Doug's Darkworld

Here it is, photographic proof that I saw the great man in person myself. Yes, my camera doesn’t have a telephoto lens. Is there an app for that? Did I spell app correctly? I’m a little behind on the technological curve sometimes. It runs in the family. When I was a kid in the early sixties my grandfather’s phone had to be cranked to make it work. How many people remember one of those still in use? I eventually as a young man-made the phone’s wooden case into a jewellery box for my sister, I think she has it still.

Dr. Paul’s speech was an interesting experience, I don’t think I’ve ever been to a political rally before. There were a few thousand people. Mostly pro Paul, with a few exceptions. It was outdoors, which was nice. I like the outdoors. My overall experience was one of gladness and sorrow. On the one hand, it was really nice to see a mainstream political candidate who was calling for actual change, not just new monograms on the White House towels. And for an end to the War on Drugs, and an end to endless military adventures overseas. Yes, even our troops in Japan and Germany should come home. No more “nation building,” scaling back the size of the US government, all things that need to be done. His positions on abortion, woman’s rights, and the welfare state … not so promising.

The sorrow. Well, there was this quixotic aspect to all of it. The people running the rally were all so upbeat and optimistic about Ron’s candidacy, when it was obvious that the crowd of a few thousand was draw from all over the greater Bay Area. The Grateful Dead drew larger crowds when they appeared at UC. And then there’s the unspoken fact that the media and the mainstream parties have largely marginalized “outsider” candidates like Ron Paul and successfully demonized him. Most Americans now are basically programmed to think that their party has all the right ideas, the other party is going to destroy America, and third parties are dangerous lunatics. Yes, actually making changes in how the government does things is now a dangerous heresy. Washington wept.

All said and done, I still think Rob Paul is the best of a bad lot by far. For one he’s the only politician who answers questions more or less directly, instead of launching into sound bites. Or lying through his perfect teeth. More importantly, he’s the only one calling for and end to World War Two. It’s time to bring the troops home. Nearly 75 years as globocop has made a small number of Americans very very very rich, and impoverished the rest of us. War profiteering is not a sustainable base for the economy of a great nation. And his stand on reducing government spending and ending the War on Drugs is also refreshing. Refreshing in the former case because I think he’s serious about it, refreshing in the later case because the war on Drugs has been a costly and counterproductive failure.

How about his stand on abortion, fetal rights, and the welfare state? Apalling, and sadly a reflective of his all too Christian world view. Abortion especially has been the scalpel that allowed the democrats to successfully demonize Mr Paul and make sure that no “progressive” voter looked any further, lest they too be demonized as some sort of woman hating monster by their progressive friends. That’s modern America for us, no debate, just to hell with any alternatives. I have recently noticed that the progressive left is about as fair and balanced in their outlook as Fox News viewers are in theirs. Does it show?

Am I for banning abortion, making fertilized eggs into human beings, or slashing social programs? No, of course not. So why do I support Ron Paul? It’s very simple. If we don’t end the warfare state, the Christian right is going to eat us alive, and we will lose all our rights anyhow. These people have a crusader mentality, and constant war is their bread and butter. It means they are the good guys, therefore whatever they do is right. And since they are steeped in ideology and a need to make everyone conform to Biblical norms of behaviour, it’s not going to be pretty. When the Christian right eventually overturns Roe vs Wade, and then outlaws abortion nationally … Ron Paul’s idea of leaving it up to the states to decide is going to look a lot better in retrospect.

Sigh, politics. Next maybe some uplifting posts about zombie puppies or some such.

(Photo copyright Doug Stych 2012, all rights reserved. I think that’s his wife and daughter sitting behind him. And I guess those are security people watching him and the crowd. I’m glad I went, for good or for ill it’s still a very free country in many ways. It’s been a  long strange path since Yorktown, and I think we are lost in Mirkwood, but who knows what is on the other side.)

Thursday I have reserved a seat to go listen to Ron Paul speak. I’m pretty excited, I think the last time I saw a public figure in the flesh I was holding a sign saying “Go Back to Hanoi!” That probably says far more about my past than I should let on, but hey, it’s still a free country. Well, sort of. Moving right along, I’m thrilled, and not ashamed to say it. Ron Paul is one of the few politicians these days who actually says things that make sense. We have a president who utters the most egregious lies and nonsense with presidential sincerity that would make Satan proud, and a veritable clown parade of Republicans. Ron Paul at least is willing to stand up and say that the Emperor has no clothes, just for that I appreciate him. I will take pictures, and try to shake his hand if the opportunity arises.

