Although I am a homophobe and proud of it, I came across this exchange on the internet and thought it was hilarious.
All words from this point are verbatim quotations:
"One of the stunts Nunn pulled back in the day was a little field trip with the MSM to a submarine to show them how close it was in those quarters, telegraphing the message that predatory ho-mo-sexuals were going to jump their fellow submariners for some Satanic nookey.
In a flash, Nunn lowered the tenor of the debate and created visions of promiscuous, unpatriotic gays and lesbians transforming our Navy into a hapless fleet of Sodomy Subs. All people wanted to talk about after this monstrosity was bunk beds.
Do they really think that putting a Southern White Guy on the ticket as VP will get rednecks to vote for Obama? Those people are going to vote Democrat even if Jesus Christ is on the ticket.
MKK
Mary Kay on 05/29 at 01:27 PM
Arrrgh. Those people *aren’t* going to vote Democrat…
Proof reading is your friend.
MKK
Mary Kay on 05/29 at 01:28 PM
I would think Jesus being on the ticket would make them even less likely to vote Democratic. Come on, they’re really going to vote for a long-haired Jew who wants them to love their neighbors and help the poor?
libdevil on 05/29 at 01:32 PM
That’s a bit of an obscure name, anyway… when did he run, 1988?
There is an interesting discussion of another Southern white messiah, Jim Webb, here.
norbizness on 05/29 at 02:22 PM
That’s a bit of an obscure name, anyway… when did he run, 1988?
Jesus is an obscure name? Man, you don’t get out much, do you, norbizness?
For that matter Jesus didn’t run in 1988, it was 36 and he lost court decisions at both the Sanhedrin and Roman appellate court levels. Like Gore, but with a less salubrious retirement.
seeker6079 on 05/29 at 02:34 PM "
(close quote)
[source http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/no_on_nunn/ ]
I like Sam Nunn but, unless his staffers molested a Senate page or something, it is wrong to fire people simply for being gay. I used to work for a gay man and he was one of the best bosses I ever had.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
A Brief History of US Concentration Camps
Those who are not students of history may be unaware that America has had bona fide concentration camps twice in its history and almost on a third occasion.
The first "Indian reservations" were fields where Native Americans [who had survived slaughter by pioneer settlers from back East, professional "Indian fighters" and the US Cavalry] were herded together, fenced in, and left exposed to the elements without food, clothing (except smallpox infected blankets) or shelter during the brutal North American winters. These were concentration camps before that term had been coined.
The Japanese-American internment camps during World War Two were the second concentration camps in American history. Documents have been declassified from the National Archives that show, during the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, the US government made plans to round up its black population. This would have been the third era of American concentration camps.
If you wanted to argue that the slave pens and slave prisons in which slaves newly arrived from "seasoning" (code for torturing African culture and languages out of African abductees) in the West Indies of the Caribbean after the Middle Passage from Africa were incarcerated were concentration camps, then I would be prepared to accept it as the first era of concentration camps. Guantanamo and the CIA prisons around the world could be seen as the most recent concentration camps.
There is no point in lecturing you the reader about how it demeans America to be seen as a police state. But aside from how non-Americans see America, do we Americans want to live in a police state? Hasn't the Patriot Act essentially abolished the Bill of Rights?
The first "Indian reservations" were fields where Native Americans [who had survived slaughter by pioneer settlers from back East, professional "Indian fighters" and the US Cavalry] were herded together, fenced in, and left exposed to the elements without food, clothing (except smallpox infected blankets) or shelter during the brutal North American winters. These were concentration camps before that term had been coined.
The Japanese-American internment camps during World War Two were the second concentration camps in American history. Documents have been declassified from the National Archives that show, during the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, the US government made plans to round up its black population. This would have been the third era of American concentration camps.
If you wanted to argue that the slave pens and slave prisons in which slaves newly arrived from "seasoning" (code for torturing African culture and languages out of African abductees) in the West Indies of the Caribbean after the Middle Passage from Africa were incarcerated were concentration camps, then I would be prepared to accept it as the first era of concentration camps. Guantanamo and the CIA prisons around the world could be seen as the most recent concentration camps.
There is no point in lecturing you the reader about how it demeans America to be seen as a police state. But aside from how non-Americans see America, do we Americans want to live in a police state? Hasn't the Patriot Act essentially abolished the Bill of Rights?
The Far Right or How to Smear Your Political Enemies in One Easy Step
Step One: Call them commies.
Hitler, a Nazi, ordered the extermination of Jews. You might say if you were trying to be fair, that one shouldn't judge all Nazis and fascists from this one example. However, far from being an isolated example, all Nazis and fascists are anti-Semitic and anti-Christian. This is somewhat true of Vladimir Putin's Russian ultra-nationalists who would bring back pogroms and invasions of smaller countries. This is true of European skinheads. This is true of ultraconservatives, reactionaries and the Ku Klux Klan in America. During the Great Depression, the loudest voices that were raised against photographs of poverty, sharecroppers, the Dustbowl, and migrant workers were the fascists who cried: "propaganda and communist class warfare!" Fascists live in a state of denial. Denial of the fact of the Great Depression. Denial of the Holocaust. Any day now, they will deny World War Two. They preferred poster art showing happy Volk and peasants like they had in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.
America in the early Twentieth Century was so f-cked up that the disenfranchised (without the right to vote) and the workers who were physically beaten as they tried to organize had no one to turn to but the communists. History amply shows that the relationship was short-lived and temporary at most.
Now if I wanted to forever smear you in America, all I would have to do is tell some nut like Joe McCarthy and some cross-dresser like J. Edgar Hoover that you were a communist. It would not matter to any knee-jerk fascist whether such a charge were true.
What difference did being a communist make to Nelson Mandela who never raised a finger against capitalism or democracy and who, in fact, supported both capitalism and democracy?
I personally have no sympathy for socialism nor communism since Stalin was responsible for forty million deaths and Mao was responsible for seventy million deaths. I simply point out that in the grand scheme of things; Hitler was closer to Satan because Hitler built death camps and death factories. Even Stalin did not go that far with the gulags.
The non communist left is guilty only of guilt by association with communists. Nazis hate minorities, Christians, Jews, freedom, and liberation. Nazis love slavery, book burning, lynching, arson, and breaking the windows of small businessmen who would dare compete with the giant Krupp industries.
Ironically, the one group that Nazis leave alone is the communists. Nixon aided and abetted the Red Chinese in killing Tibetans. Putin's KGB spread disinformation as his tanks rolled over Georgia. The North Korean dictators and the Castros can make their people suffer. Communist China finances the USA's multi-trillion dollar debt. Ultraconservatives, reactionaries, neo-Nazis, and other conservatives will let it happen unopposed as long as they get their fix of oil to feed their oil addiction. But let someone in America talk about the Americans wiped out by climate change (hurricanes, floods, the sea eroding coastal land, drought) or jobs wiped out by the oil addiction or black lung from coal mining or asthma from dirty air or cancer from the chemicals in water and food or the danger of radioactive waste from nuclear plants falling into the hands of terrorists or affordable health care or unjust imprisonment of men (who may have DNA proof of innocence or who may be in prison because they are black) or Abu Ghraib or making peace (rather than beating the drum for war, the John Wayne "nuke'em" attitude) and they will be unfairly called a communist. All discussion will grind to a halt. Thinking will cease. And America will continue to drift to the right. The Republicans used to have, in the not so distant past, a liberal wing. Now moderate Republicans are portrayed not as liberals but as radicals. This isn't ignorance of political science. This is political engineering of the dangerous kind. [Look for my article on concentration camps for a nightmare scenario]
Hitler killed six million Jews. Our feckless leader's reckless determination to do nothing about cancer or dirty bombs will result in the death of hundreds of millions of Americans. His fighting of any attempt to reverse climate change will doom Billions of people. It is called the sin of omission.
This whole Nazi/KKK/Christian Identity/Church of the Creator (gosh these guys keep proliferating) far right versus communist* far left battle gets old. That's why I am a moderate centrist. The problems with being a centrist or a moderate or independent are threefold:
1. We have no think tanks or research institutes or academics that will do the intellectual heavy lifting of developing public policy. What exists now is simply mathematical averaging. If the extreme left is zero on a scale of zero to ten and the extreme right is ten, then five represents us.
(0+10)/÷2=5
You can't build anything worthwhile by simply looking at the left [communists taking advantage of idealistic liberals by pretending to care about progress and the future] and the right [fascists pretending to be realistic and respectful of the traditions of the past] and trying to find a happy medium. When you average out types of extremism, you simply have generic extremism.
2. Centrists and moderates and independents have no political party to represent them. However, if we could mash together the third parties (Libertarians, Greens, and others), then you would have a viable party that could take on the duopoly which prevents third parties from getting attention or even getting on the ballot.
3. Centrists and moderates and independents need their own influence on judicial selection, on entertainment, and on the business world just like the liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans.
*the far left only comes in one flavor
Hitler, a Nazi, ordered the extermination of Jews. You might say if you were trying to be fair, that one shouldn't judge all Nazis and fascists from this one example. However, far from being an isolated example, all Nazis and fascists are anti-Semitic and anti-Christian. This is somewhat true of Vladimir Putin's Russian ultra-nationalists who would bring back pogroms and invasions of smaller countries. This is true of European skinheads. This is true of ultraconservatives, reactionaries and the Ku Klux Klan in America. During the Great Depression, the loudest voices that were raised against photographs of poverty, sharecroppers, the Dustbowl, and migrant workers were the fascists who cried: "propaganda and communist class warfare!" Fascists live in a state of denial. Denial of the fact of the Great Depression. Denial of the Holocaust. Any day now, they will deny World War Two. They preferred poster art showing happy Volk and peasants like they had in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.
America in the early Twentieth Century was so f-cked up that the disenfranchised (without the right to vote) and the workers who were physically beaten as they tried to organize had no one to turn to but the communists. History amply shows that the relationship was short-lived and temporary at most.
Now if I wanted to forever smear you in America, all I would have to do is tell some nut like Joe McCarthy and some cross-dresser like J. Edgar Hoover that you were a communist. It would not matter to any knee-jerk fascist whether such a charge were true.
What difference did being a communist make to Nelson Mandela who never raised a finger against capitalism or democracy and who, in fact, supported both capitalism and democracy?
I personally have no sympathy for socialism nor communism since Stalin was responsible for forty million deaths and Mao was responsible for seventy million deaths. I simply point out that in the grand scheme of things; Hitler was closer to Satan because Hitler built death camps and death factories. Even Stalin did not go that far with the gulags.
The non communist left is guilty only of guilt by association with communists. Nazis hate minorities, Christians, Jews, freedom, and liberation. Nazis love slavery, book burning, lynching, arson, and breaking the windows of small businessmen who would dare compete with the giant Krupp industries.
Ironically, the one group that Nazis leave alone is the communists. Nixon aided and abetted the Red Chinese in killing Tibetans. Putin's KGB spread disinformation as his tanks rolled over Georgia. The North Korean dictators and the Castros can make their people suffer. Communist China finances the USA's multi-trillion dollar debt. Ultraconservatives, reactionaries, neo-Nazis, and other conservatives will let it happen unopposed as long as they get their fix of oil to feed their oil addiction. But let someone in America talk about the Americans wiped out by climate change (hurricanes, floods, the sea eroding coastal land, drought) or jobs wiped out by the oil addiction or black lung from coal mining or asthma from dirty air or cancer from the chemicals in water and food or the danger of radioactive waste from nuclear plants falling into the hands of terrorists or affordable health care or unjust imprisonment of men (who may have DNA proof of innocence or who may be in prison because they are black) or Abu Ghraib or making peace (rather than beating the drum for war, the John Wayne "nuke'em" attitude) and they will be unfairly called a communist. All discussion will grind to a halt. Thinking will cease. And America will continue to drift to the right. The Republicans used to have, in the not so distant past, a liberal wing. Now moderate Republicans are portrayed not as liberals but as radicals. This isn't ignorance of political science. This is political engineering of the dangerous kind. [Look for my article on concentration camps for a nightmare scenario]
Hitler killed six million Jews. Our feckless leader's reckless determination to do nothing about cancer or dirty bombs will result in the death of hundreds of millions of Americans. His fighting of any attempt to reverse climate change will doom Billions of people. It is called the sin of omission.
This whole Nazi/KKK/Christian Identity/Church of the Creator (gosh these guys keep proliferating) far right versus communist* far left battle gets old. That's why I am a moderate centrist. The problems with being a centrist or a moderate or independent are threefold:
1. We have no think tanks or research institutes or academics that will do the intellectual heavy lifting of developing public policy. What exists now is simply mathematical averaging. If the extreme left is zero on a scale of zero to ten and the extreme right is ten, then five represents us.
(0+10)/÷2=5
You can't build anything worthwhile by simply looking at the left [communists taking advantage of idealistic liberals by pretending to care about progress and the future] and the right [fascists pretending to be realistic and respectful of the traditions of the past] and trying to find a happy medium. When you average out types of extremism, you simply have generic extremism.
2. Centrists and moderates and independents have no political party to represent them. However, if we could mash together the third parties (Libertarians, Greens, and others), then you would have a viable party that could take on the duopoly which prevents third parties from getting attention or even getting on the ballot.
3. Centrists and moderates and independents need their own influence on judicial selection, on entertainment, and on the business world just like the liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans.
*the far left only comes in one flavor
Top Ten Things Obama Can Do To Satisfy Hillary Supporters
1. Have his name legally changed to Hillary Rodham.
2. Have a sex change operation.
3. Get castrated by Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.
4. Crawl on his knees through broken glass and beg for forgiveness.
5. Crawl on his knees through the broken glass of the glass ceiling
6. Drop dead so that Hillary will have to be substituted as the Democratic nominee. [Hey that's how Hubert Humphrey got it from RFK]
7. Drop Joe Biden from the ticket and substitute Hillary as running mate.
8. Make a speech to the National Organization of Women in which he says it will not be Hillary's fault when he loses the election.
9. Declare his support for Hillary in 2012 and his intention to be a one-term president.
10. He can't satisfy Hillary supporters. No man can satisfy a woman.
This is one list you'll never see on David Letterman.
2. Have a sex change operation.
3. Get castrated by Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.
4. Crawl on his knees through broken glass and beg for forgiveness.
5. Crawl on his knees through the broken glass of the glass ceiling
6. Drop dead so that Hillary will have to be substituted as the Democratic nominee. [Hey that's how Hubert Humphrey got it from RFK]
7. Drop Joe Biden from the ticket and substitute Hillary as running mate.
8. Make a speech to the National Organization of Women in which he says it will not be Hillary's fault when he loses the election.
9. Declare his support for Hillary in 2012 and his intention to be a one-term president.
10. He can't satisfy Hillary supporters. No man can satisfy a woman.
This is one list you'll never see on David Letterman.
"For the first time I'm proud"
To those who say Michelle Obama is angry, I have a few questions to ask. Since when did white people earn the right to judge black people?
Do white people know the history of black people? Do most white people know that black people have spent over five (>500) hundred years at the bottom? Do most white people know that Africans were kidnap victims of Arab slave traders? That they were forced on a death march to the Slave Coast? That they were put in a dungeon? That they were next crammed on slave ships like sardines, chained together, not allowed to get up to urinate or defecate? That sometimes when slop ran short excess "cargo" was thrown overboard still in chains unable to swim? That their first experience of America was being led off ships naked and put into pens? That they were sold like animals or beaten in workhouses often to the accompaniment of a hypocritical preacher reading from the Bible? That they had to walk to the plantation, there to be worked to death? That they were killed for reading the Bible or any other book? That if they rebelled, they were skinned and used for leather? [That’s how the Nazis got the idea to turn Jewish skin into leather] That if they escaped to flee to Canada and were caught, they might lose a body part? That they had to endure humiliation and half pay at the hands of racist white officers when they fought for freedom in the US Colored Troops during the Civil War? That after the Civil War, the Red Shirts would surround their houses and demand they come out? That if they refused, they would burn the house down and if they came out, they would be shot? That next came the Klan who doused them in kerosene and burned them alive or lynched them and took body parts as souvenirs that some Southern white families have pickled in jars to this very day? That photo postcards of lynchings used to be a popular hobby? That entire Southern communities (men, women and children) participated in these "picnics"? That the Klan was once in all fifty states and several foreign countries? That the United States federal government has been integrated and re-segregated several times in history? That state governments in the South nullified the right to vote for blacks? That "states rights" was the right to discriminate against blacks? That even after blacks served in every war from the Revolutionary War to World War Two, returning veterans were often lynched for returning to their home towns wearing their uniforms? That fire hoses and dogs were used on children during the Civil Rights Movement? That burnings of black churches only recently stopped? That lynchings have taken place since the year 2001? In the Twenty-First Century? That in Florida black people were classified as felons and stopped by police roadblocks to prevent them from voting against Republicans? That ballot boxes were thrown away? That this is common knowledge among foreign reporters but American reporters didn't investigate? That not one US Senator, Republican or Democrat, would sponsor an investigation of the irregularities of the Florida count in 2000? That not one member of the US Senate was black? [before Obama]
Tell me that the Irish-American experience of the coffin ships means nothing. Tell me that the Jewish-American experience of the Holocaust means nothing. Tell me that the Japanese-American experience of being stripped of their homes and businesses and put in concentration camps means nothing. Tell me that the Native-American experience of genocide means nothing. Tell me that the experience of Chinese-Americans who built the transcontinental railroad and then were denied being allowed to send for their wives or children because of the hysteria of 'Yellow Peril' means nothing. Tell me all this and then I won't say a thing when you criticize Michelle Obama for saying that this is the first time she has been proud of this country. I won't say a thing because I wouldn't have anything to say to a person who lacked both brain and heart.
But some people are more interested in style than the substance of our lives. And even here too, Mrs. Obama has been compared to Jackie Kennedy. This is rich irony considering that McCain has more houses than he can count while the Obamas come from the working class. Only in America can you struggle for centuries (half a millennium), overcome obstacles (which all too often are us white people), lose a father (both Barack and Michelle), work and get into Harvard, go to work for poor people instead of piling up the money at a Wall Street law firm, and then hear idiots who don't know what the hell they're talking about criticize you.
Do white people know the history of black people? Do most white people know that black people have spent over five (>500) hundred years at the bottom? Do most white people know that Africans were kidnap victims of Arab slave traders? That they were forced on a death march to the Slave Coast? That they were put in a dungeon? That they were next crammed on slave ships like sardines, chained together, not allowed to get up to urinate or defecate? That sometimes when slop ran short excess "cargo" was thrown overboard still in chains unable to swim? That their first experience of America was being led off ships naked and put into pens? That they were sold like animals or beaten in workhouses often to the accompaniment of a hypocritical preacher reading from the Bible? That they had to walk to the plantation, there to be worked to death? That they were killed for reading the Bible or any other book? That if they rebelled, they were skinned and used for leather? [That’s how the Nazis got the idea to turn Jewish skin into leather] That if they escaped to flee to Canada and were caught, they might lose a body part? That they had to endure humiliation and half pay at the hands of racist white officers when they fought for freedom in the US Colored Troops during the Civil War? That after the Civil War, the Red Shirts would surround their houses and demand they come out? That if they refused, they would burn the house down and if they came out, they would be shot? That next came the Klan who doused them in kerosene and burned them alive or lynched them and took body parts as souvenirs that some Southern white families have pickled in jars to this very day? That photo postcards of lynchings used to be a popular hobby? That entire Southern communities (men, women and children) participated in these "picnics"? That the Klan was once in all fifty states and several foreign countries? That the United States federal government has been integrated and re-segregated several times in history? That state governments in the South nullified the right to vote for blacks? That "states rights" was the right to discriminate against blacks? That even after blacks served in every war from the Revolutionary War to World War Two, returning veterans were often lynched for returning to their home towns wearing their uniforms? That fire hoses and dogs were used on children during the Civil Rights Movement? That burnings of black churches only recently stopped? That lynchings have taken place since the year 2001? In the Twenty-First Century? That in Florida black people were classified as felons and stopped by police roadblocks to prevent them from voting against Republicans? That ballot boxes were thrown away? That this is common knowledge among foreign reporters but American reporters didn't investigate? That not one US Senator, Republican or Democrat, would sponsor an investigation of the irregularities of the Florida count in 2000? That not one member of the US Senate was black? [before Obama]
Tell me that the Irish-American experience of the coffin ships means nothing. Tell me that the Jewish-American experience of the Holocaust means nothing. Tell me that the Japanese-American experience of being stripped of their homes and businesses and put in concentration camps means nothing. Tell me that the Native-American experience of genocide means nothing. Tell me that the experience of Chinese-Americans who built the transcontinental railroad and then were denied being allowed to send for their wives or children because of the hysteria of 'Yellow Peril' means nothing. Tell me all this and then I won't say a thing when you criticize Michelle Obama for saying that this is the first time she has been proud of this country. I won't say a thing because I wouldn't have anything to say to a person who lacked both brain and heart.
But some people are more interested in style than the substance of our lives. And even here too, Mrs. Obama has been compared to Jackie Kennedy. This is rich irony considering that McCain has more houses than he can count while the Obamas come from the working class. Only in America can you struggle for centuries (half a millennium), overcome obstacles (which all too often are us white people), lose a father (both Barack and Michelle), work and get into Harvard, go to work for poor people instead of piling up the money at a Wall Street law firm, and then hear idiots who don't know what the hell they're talking about criticize you.
The Presidential Reform Amendment
1. Slander and libel laws apply to presidential campaigns. Caps removed from jury awards. This anti-slander and anti-libel regime applies to all: candidates, campaign staff, 507 groups, and even private citizens spreading rumors. Even foreigners could be sued in international courts for attempting to influence the campaign.
2. Any black ops contractor or intelligence operative of the US government who engages in election tampering must be arrested and, if convicted, must face immediate capital punishment with no chance of appeal. Cryptocracy and democracy are incompatible. Therefore this reform has to have iron teeth.
3. Eligibility to be president should be lowered to age twenty-five because by the time they get through a couple of campaigns they will be seventy years old anyway. Gerontocracy leaves the young unrepresented. Experience is overrated when compared with energy and new ideas not corrupted by the way things are.
4. Abolish the Electoral College permanently. What were the Founding Fathers thinking? They did a lot of things right but this wasn't one of their good ideas.
5. A Supreme Court justice, even the Chief Justice, cannot rule on a presidential election. All such cases that come before must be referred to lower courts or even an international court lest the Supreme Court be tainted with being politicized. The Supreme Court is supposed to be above politics. Any justice who acts otherwise must be immediately removed from the bench by impeachment, arrest, disbarment, or whatever legal means necessary.
6. The vice-president will no longer be chosen by one man because all too often vice-presidents become presidents and choosing a running mate undermines democracy. The vice-presidency will be an elective office with a separate election as is done on the state level with lieutenant governors. This might result in vice-presidents who were opponents during the primaries or even from an opposite party. As a result, the president may hate the vice-president. To provide for smooth operation of government, both president and vice-president must either resign from their respective political parties or resign from office.
7. Furthermore, the VP may not be excluded from Cabinet meetings nor another key meeting lest a situation result like that in which Truman was never briefed about the atomic bomb. Should a president attempt to freeze out the vice-president, other formal and informal institutions of America are expected to bring pressure to bear on the president as a check and balance: First Ladies or First Gentlemen, the clergy, the business community, the press, chief scientific advisor, universities, the legal profession, state governors, and arbiters of etiquette.
Granted this is a rough draft (could use a Constitutional law attorney to help me spruce it up) but if you are willing to circulate a petition or help look for sponsors in the states and in Congress, then we can prevent future occurrences like the disaster in 2000.
2. Any black ops contractor or intelligence operative of the US government who engages in election tampering must be arrested and, if convicted, must face immediate capital punishment with no chance of appeal. Cryptocracy and democracy are incompatible. Therefore this reform has to have iron teeth.
3. Eligibility to be president should be lowered to age twenty-five because by the time they get through a couple of campaigns they will be seventy years old anyway. Gerontocracy leaves the young unrepresented. Experience is overrated when compared with energy and new ideas not corrupted by the way things are.
4. Abolish the Electoral College permanently. What were the Founding Fathers thinking? They did a lot of things right but this wasn't one of their good ideas.
