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He'll be jumping to qualify on the morning of August 16, and if all goes as well as expected, for the gold on the 18th. You can bet that a large percentage of the Panamanian people will have their eyes on their television sets. The time difference with China isn't very favorable to Panama's sports bars, but I would imagine that several of them will sell more coffee than they ever have.

Definitely Panama's athletes don't deserve the scandals, uncertainties and lack of support which has been their lot at the hands of the Olympic Committee of Panama (COP). Now the chances appear excellent that despite everything Panama will win its first Olympic medal since 1948 --- in fact, long jumper Irving "El Canguro" Saladino, celebrated above in the form of a New Year's muñeco, is favored to win the gold --- and if he does there will be disreputable politicians eager to claim the victory as their own. However, everyone knows the score: all credit belongs to the athletes, and any politician or COP dignitary who pretends otherwise ought to be booed off the field and out of public life. And however Saladino and the others do, when they come back the nation really ought to take up the subject of sports reform. Maybe some of our Olympians and other fine athletes, active and retired, should lead the discussion.

Then there are some of us who follow other sports, other pastimes or other passions.

Me? As these words are written I'm flashing back and forth to the MLB Game Channel, agonizing over my beloved Detroit Tigers getting hammered again --- but wait! Cabrera just hit the ball over the center field fence! (More or less where I used to study law, before they sold Detroit College of Law to Michigan State University and tore down the old school to make way for the new stadium.)

There is an early political season here in Panama, and in the USA the vice presidential nominations and conventions are almost upon us, and thereafter we will have the sprint from Labor Day to Election Day. Although I was a Tiger fan way before I first stuffed envelopes for the Democratic Party, and was a veteran of many US campaigns before I ever took sides in an election in my native Panama, both of these election seasons have me engrossed. Let's look at pieces of them one at a time.


The Panama News is and has been from time to time providing space to the various contenders in both the US and Panamanian elections in the opinion pages. In this issue's opinion section, Barack Obama talks about energy policy and John McCain talks to Americans with disabilities.

Quite frankly, I don't think that Obama addresses the full enormity of the US energy problem. It's easy to dismiss Senator McCain's routine about how more offshore drilling is going to save the American Way of Life as we know it because it is, after all, completely ridiculous. But the United States has for many decades laid itself out geographically on the presumption of cheap fuel, and the commuter lifestyle itself is one of the things that has to end for Americans to get out of the deep economic hole caused in large part by making the wrong bets on energy. And while high food prices are not destabilizing American society the way they are here in Panama, at a certain point Democrats and Republicans alike are going to have to realize that subsidizing the conversion of the Midwestern corn crop into ethanol is neither a wise nor a sustainable policy. The necessary steps will surely be traumatic to many entrenched interest groups, but a good energy policy should on the other hand create a lot of jobs for the reconstruction and retooling that will be needed. Think about the most expensive sailing yachts you see coming through Panama, and how they have these modern conveniences that are run by little windmills or photovoltaic cells --- things that run on less energy and renewable sources are the directions in which to move.

And quite frankly, although John McCain is probably sincere in what he says to his fellow Americans with disabilities, once they get beyond the identity politics a lot of people with various handicaps and a lot of people who have come back wounded in various ways from Iraq or Afghanistan are going to find a lot of objections to his voting record in the Senate.

The Taliban was harboring people who staged major attacks on the United States, making targets of mostly non-combatant civilians in gross violation of the laws of warfare as set down by the Prophet Muhammad as well as those contained in international war. There was really no choice about going to war with the former government of Afghanistan, even if that war is now going badly and it doesn't seem that there is any rational idea of what a successful US end game looks like. The war in Iraq never should have been undertaken and the only way that those who led the country into it can claim success is by constantly changing the goals. (You say that The Surge was a success? Well, maybe if you don't count the massive ethnic cleansing that took place during its course, including the uprooting of ancient Iraqi Christian communities like the Chaldeans, who have been forced to flee their country by the hundreds of thousands.)

So one arguably necessary war, one arguably unnecessary one, but in each case George W. Bush tried to do it the cheap way by skimping on the military --- not sending enough troops to do the assigned tasks, not sending enough of the right equipment, not properly staffing and equipping the hospitals that would be needed to take care of the wounded, not setting aside sufficient funds for the benefits that would be owed to the veterans. Actually, it was not just George W. Bush. It was George W. Bush, John McCain et al. The Bush policy of extravagant military adventures paid for by cheating the vets and depleting US military strength is the McCain policy, and I think that a lot of disabled vets will legitimately ask why they should support McCain when they don't get the benefits that he got. The insulting bureaucratic runarounds that so many of them have faced just add up to that much more salt in the wounds.

So is that an attractive campaign issue for the Democrats? Not really. It's never a big winner to look for votes by telling the taxpayers that there are huge public debts to pay. That is, however, the reality of the situation.

The polls go up and down, but I think that the basic issue of the US election is the economy and that has to favor Obama in November. But whether Obama or McCain ends up in the White House, I expect that the economy will force some very unpopular decisions.

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