Mr Paul is an interesting figure,  more than just the Howard Stassen of his time. Or, to be more accurate, it’s fascinating to see how people and the establishment react to him. Fascinating as in like watching a cockroach in a  microwave. Sigh. I like some of  what on Paul says. I have had people question my sanity for saying that. Literally. And this is from people who claim to be mainstream progressives. I’m used to troglodyte conservatives claiming that anyone who isn’t a conservative is either stupid or insane, but it sure seems like a recent development that mainstream people, people with college educations, would actually believe that people who disagreed with them are insane. Um, this is what the communists and Nazis believed. Just saying.

Secondly, the attacks on Ron Paul by the progressives are also scary and creepy. They cherry pick all sorts of stuff from his past, present it out of context, and then claim what a monster it makes Mr Paul out to be. Do they talk about his position on the issues? Noooooo, we apparently can’t discuss the issues any more in this country. It’s all about irrelevant peripheral  stuff. And progressive’s take it with deadly seriousness. I had a progressive claim recently that Ron Paul supporter’s “heads would explode” when it was realized that one of his campaign donors was a controversial figure. Um, as long as he isn’t getting money from Al Qaeda, who cares? More on point, do they not understand that every political candidate has taken money from people with agendas, so what? Frankly one would think it would be scarier to have politicians bankrolled by the bankers whose greed destroyed the economy in the first place, like say, the mainstream candidates. Nope, not an issue. Sigh.

It’s depressing really. When I was a young man most people didn’t take politics personally, today the two parties are so polarized that it’s hard to find anyone on either side who is willing to discuss the actual issues. Well aside from wedge social issues, but I digress. Now we have a system where both parties are in lock step conviction that the other party is going to destroy the country, oblivious to the fact that both parties are completely run for and by big business, big oil, big banking, and big military. And that for three decades these people have enriched themselves at the expense of everyone else, and used the increasingly sophisticated power of advertising (helped immensely by the fact that big business owns the big media) to mould their supporter into compliant sheep.

Well, compliant until someone tries to say “Um, the herd is heading for a cliff people, we need to change direction.” And then the scary sheep fangs come out. On the plus side, on a personal level, I have concluded that people who would hold my political views against me personally aren’t really my friends. My friends hold political views that are all over the spectrum, and I don’t take any of it personally. They are good people, we just disagree on some things, so what? I suspect that if a person’s entire spectrum of friends fits into the exact same ideological slot as them, they don’t really have any friends. A person and the ideas they have are two different things, a distinction that seems lost these days in the media and public discourse.

We have a two party system working in lock step to prevent any fundamental change in this country, change that is decades overdue; while simultaneously sidelining anyone who proposes real change.  Like Ron Paul. He’s the last politician standing who is willing to stand up and say that things like the War on Drugs and the War on Terror are causing more harm than good. I certainly disagree with him on some issues, and don’t think he will get elected unless there is a “King Ralph” event, but God Bless him for being a voice of sanity in a world of lies.

(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law, the usual caveats apply. I chose this image because it just shows him as he is, he’s just an old guy, a human being like the rest of us. And sorry about all the sighs, it’s kind of my overall response to politics in America these days: Sigh.)

Another week gone. The situation in the Middle East just gets worse. And I mean the greater Middle East when I say Middle East, including Iran and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan the situation is acutely bad. Riots and demonstrations triggered by the burned Koran incident continue. And pathetically, many Americans simply regard this as “loony” rather than try to understand the far more difficult concept that  these people are reacting in a way that is entirely consistent with their cultural and historical context. If a hated decade long occupier in the USA  trashed some of America’s most sacred relics, Americans might riot too. In just a few weeks with just two brain dead incidents, the pissing on Taliban corpses and now this burned Koran thing,  the USA has given the Taliban a huge propaganda boost and undone much of whatever good we did in the country. Smooth move.

Syria is more or less in a civil war. And in the new world order, that means intervention, IE benevolent invasion. Somalia, same deal. More drone strikes, more interventions, more inability to grasp that there are problems you can’t kill your way out of. Well, at least without killing on a scale that hopefully even the most rabid pro-war American would blanch at. One can hope at least. I think wider war in the Middle East is inevitable at this point, has been really since the USA rolled into Baghdad.

And in the USA, the Republican race to see who gets eviscerated by Obama gets weirder all the time. The Republicans are doing what the Democrats did in 2004, they seem intent on running a candidate with zero crossover appeal. The more they pander to their extreme religious base, the more they guarantee Obama’s reelection. At least that’s my take on it at the moment, could be an interesting summer.

In science news, they seem to have discovered that the faster-than-light neutrinos measurement was due to an equipment malfunction. Seem to being the operative words here, testing continues. That they can’t pin it down precisely just yet is a great illustration of just how fine scientists are slicing reality these days, we are talking extremely thin slices. Sadly, a lot of media sites pounced on this to take cheap shots at science and scientists by making this seem like it was a simple as a loose VCR cable, reinforcing the worst negative stereotypes about scientists. And these days, with massive sophisticated organized efforts under way to deny science for both political and religious reasons, I find gratuitous attacks on scientists distressing.

