Now let’s leave aside foreign policy and look at the differences in the candidates’ approach to a topic that is very dear to my heart: higher education.

On the issue of why tuition is going up, Sanders pointed to choices being made by colleges. “We have some colleges and universities that are spending a huge amount of money on fancy dormitories and on giant football stadiums…  And I understand in many universities a heck of a lot of vice presidents who earn a big salary.”

So Bernie is doing his favorite thing and suggesting that taking away money from a few rich individuals and spreading it around will solve the problem. In the process, he contributes to demonize colleges who, according to him, are making all those bad spending choices. What does Clinton suggest instead?

Clinton said that, by far, the top reason for rising college costs at public colleges is that “states have been dis-investing in higher education…. So states over a period of decades have put their money elsewhere; into prisons, into highways, into things other than higher education.”

Who is right? Obviously Hillary. My university right now (and that’s only just at the moment. Things will get much worse in the new fiscal year) misses $250,000,000 in state funding. Even if we fire every administrator on campus, that will not even begin addressing the problem. We are a state school, our administrators are not overpaid. And the only fancy thing we are building right now is a new science lab.

Bernie’s comments are relevant to expensive private schools. But their students don’t need help. Our students do! We had to raise tuition last year because the state of Illinois is dis-investing in higher ed. That’s the only reason for our tuition raises. But Bernie doesn’t notice our existence because that’s inconvenient and spoils his neat “the rich guy stole your pony” narrative.

Bernie’s college plan sounds cute but since Bernie doesn’t understand how things work, the plan will not address the real problems. His are simplistic, superficial suggestions that make people feel good by pointing out the enemy: rich folks, money-hungry administrators, evil hedge fund managers. There is zero difference between this approach and that of Trump. 

I hope people abandon the childish yearning for simplistic recipes and begin to understand that life is more complicated than this good guys vs bad guys fantasy.

Thus the major dilemma for Democratic voters in 2016: Do they support Sanders, a guy whose positions are in line with the party’s mainstream, but who obviously has a fairly superficial, ideologically rigid engagement with foreign policy? Or do they support Clinton, who has a more powerful, detailed, and nuanced command of the issues than any other candidate, but is also far more hawkish than most Democrats?

Absolutely. And here’s the deal: what the dunces call “more hawkish” is simply more active. Ignorance paralyzes and makes people close their eyes and pretend nothing is happening and a few magic incantations will make all problems go away. Knowledge prepares people to act.

Hillary is not afraid to act because she understands the complexity of the situation. Next to her, the other two contenders looked like lost little boys. The problem is that, for most voters, it’s easier to identify with the lost boys than with a competent adult.

From a great article on the prospects of democracy in Africa:

In order to attract more aid and budget support (resources useful in building patronage and security machines that can they can deploy to tighten their grip on power), African leaders have been willing to sing and dance to the tune the human rights crowd wants to play. So they have solemnly written and enacted lovely paper constitutions that send thrills up the legs of the gullible and easily pleased human rights community.

This is exactly what happened back in the former USSR. I wrote in my diary back in 1996, “Americans, what are you doing? Stop giving us money, stop sending ‘humanitarian aid.’ It just makes everything worse!”

You can’t pay people to establish democracy. You can’t talk them into it. They need to want it, and unless they do, it’s never going to happen.

And now look at Putin who first enriched himself by selling American humanitarian aid in Leningrad  (I hope nobody thinks it went to feed the hungry, do they?), used the money to consolidate his power, and can now stop keeping up the pretense of democracy.

I’m happy that yesterday’s silliness with DNC servers was not central to the debate. Hillary trounced her opponents on every issue.

Old age begins when you can no longer learn and adopt new ideas. Unfortunately, Bernie is at that stage in life. He never says anything new. He knows he’s weak on foreign policy but is he trying to learn? Not at all. He keeps repeating the exact same statements he made in the previous debates. A president with no intellectual agility is simply incompetent.

Bernie even ended with some sexist rant about his wife in the spirit of “women and children.” O’Malley’s response about his wife showed an enormous generational chasm between the two men on gender issues. And this is yet another instance where Bernie just can’t learn. He isn’t trying to understand why you can’t talk about women in a way that was OK in the 1950s.

Overall, this was a good, important debate that clarified many crucial things. Hillary rules! And the way she closed is just fucking priceless.

. . . And the channel that will transmit the debate is stupid. And nobody is offering any pre-debate analysis or trying to hype up the event. Even MSNBC is doing something entirely unrelated. I feel cruelly put upon and discriminated against in my political beliefs.

In any case, let’s make the best of the debate anyway. Leave comments and show your support!

19:32 – Hillary’s outfit is a little too grandmotherly. It’s the first unsuccessful outfit of her campaign.

19:35 – God, O’Malley is boring. I fall asleep whenever I hear him.

