If China were not the world's second largest economy and among the largest trading partners to the United States, I somehow doubt we would have friendly relations with its government which is oppressive, expansionist and, frankly, far more dangerous to world peace than many dictatorships we've toppled in the past.

Ron Paul's crazy (and racist!  and paranoid! and misogynist!) 80s and 90s newsletter has drawn a lot of attention here on the left, and for good reason.  Ron Paul holds a certain attraction for some of us, as he's the kind of guy who, given the power, woul reliably keep the U.S. out of foreign wars and who would dismantle America's surveillance state while also bringing an end to the ridiculous drug war.

I should be in San Francisco right now.  The plans had been made, tickets bought, room and board at the ready. A family Christmas vacation awaited. But then, life got in the way.

It's Christmas time, which means "War on Christmas" time, which means a whole bunch of bizarre complaints about persecution by members of an overwhelmingly privileged religious majority group. This bad behavior is often understood as part of the most intense and fire-breathing American Christianists' fire-breathing intensity.

According to new census data, when you account for necessary expenses like rent, food and utilities, 48% of Americans are "struggling" economically -- living just above the poverty line.  I doubt this is news to everyone here, but it's a major problem and the subject of my latest for The Daily.

On Christmas Day, 1914, only four months into the brutality of World War I, a spontaneous miracle happened on the Western Front.  On that day German and British soldiers laid down their arms and gathered together in No Man's Land to share food and cigarettes, sing Christmas carols, and play a few games of football.
 

Named for the famous revolutionary who was stabbed in the bath, Marat Safin was about as talented and powerful as anyone that has played tennis. While the he earned a handful of good results on the tour, like defeating Sampras in the 2000 US Open and briefly claiming the #1 ranking, the rumor was that he spent too much time satisfying his female fans. Though charming off-court, he was known for angry outbursts on court and claims to have smashed over a thousand racquets. He once played the Hopman Cup, "sporting a bandaged right thumb, two black eyes, a blood-filled left eye, and a cut near his right eye, all suffered in a fight several weeks earlier in Moscow."

So he's well prepared for a life in Russian politics.

Marat Safin Reveals His Plans for His Future

I got another Keystone XL (KXL) email this morning, but it wasn't from Duncan Meisel or Bill McKibben:

Dear Friend:

Thank you for writing.  President Obama has heard from many Americans concerning the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline project, and we appreciate hearing from you.

The President is committed to creating the most open and transparent Government in American history, and values your input.  Given your interest in this matter, you may be interested in reading a recent official White House response to a petition on this issue.  To learn more, please visit: www.WhiteHouse.gov/Energy.

Thank you, again, for writing.

Sincerely,

The White House

Does Paul Ryan want to permanently end Medicare, the way the program is run now?  Well, yes.  Does he want to keep the name Medicare so that people don't think he's trying to end Medicare?  Yes.  Was Politifact wrong last year when it accused Democrats of lying about Paul Ryan wanting to end Medicare?  Yes, by any reasonable measure, yes. 

Some live tennis is being played, but in a series called Love-30, the Tennis Channel has been mostly rebroadcasting the 30 best matches of the year. There certainly is live controversy Down Under, though, in advance of the Australian Open. On Tennis Channel's news crawler, I caught a glimpse of a story about players being fined $75K for playing the Hopman Cup, an exhibition tournament named after the legendary Aussie tennis coach.

Exhibitions have long been controversial. In 1991, Monica Seles ticked off a lot of people when she withdrew from Wimbledon, citing an injury, only to play an exo in Mahwah NJ for a guaranteed six-figure payday. There's no income equality in tennis. Once they've succeeded on the tour, top players can make stress-free money playing exos, but the tour and the tournament organizers need those top players to attract crowds that keep their tournaments profitable, and claim that without the tour, there would be no top players. Tennis politics is truly Byzantine.

Note to the reader: I had originally planned to divide what follows as a series of posts in order to better present the ideas herein.  However, I've decided to simply cram it all into one post in the interest of getting the ideas out there and hopefully sparking a discussion.  I know that this isn't in the interest of good writing, but I think the prospect of getting these ideas out, here and now, is a more pressing matter.

(WKW Note: Following the death of Christopher Hitchens, many have spoken about his support for the Iraq War, as well as his Vanity Fair story on waterboarding. I wrote this piece on July 3, 2008 to express the conflict I felt over these two issues.)

I don't know who dubbed me "dag's doomer" over the masthead last week, but I had to laugh because I think of doomers as those guys that are predicting an imminent meltdown of society (or its cheese) but will gladly sell gold, shotguns and freeze-dried food to all comers. We're in the time of year when radio stations replay the classic songs, tv stations replay the classic movies, newspapers tally celebrity deaths, and doomers tell us just how lucky we were this year but just how bad next year will be. I'm sure James Kunstler, Dr (Doom) Nouriel Roubini, et al, will not disappoint us in the doomsaying department, but let's face it, folks, things are already bad right now. As Joseph Stiglitz writes in Vanity Fair:

It has now been almost five years since the bursting of the housing bubble, and four years since the onset of the recession. There are 6.6 million fewer jobs in the United States than there were four years ago. Some 23 million Americans who would like to work full-time cannot get a job. Almost half of those who are unemployed have been unemployed long-term. Wages are falling - the real income of a typical American household is now below the level it was in 1997.

Every few years, a group of mindless political operatives shriek loudly about how I, William K. Wolfrum, am a racist. This, my friends, is an exercise in futility, as I am obviously not a racist. Nonetheless, these hateful smear mongers continue to pursue these charges.

These charges are baseless, and come from words that appeared at “William K. Wolfrum Chronicles” years ago, such as:

“Opinion polls consistently show only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions.”

Hey there, conservatives. I know a bunch of you have had a good ride bashing on gays in the military for most of the last twenty years. (If you're a conservative who hasn't, good for you. You can ignore the following advice, with my hearty compliments.) And I know those of you who've been doing the public hating also hate to give up a good thing. Now that gays are openly serving in the military, I understand that it feels like time to double down. The issue's always been a winner for you before. Why wouldn't it be a winner now?