The myth of eight hours sleep. This one is great. There seems to be a case to be made that it’s normal for humans to sleep for two periods at night with an activity period in between. Honestly, that’s pretty much my usual pattern. Many of these blogs are written between four and six in the morning, then I go back to bed for a few more hours. There’s probably a book that could be written about things that are commonly believed to be true, with little or no scientific basis. Dogs are mammals, apples are fruit, that sort of thing.

In a last little science tidbit, research is increasingly showing that humans are naturally cooperative, not competitive. There’s actually been a lot of research like this the past few decades. It gives me hope for the species, though organized government and religion loathe research like this, don’t expect it to be getting it into school curricula any time soon. Both organized government and organized religion are predicated on the meme that without them, people would do bad things. Can’t have people doubting that, they might actually start to wonder why organized government and religion get such a big slice of the pie.

Lastly, in local news, Berkeley had its second murder of the year. Basically a lunatic attacked a man who confronted him trespassing in the man’s yard. Infuriatingly, the Berkeley police didn’t respond to the first call because they were too busy “standing by” because an Occupy Oakland march was scheduled later that night. Yerp, a massive police presence has to “stand by” when a few hundred people engage in a  peaceful and legal protest, but actually protecting the public and doing their job, that gets short shrift. The media of course is having a field day blaming the protesters! That’s right folks, don’t dare engage in peaceful and legal protests, you might get someone killed!

The founding fathers are rolling in their graves at that sentiment. Have a great weekend everyone.

(The above image is believed to be Public Domain under US copyright law, but I will gladly amend if informed differently. The wild police over-reaction to OWS is a symptom of how far down the road to a police state this country has gone, if Washington had done their job the past few decades instead of selling the country out to the highest bidder, OWS wouldn’t be happening. Attacking protesters with riot police isn’t going to fix the problem.)

Well, no rapture. No surprise. It really is dismaying how people can believe prima facie nonsense in this day and age. It’s especially galling because so many Americans, especially the ones who fall for this kind of crap, have an especially high opinion of America and Americans. A country where tens of millions of people think the Earth is a few thousand years old or that evolution is “just a theory.” And don’t even get me started on people who think the Moon landings were hoaxed. Our educational system as once the envy of the world, it’s rapidly becoming the laughing stock of the world.

Moving right along, I think it’s clear at this point that Obama is going to get reelected. No one in their right mind is going to run against him, so its going to be a very amusing election. Especially the Republican primaries, a collection of, well, political suicide bombers like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich squaring it off. They might as well skip any actual pretense of debate and settle the issue mud wrestling. Hell, I’d pay to see Sarah and Newt go at it in a mud pit. On the plus side, I won’t have much to blog about since Obama’s inexorable progress will be painfully obvious to all. I wonder if peeps will be dancing in the streets the second time he gets elected? (Of course by then public displays of affection towards our Dear Leader may be mandatory.)

The economy still sucks. Tushima is still a disaster. The Gulf Oil Spill is still wreaking an unsung toll. Iraq is still a bloody mess, Afghanistan a repeat of Vietnam … without even the option of carpet bombing the Taliban’s cities because they don’t have any. Egypt is still a mess becasue Mubarak’s cronies throwing him and him alone to the wolves was not exactly the democratic revolution the people of Egypt struggled for and deserved. Libya is now effectively two states, with NATO bombing here and there. The totalitarian governments of Syria and Yemen are slaughtering people in the street, Syria’s may survive, Yemen’s is looking more doubtful. Bahrain is still a brutal mess. Pakistan gets more unstable every day. And the rest of the world is looking on and trying to stay out of the scrum … or see how they can benefit from it. See, more information about the state of the world in one paragraph than in an entire year of the New Yorker.

I wanted to mention Pakistan in a bit more depth. There’s been a lot of hostile talk about Pakistan in the USA, about how they aren’t a good ally, and they may have even known about OBL’s location. All possibly true. Then there’s reality. In reality, Pakistan is far more fractured and power is far more diffuse than in the USA. It takes a long time to forge a nation out of nothing, and Pakistan has had less than a century as a nation under conditions that make the United State’s infancy look like a romp in Disneyland. Secondly, aside from understanding what a mess Pakistan is, more importantly, they only joined the USA’s war against the Taliban because of threats and bribes. Pakistan was the Taliban’s best friend, for perfectly reasonable geopolitical reasons. So basically the USA is in the position of a bully who with a combination of threats and bribes forced Pakistan into a war not only against its best interests, but into a war against elements of its own society. To then blame the Pakistanis for being less than enthusiastic participants in the mess we made is, well, ignorant. We’re lucky they’ve cooperated as much as they have, we should be counting our blessings.

