JetAge

Nuclear War Saves Humanity

2011-05-29T08:10:00.003-04:00

What if we had failed in the Cold War and a nuclear exchange between the USSR and the USA resulted in large tracks of both countries a nuclear wasteland and earth’s climate became a nuclear winter and many species driven to extinction? Humans survives, but just barely and earth’s human population returns to what it was when humans first walk out of Africa – only spread out in small groups all over the globe.

What if our chances for survival as a species where better in that scenario than the one we are living. The degradation of our environment with industrial waste, loading greenhouse gases into atmosphere, and yet to be determined changes brought on by an over populated world is going to bring more long term changes to this planet than the damage caused by a major nuclear war.

Only with in the last few generations, earth was way big enough to handle whatever we threw at it, but that is no longer true. While you never pee in your own tent, what happens when your tent is all there is? Our little world is now the world. We have reached a point when the whole world is our community, and like any good citizen, we need to maintain and keep our community healthy.

One of my earlier blogs, back in the days of weekly blogging, I wrote in praise of global warming. That we are capable causing global warming seemed a good thing when considering what climates the planet had experience in the past, naturally without any help from humans.

However, that argument stood on a foundation that we would wake up and realize we could control things and begin to do so. The longer we wait, the more damage is done, and next generations will have way more struggles ahead than if our generations was trying to come back after a nuclear war.

Who would have though that something so terrible would be better than where we currently headed?

Success! Sort of.

2011-01-09T10:05:00.004-05:00

I manage to stay up long enough to see Frank Rich's column and enter a comment.

I didn’t have much to work with, Obama and the Reagan revolution. While I didn’t do it in my comments, I should have pointed out that Reagan was an example of a Republican president with a Democratic congress.

Comment number fifty-seven (57). It is marked as being posted at 6:33 am, some seven hours after it was actually submitted. Twelve recommendations, a respectable number when compared to others but nothing to brag about. Comment 59 got the coveted Highlight. After reading the comment, I recommended it, too. Something I don’t normally do.

The important point is that to get noticed, you have to stay up Saturday, and submit you comment as soon as possible. Hopefully, you got something to say.

All Our Greatest Fears

2010-10-31T08:37:00.005-04:00

Trying to get a comment loaded into Frank Rich of the NYTimes' column at 8:30 am Eastern and I was too late. I'm just going to have to stay up all night and try it right after it's posted.

Here's Mr. Rich's column.

This would have been my comment had I gotten it in on time.

Thanks for the links. I appreciate your online column for great links, especially if it's one I missed on my own.

We are entering a legislative desert. Of all the permutations of which party holds which branch of government, a Democratic president with Republican control of either house of Congress is the second worst setup we could have.

A Republican president with a Democratic controlled Congress is the best. While as a group, Republicans march lockstep with only insignificant exceptions, control of Democrats is like herding cats. Enough independently minded Democrats will cross over and support a Republican president's initiatives and legislation will move forward. Unfortunately for us, the opposite is not true.

By the way, we just witnessed a Democratic president with his party's super majority in Congress. I don't know about you, but I couldn't tell the difference from a simple majority. Just shows how uncontrollable the Democratic Party is.

The worst permutation? A Republican president with a super majority in Congress. We will certainly need prayer in school should that ever happen. The Republican Country Club's hidden agenda mentioned in FR's column would be realized.

Scientific American is Wrong

2010-07-25T10:31:00.003-04:00

In their June 2010 cover story, 12 Events that will Change Everything, they got it wrong. They got some things right, but it is what they got wrong that is the problem.

I realize this is some time after the article appeared, but it has been bothering me ever since.

While their wild speculation about extra dimensions and asteroid collisions was a bit much and their dated or miss titled speculations of cloning of humans missed the mark, they left out at least three glaring probabilities. Here for your reading enlightenment if not pleasure, is some life shattering events that are going to occur:

Taking control of the DNA molecule. The article on cloning of humans highlights this, but it should have been the meat of the story. The code of life, the program by which each life is initialized, is found in the DNA molecule, and we are about to not only decode it, but to take control of it. Somewhat similar if not analogous to computers, we will run the program.

Not just human DNA, all of it - eventually. I don't know if that person is born yet, but one day here shortly - within the next 100 years - someone will be born who will be the first to live forever. We will take control of the DNA molecule and we will live forever. While aged we will become, infirmed we will not. Given the optimum age is the mid to late 20's, all humans will maintain their mid-20's forever. We may choose to move our awareness into something more durable than our carbon-based bodies. We will all become ironman or woman, or maybe sex will no longer matter.

Extinction Event. Their asteroid collision story should have gone in this future event. The more likely is something volcanic, maybe the inevitable Yellowstone caldera eruption, but a major extinction has happen several times since life arose on earth, and it will happen again. The questions is are human adaptable enough to survive it. And we may not only need to keep our own line going, but the line of anything we want to eat going too.

I could see a futuristic science fiction story about earth after an extinction event - well after the catastrophic survival and transition period - in which the only higher life forms are humans and the plants and animals humans designed to save in some sort of pastoral setting. Idealistic - except their pest and parasite would come with them.

An extinction event is so inevitable, I'm bothered by the fact that the only evidence we find is that of the dinosaurs and even lesser life forms. Plagues and climate change may contribute to an extinction event be will not cause massive extinctions by themselves. There may have been a minor extinction event in North America at the end of the last Ice Age that killed off all the large land animals including the Clovis culture. Today, such a castastrophe would be life changing for everyone on earth, including the future history.

Climate change. Lost in the fuss over global warming, is that climate change is inevitable. Global warming and global cooling are eventually going to happen. Like living forever mentioned above, I don't know if that person is born yet, but one day not to far off, someone will be born who will see the Florida Keys disappear beneath the waves, as well as coastal lands all over the world. And then there is the return of the ice. Something going on for millions of years is suddenly going to stop? I don't think so, homie, anymore than I think people will stop believing that the climate that has been around for the past ten thousand years is all there is. The climate is going to change and all that is affected by it will change too.

That's three things Scientific American got wrong. Of course, trying to predict the future is wrong too. Detemining what is inevitalbe is hard enough.

The Lucky BP Oil Spill Blunder

2010-06-06T11:41:00.001-04:00

We are lucky the BP Oil Spill Blunder occurred when it did. Obama had just opened offshore drilling just days before the well blew up. If this had occurred after BP had been allowed to sink wells with their profits before safety operations all up and down the coasts of America, if we had all these under regulated wells with faulty blowout devices off every coast line, we would be in a lot worse situation that we are now.

We can be thankful that at least it happened now and not later. The ruination of Louisiana coast line fishing and tourist industries will be sacrificed for us all, so it will not happen else where, or even worse, everywhere.

We can either regulate offshore dilling so this can never happen again, or at least not happen because the preventative measures where cut or restricted for the bottom line, or we can spend a lot more for gas or alternatives.

I've got a bottom line for you. BP should not be allowed to operate in the U.S. Any investigation of future blowouts that determines the blowout preventive device was not properly maintained or the well continued to operate with a faulty blowout device, all companies involved take full responsibility and cost for any clean up. Continuing to operate is acceptance of this responsibility, company officers and board members can be held accountable, and no dividends can be paid. That's the new bottom line.

Buffalo Steaks Tonight! Let's Celebrate Survival!

2010-05-23T10:40:00.004-04:00

The NYTimes had a story about Ted Turner Ranch turning a profit off of some Yellowstone buffaloes that strayed over on its property.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/us/22bison.html

Cows, chickens, pigs, dogs, cats and the word extinction are not used in the same sentence because they are either the food we eat or our pets. The American Buffalo's line is saved if it joins the club.

As crass and exploitative as the notion may be, it works. That is if keeping a great and wonderful species, the only member of America's large land animals that survived the great extinction event, going is your primary objective.

It's the Ratings, Stupid!

2010-04-18T11:35:00.002-04:00

Matt Taibbi has been raising a stink about Goldman Sachs and probably rightfully so, however, I don't see them as the big problem in the recent sub-prime housing bubble burst meltdown thingy.

He's getting a lot of coverage. (What is the new Internet word that means the same thing as the term coverage did in the days of print? Could it be links or clicks?) He's getting a lot of both links and clicks with the SEC saying the same thing he is, or investigating the same thing he is saying.

As bad as Goldman Sachs is, and I don't doubt much of what Taibbi writes, that is not the problem. They just took advantage of the problem. Good old American exploitation. What's wrong with that?

If only those sub-prime back investments had been rated to reflect their riskiness, much of what happen would not have occurred because the bubble would not have been funded to the bloated state it was. Much of the money would never have gone into such a risky investment instrument had investors been more wary of its way too good rating. It was the rating that was the problem.

When the new sub-prime loan backed bonds came out, the rating houses, Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s, and Fitch, wanted to be the ones that got the new business and if you want the banks producing these bonds to give you the business, you are not going to get it if you tend to rate their new product down. The banks claimed the bonds' diversity - or something like that - reduced their risk and the rating houses that were competing for the right to rate them, agreed.

The rating houses are working for the wrong people. They work for the seller. They should be working for the buyer, or at least the market. They should work for either the buyer or the market, but never the buyer unless you want what just happen. That's what needs to change.

Let Goldman Sachs do their dirty work as concerns like them have been doing and will continue to do. Just accurately rate their work for what it is, and then let the buyer beware.

All the News that Fits

2010-04-12T22:32:00.000-04:00

Fox News scares the hell out of me, and it should scare the hell out of you too.
Jim Jones is wanting you to drink some Kobool-Aide and it's called Fox News.

If you were in Germany in the 1920's would you join the Nazi Party? Or back here in this country, if you were standing around in the South and they were going to get a lynching going, would you join in even it you happen to know the black man they were going to lynch and you knew he was innocent?

If you and your family would be labeled as undesirable or forever different if you didn't join in, would you do it? It's easy to say you wouldn't. It's not so easy if that life was all there was, and if you didn't join in, you and your kind would be forever tarnished in the eyes of your neighbors.

There's a movement afoot and it's being pushed by the right, but they are playing with a fire that will consume them if they don't watch it. The Sarah Palins, Rush Limbaughs, and Glenn Becks of this world are playing with a fire that will consume us all, and yet, they keep at it, oblivious to the repercussions, only thinking of their careers, they push us toward an annihilation the likes of which scare the hell out of me.

Just saying.

Continuing Adventures at the New York Times (2)

2010-03-28T09:04:00.003-04:00

Failure. Again.

I got up really early to see if I could leave a noteworthy post on Frank Rich's column and before I could read and compose something I though might get a vote of recommendation, the site closed to further comments. It's not even 7:00 a.m., and site's closed.

I'm just going to have to stay up one Saturday night and get in when the getting is good.

Anyway, here is what I would have posted on Frank Rich column.

Wow! this is rich, Frank. Nicely written and well linked.

However, one point you did not mention when writing of the great what-was is that the clock is ticking.

How long before the current national health care becomes another liberal idea that is transformed over time to a foundation of conservative rights. Like that centuries old liberal belief that every individual had a right to bear arms that it was given near top billing in the Bill of Rights and is as bedrock with the old order as tea parties.

How long before the individual right to decent health care will become something you have to pry from conservatives' cold dead fingers? Tic, tic, tic.

Throw the Bums Out

2010-03-15T20:15:00.002-04:00

Congress is dysfunctional. Start over on health care may make a good sound bite on Fox News and the foundations of a shallow but effective political strategy, but it sends a message of failure for a deliberative body. Our government is a failure.

Democrats have proven they cannot lead even with a super majority, and Republican have proven that to them compromise means doing what they want and they will not budge from that position otherwise, and do it in lockstep -- which scares me on an whole 'nother level.

What can we do? No matter how much you hear about change or keeping the old fashion traditions, it all comes down the the same-old, same-old. Policy making, politics, will continue in the future as it has in the past. Get used to it.

However, we could send a message to Washington like they've never heard before and will shake them up the pols, lobbyist, and bureaucrats down to their self-serving bones. Send the message that you can continue to do what you do, but you'll only do it for one term.

Throw the bums out!

Stand up for America! Do your part. Vote this year for sure, but vote for anybody but the incumbent. Vote for the non-incumbent whoever it may be. Vote for the new guy or gal. Keep your part affiliation, if you must, but vote for someone not currently serving in Congress. Neither representative or senator shall return. Join the movement. Send a message to Washington. Enough is enough.

We rule this country and we've had enough. Either shit or get off the pot.

Iran Proves the Theory

2010-02-21T10:30:00.000-05:00

As religions go, Islam is no better or worse than any other. Among those that believe in the God that spoke to Abraham, it gets the major points across. However, Islam contains an element that is disruptive. A disruptive element that is tolerated, admired, and even praised as long as it is directed as Islam's enemies.

What only a few in Islam understand is that when there are no enemies of Islam, this disruptive element will turn on its host. It always has. It always will. It will destroy Islam itself.

Christianity contained these same disruptive elements, but they have been marginalized hopefully to extinction and history, although Fox News does keep serving up the Jim Jones' Kool-Aid. God forbid the self-righteous right should conceive of some sort of holiness in sending children to blow themselves and other innocent people up in the name of some Christian God.

The U.S. strategy should be leave Iraq and Afghanistan – but leave with ominous message. Give them an Arnold moment. We leave but we tell the war lords and tribal chiefs that if they allow those that would plot against the U.S. in their midst: "We'll be back." We tell Iran than any terrorist nuclear bomb explosion in the U.S. using nuclear material processed in Iran – and yes, we can tell where it came from – will be considered an attack from Iran, an act of war, requiring a full retaliatory response. Regime change would be the least of their worries.

And all this need not happen if we just leave Islam to itself. It will self destroy as readily as it sends its children to self destroy themselves. It's its own worse enemy. Islam cannot move into the twentieth century and here we are in the twenty-first.

What is going on in Iran proves the theory that Islam will destroy itself. What is going on in Iraq proves the theory that Islam cannot get along with its factions and that the coming great war in the Middle East will be between Sunnis and Shias.

The conflict between Jews and Arabs is relatively recent. For centuries, Jews were more accepted in the Sunni run states than Shias and could prosper in a way they never were allowed in Europe. The Sunnis treated the Shias worse than the Jews. So, the Israeli-Palestinian problem is solvable, but once that occurs, the clock starts ticking on the great Sunni-Shia war.

And the best thing America can do is get out of the way.

The Leno Shuffle

2010-02-07T11:42:00.003-05:00

I read a posting at the NYTimes where Dick Cavett weighted in with his opinion of the NBC-Leno-O'Brien fracas. He mentioned how it's known fact in his industry that interviews – no matter how rich and famous – will not work in primetime. Given the events at hand, it would seem this old TV saying still holds true.

Here is what I posted:

The network affiliates caused the blow up at NBC. And why not, their local news broadcast were losing ratings and advertising dollars with Leno's lead in, every night. The Hindenburg was a magnificent work just before it caught fire; the Jay Leno show in prime time was not. They should have spent more on writers. Leno had some good stuff but you can only do so much with an interview.

How NBC handled it and your comment on it – priceless!

All this proves is that just because reality TV is the latest fashion, interviews of the rich and famous will still not make it in prime time.

And as far as young viewers driving ratings and corporate decisions, I have one question: This is the demographic that was watching local news until Jay took over the lead-in timeslot? Give me a break.

Now we see just how much ratings Jay gets once he is up against Letterman. Like the affiliates, he is going to need all the rating bump he can get, hopefully from some new NBC rating phenomenon on late prime time. And to make things juicier, Letterman blackmail trial and all his affairs will be out there. Who you going to watch?

[End of posting]

It showed up on the fifth page of comments, item 106. Careful reading will show that it has been edited since it appeared in the NYTimes. And I got no recommendations. None! Zip!

How devastating. Do I feel like a small time nobody with a nobody avatar that nobody pays any attention worth a click of a recommendation button or what? At least I'm not making stupid decisions at NBC for everybody to see.

Why did they take Jay with the highest ratings in his late night timeslot off to begin with? This younger viewer demographic stayed away from Conan in droves as well a staying away from Jay in his new timeslot. Letterman was letting his dick screw him out any Johnny Carson future. Leno could have sailed into old age retirement with great ratings for both him and NBC, but no, we had to get smart.

Jay may still come back late night, but he is tarnished. This may all be washed away or covered up as the Letterman trials cranks up. Letterman should have never made fun of Leno's problems. If anybody lives in a glass house it is Letterman. And as is Leno bad habit, once he starts a cutting joke, it goes on and on, show after show, night after night, the same old shtick. That's one of the reasons he failed at prime time. I thought he would never go one night and not have Tiger Woods the butt of some joke. Jay didn't really get good until this whole fracus blew up.

And here's another thing I missed in my 2010 predictions. Not even spring and I missed something as simple as interviews not working in primetime.

Same-old Same-old Change

2010-01-31T09:17:00.002-05:00

Nothing like same-old same-old for the coming political perfect storm. If the state of the union address proves anything, it proves what has been going on is going to continue, or the more things change, the more they stay the same.

While Republican legislation can occur even without a majority as they march lockstep to advance their agenda, the Democrats had difficulties even with a super majority. Like herding cats, they move in a wild uncontrollable mass. They are still Will Rogers' party: I don't belong to an organized political party. I'm a Democrat. God bless them, they haven't changed in seventy years.

The only thing new this year – so far – is the Supreme Court's decision to allow businesses and other groups with money the right to influence the next election with political ads. The political ads that will really be good will be the ones that look like the commercials for something else entirely. We will not see it coming, their hidden persuaders quietly tucked away, firing within our subconscious all manner of responses.

Perhaps the unrestrained financing of campaign ads will give the Republicans the congressional seats of their dream. However, I can't get away from Leno's shtick "How Long Will It Take". How long before the conservatives, including the right-wingers on the bench, realize they have opened Pandora's Box?

When it comes to same-old same-old type government, I believe the most effective is a Republican president with a Democratic congress.

We have just seen a Democratic president with a super majority in congress. Not a whole lot of difference when the Democrats just have a majority.

A Republican president with a majority in Congress is a process of undoing what the Democrats have done, and a Republican super majority is scary. No one wants a group that has a tendency to self righteously march lockstep to have a super majority.

A Democratic president with a Republican majority is the foundation on which gridlock is defined. If the new kid on the campaign ad block has any affect on this October's election, we might see this for the next two years at the least. Remember, all representatives have to run. All their seats are up for grabs. Even though it was a special election, Massachusetts proves they are no sure seats.

A Republican president with a Democratic congress is our best hope for getting anything done. Enough of those unherdable cats in the Democratic Party will cross over and support the Republican president to get needed legislation passed. Something that is not going to happen when the reverse comes true.

The 2010 Perfect Storm

2010-01-24T10:03:00.000-05:00

Not a month has passed since my 2010 predictions and already my inability to see what is coming is apparent. While I don't mind missing the earthquake in Haiti, since natural disasters can and will happen anytime, I'm cut to my prognostication quick by the other political earthquake. The Republican upset in Massachusetts and the Supreme Courts decision to allow corporations and unions to pay for political campaigns ads for and against candidates will reverberate through out the rest of the year and I didn't see it coming.

Like a perfect storm, wouldn't you just know it would happen in an election year? The conservatives are already giddy with their triumph in Massachusetts, and now with the court's decision, the conservative businesses and CEO's can fill the airways with their brand of politics. While liberal geeks and technocrats may have been the first to realize the significance of the new invention, television as mass communications, the conservative cavemen finally caught on and have become its master.

How and why the Massachusetts quake occurred is the mystery in this political who done it. How much did Martha Coakley loose it and how much did Scott Brown win it? How much of the Fox News cool aide is being consumed in such a blue state? Supposedly, the great unwashed of Mass. objected to a national health care bill that was very similar to their state health care program currently in place? The pundits are trying to tell me the tsunami on the polls was over something they already have. Something is amiss here.