5. A Supreme Court justice, even the Chief Justice, cannot rule on a presidential election. All such cases that come before must be referred to lower courts or even an international court lest the Supreme Court be tainted with being politicized. The Supreme Court is supposed to be above politics. Any justice who acts otherwise must be immediately removed from the bench by impeachment, arrest, disbarment, or whatever legal means necessary.
6. The vice-president will no longer be chosen by one man because all too often vice-presidents become presidents and choosing a running mate undermines democracy. The vice-presidency will be an elective office with a separate election as is done on the state level with lieutenant governors. This might result in vice-presidents who were opponents during the primaries or even from an opposite party. As a result, the president may hate the vice-president. To provide for smooth operation of government, both president and vice-president must either resign from their respective political parties or resign from office.
7. Furthermore, the VP may not be excluded from Cabinet meetings nor another key meeting lest a situation result like that in which Truman was never briefed about the atomic bomb. Should a president attempt to freeze out the vice-president, other formal and informal institutions of America are expected to bring pressure to bear on the president as a check and balance: First Ladies or First Gentlemen, the clergy, the business community, the press, chief scientific advisor, universities, the legal profession, state governors, and arbiters of etiquette.
Granted this is a rough draft (could use a Constitutional law attorney to help me spruce it up) but if you are willing to circulate a petition or help look for sponsors in the states and in Congress, then we can prevent future occurrences like the disaster in 2000.
Why Obama Will Lose (Revisited)
1. The color prejudice factor: Obama will lose because when many voters get in the privacy of the voting booth they will vote against him because of color prejudice. What people say to opinion pollsters and what people do in primaries (voting across party lines to screw up the other party) is a far cry from actual events in November. Gallup and the other public opinion surveys have been wrong before. People will lie and tell a pollster anything. They don't want to publicly admit to a reporter or a pollster that they fear or hate blacks.
2. Hispanic voters will go over to McCain because McCain will go pronunciar un discurso in Spanish in which he promesa to make español lengua oficial de los Estados Unidos. The safest choice for Obama would have been Bill Richardson (or, better yet a Hispanic female) because no one would dare shoot a black running with a brown. If Obama was assassinated, then the Mexican border would cease to exist. [Source: This bit of humor borrowed from Dave Chappelle]
3. The ignorance factor: People refuse to believe that Obama is a Christian.
4. The meanness factor: The Ku Klux Klan will get out the vote for McCain in the South because he's white. Never mind that Obama has been the best thing that KKK recruiters have had since the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Such ingrates.
5. George Bush has pledged support for McCain. Bush, who is best friends with the Bin Laden family, could get Osama to do something scary the day before Election Day so that people seeking security and experience will vote for John McCain.
6. The race factor: Obama is of African descent in a nation that has always been ruled by people of European descent and mostly Anglo-Saxon. Even Hispanics are of European descent (Spain) and they still speak Spanish. Native Americans and Africans are at the bottom of society throughout Latin America just as they are in the USA.
7. Young people will show up at rallies but historically young people won't show up on Election Day to vote. They don't know where their precinct is. They don't know where to cast their ballot. They don't know where their polling place is. They don't have their card or drivers license. Their name is not listed on the rolls because they never registered to vote. They don't prepare for such things as a flat tire or time conflict (classes or job). Their Republican employer might threaten to fire them for being late to work if they vote before work or keep them from leaving early if they vote after work. This is the real world. The other side doesn't play any fairer than Mugabe. If young people were concerned about their future (or lack of same), then the ground swell for Obama would be more than just signing up for text messaging and watching Obama Girl on YouTube.
8. The Florida vote will be rigged again. Last time every black person in Florida was classified as a felon ineligible to vote. This time every black person in Florida will be classified as insane and, under conservatorship, ineligible to vote. Or no one paid their taxes or they are misidentified as illegal aliens. Nothing incenses black people more than disenfranchisement. Has something to do with over five (500) hundred years of struggling to get the vote. One group of Republicans wonders why Blacks don't trust them. A second group of Republicans know why and just don't care. A third group of Republicans are the ones rigging the vote: owners of voting machine companies, voting software companies, and voter database companies are Republican. A fourth group of Republicans see all this, they are disgusted, and they join Republicans for Obama but not in numbers enough to make a difference.
9. The double standard factor: When a white politician is perceived as racist, it does not hurt him or her in the primaries or general election. In fact, a racist image helps them in the South and other places. When a black politician is perceived as even slightly critical of white people, he or she is finished politically. Their career is over. Even if they are in an all-black district and have no white campaign contributors or donors.
10. The Electoral College will, as usual, be used to thwart the will of the people. Hillary said the Electoral College should be abolished. Black people prefer Hillary. Black people have noticed, more than most, that the Electoral College is just another way to gerrymander.
11. Fox will declare McCain the winner before the polls even open and the other networks will lemming-like go along with their decision.
12. In a close election, the Republican Supreme Court will select a Republican president.
13. Senator Clinton's most virulent supporters are old white women who distrust Obama because their mother always told them that it is bad luck when a young black cat crosses their path. Some of them are lesbians who have nightmares over the idea of a black man on top of them (in office or in orifice). But joking aside, there are some who really would rather wreck the Democratic Party, go over to the anti-choice Republicans, and cut off their own noses to spite their faces by jumping in bed with the Enemy. We feminists are not monolithic of course. Not all of us want to kill Obama because he is not a woman. But there is more at work here. What women's issues are too important to let one candidate's loss of the nomination prevent them from transacting business with the nominee? What party offers more to women: Republican or Democrat? Should we let slide McCain's handling of the "bitch" remark? Men have been called bastards, pricks, male chauvinist pigs, and worse their whole lives and yet they don't curl up into the fetal position. Do women simply have thinner skin about personal invective?
14. The tradition factor: America has always had an old white man as president and Obama is young and black.
15. The repeat-a-lie-often-enough propaganda factor: McCain supporters will swift boat Obama who is too much of a gentleman to call McCain the Manchurian candidate. Kerry was also a gentleman and it lost him the election. Karl Rove's protégé‚ is running McCain's dirty tricks department. Democrats used to go with a knife to a gunfight with the Republicans. Now they take a plastic spork or a spitball to a nuclear holocaust. Democrats never learn.
16. The rumor factor: In addition to negative ads, the Republicans spread outright lies that can be easily refuted with a little logic or some fact checking. However, Americans are not logical Vulcans and they often check facts with such unreliable sources as Fox "News" and Rush Limbaugh. McCain supporters will spread (more) false rumors.
17. Republicans, having deeper pockets, will outspend the Democrats. The old economy (fission, oil, and coal) has more money (ExxonMobil has made record profits) than the new economy.
18. Black people, the last to throw their support to Obama, will be the first to abandon him by staying home.
2. Hispanic voters will go over to McCain because McCain will go pronunciar un discurso in Spanish in which he promesa to make español lengua oficial de los Estados Unidos. The safest choice for Obama would have been Bill Richardson (or, better yet a Hispanic female) because no one would dare shoot a black running with a brown. If Obama was assassinated, then the Mexican border would cease to exist. [Source: This bit of humor borrowed from Dave Chappelle]
3. The ignorance factor: People refuse to believe that Obama is a Christian.
4. The meanness factor: The Ku Klux Klan will get out the vote for McCain in the South because he's white. Never mind that Obama has been the best thing that KKK recruiters have had since the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Such ingrates.
5. George Bush has pledged support for McCain. Bush, who is best friends with the Bin Laden family, could get Osama to do something scary the day before Election Day so that people seeking security and experience will vote for John McCain.
6. The race factor: Obama is of African descent in a nation that has always been ruled by people of European descent and mostly Anglo-Saxon. Even Hispanics are of European descent (Spain) and they still speak Spanish. Native Americans and Africans are at the bottom of society throughout Latin America just as they are in the USA.
7. Young people will show up at rallies but historically young people won't show up on Election Day to vote. They don't know where their precinct is. They don't know where to cast their ballot. They don't know where their polling place is. They don't have their card or drivers license. Their name is not listed on the rolls because they never registered to vote. They don't prepare for such things as a flat tire or time conflict (classes or job). Their Republican employer might threaten to fire them for being late to work if they vote before work or keep them from leaving early if they vote after work. This is the real world. The other side doesn't play any fairer than Mugabe. If young people were concerned about their future (or lack of same), then the ground swell for Obama would be more than just signing up for text messaging and watching Obama Girl on YouTube.
8. The Florida vote will be rigged again. Last time every black person in Florida was classified as a felon ineligible to vote. This time every black person in Florida will be classified as insane and, under conservatorship, ineligible to vote. Or no one paid their taxes or they are misidentified as illegal aliens. Nothing incenses black people more than disenfranchisement. Has something to do with over five (500) hundred years of struggling to get the vote. One group of Republicans wonders why Blacks don't trust them. A second group of Republicans know why and just don't care. A third group of Republicans are the ones rigging the vote: owners of voting machine companies, voting software companies, and voter database companies are Republican. A fourth group of Republicans see all this, they are disgusted, and they join Republicans for Obama but not in numbers enough to make a difference.
9. The double standard factor: When a white politician is perceived as racist, it does not hurt him or her in the primaries or general election. In fact, a racist image helps them in the South and other places. When a black politician is perceived as even slightly critical of white people, he or she is finished politically. Their career is over. Even if they are in an all-black district and have no white campaign contributors or donors.
10. The Electoral College will, as usual, be used to thwart the will of the people. Hillary said the Electoral College should be abolished. Black people prefer Hillary. Black people have noticed, more than most, that the Electoral College is just another way to gerrymander.
11. Fox will declare McCain the winner before the polls even open and the other networks will lemming-like go along with their decision.
12. In a close election, the Republican Supreme Court will select a Republican president.
13. Senator Clinton's most virulent supporters are old white women who distrust Obama because their mother always told them that it is bad luck when a young black cat crosses their path. Some of them are lesbians who have nightmares over the idea of a black man on top of them (in office or in orifice). But joking aside, there are some who really would rather wreck the Democratic Party, go over to the anti-choice Republicans, and cut off their own noses to spite their faces by jumping in bed with the Enemy. We feminists are not monolithic of course. Not all of us want to kill Obama because he is not a woman. But there is more at work here. What women's issues are too important to let one candidate's loss of the nomination prevent them from transacting business with the nominee? What party offers more to women: Republican or Democrat? Should we let slide McCain's handling of the "bitch" remark? Men have been called bastards, pricks, male chauvinist pigs, and worse their whole lives and yet they don't curl up into the fetal position. Do women simply have thinner skin about personal invective?
14. The tradition factor: America has always had an old white man as president and Obama is young and black.
15. The repeat-a-lie-often-enough propaganda factor: McCain supporters will swift boat Obama who is too much of a gentleman to call McCain the Manchurian candidate. Kerry was also a gentleman and it lost him the election. Karl Rove's protégé‚ is running McCain's dirty tricks department. Democrats used to go with a knife to a gunfight with the Republicans. Now they take a plastic spork or a spitball to a nuclear holocaust. Democrats never learn.
16. The rumor factor: In addition to negative ads, the Republicans spread outright lies that can be easily refuted with a little logic or some fact checking. However, Americans are not logical Vulcans and they often check facts with such unreliable sources as Fox "News" and Rush Limbaugh. McCain supporters will spread (more) false rumors.
17. Republicans, having deeper pockets, will outspend the Democrats. The old economy (fission, oil, and coal) has more money (ExxonMobil has made record profits) than the new economy.
18. Black people, the last to throw their support to Obama, will be the first to abandon him by staying home.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
The Duopoly or why I hate the Republicans and Democrats
The Republicans talk in racist code designed to bring out the very worst in people. For example, instead of saying that they think that homosexuality is wrong or immoral, they instead give more code talk about "family values" while up on the podium is Dick Cheney and his lesbian daughter. I would disown a gay child, kick them out of the house, cut them off without a cent, not invite them to family gatherings, leave them out of the will, and never talk to them again. I would not, however, put them in death camps like Hitler (the poster child of the right wing) did. That's not tough love. That's murder. Perhaps, that is what separates me from them. Perhaps. Or perhaps, I just don't like people (Republicans) who won't say what's on their mind and eliminating enemies by violence is what's on their mind. You need look no farther than tough police policies in this country and tough military policies in dealing with other countries if you need convincing.
The Democrats, on the other hand, have no backbone. It is a recent phenomenon as such things go. Democrats lost their backbone around the time of Nixon but became outright jellyfish and invertebrates with the nomination of Kerry. The man, a war hero with multiple decorations, just refused to fight back no matter what the Bush camp said about him. I remember hearing a lifelong Democrat tell me that she was going to vote for Bush because she heard a rumor that we the taxpayers would have to pay for Kerry's mansions and that we should not "change horses in the middle of a stream." I swear that I am not making this up. She actually said that. I investigated the rumor as best I could. Never mind that it is par for the course for the US Secret Service to build security gates at the entrances to the property of a sitting president. What gets me is the total gullibility of a woman who is a property owner, a landlady, a respected pillar of her community, and her church's treasurer. As for changing horses, I would fire any general and any commander in chief and any president who was an idiot--especially in the middle of a shooting war (Iraq and Afghanistan).
Elections turn on such stupid little things. So when I hear some of the rumors flying around this election . . . . Let's put it this way. If real estate developers were terraforming other worlds and if space travel were cheaper and safer than air travel, I'd be off this planet so fast it would make your head spin. I honestly don't think the human race is a viable enterprise. Should we discover intelligent civilizations elsewhere in the universe, I would go to their embassy and apply for citizenship. On Earth, we actually have extremist heads of Islamic states (who deny the Holocaust ever happened while planning the next one) trying to get nuclear weapons. We have avoided a nuclear holocaust or a biological war so far but that luck can't last forever. The radwaste produced by fission necessitates a police state or garrison state lest MUF (material unaccounted for) finds its way into dirty bombs which would make entire cities uninhabitable for decades if not centuries. If the material in question is plutonium, then say goodbye to the human race.
Then there is sucking in carcinogenic chemicals with every breath.
If you think getting the hell off this planet is something only considered by one or two people, then think again. There are thousands of people who do more than talk. They are saving their money to move to Mars. The only thing holding them back is availability of passage and habitat there. That is admittedly a big obstacle but a financial opportunity for real estate developers and the space industry.
As for quitting the human race and living with aliens, there are lots of New Agers who will bend your ear talking about "space brothers." Yeah right. Alien abductions and rectal probes. No thank you. I can go to the doctor if I need implants or my money removed. I'm sure though that if extraterrestrials exist, then there must be more than one species and I'll find one that is less totalitarian than the Republicans and Democrats and less anal than life down here in this Sodom and Gomorrah we call Earth.
Too much code talk? I'll speak plainly. I want to get away from war, pollution, overpopulation, gays, the abortion debate, school prayer, flags, superpatriots, the Patriot Act, crime, Islam, conservatives and other racists, bigots masquerading as Christians (the religious right), illegal immigrants, Nazis, communists, Republicans, and Democrats.
For the sake of discussion let's imagine that there is as much diversity (perhaps far more) out there as there is down here. Here is a list of people that I could not only coexist with; I'd even prefer their presence:
• Pacifists
• environmentalists
• Green Party
• Greenpeace
• Nature Conservancy
• ecologists and other scientists
• ZPG (zero population growth)
• NPG (negative population growth)
• heterosexuals who use birth control and contraceptives
• (instead of abortion)
• Planned Parenthood
• libertarians
• law abiding citizens
• moderates
• centrists
• independents
• progressives
• people of every color (black, white, yellow, red, brown)
• males
• females
• neuters
• real Christians (Quakers and Mennonites)
• Jews
• Zoroastrians
• Buddhists
• Hindus
• Shintoists
• Jains
• Sikhs (pretty much any faith except Islam)
• atheists
• agnostics
Explanatory Notes:
1. It is not the military that is the problem, just the politicians who start the wars. I come from a distinguished military family that has fought in every war all the way back to the Revolutionary War so I know whereof I speak.
2. I don't really object to polygamists as people. Not all of them are like the violent ones or child molesting ones in the news. But they have such high birthrates that their lifestyle would wreck the planet. I have heard of polygamists who don't believe in having litters of children. I doubt this. [My only anecdotal experience being one time when I encountered a ménage a quatre, a guy and three gals, and there was not the expected presence of baby strollers. I have heard tell that ménages consider themselves different from polygamists.]
3. Despite being a Christian, I don't really object to swingers. They tend to be better behaved than most sexual experimenters. They practice safe sex and don't do it in front of children. I wonder if they seduced country bumpkin John Edwards. Would explain things.
3. I object to gays on several grounds. I'm a born-again Christian and the Bible condemns sodomy from Genesis to Revelation and every chapter in between. On the practical level of wanting world peace, it is hard to keep men and women from wanting to kill each other when they can't even have sex with each other because they act like Republicans and Democrats. Women are from malls, men are from penis. I'm sorry, I meant to say women are from Mars and men are from Venus.
The Democrats, on the other hand, have no backbone. It is a recent phenomenon as such things go. Democrats lost their backbone around the time of Nixon but became outright jellyfish and invertebrates with the nomination of Kerry. The man, a war hero with multiple decorations, just refused to fight back no matter what the Bush camp said about him. I remember hearing a lifelong Democrat tell me that she was going to vote for Bush because she heard a rumor that we the taxpayers would have to pay for Kerry's mansions and that we should not "change horses in the middle of a stream." I swear that I am not making this up. She actually said that. I investigated the rumor as best I could. Never mind that it is par for the course for the US Secret Service to build security gates at the entrances to the property of a sitting president. What gets me is the total gullibility of a woman who is a property owner, a landlady, a respected pillar of her community, and her church's treasurer. As for changing horses, I would fire any general and any commander in chief and any president who was an idiot--especially in the middle of a shooting war (Iraq and Afghanistan).
Elections turn on such stupid little things. So when I hear some of the rumors flying around this election . . . . Let's put it this way. If real estate developers were terraforming other worlds and if space travel were cheaper and safer than air travel, I'd be off this planet so fast it would make your head spin. I honestly don't think the human race is a viable enterprise. Should we discover intelligent civilizations elsewhere in the universe, I would go to their embassy and apply for citizenship. On Earth, we actually have extremist heads of Islamic states (who deny the Holocaust ever happened while planning the next one) trying to get nuclear weapons. We have avoided a nuclear holocaust or a biological war so far but that luck can't last forever. The radwaste produced by fission necessitates a police state or garrison state lest MUF (material unaccounted for) finds its way into dirty bombs which would make entire cities uninhabitable for decades if not centuries. If the material in question is plutonium, then say goodbye to the human race.
Then there is sucking in carcinogenic chemicals with every breath.
If you think getting the hell off this planet is something only considered by one or two people, then think again. There are thousands of people who do more than talk. They are saving their money to move to Mars. The only thing holding them back is availability of passage and habitat there. That is admittedly a big obstacle but a financial opportunity for real estate developers and the space industry.
As for quitting the human race and living with aliens, there are lots of New Agers who will bend your ear talking about "space brothers." Yeah right. Alien abductions and rectal probes. No thank you. I can go to the doctor if I need implants or my money removed. I'm sure though that if extraterrestrials exist, then there must be more than one species and I'll find one that is less totalitarian than the Republicans and Democrats and less anal than life down here in this Sodom and Gomorrah we call Earth.
Too much code talk? I'll speak plainly. I want to get away from war, pollution, overpopulation, gays, the abortion debate, school prayer, flags, superpatriots, the Patriot Act, crime, Islam, conservatives and other racists, bigots masquerading as Christians (the religious right), illegal immigrants, Nazis, communists, Republicans, and Democrats.
For the sake of discussion let's imagine that there is as much diversity (perhaps far more) out there as there is down here. Here is a list of people that I could not only coexist with; I'd even prefer their presence:
• Pacifists
• environmentalists
• Green Party
• Greenpeace
• Nature Conservancy
• ecologists and other scientists
• ZPG (zero population growth)
• NPG (negative population growth)
• heterosexuals who use birth control and contraceptives
• (instead of abortion)
• Planned Parenthood
• libertarians
• law abiding citizens
• moderates
• centrists
• independents
• progressives
• people of every color (black, white, yellow, red, brown)
• males
• females
• neuters
• real Christians (Quakers and Mennonites)
• Jews
• Zoroastrians
• Buddhists
• Hindus
• Shintoists
• Jains
• Sikhs (pretty much any faith except Islam)
• atheists
• agnostics
Explanatory Notes:
1. It is not the military that is the problem, just the politicians who start the wars. I come from a distinguished military family that has fought in every war all the way back to the Revolutionary War so I know whereof I speak.
2. I don't really object to polygamists as people. Not all of them are like the violent ones or child molesting ones in the news. But they have such high birthrates that their lifestyle would wreck the planet. I have heard of polygamists who don't believe in having litters of children. I doubt this. [My only anecdotal experience being one time when I encountered a ménage a quatre, a guy and three gals, and there was not the expected presence of baby strollers. I have heard tell that ménages consider themselves different from polygamists.]
3. Despite being a Christian, I don't really object to swingers. They tend to be better behaved than most sexual experimenters. They practice safe sex and don't do it in front of children. I wonder if they seduced country bumpkin John Edwards. Would explain things.
3. I object to gays on several grounds. I'm a born-again Christian and the Bible condemns sodomy from Genesis to Revelation and every chapter in between. On the practical level of wanting world peace, it is hard to keep men and women from wanting to kill each other when they can't even have sex with each other because they act like Republicans and Democrats. Women are from malls, men are from penis. I'm sorry, I meant to say women are from Mars and men are from Venus.
Back in the Saddle Again
Rick Warren says that he is a moderate centrist. No, he's not. Whether or not he gave McCain an unfair advantage over Obama in preparing for the appearance at his pastorate, Saddleback Church, there is some indication of Pastor Warren's politics.
1. Rick Warren's theological and political beliefs are identical with those of far right wing televangelists by his own admission.
2. Rick Warren classified Obama's beliefs as "radical". This makes Pastor Warren to the right of Obama by definition.
3. Rick Warren dismissed the black church as Marxist. This would make the white church "Nazi" in contrast.
Jesus spoke of rendering unto Caesar which many interpret as calling for separation of church and state. He never spoke about school prayer or abortion. However, in the New Testament, Jesus spoke of stewardship of the land, helping the poor, healing the sick (health care in modern terms), visiting prisoners, persecution, righteousness, mercy, and making peace.
1. Rick Warren's theological and political beliefs are identical with those of far right wing televangelists by his own admission.
2. Rick Warren classified Obama's beliefs as "radical". This makes Pastor Warren to the right of Obama by definition.
3. Rick Warren dismissed the black church as Marxist. This would make the white church "Nazi" in contrast.
Jesus spoke of rendering unto Caesar which many interpret as calling for separation of church and state. He never spoke about school prayer or abortion. However, in the New Testament, Jesus spoke of stewardship of the land, helping the poor, healing the sick (health care in modern terms), visiting prisoners, persecution, righteousness, mercy, and making peace.
Experience
Jimmy Carter had no connections in town when he arrived in Washington DC. If we had followed his program of energy independence, then we would be driving electric cars and using solar and wind power right now. Instead, we are paying extortionate prices at the pump and pumping petrodollars to terrorists.
America's friends in other countries have commented that whether we have a Republican or Democrat in the White House makes no difference; our bad foreign policy never changes. I have to agree with those who say: "What has experience gotten us?" The answer appears to be wars, a collapsing economy, high fuel prices, bad public schools, a dying planet (the number of species going extinct is accelerating), and a hundred other ignored problems.
For those who read this installment of this blog, there are things you can do to effectively solve this piling up of social problems:
1. Question whenever you hear some pundit say we need experience. If it is a talk show, then call in or email or write a letter and post it saying how much you disagree.
2. This is a general blog. Next year I might be doing cooking recipes and gardening tips. Those of you with the personality and ability to specialize and focus on this might consider dedicating a blog to making extinct the deadly meme (wiping out the infectious logical fallacy) that experience automatically connotes better government in Washington DC. It never has. On Inauguration Day, president elect George Washington had never been president of the United States of America before. He was simply smart and well-educated and smart trumps experience. He was our best president.
3. If you are a student trying to decide what to do with your life and have not chosen a major in college, consider a field of sociology called Social Problems (the equivalent of pathology in medicine). Your brain power might make the difference. You might make the world a better place.
