Sassistas! Our dish on the social soup.

Who Is This Guy?

A special weekend "Meet the Sass" from Westsista!

• Ran for president of the United States
• Born outside the continental U.S.
• Had a childhood without much money
• Teased by other children calling him racial names in grade school
• Worked hard to address the economic gap between whites and blacks
• Questions arose about whether he was really a natural-born citizen who was eligible to be President of the U.S.
• Strong supporter of the Civil Rights Movement
• Staunch advocate for volunteerism and public service
• Spoke out against extremists on the right and on the left
• Revived the auto industry by bringing together management and workers behind a shared mission with shared purpose, shared pain, shared success and shared rewards.

This guy might sound like Barack Obama, but he is really George Romney -- Mitt Romney’s father.

George Romney was actually born in Chihuahua, Mexico.

To most of us, the phrase “natural-born citizen” sounds clear.  You must have been born in the U.S. to be eligible. 

Here’s the actual wording:

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

Obviously the first several presidents were born as British subjects in British America.

The Constitution does not define the phrase natural-born citizen, and various opinions have been offered over time regarding its precise meaning.  

The Supreme Court has never directly addressed the question of a specific presidential or vice-presidential candidate's eligibility as a natural-born citizen.

The Congressional Research Service has stated that the weight of scholarly legal and historical opinion indicates that the term means one who is entitled under the Constitution or laws of the United States to U.S. citizenship “at birth” or “by birth,” including any child born "in" the United States (other than to foreign diplomats serving their country), the children of United States citizens born abroad, and those born abroad of one citizen parent who has met U.S. residency requirements.

More than two dozen constitutional amendments have been introduced in Congress to relax the restriction, notably one designed to allow Henry Kissinger and another to allow Arnold Schwarzenegger to be eligible.

Barry Goldwater’s eligibility to run was questioned (born in Arizona before it was a state) as was John McCain’s (born in the Panama Canal Zone).

But no candidate’s eligibility has been challenged with the intensity and virulence directed toward Barack Obama.  The “birthers” still continue to insist that Barack Obama is not eligible to be president (despite the overwhelming proof he was born in Hawaii).

Who publicly and loudly challenged Barack Obama’s eligibility to serve as President of the United States?  The King of the Birthers, Donald Trump.

Who just endorsed Mitt Romney ahead of the Nevada primary caucus?  Donald Trump.  No mention was made of George Romney being born in Mexico.

Irony, thy name is politics.

 

Dollars Per Vote

Today is the Florida Republican Primary. Westsista is at the ready with her political sass!

"We're going to come out of Florida I think with a pretty good number, certainly dollars per votes we're going to run rings around the other candidates."

--Rick Santorum

I’m not trying to pick on Santorum.  His reference to the new metric -- Dollars Per Vote -- is now used openly.  It’s the amount of money candidates spend in a state divided by the vote percentage they receive.

Think about that for a minute.

If Romney had just handed a thousand dollars to everyone who voted for him in Iowa, it would have been cheaper.

How much does your vote cost?

I’m pretty sure most of us believe our vote cannot be purchased.

But is that true?  Maybe it’s all the other people out there who are weak-minded enough to make election decisions based on advertising dollars falling out of the sky.

Do you know how often the candidate with the most money wins?

94% of the time

I heard John McCain say the other day that Barack Obama out-spent him in the 2008 campaign three to one.

Am I glad that Obama won the election?  Of course. If he had not been as effective as he was at raising money, he would not have won.

To be clear, the Citizens United decision (via the Supreme Court) did not create the problem -- it just made it worse, by removing the limit on corporate (and union) giving, allowing those donations to be less transparent.

Romney is outspending Gingrich by about four to one.

Who do you think will win?  Hmm, let’s guess.  If we say the guy with the most money, we’ll be right 94 times out of 100.

We The People need to demand campaign finance reform.  Until that happens, we’ll have the best democracy money can buy.

Even Newt Gingrich doesn’t deserve to lose this way.

 

 

Nervy Newt

Uh-oh -- it's Westsista's keen perspective on today's South Carolina primary! 

Newt Gingrich has made me laugh out loud more than any of the other Republican candidates.