The quake in Mass. Is more about anti-government than anti-democrat or health care. Anti-government can go against Republicans just as it can go for them. But they don't see that. Drunk with celebration, feeling vindicated in there movement, they will rush into the fire thinking they are inflammable. In their drunkenness, they will get into the car and DUI on a complex highway.

And to string out the drunken metaphor, the court's decision makes DUI legal. However, as legal as it might be, drunk driving still kills, and that is what will bring the Republicans down. While the Democrats cannot organize, the Republicans organize way too much.

Democrats remind me of Mark Twain's story of the drunk returning home and stumbling repeatedly trying to get in his front door. Finally sprawled on his front stoup, he looks up and says, "God pity the poor sailors out at sea on a night like this!" If only Bush had the majority the Democrats still have, he and his movement conservative could have enacted their entire agenda.

I kind of agree with the conservative members of the court. Free means free to all. I believe in the ideal, but it's the implementation and practice that bothers me. Only a jaundice eye will detect the message in some political ads. 1984 here we come. We won the Cold War. We overthrew the communist and don't have to worry about a central government controlling everything we see and hear, and then we go and do it to ourselves – freely. We have met the enemy and he is us.

Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

Looking for a Bush Moment

2010-01-18T09:23:00.000-05:00

With the earthquake in Haiti sucking up all the news oxygen, the movement conservatives are looking for Obama to do a Bush Moment. If he would just fly over the island as Bush did New Orleans after Katrina, a photo of him looking over the devastation would be grist for the Fox New mill. The same Bush photo would be forgotten like terrorist attacks during the Bush administration are forgotten when they complain of the increase number of attacks under Obama.

Conservative bias: If the truth doesn't fit the goals of the movement, lie. If history does not justify the movement, rewrite it until it does.

If only Biden was available to send to Haiti. Damned that period of morning! He would be good for a gaff. The Fox New people can show the liberal news elite how they should have exploited Bush's verbal blunders.

Liberals are suppose to be the smart ones, the ones with the enlighten education, the tech savvy, trend setting, stylish leaders of the modern world, and yet, the conservatives out wit and maneuver them continuously. It's as if the Neanderthals caught the Geico gecko and ate it.

Predictions for 2010

2010-01-08T11:23:00.002-05:00

Time once again for the annual predictions for the year. But before we spin the coming year, let's review last year's predictions and see just how well we did.

Predictions for 2009:

1. Something will go wrong with the idealistic government that is being formed by the man selected because he offered hope for a change. It could be something brutal, extreme, and life ending for one or many, or it could be something slow, scandalous, and life ruining but a nonetheless end of what was hoped.

This didn't happen. The current low approval rating should be expected for someone who had such high approval when he began, but there were no brutal, extreme life ending event nor were there anything scandalous that brought the man or his party down. Democrats struggle to pass a health care bill even with a filibuster-proof majority is just Democrats being democrats – nothing new with Will Rogers' party inability to organize itself even when a super majority.

2. Although the full impact of the recession will be felt in the first half of
this year, by the end of the year, recovery will appear.

I believe this happened, or is happening. The slowness of the recovery makes it suspect, but the bale out of the economy worked. However, the job benefiting results have been the meanest of trickle -downs.

3. Our involvement in Iraq will continue for another year as we prop up the current Iraqi government, that is unless one or both of the following does not happen:
a. Something big and bad is going to happen. It always has in the
past. It could be like Tet in Vietnam, which by the way the Americans won, or like the Marine barracks in Lebanon, or something big, blooded, and laden with doom, gloom, and damnation.
b. A person or a group will feel they have enough power to take over Iraq and view the Americans as an interference, in which case the above action will be even more precipitous.

4. The current government in Afghanistan is so corrupted, that Afghanis will turn back to the Taliban because even though they are extremist in their government, they are at least not as corrupted as the current administration. This will reach a boiling point in Afghanistan and we
will be invited to leave. I’m not sure this prediction will mature this year, but that this will occur is a foregone conclusion. It is as written in the terrain of the land and the faces of Afghanis as it is written in books.

Neither number 3 with all its qualifications nor number 4 has happened - yet.

5. The prison at GitMo will be closed, or at least closed for all practical
purposes.

Closed, no. Closed for all practical purposes, yes.

6. Alabama will win the college football BSC.

Got that one right.

Well I missed a lot. I though sure something would ruin Obama's administration but he and his advisors have made smart choices – given the choices they had – and kept the administration viable. Obama's decision to double down in Afghanistan jerked the rug out from under the conservative pro-war crowd, so they are only left with general liberal basing and a desperate game of fault finding, searching for anything to stick the Obama administration.

Predictions for 2010:

1. The Obama administration will end the year pretty much as it begins. Some sort of health care package will pass. Obama approval rating will improve just because he is able to hang on.

2. Iraq will continue with the U.S. maintaining a status quo that doesn't really exits, a farce that will end as soon as we leave.

3. The Afghanistan build up will appear a success but the hopelessness of the policy will also become known to anyone with any real intelligence.

4. The economy will steadily improve, jobs will begin to return, markets will end significantly higher than the beginning of the year.
5. Castro dies, this year for sure.
6. GITMO will close.

7. Alabama will with the college football BSC again.

Well there it is. This year I'm going for normalcy, good old Warren G. Harding normalcy. Instead of dread, doom, and events, I'm going same-old, same-old.

That's a sure sign something will happen. We'll see.

Don't Pay the Ransom

2009-12-29T12:01:00.002-05:00

Don't Pay the Ransom, Honey, I've Escaped is the name of a little know country song in which the protagonist text messages his wife after staying out all night and knows he needs a really good excuse to explain his absents.

I don't know if the excuse worked, but it sure makes a good country song, and I'm wondering if it works for delinquent blog postings too.

Why have I not posted? I've been really, really busy. I need a new computer (If you've read my Dell Hell postings, you know what I mean.) and I don't want to work on the one I got. The luster of blogging has lost its sheen and become a chore. I was never able to post a comment on Frank Rich's column early enough to get noticed and I didn't want to do anything else until I did that.

All the above is true, but that's no excuse when the intent was write for the sake of writing. To paraphrase Churchill: it's the planning not the plan that's important. That is true of writing also. So if I don't blog, the writing suffers.

Like staying away from the gym, the health suffers. I need to get in there and bench-press some prepositions – see if I can notably dangle a few – run on some sentences, endurance testing even myself, and bulk out my writing physique.

Continuing Adventures at the New York Times

2009-10-03T10:42:00.006-04:00

Continuing with the exciting story of last week, I looked and looked and never found my comment posted. And so I got up what I thought was early and posted a new comment last Sunday's (Sept. 27) Frank Rich column. It was a little after 8:00 when I logged on.

I dutifully read Mr. Rich's column and tried to compose a comment that would attract recommendations. I posted at 8:30, and then I waited.

And I waited. I finally found it the next day. Finally it a appeared as shown below.

A comment submitted at 8:30 am was finally was posted at 1:18 pm, and it was 250 in the count. I really do need to get up early or maybe even stay up and post that night if I'm ever going to get an early position and a better chance at those elusive recommendations. Even at two hundred and fiftieth, I got one recommendation, so I just got to get posted earlier.

I thought I was not showing up because my opening line poked fun at Frank Rich's name, and they warn of abusive or defamatory language, and I thought they were just being overly sensitive, but it was because I was posting late in this game. I was being overly slow.

We shall see what we shall see. Stay tuned. And here is the post as it appeared in the New York Times:

Comment on Frank Rich Column

2009-09-20T09:09:00.005-04:00

I got up early this morning to comment on Frank Rich's column just to see if it would get noticed and the test of that is "reader recommendations". I have noticed in the past that the earlier birds get the recommendation worms, so I'm testing to see it I can catch a few myself.

I did not get up as early as I should have. When I began reading the column, no comments were posted, but by the time I had finished and composed my little ditty, 37 comments had been posted. There's probably hundreds already in the comment queue, waiting to be reviewed prior to posting. So, if this doesn't work, if my post is too far down in the list of comments, I'll try an even earlier time next time.

Here is what I posted:

Let's be frank, Rich.

Some people just got to hate. Extreme prejudice against anyone or anything different is as natural as nature itself. We tell ourselves human beings are supposed to be different, but unfortunately, we are not, or we are not for a significant portion of society.

Some people have got to fix their hate on something, somebody, or some group. They are not truly happy or content in their life unless they do. Rational thought of why or how come has nothing to do with this. It's emotional. It's basic unconscious autonomic response, and it is a part of some peoples' lives as much as food and oxygen.

The Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs, George Wallaces, and Adolf Hitlers of the world tap into and mine this rich and rewarding vein for their own purposes. And it's not just the great unwashed on the right. As your ref to Michael Moore indicates, it going down on the left, too. It's just more prevalent on the right. It's part and parcel to being a conservative.

I've posted elsewhere about liberal ideas becoming conservative foundations over time, i.e. when the second amendment was originally stuck into the Bill of Rights it was a very liberal concept. Royalty and the ruling classes could certainly carry and use weapons at their discretion, but the very idea of a commoner having the right to keep a gun was eat up with liberalism. Wrap your cold dead fingers around that, Mr. Right-wingnut.

Also, as any political advisor worth his salt will advise, don't mess with Social Security if you want to get elected. Hopefully, one day universal heath care for all will be like that. And those on the right can begin wrapping their fingers around it as if it was their own.

End of Frank Rich comment.

So, now we wait. I'll keep you posted.

Oh, and here's the link to the post about liberal ideas becoming conservative foundations.

Late update: As of 5:14 my time, my comment had not been posted. I scanned all 637 comments and did not see it. Either it was found offensive (My "Let's be frank, Rich." may have got me kicked out), or they get so many comments, they never got to mine even this late in the day, or I just missed it. At any rate, I didn't get to test if getting a comment in early gets readers recommendations.

So, I'll just have to get up earlier and run this test again. Stay tuned.

Krugman's Economic Roundup

2009-09-13T11:08:00.003-04:00

Wow! Do they have a Nobel Prize in journalism? No on second thought, using a term synonymous with noble together with "journalism" is a bit oxymoronic.

Anyway, Krugman's roundup of just how all - or most - of the economists got it wrong in the recent economic unpleasantness renews my faith that the American economy is still the poster child of chaos theory. Perhaps the Keynesian economists and the free-market thinkers are nothing more than strange attractors in chaos theory.

Two things not mention in Krugman's article – or maybe it was and I just missed it – was expectations of investors and the other was the Cold War.

In the collapse of the whole sub-prime based financial investment instruments, if only investors had known the true risk. These packaged risky investments did not have the diversify risk their rating would seem to indicate. The rating houses did a great disservice to the economy. They sold their souls (their credibility) to the devil for the huge revenues to be made rating this new investment. The rating house that gave the highest rating to these new untried and untested instruments got the most business, and of course, profits. Had investors known the true risk involved with these sub-prime backed instruments, the risky investments would have only been for those who like to take risk – market players.

The sub-prime backed investment sellers would not have been as able to raise money to further their risky operation by loaning more money to those that any rational evaluation tells you they cannot pay. The eventual economic collapse may have been more the usual restriction or downturn, not the wiping out of investment strategies. The rating houses work for the seller not the buyer, and it should be the other way around. Their incentive should come from how well their rating of a bond proves true, not how much business they can get from the sellers.

Next, the winning of the Cold War at the end of the previous century proved that free markets are more productive than planned economies. The strategy of détente was the most important decision made during the Cold War. It was not the forces with the strongest, most powerful army but the one with the more efficient economy that won, and this could only occur if peace reigned. Like the legend of the emperor with no clothes, communism's centralized planning, no mater how well controlled or planned, could not keep up with free markets – and with peaceful co-existence, everyone could see it and acted accordingly, and communism as a future economic concept began to die. While not all countries of given of the communist ghost, they will always be at a disadvantage against free market economies.

What lesson can we learn from this? While I like the headline: If it's too big to fail, it should be regulated. In our rush to fix what we perceive as problems in a free market, let's not do away with what drives, incentivizes, and produces the return that so recently defeated a more plotting and planning foe.

A simple tweaking is all that is needed. Re-direct the incentives for the rating houses, but leave the free market, and in this case, the free financial market alone. Had the riskiness of the sub-prime investments been shown in the lower than acceptable ratings, investors betting the rest of their lives would not have bought it, and the sub-prime back investments would have been the playground for those players looking for risk.

And we could have all lived happily ever after.

GOP Death Squads

2009-08-29T08:54:00.000-04:00

The consideration of government funded euthanasia counseling is just an extension of Obama's highly successful Cash for Clunkers.

What did wonders for the car industry – and needless to say the environment – will do the same for the healthcare industry and its environment.

Time Travel: If it was up your ass, you'd know

2009-08-16T10:35:00.002-04:00

An article in Slate about the movie The Time Traveler's Wife, or more, about time travel in general since it laid down some fundamental ground rules on time travel caught my attention. I left a comment but somehow – most likely the ineptness of my posting – it got forever lost "in the Fray" of Slate. I had two basic principles that should be maintained when and if we ever learn to travel in time.

In looking for my comment to see if I got any replies or rating, I ran across a reply by the author of article, Dave Goldberg, a physicist no less. He covered one of the ground rules I had specified in my comment, and more importantly, offered a link to his blog, where he covered it even greater.

I'm way out of my league here since he and certainly some of those leaving comments are physicist while I am only a devotee, but that never stop me from commenting before, and since this is all about time, certainly not now. This is my comment to Mr. Goldberg's A User's Guide to the Unverse.

[Begin comment]
Your put off of the concept of conservation of energy and matter is a bit too flippant. Did this not point to the neutrino long before we found it? Is this not the only concept that illuminates dark matter? Is it not a basic concept in both the space-time relativity camp and those in the quantum group? It does not say we cannot travel in time. It just says that if we do, energy and matter will be conserved – and some would add momentum, but let's keep it simple.

One possible theory: atoms and/or energy are exchanged between two different times. Or maybe, you are right and the same mundane, identical atom can exist at two different places simultaneously, but the conservations equation is satisfied elsewhere.

Another fundamental I would add to your list is the constraints we currently face in the three dimensions we do travel, not even considering time. Your left hand cannot be your right hand. If you are moving in one direction, you cannot be moving in the opposite direction. Moving up while the elevator is going down only means the rate of descent has decreased. (True, both of these should include that time bitch, simultaneous, but simple solutions to complicated concept should be kept…simple.) The point is we are constrained in how we travel in the three dimensions we have mastery. The same should be true of the time dimension. This could explain the "grandfather paradox" or that pool ball thingy.

Another mind game you might play in trying to come to grips with time travel is to imagine how an individual from a two dimension world would experience our three dimension world. How would they comprehend that third dimension? Insights here could translate to insights about this fourth dimension in which we can only travel in one direction by experiencing it.
[End of comment]

Anyway, that was my comment. As to the title of this post: it's Navy unofficial jargon. While doing time in the Navy, I soon discovered that whenever you went looking for something or somebody and you made the mistake of asking a group of sailors if they knew the whereabouts of that for which you were seeking, the response ad nauseam: If it was up you ass, you'd know. A truism if ever there was one.

Autogoogling Health Care

2009-07-19T10:07:00.001-04:00

In the heath care debate presently before the body politic, before anyone expresses an opinion, either in support, against, or offering an alternative, they should state the answer to two questions:

1. What sort of heath care program do you currently have?

2. Have you, someone in your family, or someone you know closely been faced with a major medical expense or ongoing, constant expense?

Stating the answer to these two questions, up front, before anything else is said, colors everything that comes after. Once I know that, I know what baggage the opinion brings.

For instance: While I don't know who or how much a U.S. senator or his family has suffered a medical catastrophe, I know the senator has a rather good heath care program – all government employees do. I take this into consideration whenever I hear a senator or representative issue statements on the current heath care packages.

Anyone who has faced today's medical expenses with a heath care program that has protected everything else of value knows that heath care insurance is essential for a normal lifestyle. That is if anyone thinks leaving anything to their children is normal, or even having children is normal. Their opinion as compared to someone who has never had or needed much heath care would be quite different in regards to universal heath care.

I don't think wealth is a major factor since medical expenses today can drain even the largest of holdings in a very short period. We are all in the same boat as far as to the impact of expenses. What separates us is our ability to buy the insurance or access to a group plan.

And that's the sort of information that should be on the table for all to see before an opinion is ever issued. This self declaration needs a name, like the health care declaration or testament, or personal spin or disclosure, or how about autogooling heath care.

Jesus Was A Liberal

2009-07-05T11:50:00.003-04:00

Conservative Bias (2) was going to the title of this post, but when I stumbled on "Jesus was a liberal", I had to go with that – and add this blog to the 7.1 million Google results.

While Liberal Bias is an oxymoron, Conservative Bias is way too true.

For Conservative Bias believes half truths are sometimes better than whole truths -- especially if the truths involved are of the emotional kind. Race, country, and religion are prime areas where half truths are preferred to the point of fighting and killing to whole truths even when the whole truth is the complete opposite of the cause for which all the fighting and killing was done.

For example:

Accepting the benefits of science even to the point of exploiting and capitalizing on discoveries and yet rejecting the science of evolution entirely.

Co-opting history and turning what is a liberal war, The American Revolution, into some kind of conservative benchmark.

Claiming to be the first. Is it really true that Americans of European and Native American descent are more closely related than either to the Kennewick Man? And while Kennewick Man is related to people in the West (from America's point of view), Clovis technology appears related to that of the East. Who were the first? Half-truths allow many to claim it, but science does not substantiate it.

Every Arab carries the Crusades on his shoulder like some kind of chip while either overlooking or gushing with exaltation the conquest of Islamic based empires in which the term "convert or die" was a catch phrase.

The Christians' founder was crucified by religious intolerance, and yet they are past masters in its practice. (Pass judgment on the least of my children and you pass judgment on Me. Seems many a self-righteous Christian is standing in the courtyard calling for Barabbas – without truly realizing it.) And to top it off, Jesus was a liberal. He was eat up with liberal bias. So many of the rightwing nuts, extremist for the conservative cause, cling to that good old time religious. (Woops! Wasn't that an Obama gaffe?) At any rate, it was all founded by a liberal. Who would of thought?

Jesus was ("is" – depending on your belief) a liberal. Is that like that what kind of car would Jesus drive thingy from a few years back?

Wow! I seemed to have gone off course, but the way it is with half-truths

The punch line in Colbert's mockery that truth has a liberal bias is the truth within it. In fact, if the term "liberal bias" is not an oxymoron, it is a synonym for truth. It has to be by the shear definition of terms. (Click the oxymoron link above for more on this.)

And Conservative Bias is a lie, but it's for a good cause, so that makes it justifiable – or so they claim.

Conservative Bias

2009-06-14T13:05:00.001-04:00

Frank Rich's Sunday morning column is about the OReilly's and Limbaugh's of the world are enablers of recent hate crimes. I left the following comment.

While we hear way too much about liberal bias – which by the way is an oxymoron* – what we don't hear are examples of conservative bias, the very subject of your column.
Conservative bias is a biasness Orwell would love. If the history does not fit, re-write it. Famous founding papers currently housed in monumental buildings in DC were flamingly liberal when they were written are now the foundation on which conservatives stand and will defend with their last clinched fist.

The Revolutionary War was a liberal's war, and yet conservatives lay claim to it and its "Tea Party", as though, in their Orwellian minds, taxation without representation equates to taxation with it.

Conservative bias promotes yelling fire in a crowed theater, introducting political viruses that spam and corrupt like computer viruses, and touch and stroke all the lesser attribute of the human experience. They do all this for the sake of their cause, immersed in so much self-righteousness, they are blind to what they do.

Or maybe they are blinded by ratings.

*The words "liberal bias" have opposing meaning in this context. If a message is truly liberal, then it can't be bias, and if it's bias, then it can't be liberal. Liberals, we are told, have bleeding hearts for every person no matter how small their minority and species no matter how insignificant they may be. They are so fair it makes you want to puke. They can't be such bleeding hearts of fairness and biased unfairness at the same time – except in conservative bias.