4. Vote for term limits. "Experience" is often code for corrupt, compromised, sold out, part of the Establishment or whatever derogatory term you prefer. In McCain's world, black men will never be smart enough or educated enough to be president not even if they graduated top of their class (not near the bottom like McCain). No matter what Obama does McCain will find fault. He goaded Obama into going overseas. Leaders in other countries liked this particular American, so McCain was furious. What experience will satisfy McCain? None. What experience does the Constitution require? None. McCain has a clever speech and he's a celebrity but he's just not ready for the job.
5. The whole idea of reform is that what we have now isn't working. Support reform.
6. Read Saul Alinsky.
7. While being a radical is neither good nor bad per se, being radicalized can be a path to progress. Example: White people will allow black people to be brutalized by the police until white people experience what black people have to suffer. The newly recruited young freedom riders and civil rights workers went to the Jim Crow South as liberals but returned to the North and the West as radicals after being beaten by police for walking down the street and riding buses. The die hard segregationists have a different view: "They interfered in how we (meaning whites) run things." Never mind that black Southerners invited them to come and help out with voter registration. In Florida and other Southern states, black votes are still thrown away in 2008. [The point is to engineer things so that whites or men or the old or whatever groups you are trying to reach experiences what blacks or women or the young or whatever group you are goes through everyday.]
This is one tactic that the Establishment cannot use or use to turn the clock back. If some billionaire wants me to experience what life at the top is like, then I welcome the experience with open arms. That doesn't make me a sellout. Some of the new economy billionaires trying to bring green technology (for example) are hated by the old economy billionaires enough that . . . . that's why rich reformers get assassinated.
If experience is so great, then why has the Wall Street that dominates our capitalist system
1. resisted energy independence?
2. overpaid CEO's who bankrupt America's largest financial institutions that are "too big to be allowed to fail"?
3. opposed welfare for you while accepting corporate welfare?
4. invested in dying technologies while ignoring new technologies?
5. encouraged the USA to run up debt owned by China (these are the conservative capitalists who supposedly hate communism)?
Addendum: When Republicans talk about "experience", it is racist code for "if he lived longer than Methuselah, a black man will never have enough experience because we don't want a black man in the first place"? Or is "experience" code for Borg-like assimilation: "we want a puppet for our Establishment and Obama ain't a puppet"? Maybe it is both.
America's friends in other countries have commented that whether we have a Republican or Democrat in the White House makes no difference; our bad foreign policy never changes. I have to agree with those who say: "What has experience gotten us?" The answer appears to be wars, a collapsing economy, high fuel prices, bad public schools, a dying planet (the number of species going extinct is accelerating), and a hundred other ignored problems.
For those who read this installment of this blog, there are things you can do to effectively solve this piling up of social problems:
1. Question whenever you hear some pundit say we need experience. If it is a talk show, then call in or email or write a letter and post it saying how much you disagree.
2. This is a general blog. Next year I might be doing cooking recipes and gardening tips. Those of you with the personality and ability to specialize and focus on this might consider dedicating a blog to making extinct the deadly meme (wiping out the infectious logical fallacy) that experience automatically connotes better government in Washington DC. It never has. On Inauguration Day, president elect George Washington had never been president of the United States of America before. He was simply smart and well-educated and smart trumps experience. He was our best president.
3. If you are a student trying to decide what to do with your life and have not chosen a major in college, consider a field of sociology called Social Problems (the equivalent of pathology in medicine). Your brain power might make the difference. You might make the world a better place.
4. Vote for term limits. "Experience" is often code for corrupt, compromised, sold out, part of the Establishment or whatever derogatory term you prefer. In McCain's world, black men will never be smart enough or educated enough to be president not even if they graduated top of their class (not near the bottom like McCain). No matter what Obama does McCain will find fault. He goaded Obama into going overseas. Leaders in other countries liked this particular American, so McCain was furious. What experience will satisfy McCain? None. What experience does the Constitution require? None. McCain has a clever speech and he's a celebrity but he's just not ready for the job.
5. The whole idea of reform is that what we have now isn't working. Support reform.
6. Read Saul Alinsky.
7. While being a radical is neither good nor bad per se, being radicalized can be a path to progress. Example: White people will allow black people to be brutalized by the police until white people experience what black people have to suffer. The newly recruited young freedom riders and civil rights workers went to the Jim Crow South as liberals but returned to the North and the West as radicals after being beaten by police for walking down the street and riding buses. The die hard segregationists have a different view: "They interfered in how we (meaning whites) run things." Never mind that black Southerners invited them to come and help out with voter registration. In Florida and other Southern states, black votes are still thrown away in 2008. [The point is to engineer things so that whites or men or the old or whatever groups you are trying to reach experiences what blacks or women or the young or whatever group you are goes through everyday.]
This is one tactic that the Establishment cannot use or use to turn the clock back. If some billionaire wants me to experience what life at the top is like, then I welcome the experience with open arms. That doesn't make me a sellout. Some of the new economy billionaires trying to bring green technology (for example) are hated by the old economy billionaires enough that . . . . that's why rich reformers get assassinated.
If experience is so great, then why has the Wall Street that dominates our capitalist system
1. resisted energy independence?
2. overpaid CEO's who bankrupt America's largest financial institutions that are "too big to be allowed to fail"?
3. opposed welfare for you while accepting corporate welfare?
4. invested in dying technologies while ignoring new technologies?
5. encouraged the USA to run up debt owned by China (these are the conservative capitalists who supposedly hate communism)?
Addendum: When Republicans talk about "experience", it is racist code for "if he lived longer than Methuselah, a black man will never have enough experience because we don't want a black man in the first place"? Or is "experience" code for Borg-like assimilation: "we want a puppet for our Establishment and Obama ain't a puppet"? Maybe it is both.
Islam (Part I)
It often seems like Muslims don't condemn the use of violence as loudly as others. When an op ed (political cartoon) in Denmark depicted Mohammed with a bomb for a burnoose, in other countries they burned the flag of Norway and rioted.
There are three things wrong here:
1. An innocent third party (the Norwegians) is being violently attacked [In the USA, we see the same thing occur as Sikhs are attacked for what some Muslims do].
2. If it bothers Muslims that their religion's founder is shown as using violence, then why prove them right by showing and using violence?
3. The non-Muslim world is intimidated by violent Muslims even when non-Muslims in non-Muslim countries think that they are speaking in private with other non-Muslims. Case in point: The Pope was in a private discussion with Catholic scholars. Within days, there were protests in Muslim countries that the Pope was saying disparaging things about Mohammed, Islam, and Muslims (the trifecta).
I don't care what the Pope may or may not have said and you cannot force me by violence to care. I do care that as long as violent Islam exists, there is apparently no freedom of speech anywhere on Earth. You can bet, however, that Muslim clerics can disparage Christ, Buddha, Zoroaster, Judaism, Hinduism, and any other non-Muslim faith and get away with it. The reason? We non-Muslims are tolerant.
There are three things wrong here:
1. An innocent third party (the Norwegians) is being violently attacked [In the USA, we see the same thing occur as Sikhs are attacked for what some Muslims do].
2. If it bothers Muslims that their religion's founder is shown as using violence, then why prove them right by showing and using violence?
3. The non-Muslim world is intimidated by violent Muslims even when non-Muslims in non-Muslim countries think that they are speaking in private with other non-Muslims. Case in point: The Pope was in a private discussion with Catholic scholars. Within days, there were protests in Muslim countries that the Pope was saying disparaging things about Mohammed, Islam, and Muslims (the trifecta).
I don't care what the Pope may or may not have said and you cannot force me by violence to care. I do care that as long as violent Islam exists, there is apparently no freedom of speech anywhere on Earth. You can bet, however, that Muslim clerics can disparage Christ, Buddha, Zoroaster, Judaism, Hinduism, and any other non-Muslim faith and get away with it. The reason? We non-Muslims are tolerant.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Stand Up to Cancer
Public Service Announcements won't stop cancer. (SU2C has a nice website though) After losing members of my family to cancer (one lived in a cancer cluster neighborhood) and having it myself, I have the right to express myself.
The chemical industry has known, since at least the Nineteen-Thirties, how carcinogenic their products are and yet they continue to publicly maintain that toxic levels of thousands of different chemicals in the environment are not a public health problem while privately hiding files that show otherwise. Until I hear these media types concerned about cancer articulate loudly and clearly that pollution is a major cause of cancer, they can kiss my [expletive deleted].
I have to wonder if the cancer research establishment has a vested interest in ignoring a simple approach like adding their voice to that of other scientists [atmospheric scientists, marine biologists, oceanographers, ecologists, etc.] calling for cleaning up the environment.
Chemotherapy is something is something of an arms race. In case the reader does not know, chemotherapy is deliberately poisoning the body, hoping that the poisons will kill the cancer before the patient. Radiation therapy is nuking the body, hoping that the radiation kills the cancer before killing the patient. Cancer surgery often degenerates into removing this tumor and that malignancy, this organ and that organ, until there is no longer much healthy body left. It seems too much to hope for a less destructive approach such as vaccines, genetic switches, using the body's biomagnetic field or electrochemistry, and more powerful psychological approaches than simple visualization (perhaps biofeedback). I don't know what long term studies say about using acupressure or any effective alternative or holistic medicine. However, trying all scientific avenues and cleaning up pollution is better than the empty gesture of standing up to fight a microscopic opponent (this isn't a boxing ring) with seldom effective techniques like chemo, radiation, amputation, and mutilation.
The chemical industry has known, since at least the Nineteen-Thirties, how carcinogenic their products are and yet they continue to publicly maintain that toxic levels of thousands of different chemicals in the environment are not a public health problem while privately hiding files that show otherwise. Until I hear these media types concerned about cancer articulate loudly and clearly that pollution is a major cause of cancer, they can kiss my [expletive deleted].
I have to wonder if the cancer research establishment has a vested interest in ignoring a simple approach like adding their voice to that of other scientists [atmospheric scientists, marine biologists, oceanographers, ecologists, etc.] calling for cleaning up the environment.
Chemotherapy is something is something of an arms race. In case the reader does not know, chemotherapy is deliberately poisoning the body, hoping that the poisons will kill the cancer before the patient. Radiation therapy is nuking the body, hoping that the radiation kills the cancer before killing the patient. Cancer surgery often degenerates into removing this tumor and that malignancy, this organ and that organ, until there is no longer much healthy body left. It seems too much to hope for a less destructive approach such as vaccines, genetic switches, using the body's biomagnetic field or electrochemistry, and more powerful psychological approaches than simple visualization (perhaps biofeedback). I don't know what long term studies say about using acupressure or any effective alternative or holistic medicine. However, trying all scientific avenues and cleaning up pollution is better than the empty gesture of standing up to fight a microscopic opponent (this isn't a boxing ring) with seldom effective techniques like chemo, radiation, amputation, and mutilation.
Data Exhaust
Spam into trash. Junk mail into trash. Once worthwhile email into trash. No longer needed stuff in archives into trash. You've used up all your allocated space so something into trash. We're not talking about hard copy paper. We're talking about virtual paper.
When the Constitution was written, we were secure in the privacy of our personal papers, our notes, our letters, and our correspondence. Now you could end up in Gitmo even if you are not Arab*, not Muslim†, and hate our country's enemies. All Osama's techies would have to do is send email to every innocent American (carefully omitting his planning cells) and Cheney and Poindexter would send in their SWAT teams eager to decerebrate you. Red laser pointer or cross hairs on the back of your neck. To be clear, under the Patriot Act you can be held accountable for email someone sends you that you never receive and never even know existed because you never got it. A paranoid's nightmare come true and creeping closer to reality every day.
*please no flames, I know Arab-Americans are loyal Americans
†please no death threats, I know Muslim-Americans are not all trying to kill Salman Rushdie
When the Constitution was written, we were secure in the privacy of our personal papers, our notes, our letters, and our correspondence. Now you could end up in Gitmo even if you are not Arab*, not Muslim†, and hate our country's enemies. All Osama's techies would have to do is send email to every innocent American (carefully omitting his planning cells) and Cheney and Poindexter would send in their SWAT teams eager to decerebrate you. Red laser pointer or cross hairs on the back of your neck. To be clear, under the Patriot Act you can be held accountable for email someone sends you that you never receive and never even know existed because you never got it. A paranoid's nightmare come true and creeping closer to reality every day.
*please no flames, I know Arab-Americans are loyal Americans
†please no death threats, I know Muslim-Americans are not all trying to kill Salman Rushdie
The Edwards Affair
The real impact of the Edwards affair is not on his career but on his constituents. Let me explain. Although most politicians caught in a sexual scandal are finished politically like Senator Gary Hart, there are some who seem to be coated in Teflon like Bill Clinton. Edwards' campaign talked about Two Americas.
One America, billionaires, is represented by George W. Bush and, these days, some billionaires might be better served if people did not give up on their oil addiction and switch to electric cars, wind power, solar, and other alternatives. Other billionaires don't want their children living on a planet dying because of fossil fuels and are investing in energy alternatives.
The other America is the middle class and lower class (euphemistically called the working class). Edwards spoke, more than anyone else I can think of, for people on the lower end of the economic spectrum. When Edwards dropped out of the presidential race and left Hillary and Obama as the only ones in the last few primaries, those people lost just about the only strong voice they had.
I happen to have worked among the working poor. I am not talking about middle class people who have lost their McMansion during the recession and mortgage mess and had to park their Hummer due to high gas prices. I am talking about the people who work two, three, and even four jobs and still earn below the poverty line and can barely pay their bills but usually manage to do so. With Edwards radioactive because of this scandal, he cannot be considered for vice-president or Poverty Czar. He will not even be at the Democratic convention.
Remember that issues often do rise and fall with the fortunes of their champions. After the fall of Senator Gary Hart, there was no chance of getting a strong environmental president until Al Gore and Gore barely talked about the environment during his presidential campaign. He might have won more votes if he had. Certainly Ralph Nader and the Green Party proved there are a lot of green votes out there, enough to change the outcome of an election.
Poverty is not a sexy issue. Who is a national advocate for those who lost their homes in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast during Katrina, Rita and other hurricanes? Who is advocate for farmers in the Midwest who have lost or are losing their farms other than singers John Mellencamp or Willie Nelson? Neither of them is running for office. As experience proves, testifying before Congressional committees about the woes of poor Americans does no good. The poor have to have their own representatives in elected office just like any other group.
Unfortunately, the poor are usually their own worst enemy. They don't have notable political action committees. They can't afford high-priced lobbyists on K Street. There isn't a National Association of Poor People with clout like the National Rifle Association. And, worst of all, poor people are often distracted by irrelevancies like emotionalism, red herrings, and rumors. This is worsened by ignorance from getting second-rate education or dropping out or no education at all. The Republican Party knows this and engages in Machiavellian manipulation. As the Money Party, Republicans are anti-education lest the people wise up and throw them out of office. [If you doubt the characterization of the Republican Party as the party of the rich, then read "The Rich And The Super-Rich" by Ferdinand Lundberg]
Emotionalism of the poor is seen in racial hatred, hatred of liberals, and fear of forced prayer in schools.
An example of a red herring is Bush, Cheney, and McCain's willingness to force the presence of drilling platforms off the shore of states that don't want them. Whatever happened to states rights? Even oil men like T. Boone Pickens say we can't drill our way out of dependence on foreign oil. It would take time to explore and time to build these platforms. By the time the oil came on the market, as much as fifteen years would have passed and, therefore, it won't ease the current pain at the pump. Moreover, that oil would go on the world market, not to the USA, where countries like China are willing to pay extortionate prices. The oil speculators who drive up prices do their business on the InterContinental Exchange in Atlanta. Those speculators are the very banks asking for bailouts after gross financial mismanagement and the very oil companies jacking up prices and using staggering profits to fund their lobbying (of Bush, Cheney, and McCain) so that they can tear up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
They aren't even using the oil leases they have now and they want more. American oil company investment in energy alternatives is minuscule and historically used to kill innovations rather than pursue them. I can introduce anyone curious to inventors who are frustrated at seeing their energy inventions sold for little and then development never happens. Houston does it. Detroit does it. And no one ever mentions that for all the oil out there, the choke point is the lack of enough refineries to turn oil into gasoline. This is a major reason that a glut of oil can still result in high pump prices. I'm not going to advocate the building of more refineries in the USA because, as much as I hate paying a lot for gas, I hate even more the idea of putting more auto exhaust in the air and the resulting destruction of the planet.
The previous paragraph gives some idea of how complex most issues can be. Working stiffs coming in from a day or night of hard work can seldom summon the energy to read newspapers and news magazines in order to suss out the complexities. However, they (we) have no excuse for not listening to news on National Public Radio instead of conservative talk radio and turning from the sports (hey, the country is going over a cliff) and watching The News Hour, Now, and Bill Moyers on PBS. What is impressive is the amount of content that comes from poor people who pick up a camera and start documenting their own lives. But let us return to diagnosing the problem.
Rumors get spread during presidential campaigns that have no connection to reality or sane thinking. One guy was arrested in the South for plotting to kill Obama because he thinks Obama is the Antichrist. That's a laugh. We've already had three presidents who have far better qualifications for being the Antichrist: Ronald Wilson Reagan (6 letters, 6 letters, 6 letters) advocated death stars like some Darth Vader, had a wife who practiced occult astrology, and miraculously recovered from a wound. [Okay, the Chick tracts specify a head wound but let's not quibble.] Richard Nixon was the Father of Lies, a bad liar who sweated a lot on his upper lip, excommunicated from his denomination, and was quoted in a speech to a private group as saying he wanted to abolish the Constitution. George Walker Bush Jr. gets a 666 if you count Bush Jr as six letters. For those fans of Christian horror movies, The Omen suggested that the Antichrist had a canine for a mother. Bush's mother is called The Silver Fox. Bush made a deal with the devil. Bush was called Magog during his college years when he reportedly did such demonic things as brand a young woman during Skull and Bones hijinks. Even that fraternity with its horrible reputation in conspiracy circles must be embarrassed by Bush. W was power of the air (a pilot). Bush once spoke to some Amish who were aghast when he said he spoke for God as head of the religious right. As Antichrist, Bush even has the Beast (Dick Cheney) and the False Prophet (Karl Marx Rove) to complete the Unholy Trinity. So, I think that anyone who thinks Obama is the Antichrist is racially motivated. They just see the skin color and decide that black is evil. This kind of one dimensional thinking puts one more nail in the coffin of Conservative Christianity.
If my choices are an adulterous Democrat who leaves the country with a One Trillion Dollar surplus (Bill Clinton) and a Satanic Republican who sees no problem with global warming ("we can grow crops in Northern Canada") or killing off the human race, who serves Mammon, and who has sold his soul to Lucifer; then I choose the adulterous Democrat. I'd actually prefer a choice between a Libertarian and a Green but third parties are kept out of office by the two-party duopoly.
Ignorance is another handicap of the poor. If your entire world is work, sports, beer, trucks, guns, and church (a schizophrenic mix if anything is), then you will not know or care that people who wear burnooses have nothing in common with people who wear turbans. I always acknowledge in this blog that I am a Christian, that I believe in Yeshua (Jesus for those who don't know), that I read the Bible, and that I think stewardship of the Earth is a direct order from God (not to mention common sense not to poison oneself by polluting the environment you live in). I fellowship when I can with other Christians. I even have prayer in this blog but question the sanity of those who think you can force prayer in school. Whose prayer? The Our Father? Selections from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer? What about Jehovah's Witnesses, Hindus and others who pray differently? I know enough to know that I need to read other books than the Bible. I know that people who wear burnooses (the hat Arafat and Arabs over there wear) are probably Muslims but not always. There are Christian Arabs. I know that people who wear turbans are Sikhs. Muslim men can take off the burnooses anytime they want. Sikh men are obliged by their faith to keep the turban on in the same way Jewish men wear a kipah or yarmulke (which stupid people call a beanie). So I am embarrassed for that jerk in Arizona who came out of a bar after seeing planes hit the World Trade Center and murdered a Sikh who was a husband, a father, and a respected member of the business community. You can't blame ignorance on alcohol. One has only oneself to blame for that level of ignorance.
Much of the media loves to paint populist politicians as automatically bad. Well if populist means popular, then much, if not most, of the media is anti-people. I lose no sleep over media conglomerates having a bad fiscal year. They own too many radio stations with cookie-cutter formats that have no local content. Newspapers suppress freedom of speech because their legal departments forbid anonymous letters to the editor.
In America, if you try to speak the unvarnished truth, you may find your car run off the road, your house mysteriously burned to the ground, your phone calls unanswered or bugged, your children beat up in school or even kidnapped, your job has been eliminated, your insurance claims denied, your taxes audited, your military unit sent to the front lines, yourself harassed by the police, your ballot challenged at the polls, your permanent record smeared at school, your family asked to find another church, your manuscript unable to find a publisher, or your film project unable to get the green light for starters. The Bush Administration and the Republican wilding added still more dirty tricks to this arsenal.
It is easy enough to check whether the state of truth telling is hopeless: just try it yourself. If nothing bad happens to you after a week, then perhaps no one heard you. Keep doing it, it is therapeutic. Encourage others to speak out about the problems in the USA. If you get killed, then I was right. Cold comfort to you. If you attract crowds to your speeches and no one blows your head off, then I would truly be happy to have been proved wrong about how bad America is.
Let's go deeper. I've been talking about the upper lower class which has no representation but lots of taxation. There is also the lower-lower class. Then there is the lower-lower-lower class also known as the permanent underclass. Who is an advocate for the legal migrant worker? Who is an advocate for Chinese slave labor working in American territories such as the Marianas Islands? Who is an advocate for the poor of Appalachia? Who is an advocate for sharecroppers in the Deep South? Who is advocate for the homeless? Anyone who does a little research about homelessness in America discovers that it is not just Skid row drunks, unwed mothers, and orphans. It is also single fathers with children, senior citizens, sick people who ought to be in hospitals, asylum inmates turned out on the streets with no counselors or medication, retarded people who have lost their jobs, and even whole intact families (both nuclear families and multi generational).
When I sometimes rant in this blog about how stupid, evil, and crazy the American population is; some of that is letting off steam but in this case, it is a sad statement of the truth: retarded people holding down jobs until laid off and insane asylum inmates who could hold down jobs if they could afford the medication to keep themselves stable and the evil people in Washington DC kicking people when they are down. Our sports are supposed to teach us a sense of fair play. You don't kick a man when he is down. You stick out your hand and help him up even if he on the other side.
The economy is forcing us to abandon that decency. We are pouring Billions of dollars into Iraq and bases around the world when charity begins at home. Our hospitals are treating illegal aliens for free when Native Americans and other US citizens die for lack of affordable health care. Doesn't Mexico have hospitals you say? So the poor turn on each other when they should be finding the nearest Republican and some firewood. Just joking about burning at the steak. Can't afford steak. [pun intended]
The Edwards campaign dealt with the upper half of the lower class. It did not really reach down into the Lower-Lower classes who have no voice. And now that Edwards has been shown to have feet of clay, he will probably never be any advocate for them. It won't be me either because I am a private citizen with no desire for public office.
However much I feel sorry for Elizabeth Edwards and her battle with cancer, I feel sorrier for the poorest of the poor who have to still keep hoping for one of their own to get into any local office, let along the presidency. As former poor boy John Edwards himself shows, often when someone born poor gets elected, the fat salary so excites them that they forget whatever values their family and religion taught them. The good news is that some of the presidents who came from poverty turned out okay like Abraham Lincoln. The bad news is that most who came from poverty are rascals like Andrew Jackson (spoils system) or Richard Nixon (Watergate).
Dear God,
I think the United States is a pit of vipers with evil conspiracies infernally preventing progress and leaders with no moral compass, no conscience, and no qualms about ordering the deaths of Americans on American soil. Worse, they let operatives do this dirty work so that they can have deniability and pervert the legal system. Our leaders will never see the inside of the prison cells they so richly deserve. I am begging You to please prove me to be totally wrong. Amen.
One America, billionaires, is represented by George W. Bush and, these days, some billionaires might be better served if people did not give up on their oil addiction and switch to electric cars, wind power, solar, and other alternatives. Other billionaires don't want their children living on a planet dying because of fossil fuels and are investing in energy alternatives.