Lastly, as far as I can tell, the western cabal’s control of the mainstream media gets more pervasive and more subtle every day. Not that it was ever easy to figure out what was going on, but more and more huge numbers of people think they are tuned in … and they aren’t. This isn’t going to end well.

(The above image is being used legally under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Credit and copyright: Syriana2011. It’s an image of protesters in Damascus this spring. It’s obviously been photo shopped, since none of the thousands of Muslims in the image is engaged in violence.)

Still, this proposed law is scary. The whole concept is so foreign to the principles the country was founded upon that it’s like being in a bad dream and not being able to wake up. This proposed law basically turns the Constitution and the Bill of Rights into a piece of toilet paper and gives the President dictatorial powers to have anyone he likes locked up, permanently. I wonder if it has occurred to the good Senator that a future president could simply have Congress detained if the president was frustrated by them? I doubt it, Congress has so long gotten away with exempting themselves from their own laws that I don’t think it even crossed his mind. On the other hand, laws like this have made it onto the books before without people being locked up as a result. So who knows what this means, incipient fascist police state, or politicians pandering to the law and order sheep? It’s just one more piece in the puzzle, and there’s no box lid with a picture to see how it’s supposed to all turn out.

In any event, I’m more convinced than ever that we all would have been much better off if McCain had won the election. Well, maybe better off is not quite the word, but if McCain had won, there would still be hope. There would still be hope, because there’d still be an opposition movement to the “borrow and spend” and “war forever” insanity that is making a tiny number of people very very rich, while impoverishing the rest of us. I mean, Obama has not only continued Bush’s policies, in most cases he’s actually expanded on them. He really is the Manchurian candidate, though not in the silly way the Tea Partiers and such espouse, he’s no socialist or Muslim. He’s simply the complete political tool utterly craven to the rich and powerful who have been running the country as their own company town for the past few decades (at least.) Far from being an opposition party, the Democrats are now just the other face of the Republicans. Both are big business, big military, and big war supporters. For those of a literary bent, we are living in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and the pigs and the farmers just merged.

So it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise, but I don’t think this fall’s elections really mean a damn thing. Even if the Tea Partiers are swept into power, they will deviate as much from the course we are already on as Obama. Anyone who seriously thinks that any Republican or Democrat is going to shrink government and cut government spending is living in a dream world. Well, a propaganda world more precisely. A world where the rich are victims, and the poor and immigrants are the source of all our problems. A world where blowing up brown woman and children on the other side of the planet in droves isn’t even newsworthy, but some guy lights his pants on fire on a  plane and it’s an existential threat to the USA. I have to admit I never ever thought when I was a a kid that I’d grow up and find myself living in a world that was sillier than the comic books I was reading.

Where this is all going is anyone’s guess. The current situation is frighteningly similar to Rome at its height. An empire basically grown too large to manage, and hollowed out at the core by corruption and greed. An empire that is surviving by debasing its currency and looting foreign lands. Neither is a good long term strategy for a nation or an empire, but boy, a tiny number of people get rich beyond imagining. Sooner or later it will all fall apart, maybe with a whimper, maybe with a bang. It’s the bang that scares me most. A single event in the US even remotely like 9/11 and the country will go cuckoo bananas. Literally. And sooner or later one of our ever increasing number of enemies, or even one of our “friends,” is going to pull it off. It’s inevitable, 9/11 wasn’t the first terrorist attack in the USA and it won’t be the last. It’s the first one though where a rudderless administration seized upon it to make terror mongering a structural part of US politics and society. Yes, now we’re stuck with 9/11 mania forever, thank you Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney.

Lastly, while my assessment of the overall situation is bleak, it has to be balanced by the fact that throughout history, no matter what great events and catastrophes were raging, most people in most places managed to live out their lives. I dare to say that most cities in the Roman Empire are still cities today. I was reading the other day there’s one of the grand villas (palaces) built by a Roman emperor that’s still remarkably well preserved today, because a local village grew into it and used (and preserved) its buildings. I plan to live my life and enjoy the company of my friends and loved ones no matter what, as long as people do that, ultimately the bastards will never win.

(The above image of Diocletian’s Palace. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Credit and copyright: Rialfver at nl.wikipedia. If I was a better artist I’d create an image of the ruins of Washington being viewed by tourists 2,000 years from now. And I don’t mean any of this in a  bad way, American simply fell prey to the same sorts of greed and corruption that have destroyed so many prior empires. It’s been a hell of a ride, and it’s not over yet by a long shot. Parts of the Roman Empire for example carried right on for a thousand years after the fall of Rome.)

