Follow the money

It's a mistake to think that one can simply buy an election.  Money is important in a system where access to media can be so expensive, but in itself it isn't enough.  What the money trail can show, however, is where the people investing their cash think their interests lie.  It can also show us how many people are willing to put their money on the line, and by looking at the percentage of their resources invested we can get some idea of the strength of their feelings.  With that in mind, compare the organizations and their members associated with three major candidates for president in 2012:

Also note that a government agency can't invest in a political campaign.  That means that Paul's money came not from the organizations directly, but from the troops and civilians whose lives are most directly on the line when it comes to issues of war and peace.  These are also the people who have the least money to contribute.  When considered as a percentage of their wealth the pattern is even more remarkable.

Related articles

• Spending reports reveal candidate donors, money trail
• The Trail of TV Money Tells Us Where the Presidential Battlegrounds Are
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Well, *that* didn't take long...

One day after the US forces officially leave Iraq,

Nuri al-Maliki plunged Iraq into political turmoi by ordering the arrest of Tareq al-Hashemi, his respected Sunni vice president, on terrorism charges.

Further escalating tensions, he also asked parliament to hold a no-confidence vote to allow him to dismiss Saleh al-Mutlak, the Sunni deputy prime minister, who angered Mr Maliki by describing him as a "dictator" during a television interview last week.

Mr Hashemi was briefly detained after being escorted of a plane at Baghdad's airport, where he was attempting to catch a flight to the Kurdish city of Irbil, prompting speculation that he was attempting to flee.

Although Mr Hashemi was released, three of his bodyguards were arrested for "suspected terrorist activity". Following frantic negotiations brokered by the United States and Kurdish political leaders, Mr Maliki was said to have agreed not to implement the arrest warrant for now. 

But last night, judges barred Mr Hashemi from travelling overseas shortly before the arrest warrant was formally issued. Tanks were also deployed outside his home, as well as outside the houses of Mr Mutlak and a third senior Sunni politician.

It's not unexpected, but you'd hope he'd at least have the courtesy to not immediately embarass President Obama.  I suppose nobody wants to late to the Civil War.

You don't need communism to have a cult of personality

Vladamir Putin's party will probably get most of what it wants in the next elections, but he's leaving little to chance.  In a country where almost nobody trusts the government or expects it to make things better, the only alternative is to trust in a man.  No--a superman:

Vladimir Putin is an amazing man. You may have seen him co-piloting an
aircraft recently and dumping 12 tons of water to extinguish two of the many wildfires raging across Western Russia. But did you know that in 2008 he used a tranquilizer gun to save a group of scientists and a television camera crew from a charging tiger?  In 2009, he saved
Russian shoppers from high prices by ordering a grocery store executive to put sausages on sale, forced one of the world's richest men to restore laid off workers to their jobs by reopening a cement plant, taught judo to the Russian national judo team, and went to the bottom of the world's deepest lake in a submarine. In April, he hugged a polar bear. He swims Siberian rivers for exercise and enjoys bare-chested summer horseback rides. Without question, women
love him. It's said that he will never have a heart attack, because his heart isn't foolish enough to attack him. Or maybe that's somebody else.   

What a guy.  Of course it's not a problem unique to Russia.  In North Korea, the "Dear Leader" is credited with the ability to control the weather.  On his first trip to a golf course. he shot 38 under par, including five holes-in-one.  And don't even get me started on his prowess at bowling.

It seems the less a government is able to deliver, the more it requires a superman at the top.  And in a totally unrelated story,

Where the new package is going (so far)

Taking Apart the $819 billion Stimulus Package - washingtonpost.com

Reality strikes back

According to an "unnamed administration official" - often assumed to be Karl Rove - in conversation with journalist Ron Suskind, October 2004:

"[He] 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.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. '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.'"

Reality is what happens even after you deny it. Karl Rove, meet President Obama.

Quote of the day

From the opinion page of the Daily Trust newspaper of Nigeria, a few choice words:

Whenever the cliche "world opinion" is used by western powers we can expect economic sanctions, military intervention or some form of meddling in the affairs of weaker nations.

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A global village is truly emerging.

If in George W. Bush we got the first global village idiot, everyone (or almost everyone) is praying that in Obama we would have the first global tribal chief. Our understanding and expectations differ, we have no illusions about that. After all the expectations of Isreal's Kadima leader Tzipi Livni and the Ayatoolahs in Iran are very different. Yet they all would prefer Obama.

***

If the son of a Kenyan, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, attended a Muslim-majority school, could raise the cosciousness and hopes of people all over the world, could rise to become a credible contender to the most powerful office in the world, we have truly come far, thanks to the American dream, and the decency and common sense of its' average folks. Most of all, thanks to all those who fought to make ipossible for an Obama to emerge at all; from Martin Luther King Jr. to Spike Lee, from Rosa Park to Oprah

This, to me, captures the best and the worst of America's relationship with the world.