The other America is the middle class and lower class (euphemistically called the working class). Edwards spoke, more than anyone else I can think of, for people on the lower end of the economic spectrum. When Edwards dropped out of the presidential race and left Hillary and Obama as the only ones in the last few primaries, those people lost just about the only strong voice they had.
I happen to have worked among the working poor. I am not talking about middle class people who have lost their McMansion during the recession and mortgage mess and had to park their Hummer due to high gas prices. I am talking about the people who work two, three, and even four jobs and still earn below the poverty line and can barely pay their bills but usually manage to do so. With Edwards radioactive because of this scandal, he cannot be considered for vice-president or Poverty Czar. He will not even be at the Democratic convention.
Remember that issues often do rise and fall with the fortunes of their champions. After the fall of Senator Gary Hart, there was no chance of getting a strong environmental president until Al Gore and Gore barely talked about the environment during his presidential campaign. He might have won more votes if he had. Certainly Ralph Nader and the Green Party proved there are a lot of green votes out there, enough to change the outcome of an election.
Poverty is not a sexy issue. Who is a national advocate for those who lost their homes in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast during Katrina, Rita and other hurricanes? Who is advocate for farmers in the Midwest who have lost or are losing their farms other than singers John Mellencamp or Willie Nelson? Neither of them is running for office. As experience proves, testifying before Congressional committees about the woes of poor Americans does no good. The poor have to have their own representatives in elected office just like any other group.
Unfortunately, the poor are usually their own worst enemy. They don't have notable political action committees. They can't afford high-priced lobbyists on K Street. There isn't a National Association of Poor People with clout like the National Rifle Association. And, worst of all, poor people are often distracted by irrelevancies like emotionalism, red herrings, and rumors. This is worsened by ignorance from getting second-rate education or dropping out or no education at all. The Republican Party knows this and engages in Machiavellian manipulation. As the Money Party, Republicans are anti-education lest the people wise up and throw them out of office. [If you doubt the characterization of the Republican Party as the party of the rich, then read "The Rich And The Super-Rich" by Ferdinand Lundberg]
Emotionalism of the poor is seen in racial hatred, hatred of liberals, and fear of forced prayer in schools.
An example of a red herring is Bush, Cheney, and McCain's willingness to force the presence of drilling platforms off the shore of states that don't want them. Whatever happened to states rights? Even oil men like T. Boone Pickens say we can't drill our way out of dependence on foreign oil. It would take time to explore and time to build these platforms. By the time the oil came on the market, as much as fifteen years would have passed and, therefore, it won't ease the current pain at the pump. Moreover, that oil would go on the world market, not to the USA, where countries like China are willing to pay extortionate prices. The oil speculators who drive up prices do their business on the InterContinental Exchange in Atlanta. Those speculators are the very banks asking for bailouts after gross financial mismanagement and the very oil companies jacking up prices and using staggering profits to fund their lobbying (of Bush, Cheney, and McCain) so that they can tear up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
They aren't even using the oil leases they have now and they want more. American oil company investment in energy alternatives is minuscule and historically used to kill innovations rather than pursue them. I can introduce anyone curious to inventors who are frustrated at seeing their energy inventions sold for little and then development never happens. Houston does it. Detroit does it. And no one ever mentions that for all the oil out there, the choke point is the lack of enough refineries to turn oil into gasoline. This is a major reason that a glut of oil can still result in high pump prices. I'm not going to advocate the building of more refineries in the USA because, as much as I hate paying a lot for gas, I hate even more the idea of putting more auto exhaust in the air and the resulting destruction of the planet.
The previous paragraph gives some idea of how complex most issues can be. Working stiffs coming in from a day or night of hard work can seldom summon the energy to read newspapers and news magazines in order to suss out the complexities. However, they (we) have no excuse for not listening to news on National Public Radio instead of conservative talk radio and turning from the sports (hey, the country is going over a cliff) and watching The News Hour, Now, and Bill Moyers on PBS. What is impressive is the amount of content that comes from poor people who pick up a camera and start documenting their own lives. But let us return to diagnosing the problem.
Rumors get spread during presidential campaigns that have no connection to reality or sane thinking. One guy was arrested in the South for plotting to kill Obama because he thinks Obama is the Antichrist. That's a laugh. We've already had three presidents who have far better qualifications for being the Antichrist: Ronald Wilson Reagan (6 letters, 6 letters, 6 letters) advocated death stars like some Darth Vader, had a wife who practiced occult astrology, and miraculously recovered from a wound. [Okay, the Chick tracts specify a head wound but let's not quibble.] Richard Nixon was the Father of Lies, a bad liar who sweated a lot on his upper lip, excommunicated from his denomination, and was quoted in a speech to a private group as saying he wanted to abolish the Constitution. George Walker Bush Jr. gets a 666 if you count Bush Jr as six letters. For those fans of Christian horror movies, The Omen suggested that the Antichrist had a canine for a mother. Bush's mother is called The Silver Fox. Bush made a deal with the devil. Bush was called Magog during his college years when he reportedly did such demonic things as brand a young woman during Skull and Bones hijinks. Even that fraternity with its horrible reputation in conspiracy circles must be embarrassed by Bush. W was power of the air (a pilot). Bush once spoke to some Amish who were aghast when he said he spoke for God as head of the religious right. As Antichrist, Bush even has the Beast (Dick Cheney) and the False Prophet (Karl Marx Rove) to complete the Unholy Trinity. So, I think that anyone who thinks Obama is the Antichrist is racially motivated. They just see the skin color and decide that black is evil. This kind of one dimensional thinking puts one more nail in the coffin of Conservative Christianity.
If my choices are an adulterous Democrat who leaves the country with a One Trillion Dollar surplus (Bill Clinton) and a Satanic Republican who sees no problem with global warming ("we can grow crops in Northern Canada") or killing off the human race, who serves Mammon, and who has sold his soul to Lucifer; then I choose the adulterous Democrat. I'd actually prefer a choice between a Libertarian and a Green but third parties are kept out of office by the two-party duopoly.
Ignorance is another handicap of the poor. If your entire world is work, sports, beer, trucks, guns, and church (a schizophrenic mix if anything is), then you will not know or care that people who wear burnooses have nothing in common with people who wear turbans. I always acknowledge in this blog that I am a Christian, that I believe in Yeshua (Jesus for those who don't know), that I read the Bible, and that I think stewardship of the Earth is a direct order from God (not to mention common sense not to poison oneself by polluting the environment you live in). I fellowship when I can with other Christians. I even have prayer in this blog but question the sanity of those who think you can force prayer in school. Whose prayer? The Our Father? Selections from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer? What about Jehovah's Witnesses, Hindus and others who pray differently? I know enough to know that I need to read other books than the Bible. I know that people who wear burnooses (the hat Arafat and Arabs over there wear) are probably Muslims but not always. There are Christian Arabs. I know that people who wear turbans are Sikhs. Muslim men can take off the burnooses anytime they want. Sikh men are obliged by their faith to keep the turban on in the same way Jewish men wear a kipah or yarmulke (which stupid people call a beanie). So I am embarrassed for that jerk in Arizona who came out of a bar after seeing planes hit the World Trade Center and murdered a Sikh who was a husband, a father, and a respected member of the business community. You can't blame ignorance on alcohol. One has only oneself to blame for that level of ignorance.
Much of the media loves to paint populist politicians as automatically bad. Well if populist means popular, then much, if not most, of the media is anti-people. I lose no sleep over media conglomerates having a bad fiscal year. They own too many radio stations with cookie-cutter formats that have no local content. Newspapers suppress freedom of speech because their legal departments forbid anonymous letters to the editor.
In America, if you try to speak the unvarnished truth, you may find your car run off the road, your house mysteriously burned to the ground, your phone calls unanswered or bugged, your children beat up in school or even kidnapped, your job has been eliminated, your insurance claims denied, your taxes audited, your military unit sent to the front lines, yourself harassed by the police, your ballot challenged at the polls, your permanent record smeared at school, your family asked to find another church, your manuscript unable to find a publisher, or your film project unable to get the green light for starters. The Bush Administration and the Republican wilding added still more dirty tricks to this arsenal.
It is easy enough to check whether the state of truth telling is hopeless: just try it yourself. If nothing bad happens to you after a week, then perhaps no one heard you. Keep doing it, it is therapeutic. Encourage others to speak out about the problems in the USA. If you get killed, then I was right. Cold comfort to you. If you attract crowds to your speeches and no one blows your head off, then I would truly be happy to have been proved wrong about how bad America is.
Let's go deeper. I've been talking about the upper lower class which has no representation but lots of taxation. There is also the lower-lower class. Then there is the lower-lower-lower class also known as the permanent underclass. Who is an advocate for the legal migrant worker? Who is an advocate for Chinese slave labor working in American territories such as the Marianas Islands? Who is an advocate for the poor of Appalachia? Who is an advocate for sharecroppers in the Deep South? Who is advocate for the homeless? Anyone who does a little research about homelessness in America discovers that it is not just Skid row drunks, unwed mothers, and orphans. It is also single fathers with children, senior citizens, sick people who ought to be in hospitals, asylum inmates turned out on the streets with no counselors or medication, retarded people who have lost their jobs, and even whole intact families (both nuclear families and multi generational).
When I sometimes rant in this blog about how stupid, evil, and crazy the American population is; some of that is letting off steam but in this case, it is a sad statement of the truth: retarded people holding down jobs until laid off and insane asylum inmates who could hold down jobs if they could afford the medication to keep themselves stable and the evil people in Washington DC kicking people when they are down. Our sports are supposed to teach us a sense of fair play. You don't kick a man when he is down. You stick out your hand and help him up even if he on the other side.
The economy is forcing us to abandon that decency. We are pouring Billions of dollars into Iraq and bases around the world when charity begins at home. Our hospitals are treating illegal aliens for free when Native Americans and other US citizens die for lack of affordable health care. Doesn't Mexico have hospitals you say? So the poor turn on each other when they should be finding the nearest Republican and some firewood. Just joking about burning at the steak. Can't afford steak. [pun intended]
The Edwards campaign dealt with the upper half of the lower class. It did not really reach down into the Lower-Lower classes who have no voice. And now that Edwards has been shown to have feet of clay, he will probably never be any advocate for them. It won't be me either because I am a private citizen with no desire for public office.
However much I feel sorry for Elizabeth Edwards and her battle with cancer, I feel sorrier for the poorest of the poor who have to still keep hoping for one of their own to get into any local office, let along the presidency. As former poor boy John Edwards himself shows, often when someone born poor gets elected, the fat salary so excites them that they forget whatever values their family and religion taught them. The good news is that some of the presidents who came from poverty turned out okay like Abraham Lincoln. The bad news is that most who came from poverty are rascals like Andrew Jackson (spoils system) or Richard Nixon (Watergate).
Dear God,
I think the United States is a pit of vipers with evil conspiracies infernally preventing progress and leaders with no moral compass, no conscience, and no qualms about ordering the deaths of Americans on American soil. Worse, they let operatives do this dirty work so that they can have deniability and pervert the legal system. Our leaders will never see the inside of the prison cells they so richly deserve. I am begging You to please prove me to be totally wrong. Amen.
End of Life Issues
Where are the Pro-Lifers when the Kevorkians of the world are euthanizing old people? They worry about legal abortion doctors but not illegal "assisted suicide". If an old person with chronic illnesses and on life support wants to off themselves and even if they are force fed with tubes and IV drips, they can still will themselves to die. Most of us just refuse to exercise (slow but effective). They shouldn't get someone, particularly a doctor who is sworn to do no harm, to commit murder. I don't trust my doctor as it is without worrying if she is going to kill me knowing she'll be paid whether I live or die.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
The Volt
They drank the Kool-Aid: Much of the automotive press and the general media believe General Motors will deliver The Volt by 2009, 2010, and 2011 or by some date. Electric vehicles made by the Big Three in Detroit [GM, Ford, and Chrysler] are always in the future and seldom in showrooms and never for sale. GM's EV was for lease not for sale. That car was recalled, mashed, and shredded despite the number of satisfied drivers who wanted to buy it.
There are electric cars and hybrids available right now that don't look like golf carts or accelerate like snails.
Tesla Motors, San Carlos CA
http://www.teslamotors.com/
Phoenix Motorcars
www.phoenixmotorcars.com
Venturi Fetish, Monaco
http://www.venturifetish.fr/fetish.html
Honda Insight
This was a two-seater hybrid in production for model years 2000 through 2006 but you could get one used.
Toyota Prius
http://www.priusfuture.com/
Mitsubishi MIEV
This is a concept car that seems to have seen more of the real world than most.
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/03/21/new-york-2008-autobloggreen-drives-the-mitsubishi-i-miev-w-vid/
There are electric cars and hybrids available right now that don't look like golf carts or accelerate like snails.
Tesla Motors, San Carlos CA
http://www.teslamotors.com/
Phoenix Motorcars
www.phoenixmotorcars.com
Venturi Fetish, Monaco
http://www.venturifetish.fr/fetish.html
Honda Insight
This was a two-seater hybrid in production for model years 2000 through 2006 but you could get one used.
Toyota Prius
http://www.priusfuture.com/
Mitsubishi MIEV
This is a concept car that seems to have seen more of the real world than most.
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/03/21/new-york-2008-autobloggreen-drives-the-mitsubishi-i-miev-w-vid/
The Population Explosion
Knowing that it will reach a two billion person population, China enforced a one child family policy and made abortions easy. With the entire populations of Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America and South America moving to the United States, eventually the US government (using the power given it by the Patriot Act), will make smaller families mandatory. By eventually, I mean when the US population reaches, say, three billion. Long before then the human race will have used up the world's resources, most important of which is oxygen, and the human will have committed suicide quite consciously because we know that overpopulation not only makes pollution worse but that it drives it. I don't know that overpopulation causes pollution but it is fair to imagine a strong correlation.
If people in early Biblical times lived for centuries like Methuselah, one has to wonder if with the increase in population came an increase in pollution. Animals don't burn fires nor engage in slash and burn agriculture which, after millennia, is still practiced. Animals don't pollute streams with mine tailings nor metalworking runoff which we humans have been doing since the Iron Age and Bronze Age. You can call it sin, stupidity, or insanity. I call it overpopulation.
If people in early Biblical times lived for centuries like Methuselah, one has to wonder if with the increase in population came an increase in pollution. Animals don't burn fires nor engage in slash and burn agriculture which, after millennia, is still practiced. Animals don't pollute streams with mine tailings nor metalworking runoff which we humans have been doing since the Iron Age and Bronze Age. You can call it sin, stupidity, or insanity. I call it overpopulation.
The Middle East
Israel and the Islamic republics will be at odds for a long time because their Weltanschauung (world view) is so diametrically different. Israel thinks it has an historical, legal, national, religious, cultural, racial, and Biblical claim to the land. The Arabs do not.
Israelis think they have a right to exist. The Islamicists think they do not. The modern state of Israel won its independence with guerrillas whom they called freedom fighters and the British called terrorists. Palestine is run by and Palestinians in other countries support what the USA considers terrorist organizations.
Exactly what makes one a terrorist? Blowing up a hotel full of civilians? Certainly if you put on a vest full of C4 and shrapnel and blow yourself up in a bus full of schoolchildren or at a shopping mall, then most Americans call that terrorism. Hijacking a plane full of people and killing them is called terrorism. There was a time when Islamic terrorists would target only Israelis but since Israelis tend to be tightening security, terrorists started attacking Jews in other countries who may never have been Zionists or sympathetic to Israel thus creating more allies for Israel. Then terrorists started attacking Americans who weren't even Jewish thus creating more allies for Israel. Then word got out that Islamic terrorists used the phrase "first the Saturday people, then the Sunday people". This creates still more allies for Israel.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban blows up Buddhist shrines and archaeological sites. In Kashmir, once a place with a crime rate so low that murder was unknown, control by India (primarily a Hindu nation) was contested by Pakistan, an Islamic nation. In Iran, the birthplace of two world religions, Zoroastrianism and the Baha'i faith, those religions face extinction under the rule of Muslims. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that Islamicists do not care for any religion that is not Islam and that Christians and Jews are not the only one targeted by terrorists.
So when some uninformed Americans scratch their heads wondering why Israel continues to get moral support from the USA if not military, financial, and political support, at least you have a clue: it is mutual self-interest and survival.
As for walls, why shouldn't the Israelis build them? Yes, the Palestinians need to get to their fields and their jobs but, invariably, sneaking in with them are suicide bombers.
Israel can continue to trade land for peace (Perea a.k.a. West Bank, Ituraea a.k.a. Golan Heights, Jerusalem, Galilee, Judea, Gaza Strip, Idumaea a.k.a. the Negev etc.) until there is no longer any left for the Israelis to trade and still never get peace. Some say this is exactly the Arab plan and the Israelis are deluding themselves to hope for peace anytime in this millennium.
If you think that Israel has plenty of land, then find Israel on a globe. It is tiny compared to its neighbors. If you think any country likes giving up land, then check your history on the Panama Canal Zone. The USA was only leasing the land! There would have been a second civil war if the USA had outright managed to buy the Canal Zone and then decided to give it back to satisfy Panamanian demands.
If you still think that Israel has plenty of land, then consider that in Biblical times the Kingdom included parts of modern day Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. Modern Israel is a fraction of Ancient Israel. I am one those who think the Israelis should never have given up any of the land they won during the Six Day War. They wanted peace with their neighbor which is a hopeless cause.
Samaria, the very heart of ancient Israel, is now part of Jordan. The hymn about the balm in Gilead refers to a place now in Jordan. Bethlehem where Jesus was born is not in Israel. It is in Jordan. When the terrorists a few years ago barricaded themselves inside the Church of the Nativity, do you think that violating the holiest place in Christendom bothered them? Did it even enter their minds?
Now you know why some people would have no problem with nuking and vaporizing Mecca and Medina. Of course, the Muslims may do it themselves. Muslims supposedly regard the Dome of the Rock as the third holiest place in Islam. Yet the Iranian leaders want to be able to blast Israel with nuclear missiles (which would destroy the Dome of the Rock, a minor detail).
Even what constitutes the people has shrunk: there were huge Hebrew colonies worldwide even as far as China, southern Africa, and modern day Russia. The family of Jesus lived for the first twelve years of His life in Egypt where many communities of Hebrews lived permanently even after that falling out with Ramesses . Nowadays, they are called Karaites or Kara'im. The Samaritans or Shomronim live in Jordan near Mount Gerizim which is the geographic center of ancient Israel. The ancient Israelites constituted the Northern Kingdom. The ancient Jews constituted the Southern Kingdom of Judah or Judea. What about the other Lost Tribes that every Jewish wannabe claims to be? The conspiracy theorists and the Mormons, among many others, claim to be lost tribes. In fact, geneticists have long been able to identify lost tribes such as the Falasha.
So what constitutes the people has shrunk. The Hebrews were twelve tribes and the Jews claim descent from Judah. In practice, modern Israel allows in more than rabbinical Jews. Those claiming right of return include Karaites fleeing persecution in Egypt, Saudi Jews fleeing Arabia, Persian Jews fleeing Bukhara, Kurdish Jews fleeing Kurdistan, and even Native Americans from the Andes who converted to Judaism long ago but were not allowed into the synagogues of European colonists.
There is a group of Japanese Jews who claimed right of return after German Jews and others came across Russia and down from Vladivostok through Japan on the way to Israel. Neither Imperial Japan nor postwar Japan had a tradition of anti-Semitism. Nor has China or India but those communities died in isolation from the rest of the world community.
Most of these groups, particularly the Falasha, predate rabbinical Judaism in Europe by centuries and resent being talked down to as if all Jews were blue-eyed blonde whites. The conversion of the Khazar Empire ruling class to Judaism in 740 AD is often quoted by some conspiracy theorists to say that European Jews are not Jews. This is nonsense. What is real is that Jews themselves recognize Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, Oriental, and "other Jewry". Older communities such as the Falasha resent being made to adopt European rabbinical ways when their community is far older and their tradition unbroken since the time of Solomon. These older communities use the Torah or Pentateuch (what we call the Bible) while the rabbinical communities use the Talmud.
Okay, so you have Jews of every race immigrating to Israel from every nation. But it is more complex than that. Besides Arab Jews there are Palestinian Jews. Hebrew and Jewish presence in the Holy Land has been continuous. Even after Samaria fell to Assyria and the Israelites were deported, the Southern Kingdom of Judea continued. When the First Temple was destroyed in BC 586 and most of the tribe of Judah taken into Exile, some Jews managed to be overlooked by Nebuchadnezzar. In 135 AD, the Romans put the dispersion into the Diaspora but again some were overlooked. Formal attempts to reestablish a Jewish government began in 1567 AD. The first returnees arrived in 1881. The League of Nations gave Britain a mandate over Palestine in 1922 which they used to limit Jewish immigration and land purchase. Note that they were trying to dot all the eyes and cross all the tees by buying not stealing the land as some claim.
But it is still more complex than that. There are also Armenians, Greek Orthodox Christians, and Baha'is living in Israel. There are Muslims who much prefer to be citizens of Israel than citizens of Palestine at the whim of a government of terrorists. There are Druze who claim descent from Jethro (Moses' father in law) and who are the only non-Jewish military in the Israeli Defense Force.
The whole problem is the same as the debate over the effectiveness of the surge. Who cares? We shouldn't be in Iraq in the first place. Who cares whether the surge is effective or not? Let the Palestinians and Israelis kill each other. In Northern Ireland, nothing worked until the British let the Protestants and Catholics kill each other for the better part of two centuries until they got it out of their systems. If Iran and Israel come to blows in a nuclear exchange, we can't stop it. We blew that chance when Bush got Iraq and Iran confused. If you think that is a joke, then how many times has McCain confused Sunni and Shiite? A disruption of oil supply is our problem. We should never have gotten addicted to a substance owned by the very terrorists who want to kill us. The Founding Fathers warned us about entangling alliances dragging us into wars.
The use of nuclear weapons by Israel and Iran (and Pakistan and India) will scare the rest of world into finally getting rid of nuclear weapons altogether.
Just in time for those aliens in Independence Day. Oh my God.
Israelis think they have a right to exist. The Islamicists think they do not. The modern state of Israel won its independence with guerrillas whom they called freedom fighters and the British called terrorists. Palestine is run by and Palestinians in other countries support what the USA considers terrorist organizations.
Exactly what makes one a terrorist? Blowing up a hotel full of civilians? Certainly if you put on a vest full of C4 and shrapnel and blow yourself up in a bus full of schoolchildren or at a shopping mall, then most Americans call that terrorism. Hijacking a plane full of people and killing them is called terrorism. There was a time when Islamic terrorists would target only Israelis but since Israelis tend to be tightening security, terrorists started attacking Jews in other countries who may never have been Zionists or sympathetic to Israel thus creating more allies for Israel. Then terrorists started attacking Americans who weren't even Jewish thus creating more allies for Israel. Then word got out that Islamic terrorists used the phrase "first the Saturday people, then the Sunday people". This creates still more allies for Israel.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban blows up Buddhist shrines and archaeological sites. In Kashmir, once a place with a crime rate so low that murder was unknown, control by India (primarily a Hindu nation) was contested by Pakistan, an Islamic nation. In Iran, the birthplace of two world religions, Zoroastrianism and the Baha'i faith, those religions face extinction under the rule of Muslims. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that Islamicists do not care for any religion that is not Islam and that Christians and Jews are not the only one targeted by terrorists.
So when some uninformed Americans scratch their heads wondering why Israel continues to get moral support from the USA if not military, financial, and political support, at least you have a clue: it is mutual self-interest and survival.
As for walls, why shouldn't the Israelis build them? Yes, the Palestinians need to get to their fields and their jobs but, invariably, sneaking in with them are suicide bombers.
Israel can continue to trade land for peace (Perea a.k.a. West Bank, Ituraea a.k.a. Golan Heights, Jerusalem, Galilee, Judea, Gaza Strip, Idumaea a.k.a. the Negev etc.) until there is no longer any left for the Israelis to trade and still never get peace. Some say this is exactly the Arab plan and the Israelis are deluding themselves to hope for peace anytime in this millennium.