Sure, he lacks the entertaining qualities of Rick Perry, who unselfishly provided many hours of mocking fun.  And he never comes close to making as many silly, unsupported statements as Michele Bachmann.

But he does remind me of another political celebrity that we haven’t heard from in a long time: Baghdad Bob

Remember him?  He was the guy who on live TV proclaiming that U.S. troops were not in Baghdad, even as you could see them behind him in the video.

It takes a special kind of person to be able to sustain that level of, let’s say, flexibility with reality.  And Newt is a very special guy.

The Women

You and I might describe a person’s behavior as “appalling” who cheats on and then dumps wife #1 when she gets sick, and then cheats on and dumps wife #2 when she gets sick.  But Newt used that word to describe being asked about an explosive interview given that day by aggrieved wife #2.  You gotta love that chutzpah, especially as it earned him a standing ovation!

Many people are guilty of cheating on their spouses, but the exceptional feat here is explaining it this way:  “partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.”  Genius!  Talk about turning your weak points into strengths!  What could be more virtuous than hard work and patriotism?

Newt Gingrich went after Bill Clinton with the flaming vengeance of an archangel over Clinton’s affair with a staffer, while he was deeply immersed in his own extramarital affair with one of his own staffers. 

The Money

Newt Gingrich is the kind of guy who can pull down over three million dollars in a year, putting him in the tiniest upper tier of the top 1%, and nastily attack his opponent for . . . being even richer?

In 1988, Gingrich helped force the resignation of the Democratic Speaker Jim Wright, who was alleged to have used a book deal to circumvent campaign-finance laws and House ethics rules.  This occurred while Gingrich himself was getting money from his own “unusual” book deal that raised money from political supporters to promote sales of his book.

The Positive Campaign

In Iowa, Mr. Gingrich vowed to “stay focused on positive things.”  But I knew he would not disappoint.  I knew that deep down he was the same guy who wrote a 1996 memo encouraging Republicans to "speak like Newt" by describing Democrats and Democratic policies using the words “corrupt,” "devour," "greed," "hypocrisy," "liberal," "sick," and "traitors."   

In a delicious irony, it was his very close business partner – the conservative group Citizens United who helped him make three films – which led to the Supreme Court decision that enabled Romney’s Super PAC to run round-the-clock ads against Newt Gringrich in Iowa.

It wasn’t long before Romney’s relentless assaults caused him to abandon his positive campaign with brutal attacks on Romney.

The Mandate to Buy Health Insurance

Pop Quiz: In May 2011, who made this statement on national TV?  “All of us have a responsibility to pay—help pay for health care,” and suggested this could be implemented by either a mandate to obtain health insurance or a requirement to post a bond ensuring coverage.

Nancy Pelosi?  Harry Reid?  President Obama?

Nope.  Newt Gingrich.  You can actually see him in a 2008 video making a pretty convincing argument on the merits of the individual mandate.  Now he opposes the Obamacare mandate.

Where Newt Gingrich truly sets himself apart from the other candidates is in sheer gall.  He appears to be totally untroubled by his own unbridled hypocrisy or his non-stop carousel of positions.  I have barely scratched the surface of the “Newtisms,” without even mentioning climate change, immigration, Libya or Paul Ryan’s budget plan, but you can read about some of them by clicking here.

I don’t know about the people in South Carolina, but I would hate to see another Republican debate without Newt in it.  He makes me laugh.

 

 

The 17% Fight

Let's hear it for Westsista's take on today's New Hampshire primary!

It is estimated that the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries get about as much media coverage as the rest of the primaries combined.  People like me pray for a long, drawn-out battle where the other party’s nominees slash each other to ribbons for months. But what usually happens is that after Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida (which will be January 31^st), the nomination usually seems pretty well decided.

What’s all the fuss about the New Hampshire primary?  After all, they only have 12 delegates, out of a total of 2,286 Republican delegates. That’s way less than 1%.

Although New Hampshire is notorious for delivering surprise election results (as opposed to polls), Romney seems to be so far ahead that none of the other candidates have a chance to beat him.

