the morning after

i'm waiting to hear the sanders supporters' reactions - much like the obama supporters when they learned that their candidate could not change the world single-handedly. it must be like waking up after you've slept with someone at a party... sweet talk and too much to drink, followed by that long, angry and disappointed walk home.

it's not that the candidate is not admirable; they are always better than what we end up with. but expecting a different outcome when the other side writes the rules is folly, and naive. of course they win - they own the game.

the winning move is not to play. don't accept the lesser of any number of evils; evil is not something that should be judged by degree. do you say that the monster who eats just 1 child is better than the one that eats 10?

they are a made-up thing, like money and priests. if we all stop believing in them, they will go away.

congress kills insider trading ban

one of the few pieces of good legislation to come out of congress in a long while was a law meant to stop the congressional practice of profiting from insider information, known as the stock act. all the law did was require that any stock transactions by members of congress and their senior staff be posted in an online database so we could see nothing shady was going on.

although the law was passed almost exactly 1 year ago, it was never put into effect, and the white house is just as responsible for that as anyone else.

then, as soon as they thought we weren't looking any more, congress repealed it. both parties, both houses, in a grand total of 24 seconds, and signed by president obama almost as quickly.

transparent, my ass.