Well, that’s more interesting than my usual Friday “Through Thick and Thin” headline, eh? While I have written a fun post about the battle of Stirling Bridge,  possibly history’s best example of why accountants should never be put in charge of armies, today I will restart my Friday review posts. There’s always something to review. History unfolding, scientific breakthroughs, cat news, stock market tips, End Times omens, what have you.

And this week, protests in Iran. This is actually fairly easy to understand. Everything the mainstream media says about Iran is garbage, so that immediately really simplifies my analysis. Basically, there’s always people rioting and demonstrating about something somewhere. We can’t rely on the media to tell us what they are rioting about, but the coverage of such events is revealing. To wit:

If foreign demonstrations get extensive media coverage and are portrayed as  popular “pro-democracy” movements, this means the government in question has told the USA to fuck-off and they aren’t about to let the UN and the IMF run their countries to expedite western looting of their resources. This of course would be the case in Iran. If the demonstrators are opposing a US backed toady government, they will get zero mainstream media coverage. This would be the case in Georgia or Thailand.  And if the demonstrators are actually opposing the hyper concentration of wealth and power that epitomizes the modern era, such as the protesters at the recent G20 conference, they will be portrayed as radical anarchist thugs. See, one can learn something from the mainstream media, one just as to know how to interpret it.

Back to Iran, I don’t really know what’s going on, and I have no idea how this will turn out. The fact that the protests are even allowed would indicate that it’s probably not the horrible dictatorship that some would like us to believe. It’s also a pretty good bet that whatever the  actual results of the election, Ahmadinejad still has a lot of supporters, again, a point that one will rarely see in the western press. And lastly, one has to realize that a lot of the media is using exiles, radicals, and outsiders for their information about Iran. Um, these people might not be the most unbiased sources. In any event, here’s an interesting blog that goes into a bit more detail about western media coverage of foreign unrests: Penny For Your Thoughts. And lastly, despite the endlessly repeated claim that the Iranian election was stolen, it’s entirely possible that it wasn’t. Personally I suspect this will all blow over and Ahmadinejad will continue as Iran’s president, but we’ll see.

In our other foreign policy demon-de-jour, North Korea is making threats again. Of course they aren’t the only one. Obama has called North Korea a “grave threat to the world.” See, that’s the secret to Obama’s success, the man can say stuff that’s absurd beyond all measure, and do so without smirking, laughing, or choking. North Korea is a threat to South Korea, not the world. For the record, North Korea is a small, impoverished, badly run country on the other side of the planet. I’d say that Hollywood has destroyed the typical American’s ability to assess the magnitude of foreign threats, but sadly the American people’s penchant for over-reacting to threats pre-dates the mass media. At one point in the nineteenth century about 20,000 men, fully one third of the US army, was engaged in trying to catch Geronimo and his band of a few dozen braves. Their crime? Refusing to stay on the reservation and cattle rustling. Hmm.

In other world news, a 14 year old boy was recently struck in the hand by a meteorite. This is only the third time in recorded history where a person has been struck by a meteorite, the second being a boy in Uganda who was struck in 1992. The first was the Hodge’s meteorite that came through a roof in Alabama in 1954 and struck a woman napping on a couch. She was badly bruised but able to walk, and the story received world wide media attention at the time. Granted, three hits in fifty years means that people have probably been struck fairly often by meteorites, but it either wasn’t recorded or no one knew what had happened. I mean, if a person was out and about one day, and a rock hit them, most people would assume some miscreant had thrown it from the bushes. There is also a note in a medieval (or older) Chinese archive about an event where “thousands of people”  were killed by “iron falling from the sky.” It’s pretty safe to say if this occurred as described, it was a meteor fall.

In one last note, I have started a Doug’s Darkworld twitter: DougsDarkworld. For one thing I will be using this to announce updates to Doug’s Darkworld. Primarily though this will be a place where I will post links to articles and such that I thought were really interesting or instructive, but was unable to fit them into a post. I suppose I might also make the occasional trenchant remark about ongoing world events … no screaming though, I promise. It’s bad enough my neighbours and cats have to hear me screaming when I watch the news on TV.

Have a great weekend everyone!

(The above image predates 1927 and is public domain under US copyright law. Courtesy of the National Archives. This is one of my all time favourite pictures,  I apologize if I’ve used it before. This is Geronimo and his band photographed while they were being hunted by the US Army. This is significant because this is the only photograph ever taken of a native American military force operating in the field against the US Army. Whether one calls them freedom fighters or criminals, brave or foolhardy, it’s a remarkable moment captured in time.)

I’ve been mulling over McCain’s VP pick, Sarah Palin, for the past day. I’ve looked up a little bit about her, but pretty much ignored what any of the pundits had to say so I could form my own opinion. It’s a painful process but I’ve had some good luck with it before. And at the very least, if I’m wrong, I have no one to blame but myself. Sadly, I’ve also noticed that with practise, I seem to be getting better at forming opinions that seem reasonable to most people, even people who disagree with me. Why sadly? Because my opinions are often depressing.