Controlling for other factors statistically, a win in New Hampshire increases a candidate's share of the final primary count in all states by 27 percentage points. (Click here for a link that proves my point.)

Good news for Mitt Romney, the frontrunner. But the real fight is over second place in New Hampshire, which is worth about 17 percentage points in the final primary tally. 17% is a huge number if the ABR (Anyone But Romney) Republicans can agree on a candidate.

Although Rick Perry proved that he CAN indeed remember three things in the last debate, I don’t think he has much of a chance in New Hampshire (in fact, I think lots of people may believe he already dropped out when he said he was returning to Texas to think about the election.  Don’t bother thinking too hard, Rick Perry.)  Rick Santorum will probably not do very well either, although he may still have a shot in the South Carolina primary.

• Will it be Jon Huntsman, who has gone all in for this primary fight?   Lesser-known candidates who do well in New Hampshire can suddenly become serious contenders.
• Will it be Ron Paul, who routinely gets the least media attention proportionately for the highest amount of support?
• Or will it be Newt Gingrich, who has completely given up running a positive campaign in favor of the nasty attack ads that history has shown to be vastly most effective?

Second place here doesn’t mean second rate -- it is enormously more important than first place in most other states.

Here We Go Again

Thank you, Westsista, for a special "Meet the Sass" report on the Republican primaries!

 Although it may seem like just yesterday for those who lack the stamina of true political junkies like me, it was actually four years ago that we watched both parties duke it out for the presidential nomination.  As Barack Obama is eligible to run for another term as president, this primary is all about the Republicans. 

What a wild ride it has been!  Ever since April of 2011, many different candidates have surged ahead in the polls.

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention (aka those with lives), here’s the quick wrap-up of the race so far:

• Trump – although he never officially declared, voters seemed to like his aggressive attitude and proven track record of making money.   The fall:  Turned out he was just boring after Hawaii released Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate.
• Bachmann – attractive and able to memorize and deliver humorous talking points, for awhile she looked like the real deal.  The fall:  She was forgiven for mixing up John Wayne with John Wayne Gacy, but she finally made one crazy statement too many, repeating a mother’s lament that the HPV vaccine had caused her daughter’s mental retardation 
• Perry – also attractive and bringing that same Texas machismo which apparently never gets old.  The fall:  revealed himself to not be as good at memorization as Bachmann, not very mentally agile on his feet, and I forget the third thing.
• Cain – able to craft a catchy tagline that people could easily remember – NINE NINE NINE.  The fall:  curiously enough, not when it was revealed that at least two sexual harassment lawsuits against him had been settled out of court amid several more allegations, but when an affair surfaced where he had given his mistress money (apparently it was okay for him to screw women financially regarding sex, but not okay when they return the favor).  He also couldn’t remember what he disliked about Obama’s actions regarding Libya, but he was pretty much done by then anyway. 
• Gingrich – name recognition and perceived to be intelligent enough to do well in debates against the president.  The fall: thanks to the Supreme Court Decision (Citizens United), Romney’s Super PAC has been running negative Gingrich ads 24/7 in Iowa. In an ironic twist, Gingrich is now against the conservative Supreme Court decision and has become a believer in more transparency in campaign finance.
• Paul – consistent on issues and has a thought-out position on all the issues.  The fall:  The Ron Paul newsletters have been re-hashed again by the press, and there is some ugly stuff there – homophobic, racist and also anti-semitic.  Although he has given it a good try, it is not easy to distance yourself from the newsletters that bear your name and that have brought in millions in fund-raising.
• Santorum – may have surged at exactly the right time to have a good showing in Iowa.  His greatest weakness is that he is mostly known for his strong stance on social issues and that is generally not at the top of the voters’ list this season.

Last but not least, at some point Mitt Romney decided to seriously compete in Iowa.  Although he has never gotten over 25% in the polls, he may just be the tortoise in this race that ends up on top on the only night that counts – when the votes are actually counted.

Speaking of votes, some primaries are caucuses instead of elections.  Approximately a third of states hold caucuses for nominating presidential candidates instead of primary elections.

