Clinton wins narrowly, Republicans hold the House and Senate. Secondary prediction: if Clinton wins and there have been shenanigans a la 1960 it will be taken much, much worse than it was in 1960.

Off-topic but in light of your reaction to President Obama's reception in Cuba I thought you might be interested: Saudis snub Obama in Riyadh http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/20/politics/obama-saudi-arabia-tensions/

Anybody who expect a thaw until the old revolutionaries have died off is being unduly optimistic. That's the way it was with the Soviet Union and I expect the same with Cuba.

It's hard for me to see how anyone might have expected the "color revolutions" to flourish. You can't graft liberal democracy onto any old rootstock. It must be based on social and political institutions in order to grow. There is no instant social and political institutions kit.

As we say here in Chicago, never take a bribe--just hand 'em your business card.

"this war will last a long, long time" Pat, what are the implications of a protracted war against ISIS? Given past history I think that domestically it means the U. S. loses interest. What are the implications in the region? Do the various regimes try to accommodate ISIS? Do they forge an alliance against a common enemy? Do they retreat to their villas in the south of France?

It's not just that there aren't enough 1%-ers or 5%-ers, Tom. It's that enough of the 8%-ers are government employees or work in government handmaiden industries, i.e. healthcare, that having the government try to pay for an ever-expanding menu of goods and services is a form of perpetual motion. You will never get enough money taxing government employees to afford the raises that government employees want.

I concur with toto's assessment above except that I would add that the overthrow of Qaddafi with the connivance of US/UK/France convinced the Russians that the US was unconcerned about destabilizing MENA.

Don't you need to identify the objectives before discussing strategy?

Virtue is a habit and can only be developed through practice. Practicing Christians and observant Jews and Muslims all have an affirmative responsibility to cultivate virtue through action in their lives. They may fail. That only means that they're poor Christians, Jews, or Muslims. Secular humanists have no such obligation. For them it's enough to pay their taxes and encourage the State to feed the poor, shelter the homeless, comfort the afflicted for them. Virtue cannot be cultivated that way.

I think the term “existential threat” needs a little fleshing out. The attack on September 11, 2001 sucked $2 Trillion from our national economy combining direct losses, losses in equity, and anti-terrorism measures over a five year period. This attack did not use nuclear, biological, chemical, or radiological weapons. An attack using a nuclear weapon would be likely to result in an order of magnitude greater losses. I think that degree of loss would, in fact, qualify as an “existential threat” although there would still be millions of Americans left alive after the attack they would be left alive in a very different America. Repeated attacks with non-nuclear weapons (like those experienced by Israel) also, in my opinion, constitute an existential threat in the sense that our way of life—and it's that way of life that Gary wants to defend in his own way and that's laudable—would be destroyed. The question that we're so far unsuccessfully trying to come to terms with is what the prudent nature and degree of response is. Somewhere between “do nothing” and “nuke 'em all” there's a prudent response and, despite five years of feces-flinging it doesn't look to me like we're much closer to figuring out what that is than we were five years ago.

After such a starter, I doubt I'd be hungry for the main course.

Isn't there a broader, more serious question than whether we can handle this particular strain of flu virus? Shouldn't we have some serious level of preparation for pandemics? I mean, as a category?