Sell Your Soul for Security

2009-05-25T10:23:00.001-04:00

Would you sell your soul for security?

Sounds like the opening lines in some story I had to read in American Lit…Daniel Webster or Mark Twain or somebody like that.

However, this question is no dead writer's conundrum or some school morality play by bored adolescences dreaming of the big time. It's being played out right now. Obama gives a speech in Constitutional Hall or some place like that with a bunch of Founding Father type dudes in old pictures behind him. I don't know where Cheney spoke. Some conservative think tank, truth-in-policy special interest group like Friends for Truth in America, or a Republican Party enclave, which is the same thing and makes one question the term "think tank".

And the blogs went wild.

Did Obama know Cheney was going to give the speech he gave or was it the other way around?

I wrote the Explainer at Slate magazine the following:
In the recent speech off on Gitmo, whose speech was scheduled first? I know Obama spoke before Cheney by a few minutes, but whose speech was scheduled first? Who knew the other was speaking – first?

I don't know if those explainers over at Slate will take up the question and give us insight into how this bit of political maneuvering came about, but I'm thinking Cheney or his folks found out about Obama speech and decided to respond – or more to react, as that is a hallmark for this group.

Cheney is definitely a character from Dr. Strangelove, but I can't decide if he is General Buck Turgidson or General Jack D. Ripper.

Maybe appealing to people's lesser instincts is like doing dope. The conservatives just can't give up a good argument that has served them so well in the past. Trying to touch a nerve that has kept them in power is just to tempting a maneuver. They can't keep from doing it. They just can't say no.

If you have read this blog, you know I think they should close Gitmo. And at a MoDo post here. They should have never opened it. It's wrong, it's an abomination, it's French or Russia or German or Japanese, but it's not American. Some how it has gotten out in the world that Americans are softies who can be taken advantage of, who have no international understandings, and who in spite of all these short coming built the system that everyone wants to emulate in some form or fashion. Our system is our best asset.

We don't need to torture people to see it our way. Sitting through another beach movie should be torture enough for anyone or a waterboarding of reality TV until you agree to whatever I'm trying to sell. That's the type of torture for which Americans are noted. As flippant as I might be, part of the torture technique at Gitmo was playing really bad rock'n'roll, really loud, for a really long time. What is torture to someone from an obscure valley in Afghanistan is heaven to a valley girl. But who's counting?

To continue with facilities like Gitmo and the rendering of prisoners to places that would not be allowed on U.S. soil, is selling our collective soul for the sake of security. I have security but I lost my soul. Is that a fair trade off?

People stood by a watched as Native Americans were move to a less threatening part of the country and Americans of Japanese origin when concentrated in the name of security, and now we say we were wrong. We lost a bit of our soul then, and we are losing it now as long as Gitmo stays open.

Water Board until Brain Washed

2009-05-17T11:14:00.002-04:00

I posted this comment over at MoDo's site. She was going on about how Pelosi got caught in that political tar-baby: Americans don't do torture, waterboarding is torture even if it can't kill. What did you know and when did you know it? Is this going to be Hitchcock's MacGuffin in some sort of liberal McCarthyism?

At any rate, I remembered the story from the Godfather of the man who came to ask a favor during the Godfather's daughter's wedding, knowing that by tradition the Godfather must try and fulfill, and he told of the Italian solider POW who was working in his bakery and had developed a relationship with his daughter. The wedding petitioner wanted the Godfather to try and keep the boy in America after the war so he could marry his daughter. It was in the book. I don't remember if it was in the movie, but it got me to thinking about how we have treated the POWs we hold.

Anyway here is what I posted. I like going back the next day and seeing if I'm selected for "Editor Choice" or how many votes of recommendation I can get. I have not done very well with MoDo, Frank Rich, and Krugman, but so it goes. Here it is with, alas, editorial corrections.

I remember growing up reading stories of POWs held by the "Greatest Generation" during WWII. Atrocity occurred as they always do in war, and the old line come marketing segue "What happens on the battlefield stays [on] the battlefield" is timeless, but once the captured enemy was institutionalized by the system, their treatment generally improved.

After the war, Japanese POW told stories of how they feared prior to their capture that they would be eaten by the Americans or treated worse than animals – and there is nothing worse than Japanese animal husbandry – and discovered that the living conditions were better than whatever small island they were stationed prior to capture. Stories of ex-POWs who had been held here in the United States returned here after repatriation because even during their incarceration, they saw something like nothing they had at home before the war and they wanted to be a part of it.

We can be sure nothing like that will happen to the GitMo detainees. None of the previous inmates will be bringing flowers to the hospital for some ailing, older Bush as the ex-POW in the Godfather did for the old Don – and later saved his life with Michael. That's never going to happen.

We have created at GitMo the next generation of iconic heroes for Islamic extremist. Move over Osama, the GitMo vets are coming back and moving in with a vengeance. And they will return in fold the hell they received from us. The policy of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Neocons, and their enabler Bush will bear a fruit they never considered - and unintended consequences is the benchmark of their administrations.

Welcome the 21st Century.

Liberals Arise! Take Back Your History.

2009-05-10T18:26:00.004-04:00

Events have transpired recently that makes me feel that some sort of Orwellian rewriting of history is occurring, and most of the rewriting is taking place on the right.

I saw a bumpers sticker that joked about the founding fathers being an extreme right-wing organization. Just last week, I saw a political cartoon making fun of Homeland Security's latest gaffe about the threat of returning veterans joining right wing groups, and indirectly – or maybe well planned – that the signers of the Declaration of Independence were those self same right wing radicals. Mitt Romney with Jeb Bush along side referred to liberals as playing the role of monarchist in the revolutionary war. He specifically said Democrats but connecting them to those latte-drinking liberals as the bad guys in the Revolutionary War and the sons of political dynasties were with the good guys – the revolutionaries, if you can believe it.

Google "founding fathers" and any terms referring to the "right wing" and you'll get all kinds of hits in the web, blog, or even news search areas. This springs new fashioned "tea parties" that reference the Boston Tea Party, and somehow in their Orwellian minds, taxation with representation is the same as taxation without it. While that is a stretch, their attempt to take over early American history is not. Like liberal bias, taxation is the great bugaboo that has always worked for conservatives and maybe it will work now.

However, their attempt to seize the history of the American Revolution as conservative movement is a prime example of conservative bias: if the history doesn't fit, rewrite it.

Two great wars have been fought on the North American continent (let's exclude Canada here, I'm on a roll), and both were liberal wars. They were the American Revolution and the Civil War. Though not all the participants in these wars were liberals in today's terms, they would be judged liberal in their time, and certainly their cause was about as liberal as you could get. The Declaration of Independence is chocked full of liberal bias.

The Bill of Rights is liberal ideals become the law of the land. Mr. Peabody, have Sherman set the WayBack for the 18th century. While the ruling class had equality and protection, commoners did not. That the average citizen would have equal rights and protection under a new order called the "rule of law" was one hot liberal idea at the time. Freedom from government sponsored and enforced religion was – and still is – a liberal idea.

Oh how soon we forget. Liberals ideals become conservative bedrock over time.

We should appreciate and congratulate conservatives for highlighting our history, but let's not forget from whence it came. The Revolutionary War was pushed by liberals and after this country became independent of England, they changed a loose federation of states into single nation under a constitution. This was done by liberals. The Revolutionary War was the liberals' war. The transformation of a confederation of states into a federal republic under a constitution was a liberal plot.

At lease I have not heard of any on the extreme right claiming a kinship to the Civil War. While their party of choice was founded on the liberal concept of ending or at least stopping the spread of slavery, they have touched on this only lightly. "The party of Lincoln" is mentioned almost apologetically.

Seems the liberals have a great opportunity to plant an IED (improvised exploitive device), allowing those right wing nuts go on and on about their identity with the founding fathers, slowing entwining themselves and their cause in the birth pains of this nation, and BANG! It was the liberals' war! Oh, the horror.

But that won't happen. Liberals can no more exploit a political blunder by the right, than the right cannot when the situation is reversed.

Liberals are Cylons

2009-04-25T19:00:00.000-04:00

Battlestar Galactica finished up its season. A modern morality play if ever there was one. All the characters were boringly normal – only more so.

Cylons are artificial intelligence run amok. Why artificial intelligence in the most extreme of computing capacity would choose to redesign itself in human form is beyond me. However, it makes perfect sense in this morality play. Cylons represent all our fears of computers and machines taking over. It is as if the HAL 9000 from 2001 Space Odyssey had flow into the black monolith – and then returned.

And just as Cylons are the epitome of computer design, with all its computing capacity and instant logic, so too are liberals the epitome of philosophy and political theory. Liberalism is a byproduct of education as surely as hygiene is a byproduct of our learning of infectious agents and contamination.

The ultimate liberal schema, Communism, proved to be a failure. The best five-year plans in all the planned economies of the communist world with their absolute control of all aspects of the economy could never compete with the chaos of free markets. The fruits of chaos were more bountiful than planned fruits.

And yet, liberals keep trying. Somehow there must be a way to take all our knowledge and philosophies of how we should live and apply them as diligently as we industrialize our other technological innovations. Like Cylons with all the computing bandwidth wanting to be human, liberals seem to believe they can concoct some perfect system in which everything is equal.

If liberals are the Cylons of BSG, conservatives are the humans. Emotional and irrational to a fault, they struggle against the Cylons for not only existence but a richer life. The humans prefer to decide things based on gut feeling instead of intellectual judgment. And like humans possessing some inherit ability that Cylons want to obtain, conservatives with their free market economies obtain life styles for everyone that are richer than the best of the planned economies can provide for all.

Liberals are so Cylons.

Business Lost Its Cool

2009-03-15T20:19:00.002-04:00

Michael Douglas' Gordon Gekko told us "Greed is Good," in 1987 and the idea survived the aftermath of the dot.com bubble of 95-01, mainly by getting into what became the housing bubble. However, "greed" – and the idea of making money at any cost, by any means – has lost its charm in the current economic crisis. Some derivatives of our free market system are not so good. This was made evident when Jim Cramer appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

And the blogs went wild.

Jon Stewart appeared on Crossfire, condemned their deck chair arrangement on what appeared in the fall of 2004 to be a Titanic political ship of state – little did we know then – and the next thing you know, the show is off the air. America got itself stuck in another no win situation and who was eventually caught in the crossfire? Seemed their political bantering became so irrelevant and Stewart deflated all the gas out of the gas bags and suddenly CNN had no show to show.

And now he and his show have attacked CNBC.

His attack is on CNBC for not reporting at least something of the coming collapse struck a cord with the fashionable cognoscenti. I mean how could something so big go so unnoticed? Others saw it coming or saw something coming. Krugman at the NYTimes kept commenting on when the bubble was going to burst. As Stewart said, they were part of the problem not part of the solution.

Are they a news organization or a bunch of cheerleaders?

Jim Cramer and his friends no longer get to sit at the cool table with all the cool kids. Business has lost its cool. Business is a bunch of geeks and nerds who were never really cool but appeared that way for a short period because they were successful. But they are not successful now.

In fact, they got us all in a lot worse situation than before. How cool is that?

Dear Mr. Rich

2009-03-08T11:06:00.003-04:00

Today's Frank Rich opinion in the NYTimes brought out a comment from me. Here is what I posted.

Before the bubble burst, during loan negotiations from my local bank, I thought they were going to require me to give blood and hand over my first born. Now, I understand my local bank is sound while wilder, more speculative but significantly larger banks are at risk of default.

The current crisis pales in comparison to a greater threat we overcame recently: Communism. The economic structure of communism was a threat to the foundation of capitalism. However, planned economies, no matter how many 5-year plans, could not out perform the randomness of free markets, and by the last quarter of the previous century, this became evident even to the most common of men in all countries of the world. Communism died without the bloody necessity of the Second World War against fascism.

Tyranny will be with us as long as the power > corruptions connection holds true, but threat of a change in the structure of our economy has passed – for now. What we didn't tell all those peoples that chose free markets over a planned economy was a good cop/bad cop form of self-regulation known as boom and bust.

Planned economies remove the busts, everyone shares equally, we all suffer equally together, but they also remove the booms, and this is what gave free markets their edge in the recent competition. Right now, it's hard for us to remember that when the next boom comes, it will return more than was lost in the bust – and for longer too.

Testing FDR's Legacy (Part 2)

2009-03-08T10:19:00.002-04:00

Source: http://www2.fdic.gov/hsob/SelectRpt.asp?EntryTyp=30

In my last post I offered up some of FDR's legacy, policies developed from the cause or impact of the Great Depression, which are being tested in the current unpleasantness. I have another one that I did not mention but certainly needs mentioning.

Lots of bank failures occurred during the Great Depression. People no longer trusted banks as a place for simple savings accounts. According to Wikipedia, some 4,000 banks failed at the beginning of the Great Depression at an average asset value of $900,000 each, which according to my math results in total asset value of $3.6 billion – both of these numbers are off the scale of their respective axes of the above chart.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was set up to protect deposits so people would go back in banks and put their money in them so it could be used to loan out again and get the economy rolling. The message since then has been banks may fail but your money was safe. As the chart shows, the FDIC is now being tested like it has never been tested before – or at least since the 1950's.

The number of banks that have failed is no where near the number that failed after the burst of the savings and loan bubble, peaking in 1989, but a whole lot more assets have been put at risk. The FDIC has never faced anything like this before. The amount of assets at risk during the saving and loan bubble of the early 90's is not even 10% of today's assets at risk.

I keep hearing stories that local small banks are in good shape. They were not the ones loaning out money to people who really couldn't afford them to pay for property that is now no where near what the original loans was worth. They were not the ones buying sub-prime loans backed investments. It was the big banks, the really big banks. That's why the red line is so low in 2008 and the blue line is so high. Of the axis stretching assets in 2008, two banks account for 90 percent of that, Citibank and Washington Mutual Bank.

How the FDIC will fare in the current crisis remains to be seen. Since it is back by the U.S. government it will not fail. Everybody covered by the FDIC will remain whole, and the economy will be the better for it. No matter how great this depression is, the FDIC, and as noted in my previous posts, unemployment insurance and Social Security will lessen its greatest. They are the FDR legacies from his administration of that Great Depression.

I wonder what lessons we have learned from our recent crisis. What policies may come from this? Maybe the rating agencies such as Standard and Poor should work for the buyer and not the seller. If only those sub-prime backed investments had been rated to reflect their uncertainty instead of to gaining favor – and further business – from the seller, this might not have ever happened.

Testing FDR's Legacy

2009-02-22T15:48:00.001-05:00

Talk is we are in another Great Depression. If that’s the case, we will be testing some of FDR's legacy we have not tested before – or at lease not to the extent we are fixing to test it. That is, if we are in another Great Depression.

The Great Depression tested Capitalism as it has never been tested before. The bread lines, the Hoovervills, the bank failures, the really, really bad PR pics that we can still googly up today, these all attest to the failure of our all American capitalist system in the 1930's. Communism and Fascism rose to try and take it's place, and would have had not capitalism - or at least its war fighting capabilities - proved the better system.

FDR came in and made changes, even bigger changes than today's largest stimulus package – ever. One of these was social security. Seeing seniors citizens who worked all there lives and were passed their productive, wage earning years become wards of the state – homeless in today's jargon – and everyone just knew in their bones, this wasn't right. So, employers and employees paid into a fund from which workers could draw when they got too old to work anymore. No more old farts who had worked all their lives and are now living in the parks and out past the edge of town where nobody wanted to live became a thing of the past. Sure, we still got them, but nothing like it would be if we didn't have social security.

Unemployment insurance, the economists' friend – economists love unemployment payments because when the economy get bad, they go up, and it's the government who pays for it. It's all automatic. Is this not a great country, or what? End a recession, no. Soften a recession, yes. Unemployment insurance is the legacy stimulus plan from FDR, and it will kick in long before any Obama stimulus package hits the streets.

Things like social security and unemployment insurance were put in place, or at least started by the likes of FDR and his Skywalker, LBJ, and now they will be tested like they have never been tested before.

That is if we are in the next Great Depression. If this depression is not as great as its more infamous predecessor, then it's due to the automatic system, FDR legacy, that was put in place some seventy or so years ago.

Just so you know.

Stimulus Package: Diamonds, Timebombs and IED's*

2009-02-16T13:01:00.000-05:00

*Improvised exploitive device (No, that's right exploitive not explosive)

With any major economic or social programs, laws, and budgets passed by Congress and signed into law, they are wrought with all manner of unforeseen consequences and hidden agendas. And we shouldn't expect the Stimulus Package to be any different.

What they may be, only time will tell. Notables that jump to mind at this posting is FDR's social security for our seniors. If you worked you will have a retirement was the promise – that is if your Social Security taxes were paid while you worked. Look what the old SS has become. No Baby Boomer that has a good retirement under almost any other retirement system should expect to collect social security if you are not already or about to.

Eventually, leaving Social Security to those who have nothing else may be the only way to keep it going. However, given our current economic situation, many who had thought they had a good retirement in which Social Security was considered supplemental may now be depending on Social Security alone.

I'm not sure if SS is a diamond or a timebomb. For those that have nothing else to fall back, it certainly is a diamond but paying for it is the every present timebomb.

Another example of a diamond buried in the legislature is the college tuition in the GI Bill, another FDR innovation. When the bill was proposed, the presidents of Harvard and Yale spoke against it. They didn't want all those unruly servicemen descending onto their campuses raining all kinds of hell that servicemen are infamous for doing. However, the opposite prove the norm. The ex-GI's had raised all the hell they wanted to raise in the service. They proved to be a moderating and leveling agents in the class and on campus when compared to the typically riotous kids coming from home and whose biggest experience at that time was leaving home.

When the original GI Bill was set up, the home loan portion was thought to be the part that would have the biggest affect on the economy and the lives of ex-GI's, but it was the college tuition that proved to have the biggest impact. One look at the list of Congressmen and judges who used their GI benefits to attend college confirms this.

While any legislation has its unforeseen consequences, it's those of a hidden agendas and IED's that are the worse. Special lobbyists are able to insert their clients' interest into seemedly innocuous passages the power of which only becomes know after the bill has been passed, signed, and implemented. When you have an evenly matched Congress that has trouble passing anything, this becomes double disastrous.

And so now we must wait and see what crops up.

Hamas for that Rocket?

2009-02-14T10:02:00.002-05:00

Why doesn't Israel supply Hamas with the rockets they are firing at them? Of course, they wouldn't work, or they would blowup when fired, or even better, they would double back and hit in the area from which they were launched.

If it looks like a good place for an ambush, it usually is.

Since Israel can't seem to affect the supply once Hamas gets the rockets, Israel should supply them with the rockets they want them to use. How many of those double-back rockets would have to occur before Hamas hesitates to use them? If Hamas wants money, give them counterfeit.

Surly that would be better than the current tactic, wholesale attack on Palestinians in Gaza. Israel for all its modernization still has a ways to go in smart bomb technology or at least the use of it. The statistic of thousands of Palestinians for a few hundred Israelis just has an unbalanced ring – and injustice – to it.

I wouldn't like the never-ending threat of rocket attacks interrupting my life, making me take shelter, fearing if my family has done so, but thousands of Palestinians is no pay back. How many Palestinian children died in comparison to the Israeli children who died from rocket attacks? Two wrongs don't make a right.

With a bunch of Americans holding Iraq, I'm in no position to pass judgment, but still, so many dead. If I'm going to support Israel's right to exist and have a homeland, I must give as much support to the Palestinians. A people's right to a secure homeland is nonspecific.

Obama's Blackberry, the Beginning of a New Era

2009-02-08T20:16:00.000-05:00

Sometime in the 1950's, letter writing as a form of communication died. Instant communication via telephone was much easier than sitting down to write someone a letter, and rapid transportation made letter writing seem meaningless, anyway. Why write the wife and kids when you can see them the next day. This was especially true for Presidents of the United States and their appointees, assistances, subordinates, lackeys, and hanger-on's.

