Credit Where Credit is Due

Two days from now, on June 1 to be exact, this humble blog will celebrate its eighth anniversary.  Unsolicited Opinion may be a backwater in blogtopia (ysctp!) but it is a long-lasting.  Eight years is a long time in internet years so I take a certain amount of pride in keeping the show going, despite low traffic.  I write because I want to say things and publishing forces me to clarify my thoughts.  If I were doing it for the recognition or high traffic volume, this site would have been dead a long time ago.

Although traffic here is miniscule by Big Box Blog standards, it has been picking up of late.  May will be the third month in a row that more than 400 visitors stopped by.  May's total might even top 500.  My average daily traffic has inched up from the high single digits to the mid-teens.  A large part of that growth is due to links on other blogs, especially on The Galloping Beaver where each post on Unsolicited Opinion appears on their masthead until it is superseded by other blog posts.  Some days virtually all of my traffic comes through TGB.  I'm especially pleased that a fine Canadian blog recognizes me.  I'm hardly the only US blog on their masthead but I am pleased to show our neighbors to the north that all Americans are not batshit crazy.

Three other blogs, Herlander Refugee, Disaffected and It Feels So Good, and Under the LobsterScope are also feature my most recent post on their masthead the same.  I see them show up occasionally as a referral source.  I appreciate the recognition and have added all three to my blogroll.  I guess the truly proper thing would be to figure out how to return the favor and show their most recent posts on my masthead but at the moment I don't know how that is done.  Regardless, a blog with readership in the mid-teens is unlikely to generate much in the way of traffic.

In all ways, I appreciate the support of fellow bloggers and am happy to return the favor.

Memorial Day 2012

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work--
          I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.

Two years, ten years, and the passengers ask the conductor:
          What place is this?
          Where are we now?
  
          I am the grass.
          Let me work.


     --Carl Sandburg

Could Just As Well Be the US

From the Halifax ChronicleHerald with a hat tip to The Galloping Beaver.  A somewhat working knowledge of Canadian politics is required to fully understand many of the cartoons but some will resonate with south of the US-Canada border.  All are well done and can be appreciated by anyone who admires craftsmanship.

Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone

Leon Panetta on the plan for Afghanistan:

I think you’ve got 50 nations in NATO that agree to a plan in Afghanistan. It’s the Lisbon agreement, an agreement that, you know, others, President Bush, President Obama, everyone has agreed is the direction that we go in in Afghanistan.

“What is that direction? It’s to take us to a point where we draw down by the end of 2014. That is the plan that has been agreed to. And it’s a plan that is working. And very frankly, the only way to get this accomplished in terms of the transition that we have to go through is to be able to set the kind of timelines that have been set here in order to ensure that we fulfill the mission of an Afghanistan that governs and secures itself. That’s what this is about.”

He's a man with a plan and the plan fits the man and we're going to stay in Afghanistan. 

Repeat until fully exhausted.

A Wish for 2012

Steven Pearlstein describes the myriad forms of capitalism in the Washington Post today.  Capitalism, he writes, comes in a variety of flavors.  Each produces a different outcome, often profit and sometimes enormous wealth for some at the expense of many. 

In this national election then, Pearlstein believes it is fair to ask candidates about the kind of capitalism they want for America.

We would all surely welcome an intelligent presidential debate on what kind of capitalism we want to have. Only please spare us the self-serving nonsense about who created or destroyed how many jobs. In almost any form of capitalism, running the government is not the same as running the economy, and neither is like running Bain Capital.

My additional wish asks for non-capitalist options.  Given the choices possible in 2012 America, I vote for humane capitalism.

Arlington Northwest

In Tacoma this weekend.

I spent the morning laying out markers.

Smoldering Fire Breaks Out Anew

The spirit of Occupy is not dead.  Now it's in Montreal.

Longue vie à l'esprit de les Occuper Mouvement!

Always a Racket

A friend sent me a link to "War is a Racket!  Has Anything Changed?" which is an updated play on General Smedley Butler's classic truth about war.  On this Memorial Day weekend, it is a truth that should be well remembered, although in modern America we seem to have become very comfortable with that racket to our own economic and societal detriment.  Most readers of this humble blog no doubt already know this truth but I pass it along for you to keep in mind.  Maybe you will have an opportunity to share it with someone less aware than yourself.

Not only is war a racket, it is an enduring racket.  I came across that truth is in a review of  War Time:  An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences by Mary Dudziak.in The Nation.  What really brought the message home to me was this quote:

In almost every year of the last century, American soldiers served in a conflict that qualified for a combat medal. The military criteria for wartime, Dudziak notes, “swallow much of American history.” (emphasis added.)

And so far in the 21st century, American soldiers have been eligible for a combat medal.  Makes me think that the America's oft-recited pledge should read more like,   

I pledge allegiance
To the United States of America
One Nation at war,
Then, now and well into the future.

Eclipse

 
 The annular eclipse is at totality as I write.  I'm watching online since Olympia's cloudy sky offers no direct view.  Maybe the sky seems darker but I can't tell for sure.

The online eclipse is pretty good, though.  I'm watching on the SLOOH SpaceCamera which has views from California and New Mexico.  I am also watching amateur astronomer Scotty Degenhardt broadcasting live from Area 51 in Nevada.

Scotty's site is more animated, moving from the full image to the extremities of the solar crescent as he captured the full sequence through totality in black and white.  The SpaceCamera is static view, in color and continuously updated. 

Better than I would have seen in Olympia had the sky been clear. I did not have to arrange for protective eyewear.

photo credit:  Tom Bridges

Verdict

Washington is broken.  Not a surprise to most anyone who pays attention to public policy in the United States but worth two extended opinion pieces in the Washington Post in the past few weeks.  Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, establishment scholars who span the range of acceptable thought, first wrote  a four page article on April 27.  That article clearly laid blame:

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

Today they comment on the popular bromides--term limits, balanced budget amendments, third parties--offered as solutions for America's gridlock and dysfunction.  Mann and Ornstein dismiss these "fixes" as unworkable, unwise or fantasy (my word).  They offer what they call  a "more sensible and promising reform agenda...focused on fixing the party system and addressing the roots and the weapons of political partisanship."

All four of their proposals make sense to me.  I especially favor instant runoff voting and like the delicious irony of a compulsory voting requirement combined with a lottery funded with fines paid by non-voters.

None of the proposals are likely to fly in Washington.  Mann and Ornstein may be pillars of the Washington Establishment but in today's political climate their ideas are as welcome as Marx and Engels.