I'm here, but distracted

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, kids. I'm busy finishing my final project so I can graduate and move onto a new life completely lacking in promise or fulfillment. :) This endeavor will take me a few more days to complete (at least in draft form).

In the meantime, there are two fun things in the world you should pay attention to:

First, we have the elections going on in Nigeria. Now if these go well, and aren't totally rigged, all will be good. If, however, these go badly, and are totally rigged, shit will probably go down. And that means lots of things, including higher gas prices for the American driving public. So far, so shaky.

Second, we have elections going on in France this weekend. It'll be curious to see who emerges for the second round of voting next month. The Post ably pointed out this morning how France continues to play a major role in the world, but how the French feel their nation is in steep decline.

Entertain yourself with these fun events. I'm gonna get back to frantically writing now. The woman riding a Segway up and down Harvard Street, though, is a distraction. I'll be back after Tuesday.

Fun quotes from foreign policy land

First up to bat, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, talking about why she won't run for president:

I understand American politics very badly. I've always said I'm much better at understanding international politics than American politics. I just know that I've got a job to do for the rest of this president's term. That's what I'm concentrating on. . . . I haven't thought much about it myself. I'm thinking more about these days how to get other people to hold elections that are free and fair around the world.

Well gee golly, Condi. Your stellar grasp on international politics has led to a quagmire, a resurgent Tali-terrorist threat, a nuclear North Korea, and a really really cranky Iran. Top that all off with a completely stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process and a now four-year old genocide in Darfur. As for getting other people to hold those free and fair elections, I have two questions: 1) Florida and Ohio, much? and 2) the current elections in Nigeria, from whom we buy a lot of oil, are turning out to be a smashing success, aren't they?

If this is what your excellent command of international politics gets us, I'm quite glad you're refraining from giving us your thoughts on Social Security and immigration reform. Lord knows they'd be stunning policy failures that would make your current boss look brilliant.

Now let's move on to round two, with General John J. Sheehan (USMC, Ret.), talking about why he turned down the job of coordinating the Iraq and Afghanistan wars among several government agencies (which, by the way, is the National Security Advisor and President's job):

It would have been a great honor to serve this nation again. But after thoughtful discussions with people both in and outside of this administration, I concluded that the current Washington decision-making process lacks a linkage to a broader view of the region and how the parts fit together strategically. We got it right during the early days of Afghanistan -- and then lost focus. We have never gotten it right in Iraq. For these reasons, I asked not to be considered for this important White House position. These huge shortcomings are not going to be resolved by the assignment of an additional individual to the White House staff. They need to be addressed before an implementation manager is brought on board.

Translation: "Not gonna do it. Wouldn't be prudent." Alternatively, the Administration is clueless and they're not gonna find some savior for their debacles until they figure out just what purpose their debacles serve.

Good choice, General. Besides, you're probably making way more money in the private sector anyway, and probably also have time to see your family. Lack of family time has been a key motivator for those jumping off the H.M.S. WhiteHousePanic.

There you have it folks. We're totally fucked, and nothing will change until we get some personnel changes at the top, and/or an infusion of intellectual capital in the capital.

Slight chlorine taste?

Thanks, Army Corps of Engineers, for dumping every YMCA, YWCA, and other public pool into DC's water supply.

We all remember (or not) that little blurb last week about the chloramine in the water being replaced with straight chlorine for a month. In a brazen move yesterday, I took a brief sip of tap water, only to feel like I'd taken a brief sip of bleach. I then turned on my shower, and instantly my little bathroom smelled like a public pool. The scent didn't dissipate either.

Yay! for a month of DC residents smelling like professional swimmers. I hope we all enjoy.

Sidebar: I woke up this morning to a car sitting perpendicular across the sidewalk on Harvard Street, at a bus stop. Harvard Street in one way in my neighborhood, and there are no driveways or anything else to turn into on the right side, given there's a huge retaining wall along the sidewalk. A cop investigated for awhile (couldn't see a car owner), then it got towed off. If anyone has any information about his bizarre development, or wild speculation about people parking on sidewalks, I'm curious.