As an aside, I just got my first “You’re a liberal F–, you should move to France with the other P—–s” comment the other day. He went on to articulate his case in a cogent and elegant manner; cutting my arguments to shreds and illuminating his position in a logically unassailable way. Snort. No, the stuff in quotes was pretty much the whole comment. I mean, sheesh, I may be a bit condescending or what not, but I really do try to listen to opposing viewpoints and am happy to have people point out where I am logically  or factually in error. I’ve changed a few of my opinions because of feedback I’ve received on Doug’s Darkworld. I can pretty much guarantee that name calling and insults won’t change my mind about anything.

So anyhow I have some preliminary thoughts about Palin as VP. My first impression was, wow, she’s not a bad looking woman. I know some may say that’s sexist, no, that was my first impression and probably the first impression of a great many people. And the fact is, this certainly can’t hurt, being good looking is a huge political asset in almost any age. It was kind of a surprise pick to me, but I hadn’t really thought about it much beforehand. I was wondering if McCain was delaying his VP pick to upstage and counter Obama’s pick, if that’s the case, he’s done a brilliant job of it.

In other words, I think McCain just clinched the election. There are so many ways this can help him, and very little the Democrats can do to capitalize on it, that I think this will easily put him over the edge. I mean, what are the Democrats going to do? Attack her for their inexperience? They can’t do that without doing collateral damage to Obama. If Democrats go after her possibly criminal behaviour, the Republicans will counter with Obama’s problem in regard to criminal associates. They attack the fact that she should be taking care of her five kids, well, that’s suicidal coming from liberals! I mean, haven’t  liberals claimed that having careers is what women should be doing? So far all the avenues of attack I can think of for the Democrats…are easily countered by obvious Republican ploys.  I heard one of her kid’s is going to Iraq, pretty much demolishing any sort of claim she is an elitist for example.

Then there’s the crossover problem. How many McCain supporters are going to jump ship and vote for Obama now that he has Biden as a VP? Very very few, I mean, they have an old white war hero on their ticket already, and is Biden even a  war hero? How many Hillary supporters might be tempted to dump Obama and his old white guy VP and vote for a young impressive female governor? More than a few I suspect. And even if there is  criticism of McCain from within his party, no hard-core Republicans are going to vote for Obama. Nope, Obama listened to some cautious advice regarding his VP pick and was just checkmated as a result.

I’m not happy about this. It has an Orwellian (or Rovian) smell to it all. (I suspect a lot of liberals are going to underestimate just how clever this VP pick is.) McCain has recently started to scare me even more if that was possible, even in these already scary times. Maybe there is some horrible skeleton in Palin’s closet and this will all blow up in McCain’s face in the days or weeks to come, but right now I think he has Obama neatly boxed into a corner. God save us all.

(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It is not being used for profit and is central to illustrating the post. Credit: AFP/BBC News. Notice I didn’t say anything about Palin’s qualifications, or lack of them, for the job. That’s because I don’t think it matters, her  only real job is to get McCain elected, and she seems perfectly qualified for that.)

Another week gone. First off, I will answer the question I posed in the previous post: Who or what is the greatest threat to the USA? I concluded that the next president of the USA was potentially the greatest threat facing America today. Now I will discuss Obama, Clinton, and McCain…on the theory that the next president would certainly be in a position to do great harm to the USA. Especially since that under even optimistic assumptions, the USA has some serious ongoing issues including the economy and the war on terror.

Well, I like what Obama says, but I fear if elected he may fall prey to the “Carter syndrome.” I.E. he is a Washington outsider and new to the ways of Washington’s byzantine politics and foreign policy. He will not be trusted by the powers-that-be, and in his good intentions, may end up pissing off all sorts of people whose cooperation he needs. The result being basically checkmated within months of getting into office and unable to make any serious changes in US policy. There’s also the possibility that Obama is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, he talks the talk but if elected will he try to do what’s best for America…or simply work to make the rich richer while babbling liberal shibboleths? He wouldn’t be the first.

Clinton. Sigh. I almost feel sorry for her. She basically worked hard for years to get a shot at the White House and make history, and if Obama hadn’t appeared out of nowhere she’d have locked it up long ago. It must be really annoying, I think most people would be hard put to be diplomatic if they worked toward a promotion for sixteen years…only at the last moment to have a “new hire” suddenly be in serious contention for the corner office.

