Transparency, at long last.

This is the last post for 2016, and the first since the election, so I need to do a little housekeeping here.

First, I just need to log my advice for the Democratic National Committee. It is simply this: If you do not want a Donald Trump to get elected, do not bring us a Hillary Clinton.

I really don't know what to expect with Trump. He did not show any trump cards in the run up to the election, which was probably smart, given who he was running against. I think he could accidentally be a decent president. Not a top ten president, mind you, but he could do some good. Plus, he doesn't have to be all that great to make the top 25. Really, the less he does, the better his chances. My pipe dream is he cancels all the executive orders from the last 250 years, and appoints a couple of smart people to the supreme court. Then he can retire and play all the golf he wants, as far as I'm concerned. Of course, if he would be so kind as to eliminate the DEA, the DoEd, the DoEn, DHS, and a half a dozen other D's I'd be all right with that, too. Then play golf. Oh, and put an eviction notice on the UN, and secede from NATO, and ..., well, maybe he would need a second term to get all that done. No reason to get ahead of ourselves.

What worries me is Trump will instead double down on the executive branch abuses of picking winners and losers. If he does, it will continue to distort the economy and create other imbalances to be dealt with only down the road. He could make trade killing tariff deals and make things worse for everybody -- except the special interests. Frankly, I don't lose any sleep over it, but the economy is the most important basis for freedom and liberty, and it's so damn easy to get it wrong. I finally, resignedly, hope he doesn't do any more damage than the average president.

Anyway,  he wasn't my candidate but I do wish him well.

What else is on my "to do" list? Ah, yes, the fake news phenomenon. Sure, I've seen some fake news. It's impact is negligible. It's fakeness is obvious and inconsequential. What's interesting is to see all the mainstream media outlets now try to co-opt the term fake news to mean everything they don't want you to see. It's pathetic, reeks of desperation, and can only mean it's the end of the road for most of them.

Hacking elections. Obama said his would be the most transparent administration in history. It was true in the sense that it was pretty obvious what he was up to all along, even if his administration did its best to obfuscate everything. Finally, when a bucket of truth is poured onto the last embers of his term, there is very little left to learn. That the bucket of truth comes courtesy of Wikileaks instead of the White House should not change the value of the truth.

The administration whose state department had their server in the bathroom closet should not be the ones who get to comment on cyber security. That's like putting Dodd and Frank in charge of bank reform.

Of the 10 or 20 million people who were previously clueless about Hillary's servers and the inner DNC workings, it's possible that several million voters went a different way. It might have even been enough to swing the election. I don't mind it much when truth sways an election. It renews my faith in republican democracy.

So, if it was the Russians that did it (and I'm not buying it just yet), then maybe they did us a favor. "Right neighborly of them", I might even say. At the end of the day, perhaps the people were not fooled. Long live transparency.