A weekend of bad Africa policy

Yesterday we got the lovely news that there may be a major food crisis for impoverished Zambians unless aid groups get a swift infusion of cash to buy food, which is, admittedly, available. However, the money for such a move is most readily available from the U.S. (or Europe), but U.S. law insists that food aid be purchased in America, not local producers. In spite of shockingly reasonable and appropriate Bush administration proposals to change the law, at least for dire circumstances like this one, Congress under both parties refuses to do so. Their rationale is that the bottom would fall out of corporate America's support for international aid, because they would no longer get rich off it, and we all know the general population doesn't care.

So there's that.

Then today we get the joyous news that the U.S. allowed the Ethiopians to buy military equipment from North Korea, after sanctions against such purchases had been put in place at U.S. insistence. Granted, few countries still produce parts that are compatible with old Soviet tanks, and those that do are probably also vile human rights violators, but, still. This revelation makes the whole War on Terror thing seem even more like the Cold War. In this case, alleged terrorists in Somalia were our enemy, and the Ethiopians didn't like them either, so Ethiopia is our friend and we should give them the leverage to do whatever they need to fight terror. Even if that means violating the very sanctions we wrote. Meanwhile, State Department lackies are gingerly suggesting that Ethiopia find a new supplier, which they've been doing for over a year.

And what caps it all off? Assistant Secretary of State (and official useless mouthpiece) Jendayi Frazer went to Somalia to express support for the recently beleaguered Somali government. She made no mention of the revelation that Somali, Ethiopian, and perhaps also African Union forces committed war crimes during last week's campaign against Islamic Courts loyalists (or, perhaps more precisely, anti-government fighters resisting perceived clan favoritism). I'm pretty sure open messages of support for weak governments by the United States will only make said governments weaker, given the super popularity of the U.S. at present.

Conversations on weather

Me (waking up in the middle of the night): It's snowing out. Shit.

Later (like, 9:30)...

E: Come on, get up.
Me: No.
E: But it's snowing!
Me: I'm morally opposed to snow in April.
E: It's supposed to snow some more this afternoon.
Me: Then I guess I'll sleep all day.
E: Why don't you like the snow?
Me: It will keep the Easter Bunnies from doing their work.
E: So we'll send in snow bunnies.
Me: The snow bunnies are otherwise engaged in Alaska and Canada. You can't deprive the poor children of northern climates just because this town can't handle snow.
E: Then we'll have Buster do it.
Me: Buster hates snow.
E: No he doesn't. He eats it and plays in it.
Me: When we brought snow in for him, he just ignored it.
E: Buster loves snow!

Obligatory cherry blossom post by yet another DC resident

As promised, pics from my sunset cherry blossoming adventure. Be advised that I'm no photographer, and that these may well suck. Anyway, enjoy at your leisure.

We begin with tulip magnolias outside the Sackler Gallery.

Stalking Washington.

Blossoms overhead.

Stalking Jefferson.

Cascade in the Fourth Room, FDR Memorial.

Four Freedoms, Night.

Should you desire further torture, check out my photobucket.

In which I temporarily become a 60 year old man

I played tourist tonight, and hit the Tidal Basin for some sunset cherry blossom excitement (pics to come). I did the usual bit -- walking down the mall, around the TB towards the Jefferson Memorial, and continued on. It wasn't too terribly crowded, though it was hairy in a few spots. It was starting to get dark by the time I got to the FDR Memorial, which, being one of my two favorite memorials in town, I perused again -- from the beginning, not the end, like a good person. The quotes and stones and water features tell a story, and you can't really read it backwards. After snapping a few shots of some of the fountains and falls, and taking a moment to sort of sink into the gravity of the end of the Second World War and the weight of the Four Freedoms engraved in the wall, I continued on my way. I decided then to visit the Korean War Memorial, my other favorite. Both my grandfather's were in the military during that conflict, one in the Navy and one in the Army. Fortunately, they never actually got deployed to Korea proper (though the one in the Navy did patrol the East China Sea a lot). In their honor, I wrote my senior thesis in college about the ceasefire negotiations during that war. The best compliment I ever got from anyone was when the two of them agreed, "that's pretty much how we remember it."