What’s the difference:

• Caucus – a meeting of members of a political party to nominate candidates for political offices.  This normally happens in small precincts (Iowa has 1,774).  Winner is determined from a majority of these small meetings. 
• Election – voters go in the voting booth and choose someone.  Winner is determined by votes.

Watching the primary arena is the most political fun that I’m going to have this year, so I’m riveted, waiting to see who Republicans in Iowa choose to go up against Barack Obama in November.  

 

 

The Joy of Sex

Time for this month's Meet the Sass.  We LOVE it, but not as much as we love Westsista! Bring it, you beautiful sista, you!

 Sex is natural, Sex is fun

Not everybody does it, but everybody should . . .

                  -- George Michael

It should be fun, pleasurable, exciting, comforting, or some combination of those things.  But most of all it should be private.  Right?  Well, good luck with that.  If there’s a big enough payoff, there are video cameras, investigators and kiss-and-tellers looking for their 15 minutes of fame.

I’m kind of mad at Anthony Weiner right now.  I’ve always thought of him as someone who I could be friends with, my progressive, thin, Jewish friend who lives in New York.  I pictured us having a drink together or arguing over some policy point.   I never pictured his penis. 

Now I have to face the realization that he’s probably a giant arrogant egomaniac who I wouldn’t want to hang out with in any case.  Oh boo hoo hoo.  He ruined my fantasy by exposing himself in public.  Literally.

As for me, I’m as interested in titillating gossip as the next person.  The part that makes me feel uncomfortable is being forcefully reminded about how idiotic I have been in my personal life.  

OK, so I’ve had phone sex.  And email sex.    Thank God texting wasn’t around during my last disastrous online “relationship” or I’d probably have bad text memories that make me blush. 

One way to look at it is that the embarrassing, bad, sexy online relationships I’ve had may have kept me from having just that many more embarrassing, bad, sexy real-life relationships.  Hey, a good thing!  As far as I know, Weiner didn’t actually hook up physically with any of these women.

Can you actually get in more trouble with virtual nookie than real nookie?  Asking the question, “Is it cheating if your spouse is having virtual sex with someone?” is not the right question.  The real question is: "Would you rather that your boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife have virtual nookie or real, skin-to-skin nookie?"  I think we all know the answer to that.

I don’t get Democrats calling for Weiner to resign.  Is it because they didn’t want to see his penis either?  Because hardly any Democrats called on then-President Clinton to resign even after we knew he had ACTUAL PHYSICAL CONTACT.

Let’s not forget Senator David Vitter, who hired hookers –- a bunch of them –- who is still serving in the Senate.  No one called for him to resign.

THINGS THAT BOTHER ME MORE THAN WEINER’S WEINER:

• Charlie Rangel –- years of investigation for several different types of ethical violations.  Very few calls for his resignation.
• William Jefferson –- after federal agents found $90,000 in his freezer in 2005, there was no widespread outcry for his resignation.
• John Ensign –- ACTUAL sex with an employee, who was the wife of another employee and his wife’s best friend.  Then he involved his parents in a criminal conspiracy to pay off the former employees.   No calls for his resignation.
• John Edwards and Arnold Schwarzenegger -- for me, the worst dirtbags at the bottom of the pile.  Not because they were cheaters.  Not because they kept it a secret -– after all, sex and lying are practically the same crime.  They win my Dirtbag Award because they did not publicly acknowledge their own children.  Gross.  Total dirtbag territory.

I learned something during the Tiger Woods scandal.    I thought that the so-called “Sex and Love Addiction” was just another excuse for men to behave badly.  A friend of mine straightened me out, explaining to me that it was something he had also suffered from for years and in fact had been in the same rehab facility where Tiger went for treatment.  I had no idea but as my friend is moral, wonderful, loving, non-sleazy and takes responsibility for his actions, but it stopped my attitude in its tracks.  So at least during that scandal I learned something.

What can I learn from this one?  Don’t send out dirty stuff on Twitter.  Not that I was on the verge but I can appreciate a timely reminder.  I think on this one my take-home is that no matter how much you admire someone, everyone has their secrets.  Think of your own darkest secret and picture the dumbest thing you’ve ever done.  Be grateful every day that no one knows.  Even if you’re Anthony Weiner or David Vitter, you probably still have some remaining skeletons safely stashed in your closet.   Thank God for those non-transparent closet doors.  They only look good on the other guy’s closet.

