On the intergalactic front
Area 51, the Cold War era test site in Nevada really does exist and the government finally acknowledged it, according to a story in the Christian Science Monitor. It may even turn out that the government was experimenting with saucer-shaped craft back in the 1950s, so those boys in the Pendleton shirts who made the observations about UFOs after downing a couple of six-packs of Bud longs may have actually been at least partially correct, proving that everything that drunks see is not necessarily a hallucination.
On the international front
The U.S. government is tiptoeing around recent events in the Middle East, trying to figure out how we can be both for democracy and at the same time for a military coup, even a populist military coup like the one that occurred in Egypt. It certainly requires some agile footwork. On one hand both the U.S. and the Egyptian military are chagrined that the Moslem Brotherhood refuses to participate in the new government and sees their lack of participation as something akin to terrorism. On the other hand, I can see why the Brotherhood is a bit reluctant to come to the table, after they won the Presidential election, got thrown out in a coup (or a democratic resurgence as some like to call it), then had their leadership arrested, and accused of murder and a few other assorted crimes. Now I am no great fan of the Moslem Brotherhood, but I can well understand why they might have some doubts about a democracy that believes in free elections, provided it produces the right results. Some say the Brotherhood brought it on themselves by being non-inclusive and trying to turn Egypt into a fundamentalist state, and apparently a not-very competent fundamentalist state, but I think it means something else. To me it means that democracy has absolutely no meaning in the Middle East, it simply doesn’t compute, and our best policy is to say, “You guys fight it out and we’ll recognize and do business with whoever wins, and we don’t much care which side that is.” It’s a bit cynical but at least it’s an honest policy, and will save us a lot of American money and lives. The same applies equally in Syria, and if we had followed it in Iraq and Afghanistan we could have saved several trillion dollars and thousands of American lives.
On the national front
This hard-nosed, hard-line attitude on national security, coupled with what our government views as almost treasonous national security leaks, is beginning to make us look more and more like a totalitarian state. We’re chasing whistleblowers and journalists, classifying everyone in sight as top-secret, and lying through our teeth about just about everything. It’s amazing how quickly the Obama administration’s credibility on national security is eroding, and I would speculate that many, if not a majority of Americans, are becoming increasingly uneasy about this surveillance police state. Their most recent misadventure, where the Brits grabbed the partner of the reporter who wrote the Snowden story for the Guardian newspaper and effectively muscled him for nine hours, I’m sure at our request, makes our government look like a bunch a thugs.
On the California front
The Republican Party seems to be continuing on with their policy of suicide. After a long and careful search, they managed to come up with as keynote speaker for the annual California Republican Assembly the Honorable Rick Perry, governor of Texas, an individual with presidential ambitions who is guaranteed to turn off all of California’s middle of the road Republicans, independent voters and swing Democrats. I can only assume they picked him because Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin were unavailable.
Also on the state front the California Coastal Commission I’m sure is practically salivating at the prospect of the passage of Assembly Bill 976, which would allow them, after a short, effective kangaroo court decision, to impose backbreaking fines on whoever displeases them. At the same time, it would eliminate the necessity for having to go to court, where they would actually have to try and convince an impartial judge of the wisdom and the legality of their actions. Democracy can be such a nuisance.
On the local front
Our Malibu delegation has returned from Sacramento after meeting with state officials and trying to get them to actually enforce the law which limits drug and alcohol rehabilitation facilities in R-1 zoning to six patients, but that’s for future columns.