Historians wept.

Certainly the letters of John and Abigail Adams, Lincoln's letters, those of the Roosevelts and Truman flesh out their histories and humanize them in a way bills and laws and observations and memories cannot. But all that ended in the 1950's.

Yes, we have more reporters' reports, newsreels, and TV footage, but not the ruminations or expressions of those making policy. Somehow it seems like overcooked meat, dry and wanting of natural flavor.

However, that which taketh away also giveth. Technology made letter writing as a form of communication oh so last century, and email and texting makes it cool. Anyone from those doing corporate policy to those trying to organize an outing for the kids has seen communications that are forwarded and amended with comments as consensuses and plans develop and formalize.

Being a student of history, emails offer an opportunity to observe it in the making. I get emails that have been forwarded numerous times. I will scan the previous entries sometime because it is necessary to understand what is going on and sometimes just for the love of history. History is where you find it.

And now Obama has found a way to keep his Blackberry. The instant communication between him and his family, those in his administration, and whoever else is in his list will one day prove invaluable to understanding what is going on now. Knowing the government, it will all be backuped, and thus, preserved for posterity.

A small but significant event at the beginning of 2009. Just so you know.

Dell Hell Number 3 (or is it 4?)

2009-02-01T16:58:00.005-05:00

Well I’m back. I’m getting better at this. Didn’t lose anything important. I got almost everything loaded – still got the printer to load but I got my installation on a stick, so should not be to hard – but I got it down to a routine.

The Dell machine starts acting a little funny, getting slower and slower and then one day, Hello blue screen!

It takes about two days to get everything back up and running again. I reload the original installation and everything has to be restarted and reinitialize. Runs great for a while.

And eventually I come over here and make a note of it.

Did I miss anything?

The Great Depression of 2009

2009-01-19T11:37:00.002-05:00

There, let’s say it. Let’s get the “D-word” out there. Now we can go on.

Critiquing my recent prediction success factor for the previous year means anything I predict will not happen, or it will happen, but not the way I predicted. Just so you know.

I kicking off a “Depression09” tagged series beginning with a post from last October about why we shouldn’t be so concerned about our recent economic unpleasantness. I’ll try not to chew my cabbage twice.

I keep hearing dire predictions of a sluggish economy stretching out over years. But it is by the same people that have to have something to report as news even when they have no news to report.

Just like I had to learn all about alligators, Sunnis, and Shia after we got ourselves up to our ass in Iraq, so too I’ve had to learn about how the current economic situation came about. While it has been proven tha a free market is the goose that lays the golden egg, we fear regulation may kill both.

However, our current bond rating system is like the fox hound is working for the fox. The rating system should be working for the buyer not the seller – which if I follow the news correctly, and there a good possibility I’m not, but anyway, we are doing just the opposite.

If the sub-prime mortgage-backed bonds had been rated accordingly, a lot of value would not have been put at so much risk. If the incentive for rating companies was to profit more from satisfying buyers than sellers then a concept with a self-defeating aspect could be remedied.

Keep the markets free and change the incentive for the rating companies. That seems doable.

The lion that ate Communism could continue to roam the savanna.

Liberal Bias, Oxymoron

2009-01-19T11:30:00.001-05:00

A true liberal can no more be bias than a true conservative cannot. To be liberal is to be fair. Their bleeding-heart’s blood flows for every living thing no matter how insignificant. Everything and especially everybody have rights. It’s enough to make you want to puke.

Truth, facts, and a just compromise when equal rights conflict are the ultimate goals of any and all liberals. If you are far enough to the right, the center looks left to you. Truth looks biased.

If you are far enough to the left, you are insufferably boring to everybody. Intellectual truths obscure basic truths.

The term has be added to Red Word / Blue Word.

Dealing with Russia in the 21st Century

2009-01-11T11:16:00.000-05:00

What did you expect? In the latter half of the previous century, you confront Communism and win. Free markets beat planned economies. And what did you win? The winnings was the right to have the economies run by your way. Russia must play on your ball field by your rules.

If the US had not beaten Japan and force on it American capitalism, Japan’s economy would not be the behemoth of the Pacific. We bombed their steel mills and then rebuilt them after the war and put our old aging mills out of business. You win the war; your children lose their jobs. Hurray for us.

In winning, sometimes you sow the seeds of future conflict by being too harsh in terms of surrender as after WWI and sometimes future conflict arises by making your adversary adopt you system. They may have a knack for it. Given a new system, they out compete an old hand at competition.

Had we kept the USSR with its competitively disadvantaged planned economy, we would be living high on the hog today. Europe would be dictating terms to them, exploiting their natural resources to our advantage and not theirs.

But Noooo… We had to totally defeat Communism. We had to convince them their system was not as good as our and they had to become capitalist. And they did.

What did you expect? That we would all go to Disney World and live happily ever?

We have met the enemy and they are us.

Predictions for 2009

2009-01-10T14:58:00.003-05:00

Time once again for the prediction post. But before we get to next year’s predictions, let’s take a look at last year’s predictions and see how we did.

Review of last year’s predictions:

1. John McCain will be elected President of the United States overwhelmingly. It will not even be close. Hillary/Obama or Obama/Hillary or one of them with somebody else will somehow - as all good Democrats do - self-destruct.

Obviously, I got that one wrong, and I’m glad I did. To these old cynical eyes, this year’s event is unbelievable. In my defense as a fortuneteller, and as I have already noted, 2008 has been a year that just kept on giving. Who could have predicted that? 2008 was one of those years that will go down in the history books. Documentaries, dissertations, and all manner of books in general will be written about the year that was 2008.

As I stated in the linked post above, remember this year, like a fine meal, savor it, roll it over your tongue, realize all its nuances, and be a glutton for its fresh but nonetheless historic moments.

Obama’s election, and his selection of a cabinet that sends a message of inclusiveness and not divisiveness, portends another banner year, history-wise. Making a prediction for next year is really an exercise in uncertainty.

2. The Republicans will pick up on something that happened in the Democratic Primary that no one much noticed at the time it occurred and turn it into a major political issue during the general election.

That didn’t happen. Republicans so screwed up things, no matter how much finger pointing and liberal labeling they did, nothing seem to work. Has there been an identity shift in the general electorate? Has the term “liberal” lost its taint?

3. Castor will die. This year for sure.

Not so sure, after all.

4. Post Castor Cuba will be big in the news and draw the media's attention away from that old news story, the war in Iraq.

Since 3. didn’t happen, there wasn’t much chance of 4. happening either.

5. The Surge will prove a failure…the Surge will simply become an old fashion escalation − which is doomed to fail aso.

I got this one right. The Surge has become an escalation. The Surge is a failure on many levels, but the fact that the term meant something short-termed, it is a failure which is only waiting for us to admit it. We are still over there in large numbers. The military is over-stretch and under-supplied.

6. A major event or disaster in Iraq that will make the Surge appear meaningless.

This did not happen, but I’m sending it in again next year. Something big, bad, and politically devastating is going to happen over there.

7. The recession will be a short one. The economy is strong, it will weather the money crisis over bad loans, and the Christmas season will be a big one for retail sales.

Did I get this one wrong or what? I know many – Krugman for example – saw this coming and tried to warn us, but I didn’t see the extent of the collapse as others did.

On the hold, I did not do so good predicting what was going to happen. And if you look back at last year’s critique of 2006’s predictions, I did not do so well there either. It would seem that if I predict something, one thing you can be sure of, it will not happen, or it will happen but not in the way I predicted, but mostly, it will not happen.

With that in mind, let’s move on to this year’s predictions. This year is especially tough given a high water mark of notable events for this year, and to wring out this metaphor, after the flood waters go down nothing is the same.

The selection of Obama by voters and the building of a cabinet, teams for our current crises, and the transitional team in general seems a dream too good to be true. And like any place that looks like a good place for an ambush usually is, to my cynical mind, something must go wrong.

When it will go wrong and how it will go wrong, I don’t know, but wrong it will go, I have no doubt. So, that’s the prediction quandary I face.

Predictions for 2009:

1. Something will go wrong with the idealistic government that is being formed by the man selected because he offered hope for a change. It could be something brutal, extreme, and life ending for one or many, or it could be something slow, scandalous, and life ruining but a nonetheless end of what was hoped.

2. Although the full impact of the recession will be felt in the first half of this year, by the end of the year, recovery will appear.

3. Our involvement in Iraq will continue for another year as we prop up the current Iraqi government, that is unless one or both of the following does not happen:

a. Something big and bad is going to happen. It always has in the past. It could be like Tet in Vietnam, which by the way the Americans won, or like the Marine barracks in Lebanon, or something big, blooded, and laden with doom, gloom, and damnation.

b. A person or a group will feel they have enough power to take over Iraq and view the Americans as an interference, in which case the above action will be even more precipitous.

If this were to occur, the Americans may have to leave quickly. I hope our commanders over there have inventoried roof tops from which people can be hastily evacuated.

4. The current government in Afghanistan is so corrupted, that Afghanis will turn back to the Taliban because even though they are extremist in their government, they are at least not as corrupted as the current administration. This will reach a boiling point in Afghanistan and we will be invited to leave. I’m not sure this prediction will mature this year, but that this will occur is a foregone conclusion. It is as written in the terrain of the land and the faces of Afghanis as it is written in books.

5. The prison at GitMo will be closed, or at least closed for all practical purposes.

6. Alabama will win the college football BSC.

That's what I predict for 2009. I can't wait.

Krugman’s Bubbles

2008-12-27T09:53:00.002-05:00

Paul Krugman had another one of his columns about what’s the next bubble. He was wondering as he has wondered before what is going to be the next bubble. That way, we will know it when it starts to expand and pull the economy out of the remnants of the latest busted bubble; as was done previously; according to Krugman.

I had an epiphany and like any good epiphany (Are there bad epiphanies?), I had to comment. Like a lot of other comments I made at Krugman’s site, this one never appeared or I was never able to find it. (Is it me? Do you have to be a liberal to comment on Krugman’s site? That’s so un-liberal. Maybe I have to be signed in. I don’t remember if I was.)

Anyway, since as you will shortly read - if you continue, I knew my comment was going to be a blog post, so here it is:

Is this a game? Can we win a “Kruggie”?

Are we (the commenters) supposed to guess what we think is the next bubble and you award the best or most bubblicious suggestion an award? Honorable mention on Conscious of a Liberal*?

OK, here goes:

Export Trade Bubble. Non-starter. We are not positioned to produce anything that could not be produced cheaper somewhere else − except maybe exceedingly pretentious demand (No, the French got us beat on that one.) or irrational exuberance (Oh yea, that’s us.). The ship sailed on that possibility long ago.

Regulation Bubble − the business of regulating the financing of housing, automotive, and well…finance itself, Wall Street, derivatives, and investment instruments that go bump in the night and nobody really understands. The ugly side of Keynesian Economics in which all the fears of free marketers come true − in a bubble form.

Internet Bubble. No, not the dot.com bubble, that’s so last century’s bubble. This is a new one based on the technology that has developed since the technology that caused the dot.com bubble. Like those glasses in one of William Gibson’s novels − Virtual Light, I think − a heads up display of all the information available for EVERYTHING going on around me.

You remember Gibson. He coined the term “cyberspace” back when Senator Al Gore was getting funding for those guys who did invent the internet. Why can’t I look at my iPod and know what is in every store in every direction I’m looking no matter what corner I’m own? That’s bubble-worthy.

Why can’t my car drive itself at least on the interstate? I could read your column because I would always be online − as well as my car and everybody else’s on the interstate to the transportation authorities. That’s an internet-transportation bubble.

Sorry, my comment has become a post and will appear on my blog, out there with all the great unwashed blogs. Your column got the juices flowing. I will exercise good blog protocol and site your column, and (I hope) you give me credit for the term “Kruggie”. Or, would you prefer “Krugy”?

*Pun intended. Conscience and liberal are redundant. I have no doubt that liberals are conscience; by definition of terms that could not be one without the other. What I wonder is: are true liberals ever truly conscious.

-30- <== that used to mean end in journalism and represents the end of my comment. So for good or bad, that’s what I commented. Maybe Krugman didn’t like the Kruggie remark. I thought that was good, but hey, what do I know? I think a second internet bubble is a very likely candidate. The connectivity of iPods and the information available at hand could change everything, but more importantly, it could ignite another techno-econo bubble. Maybe Krugman should develop a whole new field of economics – maybe even get a second Nobel – on bubble economics, going from one bubble to the next. Assumedly, it would be like the old fashion boom and bust in which the boom is always bigger than the bust or why would you do it? On second thought, the regulation bubble is an oxymoron. I shouldn’t put it in the comment. If there is regulation there can be no bubbling of anything. That’s the problem with regulation. While there may be little to no bust, there just as little to no boom. The regulators make a nice, stable living, but the economy goes nowhere – forever. But I like my auto related bubble. The hook in the bailout to the car industry was to come up with some kind of car Americans would want to buy. A car with a PC or visa versa, now that would be something worth doing a trade-in. When driving me down the interstate, the car doesn’t need to see, just tell it where it is and which direction to go. It would be in communication with the other cars on the road and would know their direction – or vector in object moving in relation to one another talk and exchange other info as needed…or required. Of course, it could detect objects in the road that are not suppose to be there, but would not disturb me otherwise. A car company bailout bubble. And that’s the bubble roundup from here at blog central, or to be more precise, in the center of the blogs.

This Year’s Nightmare, Next Year’s Dream Team

2008-11-15T10:53:00.002-05:00

Obama as President, Clinton at State, and McCain at Defense. The long in the making but historically significant political campaign that seemed would never end leads to one of the most historic governments to come into existence since …when? Lincoln? Washington’s first cabinet?

Naw! That only happens in the movies. Besides, the most important appointment this time around will be at Treasury. Wouldn’t know it?

Don’t you know all our fretting and posting about the significant election cycle would be trumped by the government that followed. I’m probably just dreaming. This ain’t gon’a happen.

Just when I think I’ve seen it all, 2008 steps ups and says, “No you ain’t.” The first non-white, non-European ancestor based man to get his party’s nomination beats the first woman to come really close and then beats a genuine war hero who was up until this year the Republican that Democrats loved, and yet as the campaign ran on and on somewhat as this sentence does, Obama becomes the President. And they are all senators. A senator hasn’t gotten his self elected president since JFK. Senators’ best route to the White House is to get picked for vice president and then run from there.

I had realized in this year of firsts that they would all be back in Washington after the election was over. One of them in the White House, the other two back in the Senate, the goto for any sound byte about whatever is the latest news byte, but I never imagined them in the same government.

I feel like that dude in the movie about young King Arthur upon seeing the as yet unknighted and uncrowned Arthur do the unexpected: “I didn’t see that coming.”

Woops! Was that a Camelot reference? Has The Sword in the Stone been drawn?

Lipstick on a Trojan Horse

2008-10-25T10:33:00.001-04:00

If you know how and where your opponent is going to attack, then you know a good place for an ambush. The current party elite among Republicans are past masters at playing off their opponents' gaffs. The Democrats could turn that knowledge to their advantage. The Demos need to put something out there that they know the Repubs will jump on. However, it would be a set up - a sort of political IED (improvised exploitive device).

Like the “lipstick on a pig” comment by Obama about McCain’s healthcare policy being tied to Palin’s comment about “lipstick on a pit bull” as somehow Obama referring to Palin as a pig. The Demos would still be backpedaling on this one if the MSM in some sort of historical perspective on the term had not gone back and found where John McCain and Cheney had used it previous to Obama’s using it. And McCain was referring to Hillary’s healthcare policy. Was McCain referring to Hillary as a pig? BANG! Another IED detonates, the Repubs are shown as trying to make something out of nothing and distract from the real issues.

But no, that’s only a dramatic literary re-enactment. The Demos never did that. The Daily Show, some pundits, a few bloggers made comment, but no ground swell, no blogging frenzy, no public outrage at lynch mentality.

Come on Demos, you’re supposed to be the smart ones. Let’s get some return from that overpriced liberal education. Set them up. Out Rove the Rovians. Put an IED out there just before the election, and have it blow up in their self-righteous condescending face.

However…
Sometimes you must work for it and sometimes it is given. Just as corruption will eventually corrupt its self and conspirators will conspire against their fellow conspirators; so too the mob will turn on those that try to manipulate its chaos. While the Pittsburgh police had no trouble seeing the implausibility of the attack and political mutilation of a McCain campaign worker, the Repub elite did not. (Come on, you carve a backward “B” in your face, if you do it a mirror, and you're stupid – or crazy.)

And the Repub elite ran with it. Race war is just waiting to erupt. Stewing just underneath society is a race seething with indignation, ready to break out in social disruption and attacks if Obama is elected…Oh wait! It was a fake. Never mind.

America, you have the opportunity to continue four more years of government being run that way.

Republicans, you have a cancer in your midst and it will consume you if you do not cut it out.

Liberal Democrats, demand your money back from whatever elite liberal arts college you attended. You were cheated out of a good education.

Stanley Motts: This is Nothing!

2008-10-12T10:46:00.002-04:00

As Dustin Hoffman uttered those words continuously during one catastrophe after another as they tried to Wag the Dog, so too the economy’s current unpleasantness is nothing compared with the more threatening peril of the 20th Century: Communism.

You’d think that something that was planned and studied would work better than something that is the poster child of chaos theory, capitalism in a free market economy, but that was not the case. Planned economies could not keep up no matter how much they tried to spin it. All those Orwellian movies of happy people marching and working happily along just didn’t work. The capitalist economies provide a higher standard of living to the masses that those masses in planned economies could only watch and wonder – and envy.

However, we should have told those masses longing to be free the flipside of freedom, the freedom to fail, or at least stumble badly. There can be no boom without bust. Planned economies remove the busts, but they removed the booms, also.

It’s what you make in the booms that more than offsets what you lose in the busts. To capitalists it’s the interest, profit, commission, vig, swag or whatever that makes it all worthwhile, and the freedom to pursue it, that no amount of centralized planning could ever keep up.

The planned economites look down the collective noses at this as plunder or booty and exploitation of the working class, but the free-market economites laugh and scoff as to say the working class is doing fine looking after itself, thank you very much.

Hoffman’s Stanley always knew his system would work, trivial problems not withstanding, and an economy that recently defeated an enemy that planned its demise will rise again as the sun rises in the east. And it will be a warmer day than when last it set – to wring out this analogy during this time of economization.

In Support of Global Warming

2008-09-21T18:49:00.003-04:00

To those who say our industrialization has progress to the state that we are affecting the future climate of earth, I hope you are right. For if they are wrong and our years of burning large amounts of fossil fuels, carbon loading the atmosphere jargon-wise, will not have any major affect on the climate, then without a doubt, the predominate climate of the past 3 million years will return along with glaciers as tall as skyscrapers, Canada will become uninhabitable, and all of New England as well as all major urban centers in the northern U.S. will be wiped off the face of the earth.

For those that live in the south, winters will become much colder, more sever, but tolerable, crops and agriculture will have to change, but abundances will occur as in the last Ice Age. Those adept at adaption will thrive as is proof of our being here in the first place.

The latte-drinking liberals and those great unwashed naturalist who argue against our head long rush to global warming with threats of what will happen if we do not stop it don't tell us what will happen if we do.

Here is what is going to happen whether you are against global warming or think this global-warming hubbub is all just made up by some eggheads too smart for their own or any body's good. In the short run, 100 to 5,000 years, we can have global warming, global cooling, or global stay-the-same. From what I've seen, most of the anti-global warming crowed seems to argue in favor for the last, stay-the-same, type climate, and that's cool and OK for as long as it goes, the short run. Out beyond the short run, only one of the first two climates listed will occur, and eventually both warming and cooling will occur. Always has, always will. I don't make the rules, I just try to figure them out.

