky to put an exact price tag on how much money all that unexcavated carbon would be worth, but one financial analyst puts the price at somewhere in the ballpark of $20 trillion. So in order to preserve a roughly habitable planet, we somehow need to convince or coerce the world’s most profitable corporations and the nations that partner with them to walk away from $20 trillion of wealth. Since all of these numbers are fairly complex estimates, let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that we’ve overestimated the total amount of carbon and attendant cost by a factor of 2. Let’s say that it’s just $10 trillion.

Which is one reason these interests have invested heavily in lobbying governments around the world, including the United States, have bought and paid for the election a number of politicians whom will even go so far as to ban the use of the term “climate change” in official state documents (here’s looking at you Rick Scott), and have engineered a literal multi-million dollar disinformation campaign employing some of the same people financed by the tobacco industry who sold their souls to deny tobacco caused cancer.

Is it any wonder Secretary Kerry labeled their efforts immoral, irresponsible and reckless? Or that our continued refusal to develop alternative, renewable sources of energy is leading us toward both an environmental and economic collapse of epic proportions?

Now rest assured – not a threat, but a statement of fact – if we fail, future generations will not and should not forgive those who ignore this moment, no matter their reasoning. Future generations will judge our effort not just as a policy failure but as a collective moral failure of historic consequence. And they will want to know how world leaders could possibly have been so blind or so ignorant or so ideological or so dysfunctional and, frankly, so stubborn that we failed to act on knowledge that was confirmed by so many scientists, in so many studies, over such a long period of time, and documented by so much evidence. […]

Now I want to make this very, very clear. In economic terms, this is not a choice between bad and worse. Some people like to demagogue this issue. They want to tell you, “Oh, we can’t afford to do this.” Nothing could be further from the truth. We can’t afford not to do it. And in fact, the economics will show you that it is better in the long run to do it and cheaper in the long run. So this is not a choice between bad and worse, not at all. Ultimately, this is a choice between growing or shrinking an economy. Pursuing cleaner, more efficient energy is actually the only way that nations around the world can build the kind of economies that are going to thrive for decades to come.

And here’s why. Coal and oil are only cheap ways to power a nation in the very near term. But if you look a little further down you road, you begin to see an entirely different story. When you think about the real numbers over time, the costs of those outdated energy sources actually pile up very quickly. […]

The reality is that carbon-based air pollution contributes to the deaths of at least 4.5 million people every year. No part of that is inexpensive. And any nation that argues that it simply can’t afford to invest in the alternative and renewable energy needs to take a second look at what they’re paying for, consider the sizable costs that are associated with rebuilding in the wake of devastating weather events. In 2012 alone, extreme weather cost the United States nearly $120 billion in damages. When Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines a little over a year ago, the cost of responding exceeded $10 billion. And that’s just the bill for the storm damage. Think of the added health care costs, the expenses that result from agricultural and environmental degradation. It is time, my friends, for people to do real cost accounting.

The bottom line is that we can’t only factor in the price of immediate energy needs. We have to include the long-term cost of carbon pollution. We have to factor in the cost of survival. And if we do, we will find that pursuing clean energy now is far more affordable than paying for the consequences of climate change later.

In closing, I ask you to consider one basic question. Suppose stretching your imaginations, as it will have to be, that somehow those 97 percent of studies that I just talked about – suppose that somehow they were wrong about climate change in the end. Hard to understand after 20 years of 97 percent, but imagine it. I just want you to imagine it. What are the consequences we would face for taking the actions [to develop renewable sources of energy and kick the carbon habit] …? I’ll tell you what the consequences are. You’ll create an extraordinary number of jobs, you’ll kick our economies into gear all around the world, because we’ll be taking advantage of one of the biggest business opportunities the world has ever known.

We’ll have healthier people. Those billions of dollars of costs in the summer and at hospitals and for emphysema, lung disease, particulate cancer, will be reduced because we’ll be eliminating a lot of the toxic pollution coming from smoke stacks and tall pipes. Air will be cleaner. You can actually see your city. We’ll have a more secure world because it’ll be far easier for countries to attain the long-lasting energy independence and security they thrive – they need to thrive and not be blackmailed by another nation, cut off, their economy turned into turmoil because they can’t have the independence they need and the guarantees of energy supply.

