Election 2020

There are several unrelated matters that have popped up over the weekend.  Well, not entirely unrelated.

First of all, under instructions of the White House, a missile (from a drone) has taken out an important Iranian military leader, Qasim Suleimani (excuse any spelling errors) while he was visiting Iraq.

This tendency for US presidents to kill military and political leaders without trial is something that I do not agree with.  Sure; they are usually in retaliation for an enemy action that was essentially an act of undeclared war, e.g. 9/11, or the attack that killed a contractor recently.  There are lots of others who, like me, are unhappy about killing foreign military and political leaders, but there may be reasons why the US should take that route, though we have expressed dissatisfaction with other countries that did it.

Secondly, Bernie Sanders has done some powerful fundraising in the last quarter of last year, and this has impressed many Democrat-watchers greatly.  But I am unhappy that, it is not poll-results that impress political commentators, but ability to raise money.  Can't people look at any other criteria besides fund-raising?  We're starved for objective information about the likelihood of candidates to attract voters in primaries across the country, and it is pathetic that the best we can do is to use ability to raise funds, the very thing that we are determined to stamp out of politics.  It is so demoralizing that money is a basis for comparison without any resistance to it being so.

I have started reading the New York Times, and they invariably address the question: Whom are uncommitted, and independent voters likely to vote for?  It is so wrong that we should be burdened with the preferences of jokers we don't know, and shouldn't have to care about!  Can't we just vote for whom we like most, without worrying about countless sheep who are less intelligent than ourselves?  But no; we have to agonize over these nincompoops, who might never make it to the polls.

Meanwhile, in the UK (or Great Britain, as I call it, and who cares that it's a Kingdom?), the Brexit question is destroying their electoral decision process.  Here's what I recommend.

Each party should send their leaders who are in favor of BREXIT (i.e., in favor of Britain leaving the European Community) to one place, called Brexitville, and all their leaders who are against BREXIT to another place, let's call it Remainville.  Then they should be given two weeks to explain to the whole country why they want to Leave or Remain, respectively, to the British People, who know not their left hands from their right, in words of one syllable.  Then there should be an election between these two groups.  If it so happens that Leaving Party wins, then they should undertake to get BREXIT done in a few days, and then decide who is to lead Parliament.

Similarly, if the Remainers win, there will doubtless be a lot of repairing to do for commerce to smoothly proceed, after which there can be elections for Parliament.  Trying to elect members to Parliament while all parties are divided concerning BREXIT is madness.  BREXIT is currently restructuring all the parties, and creating questions such as: If I vote for Labor, will they do a referendum, or will they do a good job of BREXIT?  What if I want BREXIT, but a referendum returns REMAIN?  There is massive ignorance about the consequences of any step any party can take, and rightly so, because the parties themselves do not know.

Why do I advocate this?  Because the fact whether or not Britain is in the European Community strongly influences whom the Brits need to have leading them.  One set of leaders for EEC Britain, a different set of leaders for NON-EEC Britain.  An election makes no sense before the BREXIT issue is settled.  This is all the law and the prophets.  (Obviously, while we're waiting for these things to be settled, British commerce will suffer.  I don't know what to suggest.)


Meanwhile, down at the White House Farm, we must wonder whether Trump is playing chicken with Congress.  There must be at least a few members of the Republican Party that thinks that in future, they must have some mechanism to ensure that a loony like Trump never takes control of the party.  But now that Trump has taken the reins, and holds his Twitter phone in his hand, they have to pretend to be solidly behind Trump, otherwise he's supposedly liable to make some Tweet that calls out any GOP sheep who is straying from the fold.  That's a possibility that all the GOP Congressmen and Senators regard with horror.  A man with bone spurs should not exercise such an ability to instill fear in such tough fellows.

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