Now if you truly do believe that our current climate is the only climate the earth has ever experienced and concepts like evolution and climatology are just theoretical science that should include that oxymoron creation science, then stop reading. Go no further. This post is not for you. Seek your expected answers elsewhere. (Faith and science are mutually exclusive. Science is based on facts. Faith is not. If faith is based on facts, it is no longer faith but something else entirly. I have other post dealing with faith -- this is not it.)

Our climate has been in an Ice Age for the last 3 million years interrupted periodically by brief warm periods -- I don't know how many or how often the warm periods occur -- but the one we are currently in may have run it course and we are due to return to colder winters when in north central Canada not all the previous winter's snowfall melts before the next winter's begins, and thus the glaciers begin to build year after year. Much the same would be happening in northern Europe and Asia and in the mountains all over the world, but it is the glaciers in the far norther hemisphere that will have the most affect on or descendants.

Maybe the Mini Ice Age of the Middle Ages was the initial beginning of the end of our current warm period but the birth of the industrial age later was all that was needed to prevent the return of the Ice Age and the glaciers. If that is true, then the warnings today of runaway global warming are way, way too late, and our specie's gift for adaptability will be put to a greater test than a return of the glaciers. We know how to survive global cooling. Been there, got that Tshirt or at least some tricked out genes. We have no experience at global warming.

The dinosaurs did great during global warming. They thrived, multiplied, and evolved into to some of the most interesting fossils we have ever dug up, and you can be sure, their descendants -- to some degree us, but more genealogically, birds -- will survive even a runaway global warming climate. And the plants love any increased of CO2.

If our industrialization has affected the climate, then we have within our power, the ability to control it. If we can cause global warming, we can stop it -- or even better, cut back just enough to keep Canada habitable. But this is a world-wide endeavor. Even if North America and Europe where able to cut back all greenhouse gas production to an acceptable level, China, India, and other emerging nations would cancel out the savings and the affects of global warming are inevitable.

But it's there, the potential to control the climate, conservation and theories of offsetting strategies abound. We can only hope and contribute what you can. And have faith.

Back from Dell Hell, Again (one more time)

2008-09-16T19:26:00.000-04:00

Well it happen again. This time I had enough warning, or maybe I was more perceptive, and I was able to save a few files before I reloaded the original setup on my computer, but whatever, now it is done. The old (new) system is loaded and it sure runs fast.

There's that. At lease the reformatted system runs fast -- or as fast as it's ever going to run.

I keep nothing of importance on my machine. Important files and my internet "favorites" are save off on a flash drive. So, I reload the original system and then reload what I saved. Of course, any after-market software must be reloaded, like the latest account with virus protection and any other software I've bought and had the stupidity to load on my machine.

So it goes.

What Were You Doing In 2008?

2008-09-16T19:00:00.002-04:00

What are you going to say? You who are reading this blog right how are going to be asked this question one day.

While I was growing up a golden question was: what where you doing when Peal Harbor was attacked. I wasn't alive then but it was a golden question nonetheless. You may get a pause and then a personal story about what was going on when they heard the word. It comes quickly, usually without hesitation from any and all -- kind of cathartic.

While I had personal events that we all go through that I remember, there was no major event to unite me with everyone else like Peal Harbor did for that generation. And then came 9/11, and everybody old enough to remember has a story to tell when they are questioned years from now. And believe me, you will be questioned. In fact, they've already started. Just bring up where you were or anybody was and nearly everyone will volunteer where they were.

But there is another type of events. It is slow, not so noticeable, with additional, reinforcing events within a short period, that only becomes significant after the time has passed. You will be asked about this year and this election campaign going on right now even as this blog is posted and limitedly read. You can bank on it. You will be asked and what will you say?

While Pear Harbor and 9/11 were major events that all happened in one day are no doubt a shocker and imprints indelibly on any normal person's soul, some events happen over time and only become noteworthy or question-worthy after time has passed.

The run up to WWI and WWII contain events that at the time were significant to some but mostly ignored by most. The year 1968, the Democratic convention, the birth or at least major notice of the anti-war and then anti-establishment movement that so dominated the years to come after. Where were you in 1968? Fifty years ago? What were you doing then? Do you remember?

I was having he time of my life, performing in a rock band at the University of Alabama. It was great. Vietnam War? Chicago convention? I don't remember much. It was the news interruptions to the concerts I was watching in 1968. I was only interested in rock'n'roll. Woodstock happened the following year. 1968 was a biggy, and I just about miss the whole importance of it -- except I was drafted two years later, and suddenly, it meant everything to me.

That's the way it happens. 2008 may mean nothing to you right now, but it's there. Oh, it's out there baby! One day you will need to recall what you doing during this year. Fair warning.

Yea, verily I say unto thee, go forth and do likewise.

Dan Quayle Moment, TR Moment, or Harry Truman Moment

2008-09-01T10:24:00.000-04:00

John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his VP is already being called a Dan Quayle moment. Maybe it is, and then again, maybe it isn’t. It’s certainly a rush to judgment moment – but pundits bad calls do not collect and haut them, so they can continuously make them with no regard for how many times they are wrong.

Joe Biden was a safe choice for Obama. His only risk – other than Biden’s reputation for political malapropisms – is charges he compromised his Change campaign by selecting an old Senator. We can only wait to see if McCain showed that his first major executive decision was as bad as Bush senior made for his running mate.

Maybe the recentness of the Quayle decision colors all unlikely VP choices today, but history has other unlikely VP choices that later proved to be rather outstanding.

Of course, Theodore Roosevelt was not McKinley’s choice but a party decision to satisfy a very powerful New York party bigwig. They wanted to get him out of the governor’s office in New York where he was causing the party bosses problems. They didn’t expect McKinley to get his self assassinated – by a terrorist no less. Roosevelt had a little more executive experience that Palin, and he had lead men in battle – not that that has anything to do with leading a nation, but we all like to cite that sort of stuff whenever we talk such as this.

The closer analogy would be the other Roosevelt’s selection of Harry Truman as his VP in 1944. Whatever reason he made the decision – something to do with cleaning up his image and Truman’s rising reputation for rooting out government waste during the war – all the pundits questioned Truman’s ability to lead after FDR died. Now, he is thought of as one of the better Presidents. Bush, the younger, looks at how Truman’s reputation has changed when he considers his own legacy.

How wise a decision was choosing Palin for VP only time will tell, but the political wisdom is already apparent. It has changed the whole political punditry. For no matter how little executive experience Palin has had, that is more than Obama has had and so the Dems can’t criticize her too much with out significant blow back. And the talk is about Palin’s and Obama’s lack of experience and not about McCain’s anything. He is not being discussed by the constantly commenting talking heads. Point McCain.

As to Palin lack of national exposure and the supposedly greater chance of making a political gaffe, Biden is the odds on favorite to toss out the first campaign threatening flub. And we will go round and round about that – again point McCain.

But first we must see how McCain handles Gustav and the Republican National Convention. VP selection may be all but forgotten in how the ghost of political blunders past is visited on the Republicans while they party at their party’s love fest.

Gustav, Answer to a Prayer?

2008-09-01T09:57:00.001-04:00

Focus on Your Family asked devoted followers to pray for rain during Obama’s acceptance speech. Obama had a beautiful night, however the mass prayer did not go unanswered. Any death or destruction caused by Gustav should be laid at Focus on Your Family’s feet.

Like the old Rolling Stone’s song about not getting what you want but sometimes getting what you need. The pompous self-righteous right acts if God is in there exclusive corner, and as most if not all are Christian, many have the self-same condemnation that cause the death of their founder. They are blissfully blind to the concept that FOYF does unto others as was done unto their founder.

To pray for safety, life, or salvation of someone is one thing, but to pray against someone – who claims to be a Christian also – is a whole ‘nother thing. However, it is typical of the self-righteous right.

Had it rained on Obama’s night, FOYF would have claimed ownership of the weather event as proof that they are the ultimate name dropper, and can flex their connection whenever they decide to execute a mass prayer.

However the rain did not come or did not come when they intended and they equivocate that it was all a joke or misunderstanding and that Gustav is not the answer to their prayer – even though it will wash clean a city most FOYF believe is wicked, sinful and deserves the retribution it is receiving from Gustav.

So, maybe the prayer didn’t go unanswered after all. It didn’t shut down Obama, but it did shut down New Orleans from it sinful ways. Thank you, FOYF, a force to be reckon with, who can bring down lighting bolts from on high, although their aim is a bit off. Their spin doctors will make it sound as if they intended this all along.

Pray God protect us from the self-righteous.

Crossover into the Twilight Zone

2008-08-24T17:44:00.000-04:00

I read a column that made it into syndication by Leonard Pitts of the “Miami Herald” about how people on the internet are attacking Robert Novak rather viciously saying he deserves what he gets and much worse. My response upon hearing that Novak had a growing, malignant tumor replacing his brain was the question: how can you tell the difference?

Like Mr. Pitt, I had come to see in Bob all that is the worse on the Republican right, but to bring down God’s justice on him for his affliction is exactly what he and his kind would do to anyone on the left, and I draw the line there. I may trash the right (and the left) put pray God I don’t trash like someone on the right.

Besides being a devotee of the Twilight Zone during my formative years, I am conditions not to condemn least I be the recipient of the same condemnation – like making him the butt of one of my jokes. I’ve had a many of those things backfire on me. I should have never made fun of baldheaded men.

Stealth Beauty

2008-08-24T16:54:00.001-04:00

I came to know someone I met not too long ago – an experience I no longer do much. (Meeting someone more so than getting to know them.) All of a sudden, I realized she was a stealth beauty. The term “stealth beauty” comes from my younger days when I was out there and a player, and I had forgotten about it until I got to know this woman. She was undeniably a stealth beauty in her younger days and still carried the trait in her older years.

A stealth beauty is someone you meet – male or female – who is of average appearance and may even have a less than desirable attribute, a flaw in an otherwise pleasant appearance. I leave the nature of the flaw up to your imagination. The person may even look homely. However, as you come to know them their appearance seems to change, maybe you notice a subtle trait or aspect of their appearance or their personality colors everything about them, and you begin to find them very attractive. As time passes, you come to see them as strikingly good looking and long to see it played out before you. You may even fall in love with them.

The concept of stealth beauty had come to me and was forgotten long before blogging came along or I would have posted about it sooner. The phenomenon was brought back home after this recent acquaintance.

Of course, as it is with the way of life, there are also the presents of stealth uglies. Someone who is exceptionally good looking – drop dead gorgeous – but after getting to know them, their good looks seems to disappear. You can still see those attributes that make them so irresistible but somehow they have become…resistible. And sometimes they become downright ugly.

But I digress. This is a half full post.

Two of the most famous stealth beauties are the main characters in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Mr. Darcy found Ms. Bennet “tolerable” when they first met, and she found him insufferable shortly there after. Much of the novel is about discovery by both of the main characters of the other’s stealth beauty.

What hidden traits come out only with familiarity and charms all that comes after, I don’t know. It’s one of those “I don’t know what it is, but I know it when I see it” thingy. It’s a most pleasant experience to come across a stealth beauty, and I’m glad I got to do it one more time.

The Russian Bear Re-Awakens

2008-08-17T13:50:00.000-04:00

I had thought to title this post “How Russia Spoiled China’s Coming-out Party”. More about that later.

Russia’s invasion of Georgia may one day be viewed as Russia’s announcement “We’re Back!” Russia has been down since the breakup of the old Soviet Union. They had lost the Cold War. Communism was dead; it had no future. Free markets had won; planned economies had lost.

Better mines than us have made the mistake of underestimating the Russians. Napoleon and the German high command made that mistake, a blunder that lead to their undoing. So, never ever make the mistake of underestimating the Russians. Do not take the Russians for granted.

Russia had been in turmoil after the fall of Communism. During a time of weakness, countries that never really wanted to be a part of a Russian dominated union – like Georgia – declared independence, and the old Soviet Union built during Communism’s heyday began to breakup.

Communisms great claims of equality in a workers’ paradise just couldn’t keep up with old fashion capitalism. Workers under that bugaboo capitalism had a higher standard of living that those in the workers’ paradise.

During the latter half of the previous century, Russia was at a disadvantage because it was hindered by a form of government that obviously was not working as well as the governments it denounced. Now, Russia has thrown off that hindrance. It has taken up the free market cause, Russian style, and return to being a world player.

Russia’s future power plays will not be hampered by a system that everyone knows is not working. It need not cloak its aggression with altruistic Communist sayings that no one really believes but in the tried and true sayings of capitalistic exploitation which have worked for years. They are a force to be reckoned with.

Its little forceful excursion into Georgia is an announcement to the world that Russia is back. This was suppose to be the week of China announcement through the Olympics that they are a major player in world events, but news of Russia’s aggression left them with nothing more than a mention as they were pushed off the front pages of the world.

China’s Communism did not fall but has been transformed to reap the benefits of free market capitalism. How China managed the Olympics is more interesting than the games themselves. The stories of sweatshop like preparations and living conditions of participants of the host nation leave no doubt that China, while it appears to have changed, has not.

What China does not realize – just a Russia discovered with glasnost – once you allow the freedom genie out of the bottle, you can not put it back. China is due some internal reverberations as the rank and file gets a taste of freedom and demands more.

Russia could tell China a thing or two about transforming its economy, but Russia will not. They will exploit the situation like any good capitalist should do.

Iran’s Missiles and the coming Mid-East War

2008-07-13T16:36:00.000-04:00

Lead news story July 9, 2008, was Iran’s test firing of several missiles capable of hitting about any target in the Middle East. Displaying its tin ear for news, the targets the MSM most often mention are Israel, U.S. troops in Iraq, and Europe. The ones that should take note of Iran’s missiles are the Sunni Arabs or almost all of the Middle East.

Diplomats and other talking head pundits have looked at the missile launches through context to what is happening now. The importance of the second Iraqi war has not been fully realized. The U.S. overthrow of Saddam and installation of the Iran friendly Shia in Iraq has drastically changed a Middle East balance of power that had been in effect for hundreds of years. The consequence of this reshuffling of lethal age-old rivalries is yet to be known, but a Mid-East conflagration the likes of which we have never seen could erupted.

The Shia have been considered and treated as the bastard stepchild of Islam since shortly after Muhammad death in 632 − that’s over a thousand years of hatred, mistreatment, and persecutions. There was a time when the Shia were not allow holy pilgrimages to Mecca, and many Sunnis still believe that holy ground is defiled by their presents.

And now Bush has handed Iraq over to the Shia, and they will no doubt fully exercise their new position within the Islamic world. The hatred of Israel is new. It has only been around for some 50 years. For hundreds of years, Jews could live freely in the Arab world while they were being persecuted Europe.

The struggle against the Israelis and a solution to the Palestinian problem has paved over age-old rivalries that are still bubbling and brewing below the surface. Our bungled overthrow of Saddam proves that. Sunni and Shia had lived together in Saddam’s Iraq, but neighborhoods are being cleansed and huge migrations are occurring as the old factions separate themselves. Bush’s Neocons never even saw this coming.

A solution to the Israel/Arab conflict is within our reach and solvable. However, the hatred between Sunnis and Shia is hundreds of years old and the rebalance of power Bush brought about in the Middle East may very well lead to catastrophic consequences.

As soon as Iran and its pro-Iran factions in Iraq have consolidated their power, the U.S. will be invited to leave. In the coming struggle between Sunnis and Shia over the soul of Islam, oil supplies will be threatened. The world’s economy will be held hostage.

9/11 has been compared to Pear Harbor but the better comparison may be the start of WWI. Just as a terrorist attack began a conflict that eventually included all the major nations and the dismantling of the old European order, so too, 9/11 and the change of government in Iraq could lead to a war within Islam that we cannot allow to happen but cannot stop.

Let My People Go

2008-07-04T09:48:00.000-04:00

First. I don’t give a rat’s ass what happens to those sons of bitches in GITMO. If whoever captured them had put a 45 slug in their heads at that time, it would have saved us all a lot of trouble and they could have experience all of their 40 promissory virgins by now. If win-win is not ringing in the back of your mind as you read this, there’s really no reason for you to read on.

My concern is not for the captives but the captors in this situation. The argument that they are not Americans misses the point. We are! GITMO is not American. It’s not moral. It’s French or German or Russian or Japanese. If John McCain had been treated as the prisoners in GITMO are being treated, would that have made it OK? If the Japanese had treated the Americans and Filipinos on the Bataan Death March as well as we treat the GITMO inmates, would it even be called a Death March? Would that have been all right? Would we feel anything more special about veterans of that march or those that perished than we do any other veteran?

Americans have been given the unique opportunity to view the Death March or the Holocaust from a wholly different perspective. Now, I don’t believe GITMO is in any way near what the Death March, Holocaust, Gulags, or any number of other atrocities inflicted on one people by another, but then, a lot of eventual atrocities were not either – when they started. Isn’t that albatross of slavery enough for America?

I love to read stories of WWII POWs being held in America that didn’t want to go back to their own country when the war was over. That’s because we held WWII POWs as Americans should hold POWs. They were nicely – but firmly – treated. Some were allowed to intermix not only with Americans, but more importantly, with American culture. I doubt any of the inmates of GITMO are going to want to stay here. That is if they are ever released.

Even to argue their right to habeas corpus, is un-American. That’s like arguing the right to breathe oxygen. Habeas corpus is not just an American right, it’s a world-wide human right. If you’re a country that believes in the rule of law – and by the Constitution that’s what we are – then anyone deserves a day in court.

How many movies have you seen where some American POW demands to see the commandant? What has the world come to, when we are not even as good as our movies?

Close the base. Either turn them loose, turn them over to authorities of their home country, or put them in a proper prison. It’s too late to take them out and shoot them. I’m not concerned about their interest; I’m concerned about ours – a “we have met the enemy and he is us” type of concern.

Terrorism is not new. Of all the fears we have to face, terrorism is one of the oldest. A terrorist attack started WWI. A terrorist assassinated McKinley. We called them anarchists back then.

Terrorism was suppressed during the struggle between communism and free market countries, or a terrorist act had a major power behind it as part of the Cold War. It’s only since winning the Cold War that terrorism has been allowed to ferment and grow. Before, either we would eradicate it because we felt it was communist inspired and the commies would do the same because they felt it was some sort of capitalist plot.

But Americans acting un-America, that’s new. Close GITMO. It’s a Fourth of July kind of thing.

Name Your Wise Men

2008-06-15T12:21:00.001-04:00

We got two all but certified party nominees for the President’s position and there’s a whole shit pot full of punditry on prospective VP’s. So why not go ahead and name some names that will play a major roll in the prospective President’s administration.

If I had only known who Bush would decide to listen to, I might have taken to the streets or volunteered or done something to see he didn’t get elected – especially in 2000. Well, I got a decision to make come November, and I sure would like to know a lot more about who is going to be the government for the next four years.

I never cared too much for Nixon, but I admired his administration, and the more time passes the more I admire Kissinger foreign policy. Some realpolitik is just what we need in the Middle East and in domestic policy also. I thought Ronald Reagan and the first Bush as intellectual lightweights but they had cabinets I could admire and go to sleep at night and not worry about what sort of situation they had got us into overnight.

However, the younger Bush has caused me to rethink my opinion of the first Bush. I’ve come to think of him as a subtle genius – at least in foreign policy. The first Gulf War will be a study in history on how small but decidedly inclined incursion in foreign countries should occur. The decision to stop at the Kuwaiti border has been proven wise.

Maybe Cheney and Rumsfeld who were part of the elder Bush’s administration were part of that group that thought we should have continued on into Baghdad, and when they got the chance to do so the second time around, they took it – and Bush decided to listen to them instead of Colin Powell. Seems the reborn frat boy fell on his legacy to make his fathers.

I don’t need to know the whole cabinet and even who will be put in what major positions – except of course for he VP – but who will Obama or McCain bring into their administration would certainly help me decide who I should vote for come November.

There’s your Change, Barry, name some names. Come on McCain, straight talk us some names. Let’s see what kind of government you leaning toward.