We will live up in the course of all of that to our moral responsibility to leave the planet Earth in better condition than we were handed it, to live up to even scripture which calls on us to protect planet Earth. These – all of these things are the so-called consequences of global action to address climate change. What’s the other side of that question? What will happen if we do nothing and the climate skeptics are wrong and the delayers are wrong and the people who calculate cost without taking everything into account are wrong? The answer to that is pretty straightforward: utter catastrophe, life as we know it on Earth.

He couldn’t be more right about that. Disasters are already occurring. Wars, famines, droughts, floods, the threat from rising seas to the coastlines where so many people around the globe live. We are living in the times that Professor Hansen testified would occur back in 1988 if we did not address the issue of global warming in his testimony before the Senate, testimony based on his own research; research that has proven to be surprisingly accurate in its predictions, despite the advances in climate science over the last three decades.

So, thank you, Secretary Kerry for helping to advance the cause of addressing human caused Climate Change as an important agenda item, both in the United States and across the globe. I’m grateful, that for now you are the person holding the office of Secretary of State at such a crucial point in our species history. Truly, there is no Planet B, and whatever the obstacles that stand in the way of moving toward a sustainable future, one that does not rely on on energy produced by toxic fossil fuels – coal, oil, methane, tar sands, etc. – we must find a way to overcome them. If we don’t, future generations will condemn us for our immorality and our foolishness in the face of a well known, well documented threat to existence of much of life on earth, including the threat to our own species.

The video from C-Span of Kerry’s speech can be viewed here:

http://www.c-span.org/video/?324793-1/secretary-state-john-kerry-previews-2015-paris-climate-talks

If we’re really staring down the prospect of having a Clinton/Obama/Clinton Democratic succession in the White House, it might pay to think about how these two political empires relate to each other. That’s what Steven Waldman tries to do in a brief piece in the latest issue of the Washington Monthly. Waldman argues that the two political clans have been good for each other. More controversially, he argues that there’s a misperception that Bill Clinton was the ‘canny pol’ while Obama is the visionary, when nearly the opposite is the case. In Waldman’s view, Obama should be seen as fulfilling Clinton’s vision and completing projects than Clinton and his wife could not.

It’s a testament to how much Clinton changed the Democratic Party that even a conventional progressive like Obama ended up being “New Democrat” on most issues.

Conversely, Obama completed and expanded on the Clinton presidency in key ways. The most obvious is passing health care when Clinton couldn’t. That’s a big what-Joe-Biden-said. There’s more: Clinton started a modest-sized “direct lending” program that allowed college students to borrow straight from the government, bypassing banks; Obama got the banks out entirely, saving taxpayers billions in the process. Clinton proposed raising fuel efficiency standards for cars from 27.5 mpg to 40. He failed. Obama has successfully raised them, with a target of 55 mpg by 2015. Clinton moved the military from being actively hostile to gays to the milder-but-problematic policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell”; Obama allowed gays to openly serve.

One can debate the extent to which these achievements happened because of Obama’s skills or his timing.

I could nitpick this in a number of ways, but parts of it are undeniable. I think it’s an important debate to have because I don’t think we’re really sure how to think about Clintonism. How much of it was purely situational and designed to win elections in an environment where conservatism was ascendant? How much of it was a true ideological break with post-war liberalism? And where will a Hillary Clinton presidency fall on these spectrums?

To really engage in this debate, you’ll want to read Waldman’s whole argument.

Charles Krauthammer calls it “Early Onset Clinton Fatigue” and, for once, he’s on to something. During the original Clinton presidency, my defenses of the Clintons were restricted to the area around the coffee machine at work. But I’d be lying if I said that I’ve recovered from the effort. I’d be dishonest if I didn’t admit that I still resent having to defend that couple considering how we were repaid.

And I did have to defend them, because what they were accused of doing was never commensurate with what they had actually done. Their critics were bad people and they were unhinged. The media, including supposedly liberal bastions like the New York Times and Washington Post, treated them in a shoddy and occasionally downright unprofessional manner.

The upshot is that, today, I have no energy and even less inclination to do it all over again. If politics becomes reduced, once more, to pointing out that Hillary Clinton is being unfairly maligned, I think I’ll leave that job to someone else. Her cause is not mine, and if she takes up my banner and the responsibility to keep the Republicans out of the White House, I’ll feel like my work has been hijacked.

I’m a realist, which is why I haven’t spent my time railing against another Clinton candidacy. And I’m not doing that now. This is more personal. It’s how I feel.

Personally, there’s nothing “Early Onset” about this kind of fatigue. This is much more like the end game. Do I want one more moment of Clinton family drama?

I do not.