If you think that Israel has plenty of land, then find Israel on a globe. It is tiny compared to its neighbors. If you think any country likes giving up land, then check your history on the Panama Canal Zone. The USA was only leasing the land! There would have been a second civil war if the USA had outright managed to buy the Canal Zone and then decided to give it back to satisfy Panamanian demands.
If you still think that Israel has plenty of land, then consider that in Biblical times the Kingdom included parts of modern day Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. Modern Israel is a fraction of Ancient Israel. I am one those who think the Israelis should never have given up any of the land they won during the Six Day War. They wanted peace with their neighbor which is a hopeless cause.
Samaria, the very heart of ancient Israel, is now part of Jordan. The hymn about the balm in Gilead refers to a place now in Jordan. Bethlehem where Jesus was born is not in Israel. It is in Jordan. When the terrorists a few years ago barricaded themselves inside the Church of the Nativity, do you think that violating the holiest place in Christendom bothered them? Did it even enter their minds?
Now you know why some people would have no problem with nuking and vaporizing Mecca and Medina. Of course, the Muslims may do it themselves. Muslims supposedly regard the Dome of the Rock as the third holiest place in Islam. Yet the Iranian leaders want to be able to blast Israel with nuclear missiles (which would destroy the Dome of the Rock, a minor detail).
Even what constitutes the people has shrunk: there were huge Hebrew colonies worldwide even as far as China, southern Africa, and modern day Russia. The family of Jesus lived for the first twelve years of His life in Egypt where many communities of Hebrews lived permanently even after that falling out with Ramesses . Nowadays, they are called Karaites or Kara'im. The Samaritans or Shomronim live in Jordan near Mount Gerizim which is the geographic center of ancient Israel. The ancient Israelites constituted the Northern Kingdom. The ancient Jews constituted the Southern Kingdom of Judah or Judea. What about the other Lost Tribes that every Jewish wannabe claims to be? The conspiracy theorists and the Mormons, among many others, claim to be lost tribes. In fact, geneticists have long been able to identify lost tribes such as the Falasha.
So what constitutes the people has shrunk. The Hebrews were twelve tribes and the Jews claim descent from Judah. In practice, modern Israel allows in more than rabbinical Jews. Those claiming right of return include Karaites fleeing persecution in Egypt, Saudi Jews fleeing Arabia, Persian Jews fleeing Bukhara, Kurdish Jews fleeing Kurdistan, and even Native Americans from the Andes who converted to Judaism long ago but were not allowed into the synagogues of European colonists.
There is a group of Japanese Jews who claimed right of return after German Jews and others came across Russia and down from Vladivostok through Japan on the way to Israel. Neither Imperial Japan nor postwar Japan had a tradition of anti-Semitism. Nor has China or India but those communities died in isolation from the rest of the world community.
Most of these groups, particularly the Falasha, predate rabbinical Judaism in Europe by centuries and resent being talked down to as if all Jews were blue-eyed blonde whites. The conversion of the Khazar Empire ruling class to Judaism in 740 AD is often quoted by some conspiracy theorists to say that European Jews are not Jews. This is nonsense. What is real is that Jews themselves recognize Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, Oriental, and "other Jewry". Older communities such as the Falasha resent being made to adopt European rabbinical ways when their community is far older and their tradition unbroken since the time of Solomon. These older communities use the Torah or Pentateuch (what we call the Bible) while the rabbinical communities use the Talmud.
Okay, so you have Jews of every race immigrating to Israel from every nation. But it is more complex than that. Besides Arab Jews there are Palestinian Jews. Hebrew and Jewish presence in the Holy Land has been continuous. Even after Samaria fell to Assyria and the Israelites were deported, the Southern Kingdom of Judea continued. When the First Temple was destroyed in BC 586 and most of the tribe of Judah taken into Exile, some Jews managed to be overlooked by Nebuchadnezzar. In 135 AD, the Romans put the dispersion into the Diaspora but again some were overlooked. Formal attempts to reestablish a Jewish government began in 1567 AD. The first returnees arrived in 1881. The League of Nations gave Britain a mandate over Palestine in 1922 which they used to limit Jewish immigration and land purchase. Note that they were trying to dot all the eyes and cross all the tees by buying not stealing the land as some claim.
But it is still more complex than that. There are also Armenians, Greek Orthodox Christians, and Baha'is living in Israel. There are Muslims who much prefer to be citizens of Israel than citizens of Palestine at the whim of a government of terrorists. There are Druze who claim descent from Jethro (Moses' father in law) and who are the only non-Jewish military in the Israeli Defense Force.
The whole problem is the same as the debate over the effectiveness of the surge. Who cares? We shouldn't be in Iraq in the first place. Who cares whether the surge is effective or not? Let the Palestinians and Israelis kill each other. In Northern Ireland, nothing worked until the British let the Protestants and Catholics kill each other for the better part of two centuries until they got it out of their systems. If Iran and Israel come to blows in a nuclear exchange, we can't stop it. We blew that chance when Bush got Iraq and Iran confused. If you think that is a joke, then how many times has McCain confused Sunni and Shiite? A disruption of oil supply is our problem. We should never have gotten addicted to a substance owned by the very terrorists who want to kill us. The Founding Fathers warned us about entangling alliances dragging us into wars.
The use of nuclear weapons by Israel and Iran (and Pakistan and India) will scare the rest of world into finally getting rid of nuclear weapons altogether.
Just in time for those aliens in Independence Day. Oh my God.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Bleak Meditations
Is your life only worth something if you are not even a contributing member of society, such as an embryo with no brain waves?
Potential is nice but most potential is wasted. Every new generation is forced to listen to the speech about how children are our hope for the future. Why do we send children off to fight wars? An 18 year old on the front lines is still a child as far as I'm concerned. Some nations use child soldiers as young as six. If the young are the hope we claim they are, then why do we let cops beat them on the head when they read in the Constitution that they have the right to protest and when they do, look what happens to them! The generation of the Sixties believed all the lies they were told to make the world a better place and when they found out that the police weren't going to allow any changes, then the Biblical scales fell from their eyes.
Children are NOT the hope for our future. The older they get, the less we listen to them. Babies cry, we change their diapers stick a bottle in their mouth and go back to ignoring them. We park children in front of TV sets and video games. We ignore teenagers because if we paid attention to the outrageous things they did, they'd be grounded for life. We ignore college-age kids because they're off in college and moving out anyway. People in their twenties are always too busy. People in their thirties ignore us because they have their own families. Those in their forties are preoccupied with mid-career concerns. Those in their fifties are too busy with financial messes to even be aware of us other than to put us in old folk’s homes so that they can ignore us. Sixty-somethings are in the same boat as us and we'd like to tell them to go to hell but we are afraid of them pulling the plug on our life support. Seventy-somethings are worried about karma as they themselves are put on life support machines. Eighty-somethings are making out their living wills and cursing their grandchildren who visit only to see if they can pull the plug yet.
We ignore this unpleasant reality at our own peril. Of course, the pessimist says that even if we don't ignore reality, reality will still dispose of us anyway.
Children are NOT the hope for our future. Our future is death. Their future is death. If they are young soldiers, their present is death. If they have some disease, then make a similar prognosis. If one thinks the delusion that children are a legacy and a form of immortality, then tell me of even one person brought back to life by having children. In Asia, they have ancestor worship. In America, ancestors might be remembered briefly at best and only by those who knew them in life. And those who knew them will die soon themselves. Your memory will be erased from memory when the brains that contain those memories die.
Children are NOT the hope for our future. Sure, children are fun at Christmas time until thoughts of "greedy little expletives deleted, Christmas is about Christ not about you getting toys that you will leave out in the rain and be tired of before the sun sets on December 25th" intrude. Needless to say, I bite my lip a lot around my children. They don't need to know the sour thoughts of an adult. They'll get as disillusioned as I am soon enough. Let them enjoy their all-too-brief childhood. I'm luckier than most. My children are little angels most of the time but my neighbor's kid ought to be incarcerated now and save the taxpayers at lot of grief. What hope for the future does he offer? More likely he will rack up a long list of victims before the state finally puts him away for good.
Children are NOT our hope for the future. If the generation of the Sixties couldn't make any significant changes, no generation could.
Children are NOT the hope for our future. Tom Brokaw goes on endlessly about the Greatest Generation that fought World War Two. When was the last time you heard of any member of that generation sending Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a letter to protest him saying that the Holocaust never happened? If the Greatest Generation can't bring itself to educate the world about the Holocaust, then why are we surprised that genocides go off without a hitch in Sudan and Tibet? The generation that fought Hitler saw with their own eyes the death camps. If the generation that fought Hitler don't know that the whole point of World War Two was to stop death camps and genocide, then perhaps that is why Stalin got away with killing forty million and Mao got away with killing seventy million people. Hitler only killed twelve million (6 million Jews and 6 million non-Jews) but he inspired a host of imitators.
Children are NOT the hope for our future. Not when they don't remember the past and are not taught about the past. Would Bush and Congress have been able to get away with passing the Patriot Act if the generation of the Sixties had bothered to educate young people about Cointelpro and other violations of civil liberties by the government? Those programs have been dusted off and restarted under other names.
Children are NOT our future because we don't provide them with a future. Is leaving them a polluted world that will take centuries to clean up any kind of future? In a world with over six billion people, having more children is the problem that causes all problems and it is a problem that will not be solved short of God allowing an asteroid or comet *Wormwood* to drastically reduce the population. People will not stop having children, not even at gun point. The Chinese won't stop. The Muslims won't stop. The Latinos won't stop. The Catholics won't stop. The Mormons won't stop. The Europeans stopped and got overrun by Muslims.
Children are NOT our future. They are not even their own future.
God is simply wiping the canvas clean and going to start over with a different species. Other species living on this planet have to pay for our stupidity and die along with us.
I make this calculation: Russia invades Georgia, re-annexes it, and makes plans to invade Ukraine or Belarus or one of the Baltic States. Either Cheney gets his way and nuclear missiles strike Moscow or he doesn't. Either way, the public decides that it would be better to stick with a third term of Bush (declaring himself president for life and canceling elections) or a third term of Bush (in the person of John McCain) rather than change from the policies that made the world so unstable in the first place. Those policies are, of course, Bush policies. A change in policy would have saved the planet. Scientists are saying that it may already be too late to stop climate change. This chain of events will simply clinch the death warrant.
With the human race's run of bad luck, Krakatoa will erupt, dim the sun, and plunge the planet into an ice age at the worst possible time (not that there is a good time for an ice age). Perhaps the long predicted asteroid or comet impact with Earth too. Toss in a visit by hostile extraterrestrials to pick through the ashes and you have the extinction of the human race.
It just seems so perverse that right when we can hope to see Bush turned out of office, withdrawal from Iraq, and some peace with the Islamic world; along comes the Russians trying to resurrect the Soviet Union. Bush looked in Putin's eyes and did not see the KGB operative. His lack of historical perspective could not see in him another Hitler invading the Sudetenland.
I will not conclude with my usual prayer because the human race doesn't have a prayer. It just stumbles from one tragedy to the next.
Potential is nice but most potential is wasted. Every new generation is forced to listen to the speech about how children are our hope for the future. Why do we send children off to fight wars? An 18 year old on the front lines is still a child as far as I'm concerned. Some nations use child soldiers as young as six. If the young are the hope we claim they are, then why do we let cops beat them on the head when they read in the Constitution that they have the right to protest and when they do, look what happens to them! The generation of the Sixties believed all the lies they were told to make the world a better place and when they found out that the police weren't going to allow any changes, then the Biblical scales fell from their eyes.
Children are NOT the hope for our future. The older they get, the less we listen to them. Babies cry, we change their diapers stick a bottle in their mouth and go back to ignoring them. We park children in front of TV sets and video games. We ignore teenagers because if we paid attention to the outrageous things they did, they'd be grounded for life. We ignore college-age kids because they're off in college and moving out anyway. People in their twenties are always too busy. People in their thirties ignore us because they have their own families. Those in their forties are preoccupied with mid-career concerns. Those in their fifties are too busy with financial messes to even be aware of us other than to put us in old folk’s homes so that they can ignore us. Sixty-somethings are in the same boat as us and we'd like to tell them to go to hell but we are afraid of them pulling the plug on our life support. Seventy-somethings are worried about karma as they themselves are put on life support machines. Eighty-somethings are making out their living wills and cursing their grandchildren who visit only to see if they can pull the plug yet.
We ignore this unpleasant reality at our own peril. Of course, the pessimist says that even if we don't ignore reality, reality will still dispose of us anyway.
Children are NOT the hope for our future. Our future is death. Their future is death. If they are young soldiers, their present is death. If they have some disease, then make a similar prognosis. If one thinks the delusion that children are a legacy and a form of immortality, then tell me of even one person brought back to life by having children. In Asia, they have ancestor worship. In America, ancestors might be remembered briefly at best and only by those who knew them in life. And those who knew them will die soon themselves. Your memory will be erased from memory when the brains that contain those memories die.
Children are NOT the hope for our future. Sure, children are fun at Christmas time until thoughts of "greedy little expletives deleted, Christmas is about Christ not about you getting toys that you will leave out in the rain and be tired of before the sun sets on December 25th" intrude. Needless to say, I bite my lip a lot around my children. They don't need to know the sour thoughts of an adult. They'll get as disillusioned as I am soon enough. Let them enjoy their all-too-brief childhood. I'm luckier than most. My children are little angels most of the time but my neighbor's kid ought to be incarcerated now and save the taxpayers at lot of grief. What hope for the future does he offer? More likely he will rack up a long list of victims before the state finally puts him away for good.
Children are NOT our hope for the future. If the generation of the Sixties couldn't make any significant changes, no generation could.
Children are NOT the hope for our future. Tom Brokaw goes on endlessly about the Greatest Generation that fought World War Two. When was the last time you heard of any member of that generation sending Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a letter to protest him saying that the Holocaust never happened? If the Greatest Generation can't bring itself to educate the world about the Holocaust, then why are we surprised that genocides go off without a hitch in Sudan and Tibet? The generation that fought Hitler saw with their own eyes the death camps. If the generation that fought Hitler don't know that the whole point of World War Two was to stop death camps and genocide, then perhaps that is why Stalin got away with killing forty million and Mao got away with killing seventy million people. Hitler only killed twelve million (6 million Jews and 6 million non-Jews) but he inspired a host of imitators.
Children are NOT the hope for our future. Not when they don't remember the past and are not taught about the past. Would Bush and Congress have been able to get away with passing the Patriot Act if the generation of the Sixties had bothered to educate young people about Cointelpro and other violations of civil liberties by the government? Those programs have been dusted off and restarted under other names.
Children are NOT our future because we don't provide them with a future. Is leaving them a polluted world that will take centuries to clean up any kind of future? In a world with over six billion people, having more children is the problem that causes all problems and it is a problem that will not be solved short of God allowing an asteroid or comet *Wormwood* to drastically reduce the population. People will not stop having children, not even at gun point. The Chinese won't stop. The Muslims won't stop. The Latinos won't stop. The Catholics won't stop. The Mormons won't stop. The Europeans stopped and got overrun by Muslims.
Children are NOT our future. They are not even their own future.
God is simply wiping the canvas clean and going to start over with a different species. Other species living on this planet have to pay for our stupidity and die along with us.
I make this calculation: Russia invades Georgia, re-annexes it, and makes plans to invade Ukraine or Belarus or one of the Baltic States. Either Cheney gets his way and nuclear missiles strike Moscow or he doesn't. Either way, the public decides that it would be better to stick with a third term of Bush (declaring himself president for life and canceling elections) or a third term of Bush (in the person of John McCain) rather than change from the policies that made the world so unstable in the first place. Those policies are, of course, Bush policies. A change in policy would have saved the planet. Scientists are saying that it may already be too late to stop climate change. This chain of events will simply clinch the death warrant.
With the human race's run of bad luck, Krakatoa will erupt, dim the sun, and plunge the planet into an ice age at the worst possible time (not that there is a good time for an ice age). Perhaps the long predicted asteroid or comet impact with Earth too. Toss in a visit by hostile extraterrestrials to pick through the ashes and you have the extinction of the human race.
It just seems so perverse that right when we can hope to see Bush turned out of office, withdrawal from Iraq, and some peace with the Islamic world; along comes the Russians trying to resurrect the Soviet Union. Bush looked in Putin's eyes and did not see the KGB operative. His lack of historical perspective could not see in him another Hitler invading the Sudetenland.
I will not conclude with my usual prayer because the human race doesn't have a prayer. It just stumbles from one tragedy to the next.
The Political Spectra
Liberals tend to be correct about most things because, after a few decades, we all end up adopting the changes they suggest and then the non-liberals lie and claim it was their ideas all along. Enter into evidence exhibit A: the state of California. They lead; the other forty-nine states follow.
Conservatives are all mean ignorant racists. That said, their responsibility in society is to defend traditions. And there are a lot of time-tested traditions worth preserving. Enter into evidence exhibit B: England. Enter into evidence exhibit C: Japan.
For those of you who slept through political science or flunked out or never had it, reactionaries are the people on the extreme ultraconservative end of the conventional political spectrum to the right of Attila the Hun. The useful members of society here are the nonviolent survivalists (who now prefer the term preparedness) and the John Birchers who warned us about communism. The rest are crackpots. I know whereof I speak. While I am a moderate centrist myself, I have friends.
Like it or not, even radicals on the far left have their place in society. They were wrong about communism. Except for Paul Robeson, Ned Cobb, and Nelson Mandela, all other communists are mass murderers like Stalin and Mao. That said, radicals were correct about climate change and the rest of us will have to eat crow. Enter into evidence exhibit D: Antarctica. After millions of years, flowers are blooming there for the first time. Enter into evidence exhibit E: Greenland. Glaciers are retreating. Enter into evidence exhibit F: Arctic Ice Cap. Drowning polar bears and one summer soon it will melt entirely. Enter into evidence exhibit G: Alaska. Villages are being washed into the sea. These are your fellow Americans. Enter into evidence exhibits H through X: no glacier in Glacier National Park, coral reefs dying, super-hurricanes, drought, drying up of underground aquifers, changes in ocean currents, tropical diseases appearing in formerly temperate zones because the frost line has shifted North, etc.
How do you make a liberal? Arrest a conservative.
How do you make a conservative? Mug a liberal. [This is the real reason why the police let the crime rate get so high]
How do you make a reactionary? Fire a guy working two or three jobs and hire nine illegal aliens in his place.
How do you make a radical? Have the police beat people over the head. Better yet, fire guns indiscriminately into a crowd of innocent people. Best of all; have the military bomb a civilian population. [This happened in Tulsa's Greenwood]
The left and right wings comprise the conventional political spectrum. Libertarians prefer to use another political spectrum with nonviolent anarcho-syndicalists on the high end and totalitarian statists on the low end. It helps if you are capable of grasping the simple concept that the people and the government are two entirely separate things with the people having no real say in government just the illusion or delusion of it. Think of the Electoral College which actually selects presidents and sometimes ignores the popular vote of elections.
Hippies defy such easy categorization. They aren't liberals, conservatives, radicals, anarchists, or totalitarians. They were the first to give up drugs in a country in which squares still use them.
These are just some of the reasons why conservatives have such a deep and abiding hatred of hippies. They are apolitical and so, unlike liberals, don't care when their views are twisted and distorted. They don't care if the media portrays them in a negative light and gives them a bad image.
Charles Manson was not a hippie because hippies are nonviolent by definition: "Do your own thing as long as you don't hurt anybody else."
The hippie unconcern about money also drives conservatives crazy. There are rich hippies, poor hippies and some in between. Hippies are not radicals either because they accept that life is not fair but, on the other hand, would use evolutionary change not revolutionary change to make it fair.
By its very nature, politics is not scientific and therefore it generates heat but no light. It would be nice if one could discuss issues rationally without having to pass a litmus test. Politics is like religion in that regard. People want to know what religion or denomination you are. Politics and religion should be like sex. Don't ask; don't tell because it is no body's business.
Conservatives are all mean ignorant racists. That said, their responsibility in society is to defend traditions. And there are a lot of time-tested traditions worth preserving. Enter into evidence exhibit B: England. Enter into evidence exhibit C: Japan.
For those of you who slept through political science or flunked out or never had it, reactionaries are the people on the extreme ultraconservative end of the conventional political spectrum to the right of Attila the Hun. The useful members of society here are the nonviolent survivalists (who now prefer the term preparedness) and the John Birchers who warned us about communism. The rest are crackpots. I know whereof I speak. While I am a moderate centrist myself, I have friends.
Like it or not, even radicals on the far left have their place in society. They were wrong about communism. Except for Paul Robeson, Ned Cobb, and Nelson Mandela, all other communists are mass murderers like Stalin and Mao. That said, radicals were correct about climate change and the rest of us will have to eat crow. Enter into evidence exhibit D: Antarctica. After millions of years, flowers are blooming there for the first time. Enter into evidence exhibit E: Greenland. Glaciers are retreating. Enter into evidence exhibit F: Arctic Ice Cap. Drowning polar bears and one summer soon it will melt entirely. Enter into evidence exhibit G: Alaska. Villages are being washed into the sea. These are your fellow Americans. Enter into evidence exhibits H through X: no glacier in Glacier National Park, coral reefs dying, super-hurricanes, drought, drying up of underground aquifers, changes in ocean currents, tropical diseases appearing in formerly temperate zones because the frost line has shifted North, etc.
How do you make a liberal? Arrest a conservative.
How do you make a conservative? Mug a liberal. [This is the real reason why the police let the crime rate get so high]
How do you make a reactionary? Fire a guy working two or three jobs and hire nine illegal aliens in his place.
How do you make a radical? Have the police beat people over the head. Better yet, fire guns indiscriminately into a crowd of innocent people. Best of all; have the military bomb a civilian population. [This happened in Tulsa's Greenwood]
The left and right wings comprise the conventional political spectrum. Libertarians prefer to use another political spectrum with nonviolent anarcho-syndicalists on the high end and totalitarian statists on the low end. It helps if you are capable of grasping the simple concept that the people and the government are two entirely separate things with the people having no real say in government just the illusion or delusion of it. Think of the Electoral College which actually selects presidents and sometimes ignores the popular vote of elections.
Hippies defy such easy categorization. They aren't liberals, conservatives, radicals, anarchists, or totalitarians. They were the first to give up drugs in a country in which squares still use them.
These are just some of the reasons why conservatives have such a deep and abiding hatred of hippies. They are apolitical and so, unlike liberals, don't care when their views are twisted and distorted. They don't care if the media portrays them in a negative light and gives them a bad image.
Charles Manson was not a hippie because hippies are nonviolent by definition: "Do your own thing as long as you don't hurt anybody else."
The hippie unconcern about money also drives conservatives crazy. There are rich hippies, poor hippies and some in between. Hippies are not radicals either because they accept that life is not fair but, on the other hand, would use evolutionary change not revolutionary change to make it fair.
By its very nature, politics is not scientific and therefore it generates heat but no light. It would be nice if one could discuss issues rationally without having to pass a litmus test. Politics is like religion in that regard. People want to know what religion or denomination you are. Politics and religion should be like sex. Don't ask; don't tell because it is no body's business.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Pro-Sterilization
For years I have tired of hearing the anti-choice and anti-life babies fight
over abortion. Perhaps there should be legislation of tubal ligation.
Vasectomies could make a vast difference in the vas deferens. We need a third
voice in the abortion debate: pro-sterilization.
Neuter the NARAL notables. Spay the abortion clinic bombers who would spray shrapnel and rejoice in arterial spray. Why? If you talked to either side in the debate, you would turn blue talking yourself out of breath and change no minds. If you forced a pro-choice woman to have a baby, then it would make her even more stubborn because her choice had been taken away. If you forced a pregnant pro-life woman to have an abortion, then it would make her even more stubborn because the life of the unborn had been taken away. Nothing will ever be decided.
Perhaps the Democrats will nominate Hillary Rodham and Geraldine Ferraro as their presidential and vice-presidential choices in the next few weeks. Perhaps there will be a Tribulation, Rapture and Second Coming in the next few weeks. Perhaps there will be vengeful vindictive bitter women. VVV's as the male chauvinists and the gays say. Perhaps the Republicans will win and John McCain's well-known temper finally slips its leash altogether and he invokes the Patriot Act to round up all his political opponents. "Put me in the Hanoi Hilton will you? You commies!"