That aside, I think both Clintons are just very smart corporate shills. While they have a lot of liberal trappings, and are not as crippled by ideology as the reigning Republicans currently are, they have done nothing but promote the Imperial Agenda that has taken hold of America the last few decades. I lost faith in Hillary just a few months after her husband became president when she announced she was going to make sure that every American got health insurance. Americans do not need health insurance, they need health care. It may seem like a subtle difference, but it’s not if one thinks about it. That’s when I knew she was a corporate shill, and I’ve seen little to change my mind since.

Now McCain. Oh dear. I used to have some admiration for McCain, at least he wasn’t an armchair warrior or a draft evader. Then when asked what he would do if his daughter got pregnant, he blew it and said they would decide as a family and consider all the options. Of course he has worked hard to make sure that “all the options” are not available for Americans, so he basically demonstrated what virtually all politicians have in common…a sense that the laws they promote don’t relate to them. Anyone who thinks their position of power entitles them to privileges and immunities the rest of us don’t have, has utterly betrayed the ideals of the founding fathers.

Furthermore, McCain is more enthusiastic about Bush’s foreign wars than Bush himself. Since a pretty good case can be made that Bush’s “enthusiastic” military spending is what is dragging the economy down, not to even mention the wisdom of trying to spread American ideals at the point of a cruise missile around the world, it’s hard not to be a little frightened of McCain. While Bush and his policies still have a few supporters, they are a shrinking minority and most Americans think we need to make some changes, not redouble our spending on foreign adventures.

So we have a fellow who might screw things up with amateurish good intentions, a corporate shill trying to make history, and “Bush on steroids.” Who is the greatest threat to America? Beats me. I’m still pretty much of the opinion that it’s like choosing a new captain of the Titanic after hitting the iceberg. If I had to make a choice, I’d say McCain scares me the most, since I think war mongering is the problem, not the solution. On the other hand Clinton will likely take us to the same place, but with more liberal smoke and mirrors. God only knows where we’ll end up with Obama. I already have my “Don’t blame me, I voted for Ron Paul” button, so I’m good no matter what transpires.

In other world news, the Iraqi armies “surge” to take back the streets of Iraq from the Mahdi army has completely fizzled. Bush said it was a “defining moment” in the history of Iraq, but since it turned out to be just another bloody failure…he’s kind of quiet on the subject. Since the “government” of Iraq is a foreign created colonial administration, it has no real legitimacy…which is why things like the Mahdi army arise. People will create the government they need to protect their interests if the “central” government isn’t doing it’s job. In fact coincidentally enough, organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamic Courts, etc ALL seem to have arisen in parts of the world where the “legitimate” government is basically a creation of western powers. Interesting, nu? More on that line of thought in a future post, I promise.

Otherwise, it’s been a more or less uneventful week. The economy continues to putter along, China has more or less stopped the unrest in Tibet, and just in general the world continues its slide to wherever the hell this glorious train ride is taking us. And after next week I will be trekking cross country to assess the state of the republic in person, I will blog it as I see it.

Have a great weekend everyone.

(The above image of the Three Stooges is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit and its use here in no way hinders the copyright holder’s commercial use of the image, arguably the opposite. Credit: Columbia pictures. It’s an image from the 1943 short film “They Stooge to Conga,” the most violent three stooges movie ever. I’m not trying to imply anything about Obama, McCain, and Clinton…but gentle reader may infer what they want. I just thought it was interesting that during the war they could parody Hitler and the Nazis like this, nowadays this would be seen as in bad taste I suspect. Times change, perceptions change.)

Press Release
For Immediate Release: Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Contact: Doug Stych

In a move that stunned both the Democratic and Republican parties, Binky, a calico cat residing in Berkeley, announced her write-in candidacy for President of the United States. Hillary Clinton, Barrack Obama, and John McCain and were reportedly rendered speechless by the news. Ralph Nader is expected to withdraw from the race momentarily, reportedly saying “With the feline-rights and catnip industry union vote locked up, Binky is unbeatable.” Ron Paul immediately withdrew from the race and threw his support behind the redoubtable feline, saying “Finally, a non mainstream candidate that can win.”

A few reporters questioned Binky’s qualifications for the highest elected office in the land, asking how she could possibly be old enough and have resided in the United States long enough considering that she was born in 1999. She responded by pointing out that “…there is no doubt about my American birth and in kitty years I am sixty years old and have resided in the United States the entire time. The constitution is rather vague on the issue of kitty years vs. human years, so that is an issue the Supreme Court will clarify after I am elected. She went on to outline her cogent and workable plans for world peace and an end to terrorism, but the details were drowned out by thunderous applause from her supporters.

After the applause died down, she demonstrated that she can pronounce the word “nuclear” clearly and correctly; an apparent reference to certain sitting presidents who mispronounce the word as “nukuler.” Numerous Republicans in the crowd were observed hanging their heads in shame at this point. When asked about health care, Binky unveiled an amazing plan that will provide every American (human and cat alike) with cradle-to-grave health care, to be enacted within four hours of being sworn into office. This to be funded by a modest $10 per can tax on dog food.