 

Drowning Some

What better way to face mid-week bog-down than Westsista's monthly post on politics!  Dish it, Westsista!

When I heard about the planned flooding of southern Louisiana, I didn’t understand what was happening or why.  So I had to do some reading about it.

The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in U.S. history, with the river ending up 80 miles wide in some spots. 

This terrible flood led to The Flood Control Act of 1928 which authorized the construction of The Bonnet Carre Spillway, the Morganza Spillway and Birds Point Floodway.  These structures are built to interfere with the flow of the Mississippi River in times of extreme flooding.  The idea is to alter the flow so that it causes less property damage and loss of life.  Less.

This sounds good – unless you’re in the area that is being sacrificed to the “Save the Cities” strategy.  Right now, opening the bays of the Morganza Spillway is diverting the river away from its natural course through Baton Rouge and New Orleans, and to a new course directly down the Atchafalaya to the Gulf of Mexico.  In the process, over 3 million acres of land are at risk, where approximately 25,000 people live, and over 13,000 buildings are standing.  This includes many farms, thousands of oil and gas wells and even entire towns.  Much of this area is projected to end up under 25 feet of water. 

Why are all those people still there?  After all, everyone gets a written letter every year from the Army Corp of Engineers reminding them of the possibility that they might open the spillway and flood the area.

For one thing, they were all left closed during the floods of 1983, 1993, 1997 and 2008.  They are designed to be used only in extreme conditions.

• The Birds Point Floodway has only been activated twice – once in 1937 and now this year (and it is located somewhat  further upriver, in Missouri).
• The Bonnet Carre Spillway has been activated 10 times, but as far as I can find out, no one gets flooded out when the bays are opened to divert water to Lake Pontchartrain.
• The Morganza Spillway has only been opened once in its history – in 1973. 

I think in many cases, people inherit land or farms or homes in these beautiful areas.  They grow up there, so they can either sell and move away or stay and make the best of it.  I imagine if you had asked many of them why they chose to live in such a risky area, they would shrug and say “every place has got something.”  Tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, fires – it does seem that every geographic region has its vulnerabilities.

In other cases, some people just do not have the resources to be mobile.  I have seen people being interviewed on TV who were saying “we don’t have cars, we don’t have money for hotels, and we don’t have any other place to stay.” 

There is some anger in the Atchafalaya River Basin, where they call it the “Save the Rich People” strategy instead. 

I have read that if the Morganza Spillway was not opened, the levees in New Orleans would certainly fail, and the flooding there would be far worse than what we saw after Hurricane Katrina.  And there’s really no guarantee that sacrificing the Atchafalaya River Basin will keep the levee system secure.  There is intense ongoing scrutiny of the levees and the spillways themselves.

There are no easy answers along the Mississippi River this year.  Lots of excess water, lots of heartbreak and lots of loss.  One positive note being reported as of this writing is that the water may not end up cresting as high as they had originally projected.   The other bright spot is that seriously smart people have done all kinds of planning ahead for this eventuality and have run all kinds of scenarios.  Although there may be no easy answers, at least it seems there are thoughtful people who are paying attention.

 

Show Me the Money

Hey, Westsista!  Show us your monthly savvy!

Imagine if a group of us was standing around at the mall, and we had $91 between us.  After standing around telling jokes about Congress for awhile, we recount our money and this time we only have $77!  We know someone took some money from us, even if we’re not quite sure who.

This is exactly what happened to the middle class from 1980 to 2010, if you consider that our group (99% of the people in the country) went from receiving 91% of the income to receiving only 77% of the income.

I finally figured out what the Tea Party people are so mad about – they think that POOR PEOPLE took their money!  Some people think that we’re giving away too much money to foreign countries.

To clarify, poor people have only gotten poorer over the past 30 years.  And less than 1% of our total budget goes to foreign aid.

How did it happen?  How did all this wealth drift upward over the past 30 years?

One big key is CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS.