Or we can take a third path. Some say, "no one really wants abortions, we just
disagree about . . . " No. Actually, some people do want abortions. And some
people do want to murder doctors and nurses.
The antiabortion side cannot win. If abortion was totally banned, then rich
women would fly to other countries for abortions. Middle class women would
illegally obtain RU486 from drug pushers. Poor women would get back alley abortions and use clothes hangers.
The abortion rights crowd can win temporarily but after a few decades they
will have to fight the same battles over again because the religiously motivated
anti-abortionists breed faster and thereby achieve a numerical advantage.
By their very nature, the abortion rights crowd tends to be women's rights feminists. In other words, almost entirely women. The anti-abortionists
can recruit men but the abortion rights crowd alienates men. Many of the latter are man-hating lesbians. Between all the abortions and scaring away men and
liberal women (think Hillary), they are declining in numbers. So the
abortionists win the battles and even the wars only to face new wars against
greater numbers.
Few US anti-abortionists criticize China's one child family policy that made
abortions easy. Either US pro-lifers' morality stops at the border or Chinese
lives don't matter or pro-lifers are realists whose opposition to abortion
stops when the population reaches a critical mass or American anti-
abortionists are afraid of China or they don't think the government would act
decisively until the American population was about three billion or they are in
league with real estate developers who need a population explosion (or at least
constant growth) in order to fill their pockets with money or they only care about abstract unborn and not about the already born who have to grow up in world that has no place for them or they are not willing to think through the consequences of a dogmatic stand or Christians misinterpret the "Be fruitful and multiply" command in Genesis. It could have meant grow orchards and learn arithmetic.
Let's look at the abortion debate reductio ad absurdum. If an egg is a baby, then so is a sperm. Every time a male has a nocturnal emission or masturbates, he is committing murder. Every miscarriage and stillbirth is a woman committing murder. Every time a little baby dies in a war, in a car accident, in a man-made disaster, and in a country with poor health care, it is retroactive abortion. People choose to go to war, to drive carelessly, to not prevent avoidable man-made disasters (that's why they are called man-made), and to not spend money on health care. What better way to by-pass the pro-lifers than to get the little babies after they are born? The anti-abortionists aren't paying attention and they don't even identify retroactive abortion as abortion. How much easier can it be for the pro-choice crowd than to do nothing? Just neglect doing anything about auto accidents, child abductors, famines, pestilence, wars, and toxins in the environments and let nature take its course. The pro-lifers only care about quantity of life but quality of life has a way of asserting itself.
Is your life only worth something if you are not even a contributing member of society yet? Contributing members of society get no respect at all.
Pro-life is rife with hypocrisy: they never speak up about capital punishment because most of those being executed are black (despite DNA tests that prove many
to be innocent). If a rapist is black, many pro-life women would get an abortion. The pro-life movement is very white, very middle class, and very American because rich families will have none of this, the poor have no voice, and foreigners laugh at the simple-mindedness of Americans.
Needless to say, the USA does not have the lowest rate of infant mortality. We're number 42 out of over 200 countries. This means we Americans don't care if our babies die after they are born--only if they die beforehand. What gets me is concern for the death of a live child to the exclusion of concern for birth of a dead child. The cause might well be toxins in the environment.
Which takes us back to the pro-life movement. Where are they when the Kevorkians of the world are euthanizing old people? They worry about legal abortion doctors but not illegal "assisted suicide".
We wouldn't be having this discussion if Pro-Lifers would give teenagers birth control pills, condoms, and other contraceptives and educate them on Planned Parenthood. Unplanned parenthood is what caused the whole mess in the first place.
Abstinence is usually taught by people who when questioned closely (say by a Doctor House-type) admit that when they were teenagers that they lost their virginity before marriage. It is that hypocrisy that causes kids to ignore everything else that comes out of a parent's mouth. I don't blame the kids. Why should anyone listen to a hypocrite? You had your fun now you tell me that I shouldn't. The social pressure on a teenager to do stupid things (like risk an unwanted pregnancy or contract AIDS) is immense--even on those insular Mormon kids.
Celibate priests have enough sense not to talk too much about fornication. That's
because they don't talk much about anaphrodisiacs (substances that lower sex drive) either. Married people can chide singles about fornication also until a single says: "Let him without sin cast the first stone." In other words, married people commit adultery which, in some states, is a jailable offense. Fornication is not illegal in any state that I know.
My people, Fundamentalists, want girls to be virgins until marriage but we Fundamentalists never seem to press the point with boys. Are boys a lower order of life? Is a double standard de rigueur for the varsity years? Why don't we teach boys to say no? Is it such a shock to discover that a boy can become a father too early? Why does the child go automatically to the mother or to an orphanage instead of the father? Don't know who the father is? That's why we have DNA tests. If the father is dead, then he still has next of kin who don't get the courtesy of input. They may want the child. What ever happened to shotgun marriages for the sake of the child? The word "bastard" means illegitimate. Why burden an innocent baby with not knowing her father? It sometimes takes a lifetime for a child to track down and meet a father who never even knew of their existence. That is unfair to both father and child. Not informing the father ought to be illegal. But then my people, Fundamentalists, often think fathers' rights is a liberal concept.
My other people, feminists, often think that men should have no rights and no say. Our bodies, ourselves is their motto. Fathers' rights to them is a conservative concept.
I have a moderate concept: teach boys that they are responsible for siring life, creating life, in a manner similar to the way God created life in Genesis, and that this is a heavy responsibility.
I would close sperm banks if I could because it cheapens life. Overpopulation cheapens life. Someone dies? No problem, we'll make more.
Three more thoughts about abortion:
1. If life ends with the cessation of brain waves, then when does it begin? The beginning of brain waves begins in the second trimester in the fetus. Embryos don't have brain waves. I don't think they have souls either because if they do, a sperm cell has a soul.
2. Abortion on a whim is a bad idea. I'm not going to quibble about late term and so forth because I think abortion under any circumstances should be avoided but I can coexist with those who believe otherwise. I have no choice. If I can't coexist, then I would be no better than the clinic bombers. The commandment says thou shalt not kill.
3. There was infanticide in Jesus' time. I have never heard of any ancient Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic word for abortion in the Bible. Lord knows, they've had plenty of time to look for it.
over abortion. Perhaps there should be legislation of tubal ligation.
Vasectomies could make a vast difference in the vas deferens. We need a third
voice in the abortion debate: pro-sterilization.
Neuter the NARAL notables. Spay the abortion clinic bombers who would spray shrapnel and rejoice in arterial spray. Why? If you talked to either side in the debate, you would turn blue talking yourself out of breath and change no minds. If you forced a pro-choice woman to have a baby, then it would make her even more stubborn because her choice had been taken away. If you forced a pregnant pro-life woman to have an abortion, then it would make her even more stubborn because the life of the unborn had been taken away. Nothing will ever be decided.
Perhaps the Democrats will nominate Hillary Rodham and Geraldine Ferraro as their presidential and vice-presidential choices in the next few weeks. Perhaps there will be a Tribulation, Rapture and Second Coming in the next few weeks. Perhaps there will be vengeful vindictive bitter women. VVV's as the male chauvinists and the gays say. Perhaps the Republicans will win and John McCain's well-known temper finally slips its leash altogether and he invokes the Patriot Act to round up all his political opponents. "Put me in the Hanoi Hilton will you? You commies!"
Or we can take a third path. Some say, "no one really wants abortions, we just
disagree about . . . " No. Actually, some people do want abortions. And some
people do want to murder doctors and nurses.
The antiabortion side cannot win. If abortion was totally banned, then rich
women would fly to other countries for abortions. Middle class women would
illegally obtain RU486 from drug pushers. Poor women would get back alley abortions and use clothes hangers.
The abortion rights crowd can win temporarily but after a few decades they
will have to fight the same battles over again because the religiously motivated
anti-abortionists breed faster and thereby achieve a numerical advantage.
By their very nature, the abortion rights crowd tends to be women's rights feminists. In other words, almost entirely women. The anti-abortionists
can recruit men but the abortion rights crowd alienates men. Many of the latter are man-hating lesbians. Between all the abortions and scaring away men and
liberal women (think Hillary), they are declining in numbers. So the
abortionists win the battles and even the wars only to face new wars against
greater numbers.
Few US anti-abortionists criticize China's one child family policy that made
abortions easy. Either US pro-lifers' morality stops at the border or Chinese
lives don't matter or pro-lifers are realists whose opposition to abortion
stops when the population reaches a critical mass or American anti-
abortionists are afraid of China or they don't think the government would act
decisively until the American population was about three billion or they are in
league with real estate developers who need a population explosion (or at least
constant growth) in order to fill their pockets with money or they only care about abstract unborn and not about the already born who have to grow up in world that has no place for them or they are not willing to think through the consequences of a dogmatic stand or Christians misinterpret the "Be fruitful and multiply" command in Genesis. It could have meant grow orchards and learn arithmetic.
Let's look at the abortion debate reductio ad absurdum. If an egg is a baby, then so is a sperm. Every time a male has a nocturnal emission or masturbates, he is committing murder. Every miscarriage and stillbirth is a woman committing murder. Every time a little baby dies in a war, in a car accident, in a man-made disaster, and in a country with poor health care, it is retroactive abortion. People choose to go to war, to drive carelessly, to not prevent avoidable man-made disasters (that's why they are called man-made), and to not spend money on health care. What better way to by-pass the pro-lifers than to get the little babies after they are born? The anti-abortionists aren't paying attention and they don't even identify retroactive abortion as abortion. How much easier can it be for the pro-choice crowd than to do nothing? Just neglect doing anything about auto accidents, child abductors, famines, pestilence, wars, and toxins in the environments and let nature take its course. The pro-lifers only care about quantity of life but quality of life has a way of asserting itself.
Is your life only worth something if you are not even a contributing member of society yet? Contributing members of society get no respect at all.
Pro-life is rife with hypocrisy: they never speak up about capital punishment because most of those being executed are black (despite DNA tests that prove many
to be innocent). If a rapist is black, many pro-life women would get an abortion. The pro-life movement is very white, very middle class, and very American because rich families will have none of this, the poor have no voice, and foreigners laugh at the simple-mindedness of Americans.
Needless to say, the USA does not have the lowest rate of infant mortality. We're number 42 out of over 200 countries. This means we Americans don't care if our babies die after they are born--only if they die beforehand. What gets me is concern for the death of a live child to the exclusion of concern for birth of a dead child. The cause might well be toxins in the environment.
Which takes us back to the pro-life movement. Where are they when the Kevorkians of the world are euthanizing old people? They worry about legal abortion doctors but not illegal "assisted suicide".
We wouldn't be having this discussion if Pro-Lifers would give teenagers birth control pills, condoms, and other contraceptives and educate them on Planned Parenthood. Unplanned parenthood is what caused the whole mess in the first place.
Abstinence is usually taught by people who when questioned closely (say by a Doctor House-type) admit that when they were teenagers that they lost their virginity before marriage. It is that hypocrisy that causes kids to ignore everything else that comes out of a parent's mouth. I don't blame the kids. Why should anyone listen to a hypocrite? You had your fun now you tell me that I shouldn't. The social pressure on a teenager to do stupid things (like risk an unwanted pregnancy or contract AIDS) is immense--even on those insular Mormon kids.
Celibate priests have enough sense not to talk too much about fornication. That's
because they don't talk much about anaphrodisiacs (substances that lower sex drive) either. Married people can chide singles about fornication also until a single says: "Let him without sin cast the first stone." In other words, married people commit adultery which, in some states, is a jailable offense. Fornication is not illegal in any state that I know.
My people, Fundamentalists, want girls to be virgins until marriage but we Fundamentalists never seem to press the point with boys. Are boys a lower order of life? Is a double standard de rigueur for the varsity years? Why don't we teach boys to say no? Is it such a shock to discover that a boy can become a father too early? Why does the child go automatically to the mother or to an orphanage instead of the father? Don't know who the father is? That's why we have DNA tests. If the father is dead, then he still has next of kin who don't get the courtesy of input. They may want the child. What ever happened to shotgun marriages for the sake of the child? The word "bastard" means illegitimate. Why burden an innocent baby with not knowing her father? It sometimes takes a lifetime for a child to track down and meet a father who never even knew of their existence. That is unfair to both father and child. Not informing the father ought to be illegal. But then my people, Fundamentalists, often think fathers' rights is a liberal concept.
My other people, feminists, often think that men should have no rights and no say. Our bodies, ourselves is their motto. Fathers' rights to them is a conservative concept.
I have a moderate concept: teach boys that they are responsible for siring life, creating life, in a manner similar to the way God created life in Genesis, and that this is a heavy responsibility.
I would close sperm banks if I could because it cheapens life. Overpopulation cheapens life. Someone dies? No problem, we'll make more.
Three more thoughts about abortion:
1. If life ends with the cessation of brain waves, then when does it begin? The beginning of brain waves begins in the second trimester in the fetus. Embryos don't have brain waves. I don't think they have souls either because if they do, a sperm cell has a soul.
2. Abortion on a whim is a bad idea. I'm not going to quibble about late term and so forth because I think abortion under any circumstances should be avoided but I can coexist with those who believe otherwise. I have no choice. If I can't coexist, then I would be no better than the clinic bombers. The commandment says thou shalt not kill.
3. There was infanticide in Jesus' time. I have never heard of any ancient Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic word for abortion in the Bible. Lord knows, they've had plenty of time to look for it.
A Review
I just saw The Dark Knight. [Read no further if you have not yet seen the movie and detest spoilers.]
And, yes, Heath Ledger does deserve an Oscar in a cast full of heavyweights who also deserve nominations in more muted characterizations. The villains always chew up the scenery literally and figuratively in most super hero stories. As the Joker, Mr. Ledger made some interesting choices. I kept waiting for him to curtsey in a scene where he is dressed like a nurse and one of his bombs has not exploded. Perhaps he deliberately dialed it back. He manages to be cuddly, helpless, terrifying (to some), and even endearing simultaneously. He loved his mother. What more character reference do we need I ask ya? Supposedly, the Joker is crazy and fears nothing except being sent back to the asylum. Unless the screenwriter affirms this, I don't buy it. The Joker acts like he is total chaos and yet there is obviously method in the madness, a lot of planning and preparation went into placing enough bombs to level a hospital and a warehouse. In one line, the Joker says "a little gasoline". Yeah right. There is enough to fuel a small town for a month. He wasn't alone because after killing his first gang, he recruits another.
A lot of people found the Joker to be scary. I didn't but I enjoyed it anyway. It is said that Jack Nicholson warned Heath Ledger about the role. If the role did cause the actor's death, I would like to suggest to the movie industry that if they want to make heavy movies then they should take precautions like having a psychological counselor on site or on call. It might not even cost them a penny if they use a chaplain or tell their main cast to keep in touch with their ministers or rehab support group or shrink. Considering how many actors have died abusing substances, it is fair to ask if the acting profession has suicide and accidental overdose as occupational hazards.
When actors play characters who are psychopaths or sociopaths, then it is not possible that the characters' problems can invade the vulnerable minds of professionals trained to channel them? We're not talking demonic possession but there is some other phenomenon at work. Is not acting a form of multiple personality? All I'm suggesting is that studios and production companies and the actors’ guild throw a lifeline to people possibly drowning in a role. You can throw money at them so you can do this.
Perhaps the actors’ guild should ask themselves if they can achieve the same results with different techniques. Only the actors who win lots of awards or pull down eight figures know what works. Researching a role, Alexander technique, method acting, sociodrama, psychodrama, learning your chops by doing Shakespeare, improvisation, memorizing everybody's part (Brando was an exception, he used cue cards), body posture like Ben Kingsley, doing your own makeup, prosthetics, wearing period underwear that the camera never sees, and a hundred other techniques are used. I am no expert on acting but I do suspect that certain techniques leave one psychological vulnerable. Actors talk about that all the time and many directors either don't respect that fact or were never actors themselves and just don't get it.
Perhaps the director is too busy to notice but of all those people with producer credits, can't even one observe and talk to their cast and see if they are all right? Maybe take a class on how to spot early warning signs and call in mental health worker to help. After a shooting script is written, many producers do nothing. That's negligence.
It is possible that Heath Ledger knew the role would kill him and decided to do it anyway and go out at the top of his game. If that is true, I'd bet money that he read books about James Dean. Live fast, die young, and leave a good looking corpse. I hope acting ambition does not go that far but still, if true, you have to respect that level of commitment. Whatever the truth, Ms. Olsen is keeping it to herself. After the obligatory words from me that I don't approve of drugs, I can say that Mr. Ledger's parents must be proud of him. Heath, by the way, has one more film in the can so the accuracy of the publicity about The Dark Knight being his last film depends on which was filmed last.
Would we still be praising Heath Ledger's work if he had lived? I think so, but the only way to objectively tell would be to screen the movie to some people unaware that he was dead and gauge their approval or disapproval.
One more slap at Hollywood negligence, an actor with a fan base can't reprise a role if they are dead. I rather doubt if another actor could have done a better job. This brings us to Christian Bale. I never thought anyone could top Michael Keaton's dark portrayal of Batman. Certainly, the others who played Batman did not even try. Keaton was great, Bale was (and is) better. The success of The Dark Knight was almost a foregone conclusion. After seeing Batman Begins,
I was so impressed that I decided that if there was a sequel, I would see it even if the early reviews called it crap just because I wanted to see what they would do next. The Dark Knight is not crap. If you see it in IMAX, it will assault your senses.
The original Batman starring Michael Keaton had a memorable soundtrack. I can still remember the opening music played over what looked like slot canyons on a moonless night. Watching that on a big screen is indelible but I can't imagine the same impact with a DVD at home. The movies that followed had forgettable soundtracks. I liked Batman Begins but can't remember the music. Yes, I know that if you liked a movie, the soundtrack was effective even if you don't remember it. So Batman Begins must have had a good soundtrack no matter how forgettable it was. The Dark Knight is not so much better than Batman Begins as different as apples and oranges though better in some ways. But it is also like comparing Godfather One and Two in that they are part of the same piece. Whatever the differences and similarities, I have got to get The Dark Knight soundtrack and review it on this blog.
With so much money at stake, a third Christian Bale installment seems likely. But what can they do to top The Dark Knight? Hire an actual demon to play the villain? They may go low tech next time with no gadgets but more acting and more drama. A movie can only overload your eyes and ears so much before you run to find a quieter movie. Will they go even darker next time since dark sells? They don't have Batman creator Bob Kane to consult. He died some years back.
Lucius Fox (played by Morgan Freeman) quits after Batman goes over to the dark side of the force with Patriot Act-style privacy-invading technology. Will he be back? Mr. Fox runs Wayne Enterprises and his departure would adversely affect Bruce Wayne’s trust fund especially with a loose lipped lawyer spilling the beans and a board of directors and company officers who think Wayne is unfit since he sleeps through business meetings. Mr. Fox also builds Batman’s gadgets and Batman wrecked the Batmobile. Rebuilding of Wayne Manor is incomplete, the Bat Lab is no more, and there are other things Batman will have to do without but you will have to see the movie to find out what. As for the actor who plays Lucius Fox, Mr. Freeman is not a young man (he’s 71) and no one knows how his auto accident will affect him and if he is even obligated to do any acting commitments he now has. He currently has five projects in development. I can only hope for a full recovery and hope the Good Lord gives him more years instead of less. I'm selfish. I'd like to see him keep acting.
Is there a Batman curse? No. There us just coincidence taken advantage of by a wily publicist fanning the flames of such an idea. The same nonsense went on with the set of The Exorcist and the subsequent lives of the people who did Rosemary's Baby. Batman is not fighting Satan. Fist fights and weapons would not work anyway.
Gotham City in The Dark Knight is not the operatic set that Tim Burton had with buildings bigger at the top than at the bottom and a cathedral taller than most skyscrapers. This Gotham is real and location shooting must have helped that look. I could swear I spotted parts of Los Angles, Chicago, New York and Toronto. By making Gotham City so realistic, the story becomes darker. Tim Burton's set was cool in a Goth sort of way and this director goes in another direction. The real world really is full of mafia criminals, chaotic terrorists and corrupt officials. However, the officials are not just corrupt police infesting internal affairs [With all the cop shows, why no shows about IA?]. Corrupt officials include presidents and only Fox's 24 had the guts to show a president being arrested in one season and being under house arrest in the next season. [We need more presidents in handcuffs.] With the real world as background, thinking about The Dark Knight is depressing. Who would have guessed that that reaction would send a movie towards the billion dollar mark? The last time a big budget movie dared to not have a happy ending was The Empire Strikes Back which did not do as well as A New Hope. The relative success of Revenge of the Sith perhaps allowed Hollywood to think outside the box.
Expect to see other movies try to out dark The Dark Knight. Television should be safe from bipolar disorder unless some of the new fall shows, like Fringe and Eleventh Hour, pull good ratings. The real world gets more depressing every day and psychologically people have to take a breather with crap like Mama Mia or the other flicks we chicks are supposed to like. I'm all for a musical but there hasn’t been a good one since The Sound of Music.
That's the context in which The Dark Knight has dominated three weekends in a row. Bruce Wayne is passive aggressive. District Attorney Harvey Dent (played by Aaron Eckhart) romances away Wayne’s girlfriend Rachel Dawes (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal). Rachel chooses a normal life with Dent rather than a cushy life with Wayne. Aside from financial considerations, this makes no sense because she thinks being married to a vigilante will mean she will always be worried if he will come home in one piece and that he really is the wastrel playboy he pretends to be. A life with Dent in a town as crime-ridden as Gotham City is no better than being a cop’s wife and worrying if he’ll come home in one piece. Considering that her work as an assistant district attorney is also dangerous, she should hope to stay in one piece. Alfred the butler (played by Michael Caine) has his secrets. The career of Sgt. Gordon (played by Gary Oldman) was just beginning in Batman Begins and now he will become commissioner. This is no secret to anyone who read the comics or graphic novels. What is a secret is this: Did Bob Kane, the creator of The Batman (real fans always say ‘The’), leave any ideas behind when he died in 1998?
Although I have heard some critics say the plot makes no sense, I managed to follow the plot lines. The story resembles a chess game or a fencing match. Gary Oldman as Gordon makes a surprising countermove and The Joker makes a counter-countermove.
I have seen people wearing Joker T-shirts and have to wonder if they are glamorizing evil, insanity, and criminality. I have seen girls fawn over Heath Ledger as the Joker in jail. I'm thinking maybe he just needs a hug. "There, there" I say as I press his head to my bosom, stroke his stringy hair and get his makeup all over my white blouse. "Do you mind lady? I'm trying to stay in character and this ain't helpin'. Who let you on set anyway?"
And, yes, Heath Ledger does deserve an Oscar in a cast full of heavyweights who also deserve nominations in more muted characterizations. The villains always chew up the scenery literally and figuratively in most super hero stories. As the Joker, Mr. Ledger made some interesting choices. I kept waiting for him to curtsey in a scene where he is dressed like a nurse and one of his bombs has not exploded. Perhaps he deliberately dialed it back. He manages to be cuddly, helpless, terrifying (to some), and even endearing simultaneously. He loved his mother. What more character reference do we need I ask ya? Supposedly, the Joker is crazy and fears nothing except being sent back to the asylum. Unless the screenwriter affirms this, I don't buy it. The Joker acts like he is total chaos and yet there is obviously method in the madness, a lot of planning and preparation went into placing enough bombs to level a hospital and a warehouse. In one line, the Joker says "a little gasoline". Yeah right. There is enough to fuel a small town for a month. He wasn't alone because after killing his first gang, he recruits another.
A lot of people found the Joker to be scary. I didn't but I enjoyed it anyway. It is said that Jack Nicholson warned Heath Ledger about the role. If the role did cause the actor's death, I would like to suggest to the movie industry that if they want to make heavy movies then they should take precautions like having a psychological counselor on site or on call. It might not even cost them a penny if they use a chaplain or tell their main cast to keep in touch with their ministers or rehab support group or shrink. Considering how many actors have died abusing substances, it is fair to ask if the acting profession has suicide and accidental overdose as occupational hazards.