19:38 – Bernie’s passion never fails and never diminishes. It’s admirable. But “Muslim troops on the ground”? Like in a religious war? That’s a very unfortunate turn of phrase.

19:45 – OK, I kind of hate O’Malley. He sounds shrill and unbalanced.

19:48 – Bernie keeps beating the dead horse of his opposition to the war in Iraq.

19:56 – gun control again, how boring. But wait, Bernie puts down O’Malley. That’s so cool! Go for it, Bernie!

20:00 – Hillary is passionate and strong. This is great.

20:03 – O’Malley winks at the moderator and looks creepy. He thinks that freedom of worship and freedom of religion are two different things.

20:08 – OK, it’s time for the debaters to start disagreeing in something. It’s not a debate if everyone agrees. Thing’s starting to get creepy.

20:12 – Bernie: a coalition including Russia? Has he gone daft in his dotage?

20:17 – unlike Bernie, Hillary knows the specifics of the region and gives a detailed plan of action. Bernie can only come up with platitudes that are always the same and show no familiarity with the specifics.

20:20 – Hillary says it won’t come to having to shoot down a Russian plane. I’m laughing uproariously. She’s either lying or delusional when she says there’s a hope Russians will go after ISIS instead of supporting Assad.

20:23 – Bernie decided to channel stupid Rand Paul. How sad.

20:24 – Hillary is absolutely right that staying out of Lybia would have made matters worse. Bernie is being very superficial on the issue. He simply doesn’t know the region. He repeats the same things, in the same tone of voice.

20:26 – O’Malley just suggested that Sanders is old. Very classy.

20:28 – Hillary is SO MUCH BETTER and more knowledgeable on foreign policy than her opponents. It’s like me talking to two kindergartners about Spanish literature.

20:39 – Is O’Malley seriously touting Maryland’s post-recession economy? That’s the joke of the day.

20:43 – Hillary is so damn good today! I’m loving her.

20:50 – Bernie is so repetitive. I keep thinking of old dogs and new tricks. “Wall Street is a threat to the economy”? Is his intended audience the least educated among voters?

Spain is preparing for its long-awaited election. This was a very contentious electoral cycle, with candidates for the position of the President of the country’s government insulting each other, puffing and huffing in displays of macho, and not saying anything of great value. Things got so crazy that the current President Mariano Rajoy got hit in the face by a young voter who belongs to the group of population where 1 out of 2 people are unemployed.

The candidates are all men who look the same, speak the same, mumble a lot, and have bored everybody with their desire for self-aggrandizement.

40% of Spaniards have still not decided who to vote for (because the candidates are so interchangeable) but the leader of the ruling party of austerity Mariano Rajoy leads. He is older than his 3 opponents, so at least he stands out in that way. I detest Rajoy (because he is a dumbo) but the rest of the candidates are not hugely inspiring either. I’m glad I don’t have to vote in Spain.

I’m starting to think that the whole “Bernie stole Hillary’s data” insanity was a ploy aimed at generating at least some interest in today’s poorly scheduled debate. The Democrats are failing to get any press in this election to the extent that I’m afraid soon the only way of making a splash will be to disinter Monica Lewinsky. 

I will watch the debate tonight out of loyalty but once again we will see reasonable people come onstage, calmly say reasonable things, and calmly leave. And viewers will not flock to their TVs for that.

The smug squealing over the “stupid” Republican voters who confused Raqqa and Agrabah makes me want to vomit. Yes, confusing two unfamiliar names is such a massive faux pas but squealing like a stupid monkey about “a CIA-sponsored coup in Ukraine” – a pastime in which Democratic voters engaged for months and for which not a single one of them apologized – is perfectly fine.

Pathetic hypocrites.

I have no idea if the story is true or was invented for the benefit of sad, unloved kids everywhere but here it is.

A little boy came home from school one day, and his mother told him she’d received a letter from his school’s principal. She read the letter aloud for the boy, and this is what it said,

“Ma’am, your son is absolutely brilliant. We have no resources at this school to teach somebody who is obviously a genius. We believe you should take him out of school and educate him in a way that will suit his talent.”

The boy grew up to become Thomas Edison, the great inventor who created the light bulb,  the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a plethora of other great inventions. After his mother died, Edison was going through her papers and found that old letter from the principal. This is what it really said:

“Ma’am, your son is retarded. We can’t educate him because he doesn’t have the intellectual capacity to learn. Please take him out of school and take care of him at home.”

P.S. Be careful when you share this story with others, though. I already made two adult men cry with it, and now one of them is avoiding me.

Two Ukrainian women tried to enter the Crimea with 1,100 lbs of sausage among their personal belongings. They are suspected of smuggling but for two Ukrainian women, that’s a modest lunch for a week.