Rich people donate to political campaigns in a big way. 

Beneficial tax law

• Since 2005, about 2/3 of  U.S.-controlled corporations paid no corporate income tax
• In 2010, General Electric made $14 billion in profits, but paid zero in taxes – in fact, they got a $3.2 billion tax benefit to carry over

Reduced regulation

• Financial deregulation beginning in the 1980s
• Deregulation in many industries to make it more appealing (this is not a joke) to do business in the richest country in the world.  For example, oil and gas exploration and nuclear energy.
• Many safety agencies defunded or have drastically reduced funding, including OSHA and the agency responsible for inspecting toys imported into this country.

War

• Biggest tax break in country’s history to top earning bracket, while spending $1 trillion on the war in Iraq
• Much of the war spending goes to huge defense companies such as Halliburton, Raytheon, etc.  The BBC estimates that 23 billion dollars went missing in Iraq.  MISSING. Think about that for a moment.  Not one person was prosecuted for mismanagement or theft.

When I was in business school (and I didn’t exactly go to an Ivy League school), in 1982 we studied why the savings and loans were going to fail.  Demographics!  (made worse by deregulation)  We studied the aging of the population, money going into these institutions, what would happen as the economy had its natural cycle, and it was completely foreseeable.

Feels like déjà vu!  The baby boomers are aging, needing Medicare and drawing Social Security.  Sounds like the same evil culprit, demographics!

And if we were serious about cutting health care costs, how about investing more in the program where the health care overhead and administrative cost  is 2-3%?  That is Medicare!  Maybe I’ve missed it, but I haven’t heard anyone seriously push to expand Medicare to cover more people as opposed to more expensive health care programs (like private health care).  If we’re going to take Paul Ryan’s proposal seriously (eliminating Medicare by turning it over to private health care), we should at least give equal consideration to reducing costs by expanding Medicare.

88% of our federal spending is on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and Defense Spending.  Obviously we need to do something about our deficit spending and the increasing national debt.  But let’s stop blaming poor people or unions or pension benefits for our fiscal problems and get serious about reducing that 88% - and possibly increasing the taxes on that 1% group that has gotten all the financial benefit of the past 30 years.

 

Politics of Disaster

It's that time of month, sistas and mistas -- time to Meet the Sass!  Thanks, Westsista!

Sometimes it does seem like the news media hypes bad news just to keep us on the hook.  At times they probably are guilty of feeding the Chicken Little Syndrome, where we all walk around expecting disaster to fall out of the sky.

For the previous four weeks I have had a premonition that a major disaster was about to hit and that it probably would be nuclear.  I’m pretty sure though, that even without my nuclear premonition that I would have immediately grasped the enormity of the catastrophe.

While the various TV news stations have all mentioned nuclear concerns, I felt there was a concerted and continuing effort to downplay it.  I listened in disbelief after Japanese officials pronounced that the nuclear risks were “under control,” reporters would chirp away in agreement “sounds like everything is under control.”  Missing onscreen was the skepticism that often greets those types of reassurances from government officials.

Although I am far from a nuclear engineer or physicist, even I know that if the earthquake knocks out the cooling systems for the nuclear reactor, and the tsunami wipes out the backup cooling systems, that there is a serious problem, one that is unlikely to be controlled in the near future.

I listened to all the major news stations to get various perspectives and all the latest information.   I read MSNBC and CNN news online as well.

The devastation started Thursday at 9:45 pm PST.  It wasn’t until Monday afternoon that the following line was included in the stories on MSNBC.com:

The nuclear reactors in Japan that are in emergency status were designed by General Electric.

--and--

(General Electric is a parent company of msnbc.com through GE's 49 percent stake in NBCUniversal. NBCUniversal and Microsoft are equal partners in msnbc.com.)

It wasn’t until after even the Japanese government finally admitted that there is radiation being released into the open air after the third explosion (Monday afternoon), that I finally read this little gem on MSNBC.com:

The General Electric-designed nuclear reactors involved in the Japanese emergency are very similar to 23 reactors in use in the United States, according to Nuclear Regulatory Commission records.