They probably won’t, I’ll vote for one of them, and then sometime in the not too far future, I’ll be linking to this post next time I whine, if I had only known.

Obama Fever - Unforeseen Consequences

2008-05-18T11:08:00.004-04:00

I did not fully realize the import of the stories of Republicans’ anxiousness over their recent defeat in Mississippi until I read the opinions and statistics in Frank Rich’s column this morning. I still believe as I predicted in this year’s predictions that – baring any unforeseen political catastrophes – McCain will win the general elections.

However, what I did not anticipate was the effect of so much voter turn out locally. Even though record numbers of voters are going to the polls for the national election, local and state elections may receive the biggest impact. And if the numbers quoted in Mr. Rich’s column are indicative of what is to come, Democrats stand to make rather respective gains in Congress and state houses.

I left the following comment at Frank Rich’s NYTimes site:

“Wouldn’t it be funny if in the general election the white majority in the South and in cities in the North insured McCain’s victory, while a record black turnout for Obama – although insufficient for him – nonetheless overwhelmed local elections in favor of Democrats, decisively shifting the balance of power in Congress. Would that be funny, or what?”

Maybe I got it all wrong. Maybe this ground swell for Obama is genuine and much more significant than I (and many others) realized. I’m cynical and think the worse of how Americans will react to just about anything.

However, with in this cynicism, unforeseen consequences abound -- it's part and parcel. Local elections going decidedly in favor of Democrats while losing the national elections would be a prime example – and that it was not anticipated is the clincher.

Does science make belief in God obsolete?

2008-05-03T10:30:00.000-04:00

One of those advertisements or something like that at the Huffington site attracted my attention, I clicked on it and went to a site called the John Templeton Foundation. It was asking the following question: “Does science make belief in God obsolete?”

They had a place to leave a comment, and if you know me, you know I couldn’t resist that, so I left the following comment.

Answer to question: No, science re-enforces belief in God.

Awareness (science) is God’s second greatest gift. Like no other living thing, we know and understand our presents in this universe, and through scientific investigation, we will come to know and understand more and more.

Life is God’s greatest gift. The more science discovers about the universe, the more unique life becomes. We have looked and listened and no sign of life in any form has yet to be found.

Worse case scenario: There is no God or higher life form of any kind. We are it. There is no other life in the universe (remember, this is worse case scenario). The coming together of molecules that led to DNA was astronomically unique and was never replicated anywhere else. If that is the case, then we are God, or will be one day.

We are advancing so fast and space is so vast, we will develop the technology to intercept the Pioneer spacecrafts long before they reach anywhere near another solar system. We will develop the ability to live forever. We will develop the ability to travel through time (whatever that is).

One day we will be able to travel back in time to rescue our ancestors from oblivion and you and I will live forever − which God has promise to us all if we just have faith.

That’s then end of my comment. Last time I check – which is the time of this posting – I was about eighth down in the stack. If you have read this blog, you know that there is nothing new in what I said. I’ve been banging away all over the internet saying the same thing.

I think this is a good tie in to my previous post about the Pioneer anomaly. That’s the buzz word of the new century: Tie-ins.

Yea, verily I say unto thee, go forth and do like wise.

Closest Object Affected by Dark Matter

2008-04-27T17:34:00.006-04:00

I sent the following email to Slate Magazine site called Explainer:

What is the closest body in space that we can notice the affect of dark matter? Is it anything closer than our nearest galaxy, Andromeda?

A recent news story about the Pioneer spacecraft addresses what is known as the Pioneer anomaly.

The two spacecrafts are not were they are supposed to be, given their escape velocity and the pull of gravity from our solar system. Could they be affected by dark matter? Probably not, it’s more likely escaping gas or some other more down to earth phenomenon.

The affect of dark matter can not be detected in the orbits of plants around the sun, the orbits of moons around the planets, or the trajectories of comets in our own personal solar system. But when we look at the rotation of distant galaxies or the velocity of galaxies in the universe, we can see its affect.

That’s my question. What is the object in space closest to us that shows the affect of dark matter?

Link for news story about Pioneer anomaly. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=scientists-reconstruct-the-pioneer-spacecraft-anomaly For some reason I can't it to work with hypertext.

I can’t seem to find any details about the closest object in space in which we can detect the affect of dark matter on the object. Can we see it in our own galaxy? Can we see it in the group of stars we belong to or in the spiral arm in which we are located?

Seems to me if you are trying to figure out something you can detect but cannot see it directly, you ought to be looking at the closest object in which you can see its affect.

Just like my letters to MoDo, if I ever get a response, you’ll be the first to know.

Back from Dell Hell, Again

2008-04-16T21:56:00.000-04:00

Well I'm back in Dell Hell again. Something is difinitely wrong with my computer. I looked and the last time this happen was September of last year.

Let's see, that makes 7 and 1/2 months. I noticed last week Windows was coming up really slow, so I should have known it was going to go down.

There's nothing I can do but reload the original setup. I've since learned so I don't keep anything important on my machine...nothing I don't mind losing. The help desk is no help.

Time to buy a new computer. Next time I'm thinking of going with the Geek Squad. Dell still gets a high rating in Consumer Reports, so I don't know.

Commenting on Cavett's Comment

2008-04-15T07:50:00.002-04:00

In a recent post by Dick Cavett which was dated April 11, 2008, he commented on the appearance of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker and I intended to comment on Cavett’s comments and the NYTimes in general. However, comments had been closed. I guess 489 comments were enough.

At any rate, and not to let a good comment go to waste, I’m posting it here:
As I have done before, I’ve fleshed this out a bit, however that doesn’t really apply here, since it never had a chance for electrical immortality – until now.

First, in defense of Copseak, or in the particular case, military jargon. Come on, Dick, he’s general. They talk that way to each other and especially in briefings, de-briefings and any other military briefs – and even when they are only in their briefs.

By the way, “Copspeak” is not in the NYTimes’ [Alt] [Click] on-a-word thingy. A book has been written with that term as a title but as two words, and if you ask Google, it comes back asking if you meant “cop speak”, but it all means about the same thing. That form of speaking that Cavett lamented.

However, your criticism of Crocker is dead on. Who does he think he is and where does he think he is speaking? If he can’t articulate the administration’s policy to Americans any better than that, how in the hell is he suppose to do that to foreigners?

Finally, why isn’t the [Alt] [Click] on-a-word thingy turned on at this site. Come on, NYTimes, it’s Dick Cavett. Of all the pompous, articulate opinion writers you got, Mr. Cavett needs to have his words clicked. I had to go to another opinion, activate the [Alt] [Click] on-a-word thingy, and then copy and paste words from Mr. Cavett’s post to get not only their meaning but how they sound. That’s so last century

Experiencing Experience

2008-04-05T17:39:00.003-04:00

I was commenting over at the NYTimes on an opinion by Republican Minority Leader Boehner, and I couldn’t stay on task. I kept getting back to my current theme on experience. Here’s what I wrote which I’ve fleshed out a bit more since then:

Has Boehner pulled a boner or what?

This election is like no other - or not like another in a long time:

1. We will elect a senator one way or another. A senator has not been elected president since JFK, and I don’t know who it was before that. Most senators have to become vice-president before they get to be president. This year is an exception.

2. Whoever loses will still be around in the Senate. Microphones sucks, they will be the goto person for spin on the winning senator/president’s performance.

Back to Boehner’s boner. Hello! There’s a very unpopular war going on right now. A war brought on by what? Come on everybody, you know the answer! Two of the most experienced politicians to hold office in a very, very, very long time: Cheney and Rumsfeld. So much for the importance of experience.

I could see how their experience with the CIA of totally blowng it and not warning of the fall of Communism and Saddam's invasion of Kuwait would lead them to reject anything they hear from the spooks. But even a clock that is not running tells the correct time twice a day. They just happen to pick a time to reject intelligence that was right.

Democrats – we are told – are experienced at getting us into welfare spending, bleeding-heart causes, and programs that are that four letter word in liberalism, fair. Republicans are supposed to be experienced at running things, like a successful business. Fairness be damned, the return on investment and the bottom line are what measures how any enterprise is run. And what has this republican administration run us into with the almost absolute power they had at their beginning? We don’t need expertise in obtaining failure.

Oh, and while we are on experience. The person with the least experience in the administration was Bush. Maybe if we had someone in the role of president who had something higher on his agenda than outdoing his brother or showing he’s not the wimp his dad is, we wouldn’t be in this mess we are in now. That’s where we needed the experience. If only Bush had listen to Colin Powell. The Decider decided to listen to the wrong people. Hello Hillary! Here’s the point about experience you should be making.

I’m damned sure no ones going to walk into the White House the morning after that 3:00am call and tell McCain what he should do. And I don’t think that will happen to Hillary either – especially from Bill. No, any mess McCain or Hillary get us into will be of their own making. (Fairness note: I refer to Hillary by first name to differentiate her by name from her very powerful husband and not by gender from her opponent.)

The Clintons will put their lock on control of the Democratic Party if they return to the White House. If experience teaches us anything, it has taught us that. No wonder Kennedy, Kerry, Carter, and any other big dogs in the party are either out right supporting or leaning toward Obama. Political history says Gore should support Obama because they are fellow populist, but then Hillary considers herself just as much if not a more experience populist – at least that’s what her machine keeps pumping out – than either Gore or Obama, so he could display loyalty and stay with the Clinton camp.

So we sit and wait to see which way Gore goes. Will Super Al wait with us and support whoever gets the nomination, or will he move in and display the leadership the party needs to make a smooth transition to the general election? Stay tuned.

What’s Going to Happen in 2008

2008-03-29T09:47:00.006-04:00

Time to roll out this year’s predictions and score last year’s. Last year’s predictions, which are located here, where not so go. So, let’s score last year’s predictions before making this year’s

1. A big congressional investigation(s) will lead to impeachment proceeding.

Well that never happened. I was going on my belief that the second term is cursed – by LBJ nonetheless. The Bush administration proves that if you just ignore the scandals, you don’t have to worry about no stinkin’ curse. As I indicated in the linked post, it’s the response and not the actual offense that is the undoing of an administration, so if you don’t respond the chances of making a self-destroying blunder is greatly reduced.

2. The Surge will not work.

Wrong here. Is the fact the Surge is working the results of military leaders on the ground determining strategy and not required to follow Washington's detail instructions – especially the Neocons, or the result of Sunni’s forsaking Al-Qaeda and deciding to align with the U.S.? Probably a lot of both, however, if the troops sent to Iraq for the Surge are still there this summer, it’s not a Surge it’s an Escalation – which we’ve heard of before in other wars, but the predictions was that it wouldn’t work and I was wrong – last year.

3. Castro will die.

No, he didn’t, but he did give up his power position, or whatever that is in his communist totalitarian state, but he did that this year, so that doesn’t count. And he is still alive according to the internet – which never lies – at the time of this post.

4. Bush will have a nervous breakdown.

Didn’t happen, but item number one above didn’t happen, so he was not put into a situation where his family's status, wealth, or his father could not save him from total loss. If the impeachment had occurred, how he would have weather it, we can only wonder.

5. Bush will get us into a war with Iran.

Didn’t happen either. Sometimes your worse fears don’t come true.

I’m 0 for 5. Not the best of odds when it comes to procrastinating, however this was my first attempt to write them down, and so hopefully, I’ll get better with time. If you look back at the first prediction site, the last two were wild shots anyway and shouldn’t count, so I’m 0 for 3, actually.

This year’s predictions:

1. John McCain will be elected President of the United States overwhelmingly. It will not even be close. Hillary/Obama or Obama/Hillary or one of them with somebody else will somehow - as all good Democrats do - self-destruct.
2. The Republicans will pick up on something that happened in the Democratic Primary that no one much noticed at the time it occurred and turn it into a major political issue during the general election. Like Kerry's flip-flop speech. Conservatives have learned mass communication. They will not be bested by the likes of JFK in the debates or LBJ's job on Goldwater. They have become masters of the medium. Liberals strive to play fair, conservatives play to win.
3. Castor will die. This year for sure. I hate to shoot fish in a barrel, but the old coot can’t keep going forever. At least I – and a bunch of Cubians in South Florida – hope not.
4. Post Castor Cuba will be big in the news and draw the media's attention away from that old news story, the war in Iraq.
5. The Surge will prove a failure. It appeared to work and did work for what? 10 months? Maybe make its anniversary in June. But the violence will return and the Surge will simply become an old fashion escalation − which is doomed to fail also. Anyway, much of the Surge’s success was actually the decision by the Sunnis to turn against Al-Qaeda. Maybe the Surge worked there.
6. A major event or disaster in Iraq that will make the Surge appear meaningless. It could be a major attack on the Green Zone, such as the infamous “nuclear suitcase”, or forces unfriendly with the U.S. seizing control of Basra and cutting off the supply line to the coast and Kuwait, or an intense re-escalation of the violence to levels in excess of the pre-Surge time. Something is going to happen and it will not be good for pro-Iraq War politicians.
7. The recession will be a short one. The economy is strong, it will weather the money crisis over bad loans, and the Christmas season will be a big one for retail sales.

Let's hope we do better at predicting this year than we did last year, but I'm making no prediction.

Hubris, Experience’s Last Lesson

2008-03-16T14:30:00.002-04:00

Time magazine had a recent story about the experience issue in this election cycle and whether Obama had enough or not. The magazine provided a chart showing the experience of all the previous presidents and what kind of experience they had prior to taking office, specifically: public service, congress, or military. I would link to it but Time did not include it the same story online. It was one very informative chart. Amazingly, some of our best presidents had the least experience and some of our worse had the most. What does that tell us?

I saw a recent set of stories of the development of the internet and one theme that seemed to run through all the episodes was how companies lost out because they became big, dominate, and failed to notice changes in the market over which they had seemedly complete control. Microsoft did it to IBM and then nearly had it done to them when they fail to see the internet coming. Netscape was the browser everybody used and didn’t think they had to talk to Microsoft when they woke up and realized the importance of the internet. Who uses Netscape now?

Experience breeds arrogance which will lead to anyone's undoing. It is experience’s last lesson before someone with less experience takes over. And then the cycle begins again.

In the history of American policy, few have had as much experience as Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld and yet their hubris, the arrogance they displayed against any critic or detractor, the authority with which they dismissed the experts in the State Department, CIA, and anywhere else that knew they were wrong led to where we are today in Iraq and their reputation in that ol’ dustbin of history of the forgotten and ruined.

Perhaps someone with less experience is willing to listen to others that have more of it or at least others who have different opinions. Maybe that’s the best lesson experience can teach us: to not rely on experience too much. The best experience is to be open to new experience without prejudice or bias, to not let experience go to your head and make you forget how you gained that experience in the first place.

To some, experience leads to hubris, to others it leads a humility and openness to new experiences. Let us hope our experience will be the latter whoever is elected come November 4, 2008.

Experience is not what it used to be

2008-02-23T10:39:00.002-05:00

This is not the season for experience. The Clinton’s, one of the most politically adroit couples to come along since maybe the Roosevelt’s, has been unable to overcome the change movement that is in the air. People want change. People want to be inspired by their candidate. People are tired of experience.

And who’s to blame them? When the current administration came into office, it was one of the most experience groups in governing that has taken over for some time – except of course for the President himself. And yet, these pros made the mistakes of amateurs. Lucky for them, the military was educated enough from its experience that it saved their ass – sort of.

So why shouldn’t experience take a beating? Throw the bums out and get all new bums. Even if they are new and don’t know quite what to do, we know from experience they can’t do much worse than someone with experience.

Woops! I’m evoking experience to degrade experience. Isn’t that a self-defining definition or self-fulfilling prophecy or just plain selfish?

One BIG difference in this election that’s way different than almost all that have come before is the election of a Senator to the presidency. The last time that happened was when John Kennedy got elected, and I don’t know when it happed before that. Experience has taught us that for senators to get to be president, they need to get themselves picked as a vice president first. While it's not unusual for senators to get their party's nomination, they don’t usually win presidental elections.

A very good route to the White House is to become a governor first. They do very well in presidential elections. Seems we are always picking outsiders. Seems change is not all that much change.

The very best way to become president is to be the commanding general in a major war. That strategy has worked from Washington to Eisenhower. Some things never change.

Which brings up another thing experience is famous for: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Does that mean that if Obama brings enough change to the government it will be the same as what we got now?

One of these days, these Obamaniacs are going to wake up with a big case of change-hangover. And experience teaches us they will become disillusioned and cynical about their government and politics. They will turn away from it and return to sports or celebrity-watching or American Idle/Idol, and experience politicos will move back in and run thing just as they always have.

Experience will do that to you.

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

2008-02-17T11:25:00.001-05:00

In Frank Rich’s Sunday column, The Grand Old White Party Confronts Obama, he comments on just how white the Republicans are and the Obama phenomena that may (or may not) be sweeping the country right now and it is a heralding of the end of the white man racism of the Republican Party. I don’t think that’s true. I would like to think it’s true, but I don’t believe it is. I commented much the same there and am repeating it here.

When LBJ signed the civil rights bill he bullied through Congress, he is supposed to have said he lost the South for the Democratic Party. Would seem the old pol was right. One of the best things that every happen to the Democratic Party was all those good old boy racists, those Dixiecrats, the Strom Thurmans, and Trent Lotts became good Republicans. Good riddance. The Democrats may never win in the South again but it’s a better party for it.

While Obama may win the nomination because of picking up so many delegates from southern states, he can not depend on winning those states in the general election. They will go Republican just as LBJ predicted. The good old Southern boys will not return to the Democratic Party until the Republicans reduce their wages’ purchasing power to the levels it was in pre-Depression times before the Democrats and the war raised the standard of living for everybody but the exceedingly rich – and increased the number of rich people, also.

I’m one of those Democrats that liked McCain from way back. Like others, I think he has the potential of being another Teddy Roosevelt. Just as nobody but an old Cold Warrior like Nixon could have opened talks with China, so too, only a Republican can bring way-needed progressive changes to our government. Those right wingers don’t like him any more than their forefathers dislike Teddy, and rightly so from their point of view. He will be their undoing.

Will Mr. Change cause a change in the South? I wish the current Obamania would make it happen but I’m too cynical to believe it. McCain will be our next President. It won’t even be close. There still that much hate in this country.

Nora, Darling

2008-02-16T10:12:00.001-05:00

[Nora Ephron wrote over at the Huffington Post The A.D.D. Election in which she lamented she could keep track of what was going on in this election cycle. I commented on her post and here is my comment below, although I fleshed it out a little more.]

It’s not ADD when you got data overload. There’s just too, too, way too much − of everything. Election-wise that is.

It’s not ADD; it’s Bizarro World and I don’t know which one is Superman − or Superwoman as the case may be − but I do know where the Kryptonite is. That’s entitlements. Don’t get near that or you become very, very weak − politically that is, to wring out this analogy for all its worth.

Anyway, this time around, it’s a Bizarro World. What’s up is down, what’s down is up. Experience doesn’t matter – except in practice. Experience teaches us that unless there is a very good practical plan, change will change nothing. Does the takeover of Iraq come to mind?

But of course our overthrow of Saddam has changed everything – nothing like what was planned – we’ve changed the balance of power among Muslim states in the Middle East and Southwestern Asia that has been in existence for centuries. If Mr. Change wins, he’s going to have to deal with that, as we all are. Thank you, Neocons.

We have learned one thing that has not changed in our selection of a president. America’s 9/11 Mayor’s strategy − as well as “rank’em, pack’em, stack’em*” Thompson’s strategy − has taught us is you can’t ignore the early primary. Even if you know you will not do well among the holier-than-thou or the northerner-than-thou, you got to make a show of trying. A no show got no go.

Like you, Nora darling, I was hoping Super Tuesday would end the madness. And, for the Republican it did − sort of. The “sort of” reinforces the idea that Republicans would rather be “right” than win or that they prefer a faux hero who pretended to land a plane on a carrier instead of someone who actually landed a plane on a carrier.

