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I’m guessing that the dispatch of US forces to Australia, announced this week during President Obama’s Pacific tour, is not going to be a major topic on any of the so-called “Sunday shows.” I also acknowledge that I wouldn’t really know, since I don’t watch these shows or even get the significance they are assigned; all seems rather archaic to me. Still, I feel safe in guessing that Newt Gingrich or the “Supercommittee” will be much more-discussed topics, with “Marines to Oz” given minimal attention if any.

So I’ll fix this oversight, because I think it is an oversight and that it deserves a lot more discussion, along with all the related issues it touches.

As the BBC reports, essentially

Australia has agreed to host a full US Marine task force in the coming years, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced at a news conference with US President Barack Obama in Canberra.

She said about 250 US Marines would arrive next year, eventually being built up to 2,500 personnel.

The deployment is being seen as a move to counter China’s growing influence.

And, boy, is this just confounding, disappointing, dismal news for a bunch of reasons. (more…)

1. I feel so grateful to Iowa State University for maintaining a pretty clean, respectable athletic program. The biggest “scandal” I can recall was when the men’s basketball coach was found to be a drunk (and a rather sad drunk at that), and promptly fired. I don’t recall any kind of violent backlash afterward, either. (Though I do recall being part of the crowd which marched on President Jischke’s house to protest “Dry VEISHEA” back in the 1990s, so I have some sympathy for Penn State students; it’s so easy to act dumb when you’re in college.) Bigger picture, though, is there some point at which the stink from America’s college athletics world gets so bad that we finally do something to reform it? I’m not sure, though if there is such a point we’re almost certain to get there sooner or later, the way things are going.

2. For the most part, Ohio politics seem to be taking a breather in the aftermath of Tuesday’s election. But, obviously, armchair ideologues never rest, and so it was really no surprise to see rabid wingnut Kevin O’Brien wasting no time in declaring that statehouse Republicans should respond to Issue 2′s defeat by ramming the exact same legislation through all over again. Just exempt cops and firefighters, this time, and that should make it more palatable to voters. Uhhh huh. Frankly, that may have worked, or at least made the vote much closer, had they tried it the first time. At this point, though, I’m pretty sure that Republican-backed collective bargaining restrictions are a radioactive concept in Ohio, and likely to remain that way for a while. And I think the GOP will be the ones getting burned, should they try to shove it down voters’ throats a second time. But, hey, by all means. You go right ahead, Kasich & co., and listen to Kevin O’Brien. He hasn’t steered you wrong yet, has he?

3. It sounds like President Obama may be exercising a kind of “pocket veto” of the abominable Keystone XL pipeline, which has united liberal environmentalists and rural Nebraskans against Canada’s oil industry. If “delaying the study” ends up effectively dooming the plan, great. North America absolutely should be investing in large-scale energy infrastructure projects; those projects absolutely should not involve sinking more money into infrastructure designed for an energy source which is unsustainable from either an economic or an environmental perspective. Building a super pipeline to funnel more of our money into the dead end of petroleum dependency, and the carbon-intensive tar sands to boot, is fucking moronic. I had somewhat higher hopes for the Obama administration on energy and the environment, but it still takes some courage to veto this dogfucker, even via a passive-aggressive approach. For all its negligible worth, Obama has inched closer to winning my vote in 2012.

4. Amidst all the domestic and international cause for despair, there may be at least one glimmering of hope. In a recent public rambling, Warren Ellis notes that “my sixteen year old daughter… has a t-shirt that reads OF COURSE I’M NOT ON FUCKING FACEBOOK.” Mercurial adolescent enthusiasm made you, Zuckerberg, and it can unmake you too.

I say this secure in the knowledge that I’m already going to Hell (if there is such a place which, phew, there isn’t), but this past week I’ve had the bonus twelfth track from Sheryl Crow’s Globe Sessions album going through my head. I can’t find lyrics (not that I’ve looked real hard; it’s 8 a.m. and I have a headache) and I’m not sure the tune even has a title.

But judging from the album’s 1998 release, and song’s lyrics, I’ve generally assumed it to be in large part a commentary on the last time America had a Democrat as president and a Republican Congress determined to destroy him. “Should we have the man impeached or should we shoot him in the foot… newspapers and maga-zines sit there propagandi-zing to tell me what a loser I’ve elected… you waste my time lookin’ for two hundred ways to hang a guy.” Etc.

It all seems to be growing sadly more and more relevant to our contemporary politics, by the day, particularly with the attempt to turn the collapse of Solyndra into a “scandal.”

I mean, there are so many reasons why this is stupidity, it’s like you have 30 fish in your barrel and only two shotgun shells; where do you begin? I think one of the most important two observations to make, here, was noted at Democracy in America:

Even on the question of soundness, Richard Branson and the Walton family, among others, invested hundreds of millions in Solyndra; I wouldn’t characterise them as stupid or crazy, and if our government were merely as dumb an investor as Richard Branson, I think we would all be pretty satisfied. Also, we would be living in Singapore.

And I would use the other figurative shotgun shell to point out that, even if Solyndra were a “scandalously” bad judgment, as a Presidential-grade scandal that’s fucking pathetic. I mean, Obama has been President for nearly three years. A rabid opposition which openly describes “making him a one-term president” as their top priority has controlled the House of Representatives for nearly one full year. And, this being America in 2011, we know full well that both major parties can and do employ people full time to search for anything that might even look scandalous.

And this is all we have…? Are you fucking kidding me?

Frankly I’m astonished, here; even allowing for something of a late start because the GOP found plenty of Obama-hectoring fun with the whole deficit-spending outrage game, this just seems nearly impossible. Can a modern presidency possibly be this clean? It seems to me that should be the headline on CNN: “Obama administration so fucking clean it’s boring, possibly unsettling; voters and opponents may actually prefer familiar, higher level of misconduct.”

Meanwhile, if you want a real scandal, look no further than Ohio’s Republicans and their attempt to Gerrymander congressional districts beyond reason. (more…)