05 March 2008

The Last Dog


I have discovered a foolproof method of predicting elections, and it costs me nothing. I provide it here at no direct charge to the taxpayer. There is no such thing as a free lunch, so I have to insert the word “direct” in that sentence, a disclaimer required at the insistence of my legal staff.

Of course you are paying for it. The costs are just coming from other sources, and it all comes out in the wash.

Here is the secret: there were two satellite trucks outside Senator Clinton's campaign headquarters.

When she was on her losing streak, there were none. By four o'clock yesterday afternoon I had determined that the two big prizes would be hers; Ohio and Texas falling in slow motion, Buckeyes first and Texans later. The Obama campaign made a pointedly not-symbolic appearance at the Alamo.

I would have been across the alley at the bar of the Menger Hotel, where Teddy Roosevelt recruited Texas Rangers for his Roughriders. I would have glanced up at the rich dark wood and done the math; working on a standard methodology of taking zero and multiplying by two.

Of course that is erroneous. Anything multiplied by zero is still zero, which is the number of delegates that the one Senator picked up on the other. As the Obama campaign announced coolly, the lead they held in the morning was precisely the same as it was after the polls had closed in the evening.

The former President, who has minded his marching orders well, was quiet. He has previously announced that this campaign will not be over until the last dog is dead. There certainly appears to be life in the old canine yet; with these victories, the fight will go on until Pennsylvania in late April.

The Clinton win in Texas was razor-sharp. The Two-Step through the caucus portion of the Democratic process will possibly yield an actual win in delegate count, though he will probably have lost the popular vote. There are complaints about who had undue influence in the private meetings after the day-time voting was done, and a third of the delegates determined by other than popular ratification.

We have plenty of experience with that of late, and the high-elbows of full-contact politics appears to be enough to break the collective media ennui.

Apparently the media was as bored as I was at the seeming inevitability of the coronation of Hope. Or perhaps it was an early case of buyer's remorse.

In any event, the tone of the rhetoric spiked up. I particularly enjoyed the commercial about the 0300 phone call to the White House bedroom, and who would be best to answer the call. I have plenty of experience in political-military affairs, and it is a good thing I am not on the ballot, since whoever was calling would not like the answer.

It might be something like the news that Venezuelans moving troops and tanks up to the Columbian border, preparing for a retaliatory strike against a Columbian incursion against Ecuador, in which FARC strongman Luis Édgar Devia Silva, AKA   "Raul Reyes," was killed. Sensitive information was retrieved from his laptop computer.

It seems that there is some unsettling information on the hard drive. The references to uranium are bad enough, but there is evidence that hundreds of millions of dollars have been funneled into the insurgents in Columbia. That is all from petrodollars earned in America, of course, which places us in the usual position of funding both sides of the war. The Bush Administration's Plan Columbia provides $600 million in aid to eradicate cocoa production and bolster the military against the FARC, who we are funding voluntarily at the pump.

The Kenndy clan, whose high-profile endorsement of Senator Obama helped ignite the bandwagon is involved in this one, too.

You have seen the commercials during the winter, I'm sure. Joe Kennedy II founded the Citizens Energy Corporation back in 1980. He was going to try to do something altruistic and good by taking the profits generated from the oil trading would be used for a variety of charitable causes, some in the US and some overseas. I admire Joe for what he has been doing these last almost thirty years.

The old regime in Caracas kept information about their participation quiet, but oil industry has been nationalized since then, and strongman Hugo Chavez believed the program could be revitalized as part of a strategy to create allies within the US, and generate goodwill for his authoritarian style of government.

A deal was cut in 2005 by Rep William DelaHunt (D-10-MA) to reinvigorate the program. Delahunt was just the ranking member then, but he is now Chairman of the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight. It is a sweet deal; Venezuelan fuel oil is distributed at 60% of market value to poor residents of Massachusetts and some adjoining states in the northeast.

The plan was to start at around 40 million gallons, and boost the program to more than twice that by last year. Considering what has happened to the cost of oil, that is a significant chunk of change. Joe can be forgiven for looking a little conflicted on the television when he talks about it.

You certainly can't fault him for not wishing to walk away from a program in which he has invested his heart. Still, it seems a little unseemly, like Jimmy Carter's brother hanging out with Mohamar Qaddafi back in the day.

But that is politics for you, and you certainly cannot pick who is going to call you at three in the morning.

I don't know if we will talk about the mess in the Caribbean over the next few weeks. John McCain is the last dog on his side of the aisle, and perhaps he might say something. Or perhaps he will just leave it alone, and see what happens.

I am relieved that the lease on the Clinton campaign headquarters has been extended for a while, and I can continue to monitor the satellite trucks. I will be looking to see if the dogs are chasing them, too.

Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com