Anyway, my point...

By the time I got to the Korean War Memorial, I had encountered the hordes of middle school spring break trip groups. Near the pool near the top of the memorial, I saw a park ranger sit down and look sullen. He was probably about 60 or so, and just looked down. Indeed, one lady even asked if he was OK. I sat on the same bench for awhile, staring in a different direction, losing myself in thought. The kids were atrocious. One group was being led by a teacher with a toy light saber. "The statues are creepy!" The photos etched on the wall "look like ghosts."

Of course they look like ghosts. The people in those pictures (though slightly altered) represent the service members who died in that war. The statues of soldiers marching up the hill look scared because war is scary. It's not all pressed uniforms and shiny medals and big planes. It's people slogging through mud and dust killing and getting killed. It's the worst of humanity. Too often these days, wars are fought by children, and the dead are civilians, not soldiers. Just when we thought we'd hit our lowest point, we keep going lower.

And these kids don't get it. I fear they never will. Hell, my own generation doesn't get it, and some of us are being sent to fight and die for a ludicrous cause as we speak. But it doesn't touch us, really. Sure, the price of gas has gone up, but most of my friends don't have cars, so that doesn't really have much effect either. In a way, it's good that young people in America don't know what war is like. Not the huge, commit the country to the fight kind of wars of years past. But these privileged, sheltered kids don't get it. They're running around, trampling over things, screaming, yelling obscenities, and are completely untouched by trouble. For the most part, the kids tonight were white, looked relatively affluent, and probably suburban. It's not so much bothersome that they've never been touched by war, it's that they don't seem to know hardship at all.

I saw a book at the bookstore the other day entitled The "Me" Generation. I don't want to be a part of that. My grandparents grew up in the Depression in rural Tennessee. They had nothing. Literally nothing. Food was grown in the backyard, and what you couldn't grow or raise yourself, you couldn't have. While my childhood was leaps and bounds beyond that, there was still struggle involved. As a teenager, I worked after school and on weekends, and my single mother worked two jobs. We still had trouble making ends meet. If not for a scholarship, I wouldn't have gone to college. And yet in spite of that, the notion was still pounded into my head, primarily by my grandparents, that I needed to serve. There's a world out there bigger than me or anybody else, and I need to do my part, even if it's something small.

When Tom Brokaw released his book, The Greatest Generation, I was pretty incensed. I was young, idealistic, etc, (OK, I'm still those things), and thought perhaps it was premature to proclaim the greatest generation. But maybe it wasn't. Maybe it's time for the "Me" generation. Maybe there was a time when the country came together to do something big and with broad perspective, and maybe that just won't happen again. But I hope not.

Smithsonian Board takes governance lessons from AU

Our great national museum is doomed to never change. After the ouster of Lawrence Small (whose expenses have been described as Ladner-esque, a term I hope doesn't enter local parlance) as head of the Smithsonian, its Board of Regents did exactly what the American University Trustees did a little over a year ago: they created a governance committee! And what do governance committees do?

They say the problems are so big that they can't possibly be resolved until well after the media feeding frenzy is over. They may eventually call for some token transparency to appease the still-incensed, but only after at least six months have passed. After that, it's back to closed-off smoke-filled rooms to find a new leader who will again be allowed to run amok. Nothing will be done to address institutional culture or repair the broken processes that allowed for such gross misspending to occur.

Corruption doesn't exist in a vacuum, especially not at the top. If a leader is tossed out for ridiculously abusing his expense account, you can probably bet that somebody somewhere down the chain is following the dear leader's example, and will probably be the first to speak up and say the problem was only at the top. Maybe, maybe the Regents of the Smithsonian will really learn from AU and see that token change isn't good enough. If not, I hope that they at least raise the ire of Chuck Grassley and company, who, at least in AU's case, weren't too shy to say that proposed reforms weren't good enough.

And now, cue the wild speculation about who the next Smithsonian Secretary will be. For the record though, former Mayor Anthony Williams has yet to be named AU's president, so careful with the speculation.