I’m not trying to be an alarmist or Chicken Little.  I’m not even saying that MSNBC’s reporters reluctance to ask tough questions about the issue had anything to do with their parent company.

What I am saying is that I’m uncomfortable with my news basically coming from giant corporations.  Is anybody else concerned about nearly all media outlets being owned by corporate conglomerates?  Or can we trust corporations to give us the truth even if it hurts their bottom line? 

 

 

Pardon Our Dust

Thanks, Westista for this timely and thoughtful edition of "Meet the Sass"!

"Sorry for the inconvenience, but we're building Egypt." --placards worn by many of the protestors while they were cleaning up Tahrir Square

Since 1979, our country has handed Egypt a total of $2.1 billion a year, of which $1.3 billion goes directly to the military.  What’s the magic of that timing?  The 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty.

Basically we are paying Egypt to be friends with Israel.  Or at least not be an outright enemy.

The other benefit that we gain from that $2 billion is that the U.S. military enjoys priority access to the Suez Canal and Egyptian airspace.

Speaking of the Suez Canal, at least two-thirds of Europe's oil passes through the canal, and about 7.5% of the world’s sea trade is carried via the canal today.  As Joe Biden would say, a Very Big Deal.

Israel and the Suez Canal are the two biggest U.S. concerns regarding Egypt.

There is something else . . . hmmm, what is it?  Oh yeah, DEMOCRACY.  The democracy that we enjoy and would fight to the death to protect.  The democracy that some people were eager to force on Iraq.  The failed attempt at democracy in 2009 in Iran.  The democracy that we were not willing to support in Tiananmen Square.

Wikipedia defines revolution as "a fundamental change in power or organizational structure that takes place in a relatively short period of time."   The Egyptian people got tired of high unemployment (estimated approximately 50% for males, 90% for females), the lack of opportunity for people who did not have the "right" connections, and the culture of bribery and corruption.  They demanded real representative government and they wanted the president of 30 years to step down.

In theory, those sound like reasonable demands for a revolution –- ones that our democracy would seem to be able to support wholeheartedly.   Eighteen days of peaceful protests ended with Hosni Mubarak agreeing to step down as President of Egypt.

The problem is that democracy is a very risky business. 

Although we are rightly proud of our own democracy, we need to remember it was not perfectly formed.  While fighting for the right to have a voice in our own government, we certainly didn't intend to give everyone a voice.  Women didn't get the right to vote until 1920.  The Constitution specified that blacks would be counted as 3/5 of a person.  The main arguments about that calculation were not over whether slavery was evil, but centered on the amounts of representation and taxes per state.

Above is the route of a typical modern sailing circumnavigation, via the Suez Canal
and the Panama Canal is shown in red; its antipodes are shown in yellow

The military is now in control of Egypt.  Although they have made official statements that they will honor all international treaties and will ensure elections within six months, many people inside and outside of Egypt worry about the military's future willingness to voluntarily give up power.

The Muslim Brotherhood is the largest organized political opposition party in Egypt, and they do not believe in a secular (non-religious) government or in Israel’s right to exist.  The Muslim Brotherhood reminds us that the Iranian revolution in 1979 replaced a dictator with a theocracy.  You don’t have to be as crazy as Glenn Beck to be worried about that.

Even if Egypt does gain fair and free elections, there is no guarantee that they will vote in a way that our country will view as positive.  When the U.S. insisted on Palestinian elections in 2006, they elected Hamas instead of the Fatah party.  Hamas does not believe in Israel's right to exist.

The good news is that the protestors seemed to be unified in their call for a secular form of government.  The sheer number of women protestors, their willingness to speak up assertively, and the fact that their faces were not covered, lends credibility to the belief that they will not find an Islamic fundamentalist government even remotely acceptable.

The other good news is that tourism accounts for at least 12% of employment in Egypt.  Continued peace with Israel and a strong secular government will go a long way toward getting those tourist dollars flowing into Egypt again.  

Let's not forget the lesson that our own revolution taught us.  When people power their government by elections, in turn they are empowered by democracy.  Let's rejoice with the Egyptian people over their intense and dazzling chance for true democracy -– but don't forget to pray.