Of course, the Republicans can always depend of the strategy that has worked for them oh so well in the past. They can depend on the Democrats to lose an election that any pundit except those from some Biazrro World blog would predict they would easily win. I wonder if Mr. Change can change that.

Anyway, Nora darling, not blogging just commenting (too late!). Let’s do lunch. Have your bot contact my bot. Love ya’, mean it.

*One of Thompson’s lines in a Die Hard movie − the second one I believe. Wouldn’t you have just loved to hear him make at least one State of Union address? It woulda’ been a stem-winder.

Dear Maureen Dowd

2008-01-27T12:10:00.000-05:00

I sent the following email to Maureen Dowd of the NYTimes about her appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press”. It had to do with her comment on the Camelot legend which I have written about and is linked below and particularly the sword-in-the-stone portion of the legend. We must await her reply.

Dear Ms. Dowd,

Love your column, and you looked absolutely marvelous on pumpkin head’s show Sunday morning. However, in your reference to the Camelot legend, you said Caroline Kennedy’s endorsement of Obama was like Galahad drawing the sword from the stone.

Galahad did not draw the sword from the stone. Arthur did. That’s how the people knew he was supposed to the successor to Uther Pendragon who had put it there in the first place – allegedly.

Jack Kennedy and his administration being likened to the myth of Camelot is something I wrote about when I first started blogging. Where is the sword in the stone so that I might know of Camelot’s return when and if Jack’s successor draws it from the stone?

I ask it here: Sword in the Stone

Since I know you might not want to visit some unknown site, I’ll give you the condensed version here. I didn’t hyper-link the site in this email for the reason that it might not get through if I did. (In the note I sent MoDo, I didn’t hyper link it like I did here. I've also edited my copy since then – scout29c.)

Arthur who did not know he was Uther Pendragon’s son drew the sword from the stone because he had the divine right to do so. Where is the modern day version of the sword in the stone so that we might know who Jack’s successor is when they draw it from the stone?

I think the sword in the stone is the “unconscious endorsement” of the press – or MSM in the more modern expression. The term “unconscious endorsement” is within quotes because of its significance. Professional journalists try to hold themselves above the political fray so as to not compromise their professionalism – and rightfully so, however what happens when as a collective groups they just plain like and admire a certain candidate.

Having a large number of pundits, reporters, and those dastardly bloggers liking a candidate – or President, for that matter – would be one powerful weapon. That’s my guess as to where the sword in the stone is, and I’m watching to see if Obama can draw it out.

Oh, and I’ll keep reading your column and looking for your bad self on TV.

Poll Me No Polls

2008-01-21T12:00:00.000-05:00

So much for “Change as the New Black”. There is no new black in this election cycle – so far. Hillary proved the professional politician she is. Maybe experience is no longer mentioned as is change in election campaigning but she proved its merit in practice. The other big news item on the campaign trail is how wrong polls can be and how much newsworthiness they possess prior to being proven wrong.

And the newshounds keep going back to them – as if polls were a fickle but undeniable siren. It’s all they got and so they treat it like it is news. Like I said before: If “dog bites man” is the only news you got, then any newsperson worth his salt gets a dog that bites. Thus we have polls.

Super Tuesday will decide it all. I’m thinking Hillary has got it but who knows. It will be interesting to see how they campaign for Super Tuesday and how the press covers it.

Florida is going to be interesting to see if Giuliani’s strategy was wise. It didn’t work for Thompson in South Carolina. McCain won and gave a most interesting victory speech. Wouldn’t it be funny if someone who emphasized the legend of a Republican winning the South Carolina primary were to invalidate that tradition? Such is American politics.

I would almost like to see Giuliani’s strategy proven in Florida if only it would mean the demise of the early expectation setting primaries and the news hype that surrounds them. However, there is the more interesting aspect in the coming election of McCain being our time’s Teddy Roosevelt, so Giuliani has got to lose. Perhaps it will be like Al Gore proving a Democrat no longer needs the South to win but he lost anyway type of victory.

Is Change the New Black?

2008-01-07T08:17:00.000-05:00

What does Obama’s win in Iowa tell us about us? Is a rally arising on the left? A new movement among the Democrats to dump last century’s baggage may (or may not) make this a year’s selection process one to remember but it is certainly more than we pundits and bloggers could ever have asked for. Perhaps the non-appearance of any defined goals for the change made the movement’s rise missed our notice, although we were getting indications by the popularity of Obama in those incessant polls that MSN must have to have news. When dog bite is the only news you got, get yourself a dog that bites.

If the voters of New Hampshire vote for change, we got ourselves a movement. Ink will run, trees felled, and coal burned spreading the word back and forth explaining, dissecting, and commenting ad infinitum on this Change that is in the air now that anyone can see it – and report on it. Let’s hope it doesn’t all end in a scream, and son-of-change doesn’t rise up to take its place. (Or would that be daughter-of-change?)

New Hampshire – maybe even Tsunami Tuesday – could result in a race between the Machine, the Progressive, and Mr. Change. Obliviously to anyone familiar with the punditry, the Machine is Clinton. She’s got the org, the money, the names, and what comes as close as we are going to get today, a political machine. And don’t forget the experience. She was selling that in Iowa, but the young voters were not buying it. They bought change.

The Progressive for anyone needing a scorecard is Edwards. Running in the old, down home political style that has been used since the populists and progressives began at the dawn of the previous century. Like any good progressive, farmers, workers – as usual in the form of union organizations – and the poor make up his grassroots campaign. Progressivism has always been a hit with the Democrats but hardly a winner.

It may take a village for us all the live a normal life but it takes a Great Depression for a progressive to get in the White House.

How Mr. Change’s campaign will affect the winter and spring of 2008 is going to be the thing to watch. It may all be a fizzle by the end of January, but we may roar into February like some political lion and roar out that way all way up to the presidential election in November.

And what’s happening over on the Republican side with Huckabee taking Iowa? If Iowa revels a movement is afoot among the Democrats, the Republican results proves how unimportant Iowa should be considered. Let’s see…a major candidate that is so catering to the self-righteous right that this supposedly well-educated man declared in a public forum that he doesn’t believe in evolution won in a state that is predominated by just the kind of people to which his declaration was targeted.

Will the cold, hard New Englanders send Huckabee back to the land of the self-righteous were they can all pray for a the miracle they know will occur if they all pray long enough and hard enough to make it happen? Pray God protect us from faith based government.

Looks like the real race on the Republican side is between McCain and Romney. We got all kinds of polls but we will just have to wait until the official poll, the one that selects delegates to see what the thinking of the Republicans are for 2008. However, McCain and Obama are drawing water from the same well of independents to over come their own parties’ rank and file which if I’m reading the more clued-up pundits will support Romney and Clinton. Whoever draws the independents will win – or do better than expectation which what today’s primary news is all about.

We must wait for Tuesday to see. Stay tuned.

Happiness in Annapolis

2007-11-27T07:50:00.000-05:00

Today's Mid-East Peace meeting in Annapolis will be run like Bush’s other foreign policy initiatives. All participants are told that they will be welcomed with flowers and kisses but will be ambushed by unanticipated attacks when they get there. Bush’s foreign policy advisors will be totally oblivious of age old rivalries among participants and will sit people alphabetically according to the nickname Bush has given them.

Participants will be told the meeting is to discuss the Palestinian problems but it will be about Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. They will be searched for those missing Iraqi WMD’s that Bush’s truly faithful believe must be someplace.

The Neocons will usurp the meeting to manipulate its proceeding for their own naïve theories for the Middle East. In another secret agenda, Darth Cheney will come speak, and with an obtuse comment and wave of the hand make it difficult for many participants to find their breath and scare the hell out of everybody else.

Some how, a justification for the U.S. attacking Iran will come out of the meeting.

And even if nothing gets done during the conference, Bush will come flying into the Annapolis airport in his flight suit with Mission Accomplished banners flying all over. Condi will get an ’at a girl or heck of job, and everyone will live happily ever after in Bush world.

Bizarro World and no Superman, what are we to do?

A Foreign Policy Machiavelli Would Love

2007-11-12T09:42:00.000-05:00

A major power involved in a continuous conflict with a much smaller, weaker country in which the major power can never truly win or afford to lose can greatly benefit all others nations major and otherwise.

While I’m not aware that Machiavelli ever wrote anything like that, I’m sure he would agree that, as a matter of statecraft, it ranks right up there with fear. Nothing benefits other nations than having a major nation bogged down in a struggle that they can never completely win or allow a loss, but must continue bleeding their resources which would be used elsewhere against other nations. It doesn’t matter if the major nation is friend or foe, other nations can exploit the situation to their advantage.

Two centuries ago and at the beginning of the previous century, when the world’s colonial period was coming to an end, England, France, and Spain fought continuously to maintain the last of their colonies. Countries not directly involved benefited from these major countries attention being diverted in their individual struggles. The emerging U.S. economy comes to mind. England recognized what was happening in time to become Great Britain instead of just a small island that once ruled the world.

In the modern era, the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and now Iraq, hamstrings the most powerful nation in the world in dealing with other countries. Vietnam should have taught the policy wonks a lesson, but some people just will not learn. The “neo” in The Neoconservative Movement or Philosophy not only stands for “new” it also stands for neophyte when it comes to foreign policy.

The involvement of the USSR in Afghanistan may have hastens its breakup. The big communist threat of the Cold War was lessened by their involvement in Afghanistan. Eastern Europe, always under the threat of the communist hammer, was given room to breathe a little free air. The U.S. should have taken a more Machiavellian approach in aide to Afghan rebels. They should have given them just enough to harass the Russian but never enough to really drive them out. They should have never have given rebels Stinger missiles. U.S. aide to foreign rebels in Afghanistan leads directly to Al-Qaeda. Payback is a bitch.

The euro and its home, Europe, benefits while U.S. foreign policy is held captive in Iraq. They can condemn, ridicule, and laugh at the U.S. and feel good about themselves as well as benefiting their economies. They feel the naive Americans are hosted on their own idealist petards. With the concentration camp in Getmo and the stories of renditions to foreign prisons and no good ol’ American habeas corpus for any of them, world-wide critics have proof that Americans don’t practice their holier-than-thou preaching.

Of all the nations in the world, no country has benefited more by the U.S. overthrow of Saddam than Iran. The U.S. changed a neighboring threat to an opportunity for Iran to advance their religious based cause. Today, Iran has more influence in Iraq than the U.S. Shiites have come into a position they have never known before because of the U.S. takeover of Iraq. The U.S. will eventually have to leave Iraq. The Shiites never will, and have power and position not only in Iraq but in the Middle East as a whole than they ever had before. This is real historic precedents. The rest of the Islam is going to have to deal with the rise of the Shiites – courtesy of a naïve foreign policy by the U.S.

Russia struggling to find itself after the breakup of the USSR benefits from the U.S. involvement in Iraq. With the U.S. stuck in Iraq, Russia has the liberty to take chances and do things it might not be able to do. We’ve not heard the last of Russia. One day in the not to distant future, Russia will be just a powerful and influential as the USSR ever was.

With Iran at odds with the U.S., Russia can make inroads with Iran that might not be available otherwise. Who knows, perhaps Russia’s and Iran’s entanglements may lead to one of those detrimental struggles of which this post is about. If that happens, I hope the U.S. will not make another foreign policy blunder as it did in Afghanistan.

The rise of China has benefited by the U.S.’s involvement in Iraq. While the U.S. loses friends and influence, China gains what the U.S. is losing. The new world order includes the economic powerhouse China. The question is will China be able to avoid the same pitfalls other major nations have continuously fallen into. Will China follow the path of other powerful nations? Will it become bogged down in some small war that will bleed its growing economy and ability to wield power elsewhere?

China has been involved with a debilitating struggle, although its distraction was with itself and not another country. The Culture Revolution benefited everybody except China. A fact the Chinese leadership is well aware and will not allow that to happen again. If it had not been for the Culture Revolution, China would be where it is today twenty years ago. Perhaps fate will give China a small war in which they can never win and cannot afford to lose.

We could all breathe easier if that happened, and hopefully the Neocons will not be in control of American’s foreign policy and cooler more Machiavellian heads will prevail.

Smoked Filled Back Primaries

2007-11-03T09:33:00.000-04:00

During a political progressive period at the turn of the previous century, the idea of the major parties' presidential nominations being chosen by a few power brokers and party bosses in "smoked filled back rooms" was considered undemocratic and the statewide primaries were born or at least taken up by progressives as a means for people to seize the political nominating process. It seemed a novel experiment in Americana but by the middle of the previous century, politicians and their strategists realized they could win enough delegates in primaries prior to the convention to hold their parties nomination out right or be significantly on the way to the point of being able to dictate terms to the parties' power elite.

But no good intention, no matter how sincere the intent, goes untainted when politics are concerned. Just as in today’s attempt to reform campaign financing, there is too much power and too much money at stake for it not to be corrupted. I don’t mean today’s primary system is corrupted as in the criminal sense, but corrupted as to its democratic ideal. A few primaries determine who the rest of us will get to vote for. Today's first primaries filter the political field leaving the rest of us with who they liked. A candidate that would do well nationally – but may not have a chance in the region of the first primaries – is not available for the majority of Americans to choose one way or the other.

On the flip side, early primaries may choose someone who doesn't have a chance nationally. John Kerry and Michael Dukakis won New Hampshire, their parties' nomination, and did terrible in the general election. They're both New Englanders which gave them an advantage in New Hampshire. Many pundits thought anybody could beat Bush in 2004, but they hadn't counted on Kerry's ineptitude or Karl Roves' spinmaster abilities.

New Hampshire likes to brag about being the first primary. They have made their state laws so no matter when another states has their primary, New Hampshire’s will automatically be a week earlier. The early primaries are no different than the power brokers of old who didn’t want to give up their power in those “smoke filled back rooms” in choosing the next president, or at least the next nominee, and will do whatever they can to keep power. I wouldn’t be surprise if the 2012 first primary vote is the day after the 2009 inauguration.

This is especially noticeable with the coming 2008 election. Rarely do we get such a large group of candidates from which to choose, and yet, most of us will get to vote for only two or three top runners in each party. How is the winnowing to a few candidates different than party bosses selecting the next nominee in "smoked filled back rooms"?

What would the political arena be like if we all got to vote on the current gang of candidates running for their parities' nomination? What if they had all primaries on the same day? Political wonks would have to re-think the whole campaign process. Like the beginning of the primary selection process at the turn of the previous century, old school strategist would be at a loss and innovators would have the advantage. Political junkies like myself would have a reality TV show like no other.

Given my rule above about there being too much power and too much money at stake in who is president for any selection process to go uncorrupted, how long would it go before the noble idea of same-day primaries becomes tarnished?

And thus we end on a cynical note.

Writing Naked

2007-10-28T11:10:00.000-04:00

While cruising for interesting sites over at digg, I ran across this site about tips for writing. I was already familiar with several of the tips but I picked up some new ones. I had not heard about writing headlines. Headlines!

With my seemedly inexhaustible need to comment, I left my two cents on writing. I made the comment that writing is like playing a musical instrument or running marathons. I've talked to many people who wanted to be writers and they were just waiting for time or inspiration to begin writing. This is wishful dreaming and not the practical approach to writing it deserves if you are serious.

It's like someone saying they want to be a musician but they're not going to practice on whatever instrument they have some capability to use. They are going to wait until they get a gig. What kind of show would that be? No one would pay for that.

Or, some guy wants to be a marathon runner, but they are not going to go out and run everyday on some 10K or even a 5K regularly. They are going to wait until the day of the marathon to start running. How far would they get in that marathon? Not very far, and they wouldn't even deserve a t-shirt.

And yet, many people approach writing the same way. They think that just because they can talk they can write. Stream of consciousness writing only seems that way. It's lots of work even if you write everyday. It's edited, reworked, re-edited, and crafted so that eventually it appears to flow like someone's thoughts. There is a lot of effort in making something appear effortless.

I have posted earlier about the benefit of writing a blog if you have to write for a living. It's amazing how easy it is to write if you write regularly. The words just seem to flow. I'm not struggling over sentence structure, grammar, or syntax in trying to express a thought.

The other tip I left on the writing tips site is to just start writing with out any purpose or goal in mind. Just let you thought spill onto the page – sort of that first draft of the stream of consciousness writing I mentioned above. Although it's an interesting exercise, it has never lead to any short story for me, but hey, maybe one day it will.

And then there’s the story about a guy who is always being approached by young would-be writers to review something they have written in the hopes that he will tell them they have what it takes. They give him a manuscript or something they have written.

He reads the material, comments on the quality of writing, tells them of the tips I have mentioned before and were listed at the site linked above, especially the one about writers write. Musicians play for the joy of it even if there is no performance in their future. Runners run because of how it makes them feel and keeps them in shape, and writers write whether they are going to be published or not.

Then at the climax, he asked them to expose a most intimate part of their anatomy. If it’s a female, he asked to see her breast. If it’s a male, he asked to see his penis. Of course they are shocked, embarrassed, and extracting themselves from their reviewer with as much haste as they can muster. (However, a few are not shocked and begin to disrobe. Invariably these people eventually go into advertising – but that’s another story.)

And then when they are so shocked and want to leave his present immediately, he offers them their manuscript and says that when they feel as exposed in offering their manuscript as they just did at the suggestion of exposing themselves, then maybe they will have something worth reading.

They were more embarrassed in exposing some intimate part of there anatomy than their writing. When it’s the other way around, they may have written something somebody would want to read. Imagine you are more exposed in your writings than if you stood up naked in front of people totally nude and they could comment on every thing they see. Your words expose you more than being naked.

In other words, write naked or write as if what you are writing is your most naked self – or something like that. Just a thought, try it and see. You can always keep it under wraps.

The Presence of Being

2007-10-11T08:37:00.000-04:00

Saw an article at msn.com on presence. I’ve seen it, you’ve seen it, we all have seen someone who commands attention in a room just by being there. Someone who has trouble with computers, who has difficulty answering their emails, who doesn’t know who Ben Bernanke is or even who is the Vice President of the United States, and yet, can walk in a room full of people and take over the conversation as if they were an authority in all things that matter.

In the movie “The Lion and the Wind”, the little boy said it of the character being portrayed by Sean Connery – a presence on the screen if ever there was one – “He’s got the way.” This was a declaration of presence he made to his mother who was portrayed by Candice Bergin, another noted presence. This movie had lots of them; it was eat up with them. Brian Keith nearly stole the show portraying President Teddy Roosevelt – another presence. Here we have a movie by someone who has presence playing someone who had presence at the turn of the previous century.

The guy that wrote the article, Tom Chiarella, started it off writing about Bill Murray. The Bill Murray. First off, he’s famous – which by the way is a whole nother subject of a post – and which gives him presence out the ying yang. He gets to play the famous card. But Mr. Chiarella seems to think he had presence in spite of being famous as though this chicken or egg came first. Whatever.

You want presence? I got the secret right here. And I’m not sending out any scam emails selling it, but like the two colored pills in the Matrix, you must choose, now. Continue reading, the red pill, learn about presence and live with the knowledge forever more, or take the green pill by clicking on something else. Go see what Britney Spears or Paris Hilton is up to.

READ NO FURTHER – YOU CAN’T UNREAD ONCE YOU CONTINUE.

It’s simple. Be yourself. What ever presence you have within must be played straight – you can’t act it. (That’s where the writer dude in the article got it wrong.) If you don’t have any, I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. “He also serves who only stands and waits.” It was written a long time ago and is still just a true today. Presence is not necessary for happiness or contentment. Get on with your life. Appreciate the abilities of others.

But if you have it – if you have any of it – it will be maximized by being yourself. That sounds easy, but oh no my friend, it’s quite hard. If you have been trying to be cool, stylish, or accepted by others, you will not know how to be yourself. It’s a hard role to play because you’re not playing a role.