When actors play characters who are psychopaths or sociopaths, then it is not possible that the characters' problems can invade the vulnerable minds of professionals trained to channel them? We're not talking demonic possession but there is some other phenomenon at work. Is not acting a form of multiple personality? All I'm suggesting is that studios and production companies and the actors’ guild throw a lifeline to people possibly drowning in a role. You can throw money at them so you can do this.
Perhaps the actors’ guild should ask themselves if they can achieve the same results with different techniques. Only the actors who win lots of awards or pull down eight figures know what works. Researching a role, Alexander technique, method acting, sociodrama, psychodrama, learning your chops by doing Shakespeare, improvisation, memorizing everybody's part (Brando was an exception, he used cue cards), body posture like Ben Kingsley, doing your own makeup, prosthetics, wearing period underwear that the camera never sees, and a hundred other techniques are used. I am no expert on acting but I do suspect that certain techniques leave one psychological vulnerable. Actors talk about that all the time and many directors either don't respect that fact or were never actors themselves and just don't get it.
Perhaps the director is too busy to notice but of all those people with producer credits, can't even one observe and talk to their cast and see if they are all right? Maybe take a class on how to spot early warning signs and call in mental health worker to help. After a shooting script is written, many producers do nothing. That's negligence.
It is possible that Heath Ledger knew the role would kill him and decided to do it anyway and go out at the top of his game. If that is true, I'd bet money that he read books about James Dean. Live fast, die young, and leave a good looking corpse. I hope acting ambition does not go that far but still, if true, you have to respect that level of commitment. Whatever the truth, Ms. Olsen is keeping it to herself. After the obligatory words from me that I don't approve of drugs, I can say that Mr. Ledger's parents must be proud of him. Heath, by the way, has one more film in the can so the accuracy of the publicity about The Dark Knight being his last film depends on which was filmed last.
Would we still be praising Heath Ledger's work if he had lived? I think so, but the only way to objectively tell would be to screen the movie to some people unaware that he was dead and gauge their approval or disapproval.
One more slap at Hollywood negligence, an actor with a fan base can't reprise a role if they are dead. I rather doubt if another actor could have done a better job. This brings us to Christian Bale. I never thought anyone could top Michael Keaton's dark portrayal of Batman. Certainly, the others who played Batman did not even try. Keaton was great, Bale was (and is) better. The success of The Dark Knight was almost a foregone conclusion. After seeing Batman Begins,
I was so impressed that I decided that if there was a sequel, I would see it even if the early reviews called it crap just because I wanted to see what they would do next. The Dark Knight is not crap. If you see it in IMAX, it will assault your senses.
The original Batman starring Michael Keaton had a memorable soundtrack. I can still remember the opening music played over what looked like slot canyons on a moonless night. Watching that on a big screen is indelible but I can't imagine the same impact with a DVD at home. The movies that followed had forgettable soundtracks. I liked Batman Begins but can't remember the music. Yes, I know that if you liked a movie, the soundtrack was effective even if you don't remember it. So Batman Begins must have had a good soundtrack no matter how forgettable it was. The Dark Knight is not so much better than Batman Begins as different as apples and oranges though better in some ways. But it is also like comparing Godfather One and Two in that they are part of the same piece. Whatever the differences and similarities, I have got to get The Dark Knight soundtrack and review it on this blog.
With so much money at stake, a third Christian Bale installment seems likely. But what can they do to top The Dark Knight? Hire an actual demon to play the villain? They may go low tech next time with no gadgets but more acting and more drama. A movie can only overload your eyes and ears so much before you run to find a quieter movie. Will they go even darker next time since dark sells? They don't have Batman creator Bob Kane to consult. He died some years back.
Lucius Fox (played by Morgan Freeman) quits after Batman goes over to the dark side of the force with Patriot Act-style privacy-invading technology. Will he be back? Mr. Fox runs Wayne Enterprises and his departure would adversely affect Bruce Wayne’s trust fund especially with a loose lipped lawyer spilling the beans and a board of directors and company officers who think Wayne is unfit since he sleeps through business meetings. Mr. Fox also builds Batman’s gadgets and Batman wrecked the Batmobile. Rebuilding of Wayne Manor is incomplete, the Bat Lab is no more, and there are other things Batman will have to do without but you will have to see the movie to find out what. As for the actor who plays Lucius Fox, Mr. Freeman is not a young man (he’s 71) and no one knows how his auto accident will affect him and if he is even obligated to do any acting commitments he now has. He currently has five projects in development. I can only hope for a full recovery and hope the Good Lord gives him more years instead of less. I'm selfish. I'd like to see him keep acting.
Is there a Batman curse? No. There us just coincidence taken advantage of by a wily publicist fanning the flames of such an idea. The same nonsense went on with the set of The Exorcist and the subsequent lives of the people who did Rosemary's Baby. Batman is not fighting Satan. Fist fights and weapons would not work anyway.
Gotham City in The Dark Knight is not the operatic set that Tim Burton had with buildings bigger at the top than at the bottom and a cathedral taller than most skyscrapers. This Gotham is real and location shooting must have helped that look. I could swear I spotted parts of Los Angles, Chicago, New York and Toronto. By making Gotham City so realistic, the story becomes darker. Tim Burton's set was cool in a Goth sort of way and this director goes in another direction. The real world really is full of mafia criminals, chaotic terrorists and corrupt officials. However, the officials are not just corrupt police infesting internal affairs [With all the cop shows, why no shows about IA?]. Corrupt officials include presidents and only Fox's 24 had the guts to show a president being arrested in one season and being under house arrest in the next season. [We need more presidents in handcuffs.] With the real world as background, thinking about The Dark Knight is depressing. Who would have guessed that that reaction would send a movie towards the billion dollar mark? The last time a big budget movie dared to not have a happy ending was The Empire Strikes Back which did not do as well as A New Hope. The relative success of Revenge of the Sith perhaps allowed Hollywood to think outside the box.
Expect to see other movies try to out dark The Dark Knight. Television should be safe from bipolar disorder unless some of the new fall shows, like Fringe and Eleventh Hour, pull good ratings. The real world gets more depressing every day and psychologically people have to take a breather with crap like Mama Mia or the other flicks we chicks are supposed to like. I'm all for a musical but there hasn’t been a good one since The Sound of Music.
That's the context in which The Dark Knight has dominated three weekends in a row. Bruce Wayne is passive aggressive. District Attorney Harvey Dent (played by Aaron Eckhart) romances away Wayne’s girlfriend Rachel Dawes (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal). Rachel chooses a normal life with Dent rather than a cushy life with Wayne. Aside from financial considerations, this makes no sense because she thinks being married to a vigilante will mean she will always be worried if he will come home in one piece and that he really is the wastrel playboy he pretends to be. A life with Dent in a town as crime-ridden as Gotham City is no better than being a cop’s wife and worrying if he’ll come home in one piece. Considering that her work as an assistant district attorney is also dangerous, she should hope to stay in one piece. Alfred the butler (played by Michael Caine) has his secrets. The career of Sgt. Gordon (played by Gary Oldman) was just beginning in Batman Begins and now he will become commissioner. This is no secret to anyone who read the comics or graphic novels. What is a secret is this: Did Bob Kane, the creator of The Batman (real fans always say ‘The’), leave any ideas behind when he died in 1998?
Although I have heard some critics say the plot makes no sense, I managed to follow the plot lines. The story resembles a chess game or a fencing match. Gary Oldman as Gordon makes a surprising countermove and The Joker makes a counter-countermove.
I have seen people wearing Joker T-shirts and have to wonder if they are glamorizing evil, insanity, and criminality. I have seen girls fawn over Heath Ledger as the Joker in jail. I'm thinking maybe he just needs a hug. "There, there" I say as I press his head to my bosom, stroke his stringy hair and get his makeup all over my white blouse. "Do you mind lady? I'm trying to stay in character and this ain't helpin'. Who let you on set anyway?"
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Flyover Country
Let's revisit a remark I said in a previous blog. When Obama said people were bitter and clung to their guns and their religion, I was angry not because he said the remark--indeed, I agreed with every part of the remark--but because he retracted the remark or, more likely, was forced to retract the remark. I think his advisers told him that people took offense. Obama needs to get some poor Appalachian white folks, some Mississippi peasants, and some other working poor people on his staff. He already, no doubt, gets input from struggling middle class people but without John Edwards (targeted by Fox and other tabloid outfits) to direct Obama's attention to the plight of the sharecroppers, miners, and homeless, they will be lost to the McCain camp.
It just so happens I know something about the subject. I have experienced low and no income. I live in a flyover state. I took no offense at being described as bitter and clinging to my religion and my gun:
1. because it is true
2. because I am not ashamed of Christianity or the weapons I pack, indeed, I am proud of both
3. because finally a statesman acknowledged my existence and was talking straighter than John McCain
4. because I resent the attitude that people outside Washington DC are all mindless morons. Inside the beltway, I think IQ plummets. Sort of a dead zone for brains.
5. because average Americans like me are suffering afflictions
Our tax dollars go to build up other countries. Our bridges collapse. Our schools are full of asbestos and learning disabilities. Our health care and our health insurance are too expensive. Our heating is so expensive that many go without heat in the winter. Our air is so acrid that our parents and our children have asthma (at least the Chinese are discovering that pollution is their problem too). Our memories are still fresh about the loss of our family members in Iraq. Our tap water gets new pollutants (endocrine disrupters, illegal and prescription drugs) faster than our municipal treatment facilities can deal with the established pollutants. Our leaders make enemies in other countries faster than the USA can make friends and when they make friends, it is often with genocidal leaders beating up on ordinary people like me (Sudan in Darfur and China in Tibet).
So why wouldn't I be bitter? I should be happy about the State of the Union? If Obama won (unlikely) and if Obama gave a State of the Union address the day after his inauguration (no schedule forbids it), I would cheer myself hoarse if President Obama acknowledged in his opening remarks: "My fellow Americans, Washington DC has screwed you ever since they made the personal income tax permanent. It was supposed to be a temporary measure. I will fix this government or die trying." It is unlikely he would say this but likely he would die trying. Too many greedy corrupt people.
It is not the bureaucrats. Most of them are hardworking stiffs with crushing caseloads. [Memorize the following list:] It is the Cabinet Secretaries, the President, Congress, judges taking bribes, lobbyists for the chemical industry, government contractors, and corporations exporting jobs. Memorize that list. So you know who the bad guys are. Politicians (the bad guys) like to beat up on "those wasteful bureaucrats." The social worker who can't see her desk because of the stacks on files on it, the US Coast Guard administrator who has to get by on a budget a tenth of what it needs to be, the Border Patrolman who gets shot and killed trying to keep out an illegal alien after your job, and the wildlife biologist slogging through a toxic swamp to see if the fish you catch are safe to eat are the bureaucrats upon whom they are beating.
Who actually reforms things? Who really makes things better? Ordinary people like you. Erin Brockovich. Karen Silkwood. Those guys whose names you'll never see in history books who demanded occupational safety so that you wouldn't have to stand next to a machine that rips your arm off or deafens you permanently so that you can't pick up your child and you don't hear her first word.
I'm not knocking the superstars of the reform world who are in the history books. They deserve their fame. Martin Luther King knew he was going to be killed and he shrugged and kept about God's business until the very last. This is why he is in history books. No, I'm just acknowledging the guy who sees something wrong and not only speaks up, he does something about it.
So yes I'm bitter. They killed Bobby Kennedy and they kill everyone who offers hope. We're not stupid. Even in history class they acknowledge the existence of conspiracies. The National Archives is full of dirt that, if declassified, would put most of Washington DC behind bars.
Change for the worse is easy. Look how fast they passed the Patriot Act. No one in Congress bothered to read what they were voting into law. Change for the better is hard. They kill you if you try to improve things. So I respect those who lay down their lives to make reforms. I've no respect for superpatriots who buy a flag made in China, wrap themselves in it, and dare to question my patriotism.
The McCain view of America is more cynical than mine. You have only to read some of my blogs to know that it is pretty hard to out-cynical me. They believe that by negative campaigning and slinging mud that they will win over Joe Sixpack, John Q. Public, Tom Taxpayer, Vonda Mae Voter, Connie Consumer, and Mary Millworker (nice media mascots for you and me). The negativity on the internet about Obama ranges from "nigger, gorilla, ape, he'll rape your daughter; he's doing it with blondes like Britney, and he even . . .” to the most vicious things that virgin ears never hear and Christian minds cannot imagine. I've given you a sample of the LEAST offensive to Obama, a happily married man. That's far from the worst hate speech about Obama on the internet.
I suppose some people will ignore it. Some people will laugh it off as a coarse version of JimJam dot com. Some people will regard it as pornography.
I have to say this about the least of us in American society. Even people involved in hate groups often are capable of stepping back and getting perspective. They might kvetch about RAHOWA (racial holy war) to get some release from a boss they despise, but they don't really want their car or home burned in a riot nor do they want their kids beat up in school. They just want to get through the day (which might be two or three jobs) or get through the week (only to work a weekend job). Strom Thurmond was a Dixiecrat but he never failed in his support of his black daughter. George Wallace was a staunch segregationist but a taste of mortality--a sick wife and the bullet that put him in a wheelchair--allowed him to discover that black people didn't hate him. He was welcome in their churches.
But enough of this hope nonsense, it's un-Biblical.
I can't see liberals and conservatives linking arms and singing Kumbaya. They are supposed to beat each others' brains out because it's the natural (Darwinian) order of things. God surely meant the world to go to hell until He came back to straighten things out but He's taking awfully long and we've already gone through three antichrists (Nixon, Reagan and Bush Junior).
It would have been good for America if Obama had taken McCain up on his idea to ditch the campaign staff workers and press corps and ride together on a bus across the country just like the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.
It just so happens I know something about the subject. I have experienced low and no income. I live in a flyover state. I took no offense at being described as bitter and clinging to my religion and my gun:
1. because it is true
2. because I am not ashamed of Christianity or the weapons I pack, indeed, I am proud of both
3. because finally a statesman acknowledged my existence and was talking straighter than John McCain
4. because I resent the attitude that people outside Washington DC are all mindless morons. Inside the beltway, I think IQ plummets. Sort of a dead zone for brains.
5. because average Americans like me are suffering afflictions
Our tax dollars go to build up other countries. Our bridges collapse. Our schools are full of asbestos and learning disabilities. Our health care and our health insurance are too expensive. Our heating is so expensive that many go without heat in the winter. Our air is so acrid that our parents and our children have asthma (at least the Chinese are discovering that pollution is their problem too). Our memories are still fresh about the loss of our family members in Iraq. Our tap water gets new pollutants (endocrine disrupters, illegal and prescription drugs) faster than our municipal treatment facilities can deal with the established pollutants. Our leaders make enemies in other countries faster than the USA can make friends and when they make friends, it is often with genocidal leaders beating up on ordinary people like me (Sudan in Darfur and China in Tibet).
So why wouldn't I be bitter? I should be happy about the State of the Union? If Obama won (unlikely) and if Obama gave a State of the Union address the day after his inauguration (no schedule forbids it), I would cheer myself hoarse if President Obama acknowledged in his opening remarks: "My fellow Americans, Washington DC has screwed you ever since they made the personal income tax permanent. It was supposed to be a temporary measure. I will fix this government or die trying." It is unlikely he would say this but likely he would die trying. Too many greedy corrupt people.
It is not the bureaucrats. Most of them are hardworking stiffs with crushing caseloads. [Memorize the following list:] It is the Cabinet Secretaries, the President, Congress, judges taking bribes, lobbyists for the chemical industry, government contractors, and corporations exporting jobs. Memorize that list. So you know who the bad guys are. Politicians (the bad guys) like to beat up on "those wasteful bureaucrats." The social worker who can't see her desk because of the stacks on files on it, the US Coast Guard administrator who has to get by on a budget a tenth of what it needs to be, the Border Patrolman who gets shot and killed trying to keep out an illegal alien after your job, and the wildlife biologist slogging through a toxic swamp to see if the fish you catch are safe to eat are the bureaucrats upon whom they are beating.
Who actually reforms things? Who really makes things better? Ordinary people like you. Erin Brockovich. Karen Silkwood. Those guys whose names you'll never see in history books who demanded occupational safety so that you wouldn't have to stand next to a machine that rips your arm off or deafens you permanently so that you can't pick up your child and you don't hear her first word.
I'm not knocking the superstars of the reform world who are in the history books. They deserve their fame. Martin Luther King knew he was going to be killed and he shrugged and kept about God's business until the very last. This is why he is in history books. No, I'm just acknowledging the guy who sees something wrong and not only speaks up, he does something about it.
So yes I'm bitter. They killed Bobby Kennedy and they kill everyone who offers hope. We're not stupid. Even in history class they acknowledge the existence of conspiracies. The National Archives is full of dirt that, if declassified, would put most of Washington DC behind bars.
Change for the worse is easy. Look how fast they passed the Patriot Act. No one in Congress bothered to read what they were voting into law. Change for the better is hard. They kill you if you try to improve things. So I respect those who lay down their lives to make reforms. I've no respect for superpatriots who buy a flag made in China, wrap themselves in it, and dare to question my patriotism.
The McCain view of America is more cynical than mine. You have only to read some of my blogs to know that it is pretty hard to out-cynical me. They believe that by negative campaigning and slinging mud that they will win over Joe Sixpack, John Q. Public, Tom Taxpayer, Vonda Mae Voter, Connie Consumer, and Mary Millworker (nice media mascots for you and me). The negativity on the internet about Obama ranges from "nigger, gorilla, ape, he'll rape your daughter; he's doing it with blondes like Britney, and he even . . .” to the most vicious things that virgin ears never hear and Christian minds cannot imagine. I've given you a sample of the LEAST offensive to Obama, a happily married man. That's far from the worst hate speech about Obama on the internet.
I suppose some people will ignore it. Some people will laugh it off as a coarse version of JimJam dot com. Some people will regard it as pornography.
I have to say this about the least of us in American society. Even people involved in hate groups often are capable of stepping back and getting perspective. They might kvetch about RAHOWA (racial holy war) to get some release from a boss they despise, but they don't really want their car or home burned in a riot nor do they want their kids beat up in school. They just want to get through the day (which might be two or three jobs) or get through the week (only to work a weekend job). Strom Thurmond was a Dixiecrat but he never failed in his support of his black daughter. George Wallace was a staunch segregationist but a taste of mortality--a sick wife and the bullet that put him in a wheelchair--allowed him to discover that black people didn't hate him. He was welcome in their churches.
But enough of this hope nonsense, it's un-Biblical.
I can't see liberals and conservatives linking arms and singing Kumbaya. They are supposed to beat each others' brains out because it's the natural (Darwinian) order of things. God surely meant the world to go to hell until He came back to straighten things out but He's taking awfully long and we've already gone through three antichrists (Nixon, Reagan and Bush Junior).
It would have been good for America if Obama had taken McCain up on his idea to ditch the campaign staff workers and press corps and ride together on a bus across the country just like the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.
____________________________________________________________________-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Main Street
Anytown USA
3 August 2008
Anytown USA
3 August 2008
Lord Jehovah
Father's House
1 Street of Gold
City of God, Beulah Land 00000
Kingdom of Heaven
Dear Yahweh:
In the movie Bruce Almighty Your in-box seemed clogged with trillions of spam emails so I didn't even bother with my PC. I tried calling long distance but only got as far as Saint Peter who said cell phones are the devil's toys and he would not accept the charges for a cheapskate. So I wrote. You wouldn't believe the price of postage.
As you know, politicians in the USA talk to us as if we were mentally challenged children. Granted, we got that way from killing off our brains cells with beer, avoiding adult education classes, and inbreeding. But it is hard to get smart when we are breathing lead which, as you know, lowers IQ. Our very stupidity is making us even more stupid. It is a vicious cycle so we need divine help or there is no hope for us.
Please make the politicians talk to us as if we were intelligent adults. If it is hard for us to understand big words, then that's our problem. We can look them up in dictionaries. If a speech is hard to understand, then we'll get a transcript of it or go to the website of the speaker. I figure that since everyone, except anencephalics, has brains that you expect us to use them. And, as you know, there have been medical cases of some anencephalics leading normal lives. So the rest of us have no excuse.
I know that when we say "God bless America" that it must sound like we are ordering you to bless us. And that is bad manners. I know that we assume that you are on our side every time the USA starts a war in clear violation of the commandment that we should not kill.
If Reverend Wright is right in his jeremiad that you are damning America for its sins, then I will have to spend a lot of time thinking and meditating. Certainly the economists are saying that the American Century is over and the era of totalitarian China has begun.
So please make the politicians talk to us as if we were intelligent adults. Thank you.
Eternally,
Blogger
"Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons"
The Founders made a big mistake in choosing a federal system over a parliamentary system. They did not foresee that not every president would be decent, stable and intelligent like George Washington. Every president since him has been one long slide to perdition. A strong president means that one man can have a psychotic break and launch a lot of nuclear missiles or, worse, talk about tactical nukes and first strikes. You know, like Bush. The Founders did not foresee standing armies, standing navies; they could not imagine an air force, space weapons, and nuclear, biological nor chemical weapons. Congress is supposed to declare war. Not the president. That is in the Constitution. I didn't make it up.
Why Blacks Prefer Hillary
Black people were the very last group of people to drink the Obama Kool-ade. After all, he strikes them as an Oreo (black on the outside, white on the inside) and an Uncle Tom (Harriet Beecher Stowe must be rolling in her grave) who will put all black people back in the cabin in the plantation. Look how fast he capitulated during the time when Fox endlessly replayed a sound bite of Reverend Jeremiah Wright saying "God damn America." No no no. God bless America. God approves of everything Washington DC does in your name. God approves of the Allies not bombing the railroad tracks leading to the death camps when His own Son was a Jew. God approves of Abu Ghraib. God approves of leaving the Marsh Arabs at the mercy of Saddam Hussein when the Army that liberated Kuwait failed to go to Baghdad. God approves of threatening to remove Iran from the map (and we have the power to do it too) when ordinary Iranians held candlelight vigils the night after the 9/11 attacks. God approves of the White House begging for scraps of useless intel from the genocidal regime in Sudan (which has oil) as that regime slaughters Christians and Black Africans for being Christians and Black Africans whose villages sit atop oil fields. God approves of the USA removing a democratically elected president (a devout priest no less) in Haiti to suit the whims of some white racists in this country. God rubber-stamps every drugging, every assassination, every lie, every harassment, every mind control experiment, every conspiracy, every democracy overthrown, every dehumanizing torture, every waste of the hard-earned tax dollars of the American worker, every dismantling of democratic institutions, and every extinguishment of conscience. God
goes along with every outrage that America does because America is always right and even when it is wrong, to disagree is tantamount to being unpatriotic. We may under no circumstances whatsoever criticize America--not even if by so doing we would save America. We must close our eyes, hit the accelerator, and go right over a cliff. Everybody! Get up, go to your Bible and rip out the Prophets. Burn the Book of Jeremiah. It is a bad book. God bless America. God, we killed our fellow man but You have to put Your seal of approval on it anyway because if You don't . . . . How could they ram a plane into the Pentagon? What do You mean the wages of sin? What do you mean thou shalt not kill? That only applies to Quakers and Mennonites. God, why aren't You taking my phone calls? God, aren't You a conservative Republican? God, You can't be a liberal Democrat because You don't care about the poor, the illiterate, or the sick. That Beatitudes stuff was just a poem or something. God, You should only care about my base: billionaires. Amen.
[This is sarcasm in case you are too dense to realize it. The fact that I have not been struck down by lightning is proof that God understands that I am making a point in the prophetic tradition.]
Black congregations are familiar with liberation theology. Look it up, I can't do all your thinking for you. Rev. Wright was neither violent nor extreme. MOST black people think like Rev. Wright because most black people are better informed than most white people. Black Christians come from a tradition of nonviolence. Nelson Mandela learned from African-Americans not the other way around. And for the stuck-on-stupid crowd, you need to be apprised of another fact: The congregation at Trinity is white, black, Asian and Latino. As if the fact of having white parishioners makes a message more acceptable. As if black parishioners are incapable of thought. You know how emotional black people are. [that last bit was extra sarcasm] Black people may decide that if a thinker of Rev. Wright's stature could be dismissed so easily by the white media, then Obama is a sitting duck. Why waste a vote?
