I thought I’d go blind looking for a silver lining this week until by chance I ran into Celinda Faretheewell, chair of the Perpetually Optimistic Society (POS) in a neighborhood coffee shop.

“Why so glum?” she asked.

“Everything seems to be falling apart,” I replied. “The slaughter in Syria continues with thousands of refugees. In Iraq the ISIS jihadists are marching to Baghdad having taken Mosul and Tikrit. Reports of hundreds of beheaded local officials and Iraqi military lining the roads are awful enough, but now we learn the Iranian Revolutionary Guards might enter the fray. Imagine all the time and money we spent training and equipping the Iraqi military only to have less than 10,000 guys in pickup trucks creating this havoc and creating refugees of an estimated half-million Iraqis, many of them children.

Rosa Brooks said it succinctly in this tweet: 

Rosa Brooks

@brooks_rosa

Follow

US respnse 2 Syria,Russia,Iraq:

1)Huh?

2)We're watching this closely

3)With concern.

4)Hey, stop-

5)We won't tolerate that!

6)Mmm. Whatever.

9:04 PM - 12 Jun 2014”

“Oh that,” she said, waving her hand backwards dismissively. “Would you rather they were all working together against us than fighting each other?”

“This is a potential danger to the world, and to the world’s economies with the price of oil likely to shoot up as Europe and the U.S. are already teetering on the brink of massive debt. Lindsey Graham has said the situation in Iraq is likely to lead to another devastating attack like 9-11 here."   

I reached for my coffee to keep from throttling her, but I couldn’t help adding, “Now the IRS claims that it has lost Lois Lerner’s emails from January 2009 to February 2011, the critical period when it is clear she was coordinating with Treasury, the Department of Justice, and the White House to squelch the opposition. Surely this is just a ploy to delay the proceedings until the president’s term is up and he can pardon her. There has to be some backup somewhere but we cannot count on an increasingly lawless executive branch to play by the rules”

“They won’t get away with that,” Celinda laughed. “Remember how angry you were when you learned the NSA was scooping up all our email correspondence? Well, now we can take advantage of it. Congressman Stockman has requested NSA turn over to his committee all of her emails in that period.”

“Can you find anything to be optimistic about the thousands of people, many of them children, crossing our border with Mexico without any attempt to halt them?  In fact, with our government moving these illegals around the country to military bases and often just releasing them?” I responded.

“Sure, “she said, munching on a giant cruller. "It means that amnesty, in which we were being asked to take at good faith the word of a president who has breached every promise to us, Congress, and our allies, is D.E.A.D. and with it the political fortunes of Eric Cantor who made the mistake of Obama-like mendacity on the issue. He told one thing to his constituents and another to his pals in D.C. Now the entire Congress has to stop and consider that maybe voters are getting sick of sociopathy and being lied to.”

“C’mon,’ I countered. "There’s no bigger liar than Hillary and she’s getting enormous publicity and lots of money as she rolls out her maybe-I’m-running-give-me-more-money campaign with the unfortunately timed and titled book Hard Choices, which only emphasizes she hasn’t yet made her choice to run and that all the choices she did make as Secretary of State were dead wrong. Even a CNN anchor admits they’ve been giving her “a free ride.”  

“The publicity is not doing her any good, said Celinda. “She’s dropped 18 points in as many months in popularity according to a Bloomberg poll, and the more she talks, the worse it’s getting for her. She’s proving as deft in managing her rollout as she was in managing the Department of State”

Celinda said pulling out a picture of Hillary’s rollout bus broken down and the great Iowahawks’ tweet: "Not a parody: Hillary staffers try to locate bus motor."

In the Ukraine there is no sign of hostilities abating. Zero Hedge has a report today of further escalating violence:

“...a Ukraine military transport Il-76 was allegedly shot down by separatists in the city of Lugansk as it was about to land. As a result of the crash all 49 Ukrainian service personnel on board were killed. The death toll would be the biggest suffered by government forces in a single incident since Ukraine’s government launched a military operation against pro-Russian separatists in the east”

“Can’t you find anything to be optimistic about?” Celinda asked.

It took me several minutes to think of anything. After some thought, I replied, “Two things. First, a California Superior Court judge ruled this week that teacher tenure laws unconstitutionally deprive students of their right to an education by assuring that the worst teachers end up in schools where poor students were enrolled.

Now this opinion if upheld on appeal creates enormous problems for the dopes who vote for people like Hillary and Obama.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, so far the Democrats have relied on a coalition of wealthier white liberals, teachers unions, and poor minorities. The liberals pretended not to notice what the unions were doing and how they succeeded in hampering the education of the poor. If sustained, the case presents a dilemma for their party. It’s also amusing to see the left, which has sought and won judicial interference with public school management, suddenly thinking this is not such a good thing. “      

“Wouldn’t the political advantage of this ruling depend on the opposition being able to utilize that wedge issue?” Celinda asked, making me even more depressed.

“Well, what’s the second thing that you find to be optimistic about?” she inquired.

“He’s in Palm Springs golfing this weekend after another ceremonial visit -- this time to a reservation -- and another fundraiser. He can’t do as much damage teeing off on the green or siphoning money out of the pockets of crony capitalists as he does with his pen and phone.”

“See,” she said cheerfully as she gathered up her things, “there’s always a silver lining if you only look for it.”