HACK!

I don't know what to say about the hacking of the multiple U.S. Government agencies - including the Energy and Commerce Departments and the National Nuclear Security Administration, which takes care of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile - that have been taking place for the past nine months.

Except for this: This is just one more example of why you don't elect a real-estate developer with a TV reality show pretending to be a documentary as the leader of your country.

Russia is probably behind this hacking, though the Russians deny it.  The attack wasn't detected not by the government's own security system but by a private firm.  Someone in the White House must-have changed all of the login passwords to 12345 - as we all know, that's the sort of lock combination some idiot would put on his luggage!

Good thing Trump will be gone in a month.

And he's likely all packed and ready to go, despite his protests of election fraud.

By the way, to get into his suitcases to make sure he isn't taking anything from the White House that doesn't belong to him, I would advise the Secret Service to open his suitcases with the combination 12345. 😜  

Weapons of Mass Distraction

I so wanted to avoid talking about Trump this week, but he leaves me no choice.  He's already made  a week's worth of news, and this is only Tuesday.

Trump ratcheted up tensions with Iran, the country that Americans love to hate after they took over our embassy and took fifty-odd Americans hostage for fourteen months.  Maybe he won't start a war with the Iranians (though it could lead to higher gas prices if Iran takes action, which could mean SUVs becoming obsolete overnight, and I would love to see that, of course), but he can certainly distract from his disastrous summit with Putin last week with this ploy.  Don't expect his tough talk to cool tensions with Iran like it did with North Korea; Iran is deeply committed to refusing to improve relations with the U.S. except on its own terms.  You can't win with the Iranians, as Ronald Reagan found out when he tried back-channel negotiations and arms sales with them.  He was hoping for a "Nixon goes to China" moment but got a Laurel and Hardy "fine mess" moment instead.  

Iranians love to punk us, but not as much as Trump loves to punk his base.  As I type this, he's addressing a VFW convention and promising $12 billion in emergency relief for farmers affected by tariffs.  Hey, isn't it illegal to buy votes? Again, he's trying to distract his base.  It might not work for the midterms, as farmers don't want a handout.  They want foreign markets.

And former national-security officials advising current national-security officials need security clearances because they need to give their successors advice. Trump wants to take them away because he can't tolerate their negative criticism.  Another distraction from that "Russia thing."

One of them is former national security adviser Susan Rice.  Don't worry, she'll get her credentials back if she loses them - she'll get them back when she becomes President Martin O'Malley's Secretary of State in 2021.

Forget 2021 - is it Friday yet?

These Trump-triggered brain dumps could ruin my writing . . ..               

Putin It There

Now it can be told.

Russian President Vladimir Putin put his rubles on Donald Trump to win the American presidential election of 2016, then he had his toadies ensure Trump's victory. Russian hackers, under orders from Putin, deliberately spread damaging stories about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election to, if not defeat her (because who knew that was going to happen?) damage her upon her entry in to the White House. This apparently included the hacking of the Democratic National Committee's e-mails.  President Obama knew all about it, and it was so sensitive to national security that he even communicated with only four people in the government about the issue to keep it top secret, but he was reluctant to do much about it out of fear that he would be seen as politicizing a security issue to persuade voters to support Hillary.  In other words, he didn't want to be seen as "tipping the scales."

Gee, where would we ever get an idea that a Democrat would do something dirty like that?

Oh, right . . .

Be that as it may, there's a huge difference between a primary election and a general election, so if Obama had come flat out and said that the Russians were deliberately trying to elevate Trump at Hillary's expense, I think we would have understood.  Some of us would still have voted for Jill Stein, but we would have understood.  Instead, the Obama administration failed to take tougher action against Russia, and now here we are.  If Obama had taken tougher action and if Hillary had still been defeated, at least Obama could have said he tried.  At least one Republican was outraged by this news.  "The Obama Administration," this Republican said in a tweet, "knew far in advance of November 8th about election meddling by Russia.  [They] did nothing about it. WHY?"

The Republican's name?  Donald J. Trump.

Ouch!

And yes, I'm still mad at the Democrats for promoting Hillary, especially after Hillary promoted Trump in the primary season because she thought she could beat him.  And I'm still mad that the Democrats discouraged prospective Democratic presidential candidates from running for the party's nomination in 2016 and punished those who did, leaving Hillary with a left-leaning independent with no chance of winning the nomination of a political party he does not in fact belong to as her only viable opponent in the primaries.                      

(Pointless aside I couldn't resist including here: The other day, I was cycling through traffic when I came alongside at a stoplight an SUV with a Hillary Clinton sticker and a Bernie Sanders sticker on the back bumper.  I spat in front of the SUV.  Not on the SUV, just on the street in front of the SUV.  Why?  Because the back bumper didn't have a Martin O'Malley sticker on it.)   

Highway 93 Revisited

One of the most exciting infrastructure projects of the past decade has just been completed over the precipitous canyon the Colorado River meanders through just below the Hoover Dam, near Las Vegas. The Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Bridge (named for a late Nevada governor and Arizona's - and America's - most famous fatality of the Afghanistan War) spans the canyon at 1900 feet long and 88 feet wide, and should open soon. Its construction began in 2005 and is slated to open in October 2010 (this month).

The bridge is to become part of U.S. Route 93 and it bypasses the original thoroughfare built on the rim of the Hoover Dam. A right-of-way across a dam may sound novel, and it is, but when the road was integrated into the dam's design, the engineers had no idea that the it would become an important corridor. The dam was completed at the same time U.S. 93, which had terminated in Nevada, was extended into Arizona. Over the years, U.S. 93 became a major thoroughfare for passenger and commercial traffic.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (not to mention the Oklahoma City bombing before) led to the ban of trucks on the dam to prevent a terrorist attack on that facility, which would be catastrophic, given the electricity and water supply it generates for the Southwest. Once this bridge is open, trucks no longer have to cross the Colorado River by way of Needles, California (quite an inconvenient detour, you'll agree) to get from Phoenix to Las Vegas. (The old Hoover Dam route will be accessible by car only to people on the Nevada side of the river.)

This bridge is the best argument for the planned passenger railroad tunnel between New Jersey and New York City that New Jersey governor Chris Christie is ready to scuttle, likely as early as tomorrow. The bridge was built with national security in mind; no project in the New York area would do more to help our national interest. It would increase commuter railroad ridership and get more cars off the road, thus helping to lessen our dependence on foreign oil that largely comes from places where religiously fanatical commandos want to kill us. It would also help the environment and create new jobs, improving the Tristate region's well-being. Unfortunately, New Jersey is dealing with a governor who knows the price of everything (accounting for cost overruns) and the value of nothing.