Now you know why black people preferred Hillary.
goes along with every outrage that America does because America is always right and even when it is wrong, to disagree is tantamount to being unpatriotic. We may under no circumstances whatsoever criticize America--not even if by so doing we would save America. We must close our eyes, hit the accelerator, and go right over a cliff. Everybody! Get up, go to your Bible and rip out the Prophets. Burn the Book of Jeremiah. It is a bad book. God bless America. God, we killed our fellow man but You have to put Your seal of approval on it anyway because if You don't . . . . How could they ram a plane into the Pentagon? What do You mean the wages of sin? What do you mean thou shalt not kill? That only applies to Quakers and Mennonites. God, why aren't You taking my phone calls? God, aren't You a conservative Republican? God, You can't be a liberal Democrat because You don't care about the poor, the illiterate, or the sick. That Beatitudes stuff was just a poem or something. God, You should only care about my base: billionaires. Amen.
[This is sarcasm in case you are too dense to realize it. The fact that I have not been struck down by lightning is proof that God understands that I am making a point in the prophetic tradition.]
Black congregations are familiar with liberation theology. Look it up, I can't do all your thinking for you. Rev. Wright was neither violent nor extreme. MOST black people think like Rev. Wright because most black people are better informed than most white people. Black Christians come from a tradition of nonviolence. Nelson Mandela learned from African-Americans not the other way around. And for the stuck-on-stupid crowd, you need to be apprised of another fact: The congregation at Trinity is white, black, Asian and Latino. As if the fact of having white parishioners makes a message more acceptable. As if black parishioners are incapable of thought. You know how emotional black people are. [that last bit was extra sarcasm] Black people may decide that if a thinker of Rev. Wright's stature could be dismissed so easily by the white media, then Obama is a sitting duck. Why waste a vote?
Now you know why black people preferred Hillary.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Are we reliving 1929 to 1941?
The Obama camp should be comparing Senator Obama to FDR instead of JFK. The powers that be (the Establishment, the billionaire families, in other words, the Republican Party) won't budge on anything either foreign or domestic unless there is a Great Depression and a Nuclear War with Iran and China to force them to allow change. Let's take inventory:
- Great Depression means scarcity, food prices high, gas prices high, unemployment high, foreclosures, middle class families homeless, working poor, Hoovervilles (Bushvilles), undernutrition, malnutrition, and hunger. There are cuts in food stamps, school lunch, WIC, and food banks. Shelters do not take families but there are entire families (sometimes three generations) homeless. No affordable health care and no health insurance.
- Natural disasters during the "Dirty Thirties" were mostly dust storms. What we now have is more tornadoes than usual, rising sea level, heat waves each summer, strange winters with super-hurricanes, air too nasty to breathe, water with pharma (drug) pollutants, and food with bis-phenols, phthalates, and God knows what else. By the way, the chemical industry knew how toxic chemicals were back in the 1930's, according to their own records.
- Addiction during the 1930's was mostly to bathtub gin. Now it is crystal meth, crack, and a dozen other drugs.
- Bank robbers are now the executives running the banks into the ground. And they are not folk heroes like Bonny and Clyde.
- Gangland violence, gangsters glamorized in the movies and in music, drive by shootings, nothing has changed from the Thirties.
- Flood of immigrants continues but now most seem to be illegal.
- Corporations are hell-bent on breaking labor unions. American workers are too scared of losing their jobs to realize that they're going to lose them anyway as the USA races to the bottom trying to compete with nations that pay workers pennies a week in parts of Africa.
- Eduation - The Money party keeps Americans stupid with the worst schools and Christian academies (teaching intelligent design) as India and China crank out PhD's by the millions. Back then it was the Scopes Monkey Trial and schools closed because of the Great Depression.
- World War Two either never stopped or it morphed into the Cold War which in turn morphed into Bush's War on Terrorism which the terrorists perceive as a War on Islam.
- The G-men are busy chasing terrorists instead of Nazi spies. If 9/11 had been turned over to the FBI as a purely police matter, Osama would be in jail or in a grave right now because every nation on Earth including Iraq, Iran, and North Korea would gladly have helped us, such was the international sympathy at the time.
- Atmosphere of Paranoia - The OSS, SS, Gestapo and death camps then. The CIA's secret prisons, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, School of the Americas, and torture now. Also, privacy is all but a memory. Privacy is, of course, the Zeroeth Amendment. The right that comes before all other rights. The right without which all other rights are meaningless. No privacy, no freedom. No privacy, no thought. Without privacy, sanity is not possible. No wonder mental illness rates are skyrocketing. No wonder the entire country is going insane just like Nazi Germany did. Without privacy, there is no decency and no good because there is not the free will to do good. Without privacy, there is no truth because whistle blowers have no protection. This is why the media conglomerates do not accept anonymous letters to the editor and why investigative news is disappearing.
- We'll always have Casablanca. We can't seem to get out of the Middle East. For the last half century, not a day has passed that the major newspapers and television networks have not filed a bad news report from that region. The Muslim Arabs, for their part, admire the Nazis. Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion are perennial bestsellers in their bookstores and regarded as truth despite Hitler's own admission that if you repeat a lie often enough, some fool will believe it.
Here's looking at you, kid.
Why Obama Will Lose
It is the 31st of July 2008. McCain has just played the race card.
1. Obama will lose because when white voters get in the privacy of the voting booth they will revert to their true color. Gallup and the other public opinion surveys have been wrong before. People will lie and tell a pollster anything.
2. Hispanic voters will go over to McCain because McCain will go pronunciar un discurso in Spanish in which he promesa to make español lengua oficial de los Estados Unidos.
3. People refuse to believe that Obama is a Christian despite his own statements that he believes in Jesus Christ and despite the fact that not one reporter, not even "journalists" from Fox "News", has been able to document evidence to the contrary. Even tabloid reports like Inside Edition admit and state unequivocally that Obama is a Christian. McCain, on the other hand, was not even born in the USA. This all goes to demonstrate that Americans are stupid (the USA has never had the highest average national IQ), ignorant (unaware that there are Christian Arabs and Christians even in Saudi Arabia, and that Obama is not an Arab nor a Muslim), and foolish (resistant to facts, superstitious about names). America is an anti-intellectual nation that feels that being a brainless mook is a good thing. [As an American, I eat a brain food diet; try to learn things, and try, with limited success, to correct my own thinking]
4. The Ku Klux Klan will get out the vote for McCain.
5. Because McCain is the Bush third term, George Bush, who is best friends with the Bin Laden family, will get Osama to do something scary the day before Election Day so that people will vote for John McCain. "You can't change horses in the middle of a stream after all." I heard this nonsense from a lifelong Democrat as her reason for voting for Bush instead of Kerry.
6. Just by being black, a black person plays the race card even if they don't open their mouth. White people don't have this kind of stress and hypertension put on them because a newspaper or radio news report does not identify them as white. That is always assumed unless one states otherwise. TV and news magazines with color photographs show the color of a person's skin. Whenever a black person is mentioned in news reports, their color is always identified. Young people are less likely to mention a person's color when they inform their parents that they are inviting over some friends. McCain, an old diehard, comes from a past age when color was why you held people back. In John McCain's dinosaur world of fission, oil and coal, it is impossible for a black person to not play the race card. In his twisted logic, the mere fact of being black is playing the race card.
7. Young people will show up at rallies but historically young people won't show up on Election Day to vote. They don't know where their precinct is. They don't know where to cast their ballot. On the day after the election, they suddenly remember they spaced it out completely. So many young people don't read the newspapers or watch the news. Even if they remember and manage to get to a polling place, it is the wrong one. They don't have their card or drivers license. Their name is not listed on the rolls because they never registered to vote. It is a neurological fact that most young people lack a fully developed frontal lobe in their brains which is why they don't prepare ahead of time or look ahead to the consequences of their inaction. It is why they will not be there when Obama needs them the most.
8. A woman wearing too much red lipstick will rig the vote in Florida. Last time every black person in Florida was classified as a felon ineligible to vote. This time every black person in Florida will be classified as insane and, under conservatorship, ineligible to vote. Or no one paid their taxes or they are misidentified as illegal aliens. Nothing incenses black people more than disenfranchisement. Has something to do with over five (500) hundred years of struggling to get the vote. One group of Republicans wonders why Blacks don't trust them. A second group of Republicans know why and just don't care. A third group of Republicans are the ones rigging the vote: owners of voting machine companies, voting software companies, and voter database companies are Republican. A fourth group of Republicans see all this, they are disgusted, and they join Republicans for Obama but not in numbers enough to make a difference.
9. When a white politician is perceived as racist, it does not hurt him or her in the primaries or general election. In fact, a racist image helps them in the South and other places. When a black politician is perceived as even slightly critical of white people, he or she is finished politically. Their career is over. Even if they are in an all-black district and have no white campaign contributors or donors.
10. The Electoral College will, as usual, thwart the will of the people. Hillary said the Electoral College should be abolished. Black people prefer Hillary. Black people have noticed, more than most that the Electoral College is just another way to gerrymander.
11. Fox will declare McCain the winner before the polls even open and the other networks will lemming-like go along with their decision.
12. The politicized Supreme Court will select a Republican president in a close election.
13. Hillary's most virulent supporters are old white woman who distrust Obama because their mother always told them that it is bad luck when a young black cat crosses their path. But seriously, they would rather wreck the Democratic Party, go over to the anti-choice Republicans, and cut off their own noses to spite their faces by jumping in bed with the Enemy. Feminists are not monolithic of course. Not all of us want to kill Obama because he is not a woman. But what issues are important to women? Which party offers more?
McCain might as well win because Senator Obama would have to win by a landslide for President Obama to have the mandate to implement the ideas at Obama dot com. And a landslide is unlikely. More likely the fifty-fifty tie-breaker we've gotten used to for the past two presidential elections.
1. Obama will lose because when white voters get in the privacy of the voting booth they will revert to their true color. Gallup and the other public opinion surveys have been wrong before. People will lie and tell a pollster anything.
2. Hispanic voters will go over to McCain because McCain will go pronunciar un discurso in Spanish in which he promesa to make español lengua oficial de los Estados Unidos.
3. People refuse to believe that Obama is a Christian despite his own statements that he believes in Jesus Christ and despite the fact that not one reporter, not even "journalists" from Fox "News", has been able to document evidence to the contrary. Even tabloid reports like Inside Edition admit and state unequivocally that Obama is a Christian. McCain, on the other hand, was not even born in the USA. This all goes to demonstrate that Americans are stupid (the USA has never had the highest average national IQ), ignorant (unaware that there are Christian Arabs and Christians even in Saudi Arabia, and that Obama is not an Arab nor a Muslim), and foolish (resistant to facts, superstitious about names). America is an anti-intellectual nation that feels that being a brainless mook is a good thing. [As an American, I eat a brain food diet; try to learn things, and try, with limited success, to correct my own thinking]
4. The Ku Klux Klan will get out the vote for McCain.
5. Because McCain is the Bush third term, George Bush, who is best friends with the Bin Laden family, will get Osama to do something scary the day before Election Day so that people will vote for John McCain. "You can't change horses in the middle of a stream after all." I heard this nonsense from a lifelong Democrat as her reason for voting for Bush instead of Kerry.
6. Just by being black, a black person plays the race card even if they don't open their mouth. White people don't have this kind of stress and hypertension put on them because a newspaper or radio news report does not identify them as white. That is always assumed unless one states otherwise. TV and news magazines with color photographs show the color of a person's skin. Whenever a black person is mentioned in news reports, their color is always identified. Young people are less likely to mention a person's color when they inform their parents that they are inviting over some friends. McCain, an old diehard, comes from a past age when color was why you held people back. In John McCain's dinosaur world of fission, oil and coal, it is impossible for a black person to not play the race card. In his twisted logic, the mere fact of being black is playing the race card.
7. Young people will show up at rallies but historically young people won't show up on Election Day to vote. They don't know where their precinct is. They don't know where to cast their ballot. On the day after the election, they suddenly remember they spaced it out completely. So many young people don't read the newspapers or watch the news. Even if they remember and manage to get to a polling place, it is the wrong one. They don't have their card or drivers license. Their name is not listed on the rolls because they never registered to vote. It is a neurological fact that most young people lack a fully developed frontal lobe in their brains which is why they don't prepare ahead of time or look ahead to the consequences of their inaction. It is why they will not be there when Obama needs them the most.
8. A woman wearing too much red lipstick will rig the vote in Florida. Last time every black person in Florida was classified as a felon ineligible to vote. This time every black person in Florida will be classified as insane and, under conservatorship, ineligible to vote. Or no one paid their taxes or they are misidentified as illegal aliens. Nothing incenses black people more than disenfranchisement. Has something to do with over five (500) hundred years of struggling to get the vote. One group of Republicans wonders why Blacks don't trust them. A second group of Republicans know why and just don't care. A third group of Republicans are the ones rigging the vote: owners of voting machine companies, voting software companies, and voter database companies are Republican. A fourth group of Republicans see all this, they are disgusted, and they join Republicans for Obama but not in numbers enough to make a difference.
9. When a white politician is perceived as racist, it does not hurt him or her in the primaries or general election. In fact, a racist image helps them in the South and other places. When a black politician is perceived as even slightly critical of white people, he or she is finished politically. Their career is over. Even if they are in an all-black district and have no white campaign contributors or donors.
10. The Electoral College will, as usual, thwart the will of the people. Hillary said the Electoral College should be abolished. Black people prefer Hillary. Black people have noticed, more than most that the Electoral College is just another way to gerrymander.
11. Fox will declare McCain the winner before the polls even open and the other networks will lemming-like go along with their decision.
12. The politicized Supreme Court will select a Republican president in a close election.
13. Hillary's most virulent supporters are old white woman who distrust Obama because their mother always told them that it is bad luck when a young black cat crosses their path. But seriously, they would rather wreck the Democratic Party, go over to the anti-choice Republicans, and cut off their own noses to spite their faces by jumping in bed with the Enemy. Feminists are not monolithic of course. Not all of us want to kill Obama because he is not a woman. But what issues are important to women? Which party offers more?
McCain might as well win because Senator Obama would have to win by a landslide for President Obama to have the mandate to implement the ideas at Obama dot com. And a landslide is unlikely. More likely the fifty-fifty tie-breaker we've gotten used to for the past two presidential elections.
Why McCain Is a Racist
It is the 31st of July 2008. McCain just accused Obama of playing the race card.
1. Obama has bent over backwards NOT to play the race card. He has bent over so far that he has thrown his back out.
2. Exactly how does one play the race card? Claim victimhood? Blacks have been and still are victims of discrimination but Obama has not claimed that.
3. In fact, Obama is always talking about the great life this country has given him. This may not be true for another person of color who has, for example, suffered discrimination but it is true in Senator Obama's case. I take his word for it. I have not suffered discrimination either but I don't presume to say others have not suffered. Indeed, I know it for fact because I have seen Native Americans and Japanese-Americans and others done injustice.
4. Does McCain want to make a false charge in the hopes of inflaming a racist backlash against Obama? Probably. It is a tactic that some Republicans use. Code talk like "the bloc vote" as if people were too stupid to decipher the cryptograms. Fortunately, not all Republicans appreciate that kind of mental molestation. That is why there are so many Republicans for Obama.
5. Perhaps one plays the race card by referring to race. This is America people. Unless you are dead and have been dead for centuries in a grave on some desert island, it is impossible to go through a day without someone (like McCain) claiming that something you said or did has something to do with race. America is a race-drenched country. We've come to accept that and, consequently, cut people slack. We give people the benefit of the doubt unless they get insulting like Don Imus.
6. At some point you have to ask, what will satisfy McCain? If Senator Obama loses the election, that's what. So discount McCain's crankiness as the early signs of Tourette's Syndrome.
7. All this McCain camp activity is, of course, leading up to a rehash of the estrangement with Reverend Jeremiah Wright. I will bet anyone including God Almighty that I can take his or her words out of context and make them say ANYTHING. Even the exact opposite of what they meant. If you doubt that I am that good (and that bad), then get out your wallet sucker.
The tabloid media (Fox) specializes in splicing out sound bites and twisting an interpretation. For example, no one present at Howard Dean's rally thought anything was unusual. But when the evening news came out, a sound engineer isolates one microphone and the pundits declare Howard Dean to have cheered off key. Burn him at the stake. I cannot understand why foreigners do not think all Americans must be satanic imbeciles with an incurable psychosis. Even I teetered on the brink before slapping myself: "Snap out of it! It is just a yah not Hitler's Holocaust." I was not a Dean supporter either but it was because of one of the planks in his platform not his wooden voice. Policy not fallacy.
8. McCain has a lot of nerve to point the finger. It was Romney, Giuliani, Thompson, and McCain who refused to show up at a Republican debate. The reason? It was held at Morgan State University (historically black) and the host (Tom Joyner) was black. This was a real slap in the face to Black Republicans and African-Americans.
Governor Huckabee said: “I’m embarrassed for our party, and I’m embarrassed for those who did not come because there’s long been a divide in this country. And it doesn’t get better when we don’t show up.”
Senator Brownback said: “I think this is a disgrace that they’re not here. I think it’s a disgrace for our country, I think it’s bad for our party, and I don’t think it’s good for our future. You know you grow political parties by expanding your base, by reaching out to people and getting more people. What they’re doing is sending a message of narrowing the base.”
The Gang of Four (including McCain) is one reason why the Republican Party is perceived as racist.
9. Senator Byrd, a former Klan member, endorses Obama. If he has no problem with the color of a man, why should we?
10. I get tired of cheering when Obama says something I agree with: "people are bitter and cling to their religion and their guns" and then some jackhole complains and Obama has to retract the statement. I am bitter. I do cling to my guns. I do cling to my religion. I am bitter because you can't speak the truth without some jackhole forcing you to shut up. Believe it or not but I am a Fundamentalist Christian. Who uses salty language when necessary. Who sees no conflict between science and religion or between the Book of Genesis and Darwinian evolution. God knows Bush believes in Social Darwinism. And I have no problem with all the happy and cheering people at the Obama rallies. They have the audacity to hope for better things. I have been to two Obama rallies. I saw old people, young people, Asian, Hispanics, whites, blacks (not many though), middle class, working class, women, men, and people I knew were not Democrats. By the way, I am not a Democrat.
11. I admit it. I don't understand how Obama's appeal cuts across categories. But I do understand that it is driving McCain crazy to play the Nixon to Obama's JFK. Fortunately, Obama does not have Hodgkin's or Addison’s (the diseases that made JFK so horny). Unfortunately, McCain may be playing Nixon too well complete with the dirty tricks of Tricky Dick. Karl Rove used to work for Nixon. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Obama is Harvey Gantt and McCain is Jesse Helms. If so, McCain should remember that the USA is not North Carolina writ large.
12. The hate websites love Obama because they can drum up new members out of fear. Fear of what? Foreign policy seldom changes because of the CFR and all the other conspiracies. Domestic policy seldom changes for the better because the Establishment is entrenched. That leaves nothing. There is no other category besides foreign and domestic affairs. Presidents know that if they change too much they will be assassinated. I'd be surprised if Obama made it to November. Shocked if he got elected. Flabbergasted if he got sworn in without a shot ringing out. And, I would be amazed if Mr. Obama got through four years without any harm coming to him.
Dear God, please let me be wrong. Show me to be too much a pessimist and cynic. Amen.
1. Obama has bent over backwards NOT to play the race card. He has bent over so far that he has thrown his back out.
2. Exactly how does one play the race card? Claim victimhood? Blacks have been and still are victims of discrimination but Obama has not claimed that.
3. In fact, Obama is always talking about the great life this country has given him. This may not be true for another person of color who has, for example, suffered discrimination but it is true in Senator Obama's case. I take his word for it. I have not suffered discrimination either but I don't presume to say others have not suffered. Indeed, I know it for fact because I have seen Native Americans and Japanese-Americans and others done injustice.
4. Does McCain want to make a false charge in the hopes of inflaming a racist backlash against Obama? Probably. It is a tactic that some Republicans use. Code talk like "the bloc vote" as if people were too stupid to decipher the cryptograms. Fortunately, not all Republicans appreciate that kind of mental molestation. That is why there are so many Republicans for Obama.
5. Perhaps one plays the race card by referring to race. This is America people. Unless you are dead and have been dead for centuries in a grave on some desert island, it is impossible to go through a day without someone (like McCain) claiming that something you said or did has something to do with race. America is a race-drenched country. We've come to accept that and, consequently, cut people slack. We give people the benefit of the doubt unless they get insulting like Don Imus.
6. At some point you have to ask, what will satisfy McCain? If Senator Obama loses the election, that's what. So discount McCain's crankiness as the early signs of Tourette's Syndrome.
7. All this McCain camp activity is, of course, leading up to a rehash of the estrangement with Reverend Jeremiah Wright. I will bet anyone including God Almighty that I can take his or her words out of context and make them say ANYTHING. Even the exact opposite of what they meant. If you doubt that I am that good (and that bad), then get out your wallet sucker.
The tabloid media (Fox) specializes in splicing out sound bites and twisting an interpretation. For example, no one present at Howard Dean's rally thought anything was unusual. But when the evening news came out, a sound engineer isolates one microphone and the pundits declare Howard Dean to have cheered off key. Burn him at the stake. I cannot understand why foreigners do not think all Americans must be satanic imbeciles with an incurable psychosis. Even I teetered on the brink before slapping myself: "Snap out of it! It is just a yah not Hitler's Holocaust." I was not a Dean supporter either but it was because of one of the planks in his platform not his wooden voice. Policy not fallacy.
8. McCain has a lot of nerve to point the finger. It was Romney, Giuliani, Thompson, and McCain who refused to show up at a Republican debate. The reason? It was held at Morgan State University (historically black) and the host (Tom Joyner) was black. This was a real slap in the face to Black Republicans and African-Americans.
Governor Huckabee said: “I’m embarrassed for our party, and I’m embarrassed for those who did not come because there’s long been a divide in this country. And it doesn’t get better when we don’t show up.”
Senator Brownback said: “I think this is a disgrace that they’re not here. I think it’s a disgrace for our country, I think it’s bad for our party, and I don’t think it’s good for our future. You know you grow political parties by expanding your base, by reaching out to people and getting more people. What they’re doing is sending a message of narrowing the base.”
The Gang of Four (including McCain) is one reason why the Republican Party is perceived as racist.
9. Senator Byrd, a former Klan member, endorses Obama. If he has no problem with the color of a man, why should we?
10. I get tired of cheering when Obama says something I agree with: "people are bitter and cling to their religion and their guns" and then some jackhole complains and Obama has to retract the statement. I am bitter. I do cling to my guns. I do cling to my religion. I am bitter because you can't speak the truth without some jackhole forcing you to shut up. Believe it or not but I am a Fundamentalist Christian. Who uses salty language when necessary. Who sees no conflict between science and religion or between the Book of Genesis and Darwinian evolution. God knows Bush believes in Social Darwinism. And I have no problem with all the happy and cheering people at the Obama rallies. They have the audacity to hope for better things. I have been to two Obama rallies. I saw old people, young people, Asian, Hispanics, whites, blacks (not many though), middle class, working class, women, men, and people I knew were not Democrats. By the way, I am not a Democrat.
11. I admit it. I don't understand how Obama's appeal cuts across categories. But I do understand that it is driving McCain crazy to play the Nixon to Obama's JFK. Fortunately, Obama does not have Hodgkin's or Addison’s (the diseases that made JFK so horny). Unfortunately, McCain may be playing Nixon too well complete with the dirty tricks of Tricky Dick. Karl Rove used to work for Nixon. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Obama is Harvey Gantt and McCain is Jesse Helms. If so, McCain should remember that the USA is not North Carolina writ large.
12. The hate websites love Obama because they can drum up new members out of fear. Fear of what? Foreign policy seldom changes because of the CFR and all the other conspiracies. Domestic policy seldom changes for the better because the Establishment is entrenched. That leaves nothing. There is no other category besides foreign and domestic affairs. Presidents know that if they change too much they will be assassinated. I'd be surprised if Obama made it to November. Shocked if he got elected. Flabbergasted if he got sworn in without a shot ringing out. And, I would be amazed if Mr. Obama got through four years without any harm coming to him.
Dear God, please let me be wrong. Show me to be too much a pessimist and cynic. Amen.
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