World stock markets responded positively to the amazing news of the Binky candidacy, and the US dollar promptly recovered its value. Numerous world leaders immediately pledged to support any and all American policy directives originating from this remarkable cat. The UN will meet in an emergency session within hours to discuss a joint resolution calling for Binky to be sworn in as President of the World after her term of office expires in the United States.

In related stories, the Fast Food Industry announced that henceforth “Freedom Fries” will be called “Binky Fries,” Microsoft was changing its name to Binkysoft, and the Eiffel Tower will be renamed the Binky Tower.

(The above image: Copyright © Doug Stych 2002 All Rights Reserved. That’s Binky in a tree in rural Oregon in the winter of 2001-2002. The image may be used for non-commercial purposes so long as it is properly attributed and a link to Doug’s Darkworld is included.)

Another week gone, another weekend upon us. More milestones in the decline and fall of the American Empire. Another attempt on my part to organize this blog in some cogent fashion. It’s kind of annoying really, posts like this are the most fun to write, but they get virtually zero follow up traffic. Still, when one is writing, follow your heart is good advice I have been advised. So I’m going to try to write a thick and thin post every Friday for awhile. This way I can wax poetic on all the developments of the week that I would like to write a stand alone column on, but don’t have time.

Starting off with, the moral police caught the governor of New York with a prostitute, so his career is over. People like to make fun of Iran or Saudi Arabia because of their moral police, yet here in the USA if a politician gets caught doing something “naughty,” Dear God we act like it’s the end of the world. Lie us into an endless trillion dollar war that has cost thousands of American lives and unleashed the worst calamity in the Middle East since 1948…get re-elected. Stick your penis somewhere it’s not “supposed” to be, your political career is over. Does this make sense to anyone?

And while we are on the unpleasant topic of the Bush administration, Admiral William Fallon, a senior American commander in the Middle East, just resigned under pressure. His crime was opposing a US attack on Iran. The Bush administration has zero tolerance for diverging opinions, so Fallon being forced out is not surprising. And it is eerily reminiscent of the run-up to the Iraq invasion where people critical of same were fired. Does this mean the USA is going to attack Iran? Beats me, but it certainly makes it more likely. My current thinking is that Bush won’t attack Iran till right after the election, since $20 a gallon gas isn’t going to be popular. What a parting gift for the next administration that will be.

Speaking of the election (yes, I have a segue fetish, deal with it) I am still putting my money on President McCain. And what a sad commentary that is on the election, the top runner is a guy so old he recently switched from a hair-stylist to a taxidermist. And if any of my gentle readers gets an email claiming that the Commies brain-washed McCain while he was a POW and we will be electing a Chinese sleeper agent to the presidency…I started that rumour. I had to do something to counteract the emails I get telling me that Obama is some sort of closet Muslim secretly preparing to institute sharia law on the USA.

Jeez, even writing about politics makes me feel dirty. How do people spend their lives immersed in it? Oh well, moving right along, genocide in Tibet. Yes, anti-Chinese riots have broken out in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. What was once a proud and independent land is slowly and deliberately being destroyed by China, but there’s no oil in Tibet and no will to oppose China so the end of Tibet as a culture and people is nigh. The Chinese are using the slow genocide method, they are simply settling so many ethnic Chinese in Tibet that Tibetan culture is being subsumed. I think two thirds of the population of Tibet is ethnic Chinese now, so the chances of Tibet ever re-emerging as a nation are remote to non-existent at this point.

In Iraq the violence seems to be going up again, attacks on American troops are on the rise. Does this mean the surge has failed? Not really, since the surge was primarily a PR gimmick to make it look like we were doing something about the mess in Iraq. The violence went down because the Mahdi army declared a cease fire and we started paying off some of the Sunni insurgents who were attacking us. The former had nothing to do with the surge, the later is little more than paying ransom to keep hostages alive. The ugly truth of the matter, and the truth that most Americans cannot bear to hear: the USA has little or no influence on events in Iraq. We built our bases, we installed a puppet government that is revelling in corruption (and ignoring our directives,) and that’s about that. We could sit in those bases a hundred years and nothing with change. Iraq is a troubled fractured land that we have zero understanding of or influence in.

And finally, the economy. How long did we think an economy based on Wal-Mart, MacDonalds, and casinos would last anyhow? If there’s any good news, I haven’t heard it. My giant vegetable garden is under way. Enough said. Happy Pi Day everyone, have a great weekend.

(The death of Jumbo the elephant, struck and killed by a train September 15th 1885. Afterwards he was stuffed and mounted, enabling him to carry on with his show business career until 1975.)