You will have to work at it. It may take you years. Young people who are just discovering themselves will have difficulty with this, but it’s a noble goal to work toward.

Lots of middle aged people got years of experience acting cool or acceptable to their friends or those they wish were their friends and got no clue as to who they really are. They got no presence but they keep buying the right kind of stuff, going to the right kind of places, and saying all the right kind of sayings and yet at the end of the day, it just doesn’t seem to work.

They’re trying to be something they’re not. If they got lots of money, it will appear to work. Money like fame buys you presence.

But all it takes is to be in the presence of one who has it abundantly, naturally, and the phonies standout like they are so last century. It’s sort of like being cool, only we all posses the ability to be as cool as we can but only a few of us have presence.

So, go and read the article linked above, but don’t pay much attention to it. Taking up acting is not where it’s at – that is unless you have always wanted to be an actor down deep inside. Be yourself and whatever presence is within you will come out.

I can guarantee it. And if you get to know who you really are, and you realize you don’t have any presence, you really won’t give a shit – and that’s a presence all its own.

Does the Universe have a Purpose?

2007-10-08T08:53:00.000-04:00

This question was in an advertisement of this Sunday’s NYTimes Week in Review section. Several notable persons weighted in with differing opinions. The ad directs the reader to the following site – where these notables’ opinions were fleshed out.

First, since according to current prevailing cosmology, way over half the universe is missing – “dark”. How can we determine if something has a purpose when we don’t know what most of it is? It’s like that old parable (or is it a fable or allegory?) about the blind men reporting on their observations of an elephant. We know there is more to the elephant than what we can detect and that it’s different from what we are observing, and that’s all we can say right now. What’s the purpose of an elephant when all we know is the tail or the trunk or one of those column-like legs and that’s there’s a lot more but we don’t what it is?

The universe appears to be a chaotic system in which the galaxies, stars, plants, and solar systems, all appear to be strange attractors in a chaos theory – not that I know that much about mathematical or physical theories, but that’s what it appears to me. Even atomic particles could be seen as strange attractors that appeared after the Big Bang. Given that, how can the universe have a purpose? By nothing more than a definition of terms, if it is chaotic it can’t have a purpose. If it has a purpose, it can’t be chaotic.

And then we come to the strangest of all strange attractors, life. If there was no life there would be no question about purpose. Rocks don’t ask what’s my purpose. Gas giants don’t wonder why they are here. Life has a purpose: more life. That is the essence of life. That is what separates it from all other chemical processes. Life is order in a chaotic universe.

Life’s purpose is to begat more life. In its simplest form, life is a molecule that exploits its environment to reproduce itself. This molecule evolves to enhance this exploitation and to be better reproduce itself. It cooperates with other molecules; it becomes a chemical process; it continually evolves becoming more complex, more exploitive and more numerous; but always the basic principle or purpose remains the same. Survive and reproduce.

While we have yet to find proof of life anywhere else but on earth, everywhere we look on or in the earth, we find life. The way life is going, given time, the whole earth will be come alive. After that, we will expand to incorporate the rest of the solar system and then the galaxy and then the universe. Maybe that’s the universe’s purpose. To be the matrix or platform eventually incorporated into life.

Because of life, the question of whether God is or is not is a moot point. Worse case scenario: There is no God; we a totally alone; when you die, that is the end of you, you are no more. If that’s the case, then we are God or will become God one day.

When looking at the age of the universe, our existence and current state is nothing short of a miracle. In the span of time, we just appeared as a species, and yet look at all that has happen since we got here – and most of that is in the last 10,000 years. Instantaneous. While life may seem the strangest of strange attractors in a chaotic system, intelligence seemed preordained in life’s purpose. Why depend on exploitation of random chance to advance yourself, when it would be better to take charge and choose the more successful strategy.

Given our present state of advancement, we will conquer time just as we have the other dimensions. We will go back in time and save all that have ever lived. Either through God or human progress, you will have everlasting life. The prophecies will be fulfilled.

Tapping to the Muzak

2007-09-23T16:04:00.000-04:00

Is this an invitation or do you just like this song?

Frank Rich has weighted in on the Larry Craig brouhaha over how the left and right are responding to his behavior in the Minneapolis Airport’s men’s room.

The right is attacking the left for not being understanding for Craig’s misfortune. Where’s the political correctness for a gay man – sorry, a non-gay man acting as a gay man – when the left is so quick to defend a gay’s right to be gay? The left’s retort is that it is not the gayness of it all but the hypocrisy of Craig and his conservative kind. Craig was supposed to be a real gay basher in the Senate.

The lefties don’t care how many times Craig goes into a men’s room for reasons other than urinary or bowel relief. He can tap his foot all he wants and take as wide a stance as he wishes, and even followed up with whatever this behavior is suppose to portend.

It’s Craig’s two-facedness in the whole gay political scene that upset the liberals. They would act the same way if they found out Ted Kennedy was a member of the KKK or Joe Lieberman was secretly a Nazi. Would they be as upset if they found out Barney Frank was secretly having an affair with a woman? Would the right then come to their defense?

Up is down, down is up, the left is right and the right is left. We seem to be living in that kind of political bizarro world now, so I wouldn’t be surprise.

You can be sure of one thing. The right has mastered mass communication, and as we have recently seen in the past, will make the liberals look like fools over this whole gay bashing affair. They’ll feed the liberals their own lunch – sideways.

See my previous post about the two brains of politics and how the conservative brain may have been slow – as test now show – to catch on to mass communication, but now that they have, their unwavering brain pathways gives them an advantage in spinning any story the liberals can only understand but never equal.

Two-Brained Again

2007-09-16T11:19:00.000-04:00

I grow up learning all this liberal moralism about the self-evident truths of equality extended to the sexes. Later, I learn there is a difference in our brains – the fact of which I was very much experiencing first hand during a crucial period of development. As a young boy, receiving a first rate American education with access to the Playboy Philosophy, I took the politically correctness of it completely. I bought the whole bit.

Girls are just like boys but with different body parts. And so I figured like boys, they want to use those body parts a soon as possible. How wrong can a guy be? If I had only known.

And now I come to learn conservatives and liberals got different brains. Who would of thought? Oh yea, the liberals would. That’s what the results say, so unless I got my summary wrong about the summary appearing in the press, of the summary appearing in the scientific journal (to which I don’t have access and probably wouldn’t understand, anyway), liberals anticipated or were more ready to accept the two-brained politicos.

Following this line of logic, liberals must have known about two-brained sexes. Does that mean I’m not a liberal since I didn’t catch on until I heard about it? But when I did hear about two-brained gendering, I said, “Well that explains it. Now I understand what I have been experiencing personally all these years.” If I had only known.

I’ve taken the Political Typology test twice over at that Pew thingy and was judged a liberal. I considered myself a moderate conservative but the test said I was a liberal – twice. And there was a span of a year or two between the tests. So, I supposed I’m a liberal. If it’s true, this latest findings says I should be hard wired to accept the sudden change in political philosophy.

What I don’t like seeing is the repeated assumption that the results infer a lower intelligence in conservatives as a group. This idea has been around long before we knew about the two brains of politics. Everyone wants to seize this report as physical proof of the lower intelligence of conservatives.

However, the results prove something entirely different. Lyndon Johnson once said that if you can’t walk into a room and know who is on your side and who isn’t, you shouldn’t be in politics. How do you measure that on an IQ test? I know of guys who are doing well to answer their emails and spreadsheets are foreign territory to them, and yet they are the life of the party. How do you measure the ability to win friends and influence people on an IQ test?

Wouldn’t it be something that the latest results are true, and there are two brains? What if one of those brains, the liberal one, test better in IQ test than the other, the conservative one? What if the IQ test is a test for the liberal brain and the conservative brain is going untested at what it does best?

While liberals with their hard-wired capabilities grasped the significance of mass communication long before the conservatives did, once the conservatives assimilate the medium, they have proved themselves past masters at it. The liberals are the ones with all the intelligence but the conservatives keep beating them at the polls. Unwavering familiarity gives those who are wired to do so an advantage and richness for normalcy that those not wired to do so can only appreciate. Because of the tendency for unwavering thoughts, conservatives feel the patriotism and communal emotions liberals can only imagine.

These latest results on political two-brains might explain liberal ideas becoming conservative foundations.

At any rate, it does explain what I’m seeing in political behavior just as the two brains of the sexes explain the looks I got when I suggested what was obvious to the brain I was using.

The Post from Dell Hell

2007-09-08T11:19:00.000-04:00

I'm back from Dell Hell. I had to reload the mother program -- the one the computer came with -- which I suppose is an improvement over previous computers, but if I had known I was going to be doing this on an semi-annual basis I would have selected my programs more carefully.

I've still got to reload Office. This was composed at Google Office. I got to reload the wireless program. I know, I know, I should have gotten wireless when I bought the computer, but I didn't.

Of course I lost all my files but I have learned from previous failures so nothing important was lost. I don't keep anything important on my computer because I can never tell when I'll be making a trip to Dell Hell. However, I did lose the music I downloaded but had not moved to disc. I hope the MSN people will let me download them again since I've already paid for them.

I tried to reload drivers but not even the boot disk would work. There's no use calling India because they would just tell me to do what I did. I've sat on the phone long enough with them to learn that. I'm not cranky or irate. I usually ask how the weather is there, and tell them their English is very good -- anything to get their sympathy. But it's for naught, they just tell me to reload the original set up and here I am.

Next time, I'm going with the Geek Squad. At least if I get screwed, it will be locally.

I work for a large organization and they have a big computer group. When something goes wrong they come and fix it or remote in but usually they have you back up and running in no time. They've ruined me.

I must have a lemon of a computer. My computer at work never locks up and the system file is never corrupted like the one at home. I had a head crash at work but the system never locked up on me. And the one at work is a Dell, too. The one at home must be a lemon.

At any rate, I'm back and will try to uphold the code of the weekend blogger. It's good to be back.

I love cyberspace.

America's Best Worst Enemy

2007-07-22T12:18:00.000-04:00

America's great hope in Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf, seems to be in trouble. (This is a live Google, you'll get the latest news and evidance against the argument in this post. Such is fate) The question of the day is not how much longer he can hold on to power but how long his side can hold power.

Many have condemned him as an autocratic tyrant who will not allow a democratic Pakistan to rise. What many of these self same critics don't realize is they are playing Russian roulette with Pakistani society. Sure, there is a fairly good chance there could be an orderly change of government to whoever is Musharraf successor, but there is also a very good chance that chaos could become the order of the day or an extremist régime in no way friendly with normal, orderly society could seize control.

Don't say it can't happen. Proofs abound. Bush and his naïve Neocon foreign policy wonks certainly found that democracy just doesn't happen. Saddam was one mean assed tyrant, but then again, given the current situation in Iraq, maybe he had to be that way to keep peace in his own country if not order.

The deep of heart and ideal but shallow of reality and common sense rail against Mubarak of Egypt and the Saudi ruling family for there oppressive régimes as though with an open society, their country would be democracies like Europe or America. Fat chance. The chaos of Iraq or the alternative oppression of extremist religion such as in Iran or Afghanistan under the Taliban is the more likely result if their form of oppression was lifted.

That's basically the only two choices you got. Democracy is not easy. It just doesn't happen. And although no matter how good our intentions in countries that do not get the benefit of democracy and a free market, we are many time our own worst enemy. A big part of Musharraf's problem is his alignment with the west. He is tainted by association with America.

Let's face it, some people just got to hate. Today, a major sect of Islam thrives on hate, and currently much of it is directed at America. I see an opportunity here. Use the hatred against us as an asset to work for us.

The leader of a country doesn't necessarily have to be friendly with America to be of use to America. As long as he does not allow plotting against America by such groups as Al-Qaeda within his borders, he can rant and rave against American all he wants. We could even work secretly to insure he stays in power.

Musharraf's successor could campaign against us, use us as a whipping boy to make inroads with those that must hate somebody or someone, and at the same time have absolutely no intention of doing anything against America. He (or she) could take up the reins of power as an enemy of America with all the popular support that entails. They could use that power to clean out the Al-Qaeda camps in Northern Pakistan now in nationalist fervor to remove all foreigners from their country and not as a tool of the Americans. They could become America's best worst enemy.

The Beast that Ate Communism

2007-07-15T16:07:00.000-04:00

China executed the head of their pure food and drug group that was suppose to stop the making of all those products that have shown up in the news lately as killing or poisoning people, and being recalled, and rejected. Like that's going to work.

At least the government recognizes they have a major image problem on their hands. The free market is not something to be taken lightly. It's what defeated communism in the late great Cold War.

When third world leaders realized they could benefit themselves – and secondly their people – by being friendly with free market countries as apposed to centralized, planned economies no matter how elegant or noble their saying may be, communism's days were numbered. Seems free markets are more efficient than planned economies, and the peace in between the heightened tension periods of the Cold War kept reinforcing that. Anybody and everybody couldn't help but notice the two Koreas, the two Germanys, the two Berlins, the difference between East and West Europe. As long as there was peace, communism never had a chance.

And if the free markets of America and to some lesser extent the rest of the free world were to turn away from products from China, no amount of executions or 5-year plans will bring them back. If the idea that anything with the taint of "made in China" is to be avoided, the economic smack-down will make the Long March look like a hike in the woods. Don't go there.

No one controls the free market – Duh! That's why they call it free – only the collective decisions of consumers drive the most efficient allocation of resources we have ever seen.

It's our greatest resource. Every producer, exploiter, seller, marketer, hawker, and pusher wants access to the free market and especially the American market. It's were economic dreams come true, and it's a nightmare if it turns away from your product. The leaders of China know this. That's why heads had to roll. But it may be too little too late.

I recently read an article – I believe it was in the NYTimes, but I don't remember – about a reporter getting a cool to almost hostile reception at a factory in China. The police were called, but the authorities took their cue from the operators of the factory. Seems industry has way more power in China than we realized, but they need to realize that reporters from the Gray Lady is the least of their worries. That bitch the free market is way more vengeful than any reporter from any newspaper ever thought of being.

It's unforgiving. It's the bitchest of bitches. It will leave you high and dry like boats in a diverted or dried up river. Whose head is going to be cut off then?

Hamas Hate: Not Jews but Israelis

2007-07-07T10:17:00.000-04:00

It's one thing to seize the government; it's a whole 'nother thing to run it.

Hamas has taken over Gaza. The picture of fighters in mask holding the offices of the previous government speaks volumes. Thomas Friedman of the NYTimes noticed it also. He wrote about it in his June 20, 2007, column. I won't site it since it is behind the Times wall…on second thought.

Anyway, one of the more juicier quotes – and Friedman has a knack with juicy turns of phrase – was on a subject I have been posting for some time. He wrote:

If it's O.K. to wear masks when confronting the Jews, it eventually becomes O.K. to wear masks when confronting other Palestinians. If it becomes O.K. to use suicide bombers against the Jews, it eventually becomes O.K. to use suicide bombers against other Muslims.

One of my earliest post, Reap the Whirlwind, was about the error of teaching hate and how Islam will rue the day they whole heartedly accepted this strategy for their children. As I wrote in Reaping the Whirlwind, I did not believe I would see the day when it happen, but we are living in fast times, and I am seeing my foreboding on the wrongness of teaching hate coming to pass.

Christians are no better – or worse – than Muslims in how they treat other people as well as their own kind. But at least Christians teach their children to love one another, turn the other cheek, do unto others as you would want done unto you before they become adults and start killing and exploiting the rest of the world. Hate is not institutionalized in Christian Sunday school and at the pulpit. Christians don't teach hate, and yet, look at all the bad they have done. As bad a things are, think how much worse things would be if Christians had taught hate.

As many have learned, and so too now must Hamas, governing is way more difficult than attacking the government. Hamas was elected the majority in the old dead Palestinian government because it cared and did more for the people than the Fatah party. Hamas then torpedo the idea of allowing Palestinians to vote on whether they should recognize Israel's right to exist because it threaten its reason for being not that of Palestinians.

I would have like to have seen the results of that vote.

History is full of noble intentions that fail in their implementation. Our very own George Bush and his Neocon policy wonks are a good example. If only the purpose of being President was getting elected, Bush would be one of the greatest Presidents we have ever had. I don't believe history is going to be anywhere that nice to Bush – especially if he and his administration has set up a situation in the Middle East – regardless however good their intentions – that the whole world must suffer.

Hamas needs to take off their mask and put them away. Government official conceal enough without mask. Hamas needs to count their numbers and realize they could do more with peace than could ever be achieved through terror. Hamas needs to think more about the daily lives and problems of Palestinian and less that of Israelis. The time of governing is upon them. The footnotes in history are full of many who have come as far only to fail.

Besides, in the Middle East, Jews are called Israelis – a citizen of a nation – while everywhere else they are just referred to as Jews. That's more progress than ever occurred for hundreds of years of European history. At least there's that.

Oh, and one more thing: Stop teaching hate. Hate comes natural. Love and forgiveness is the more difficult and righteous path and will lead to a more mission accomplished than any teaching of hate or sending you children tied with bombs to die.

Voting for 7 New Wonders of the Old World

2007-06-17T20:49:00.000-04:00

The wife got me to get online and vote for what is the Seven Wonders of the World. When she first broached the subject to me over our morning breakfast, my mind reeled as to what I would say are the seven wonders of today's world.

She had a web site from the article she just had to share with me while I was trying to get through the NYTimes' Week in Review (Frank Rich, MoDo, and yes even Friedman – the NYTimes is flat), so later when I sought refuge at my laptop I went to the site to vote.

And what do I find? What is the collection of wonders for which I get to vote? A bunch of old stuff that supposed to still be wonders. Will wonders ever cease? I was amazed. I was agog. They were certainly not the things that rolled through my mind when my wife just had to share what she was reading. I never read the article she read although I did manage to get through Rich's piece about the Bushies going to the mattresses. (There is no use my linking to it since it's behind the NYTimes wall.)

I also read a very interesting post by one Craig S. Smith and Greg Myre, but more about that later (I hope).

Anyway I went and voted on what I thought was the Seven Wonders of the World. The first that came to mind was the internet. That "Wonder", we have not even come to know the full extent, wasn't one of the choices. I had to choose from a bunch of old buildings – or stuff like old buildings. Some wonder.

Anyway, I chose the following:

1. The Acropolis – not because I thought it was a wonder, but because I thought Greek culture was a wonder on modern civilization.
2. The Alhambra – I don't even know what it is. There's are a lot of clubs named after it but I had to have seven and this is the seventh one I chose.
3. Colosseum – (that's the way they spelled it) I chose it because of the importance Rome not because of its actual structure.
4. Eiffel Tower – Not because I think it's a wonder, but the use of steel reinforcement in construction has changed the world and skyscrapers are a wonder. Its straight lines that somehow invoke a curve are a wonder.
5. Great Wall of China – If it wasn't a "great" wall then it wouldn't be great. No doubt it was a wonder to behold for centuries, but still a wonder of the world? Come on, give me a break.
6. Stonehenge – I had to have seven, so I included it. It's very old. In fact, it's older than time itself – recorded time, that is. And no doubt, when it was constructed by ignorant people – ignorant now not then – it was quit a wonder, but now it comes up wanting. Once again, I had to have seven to I included it in my vote.
And 7. Statue of Liberty – I voted for it not because I thought it was some wonder of construction but rather because of what it represented: America. This great experiment of civilization we call America is on going. The phenomenon is happening right now. We are a blend of all peoples. This thing we call individual rights and personal freedom – given the current state of world affairs – is not to be taken lightly and a wonder into and of itself.

And so that is my seven wonders. I would have chosen the internet, television and radio, airplanes, maybe atomic power, but not a bunch of old structures, but that's the way the mind works when someone – over a bagel, cream cheese, and a couple of bloodies – suddenly tosses out to you: what are the Seven Wonders of the World.

So it goes.

Best Kept Secrets in Washington

2007-06-16T08:45:00.000-04:00

Mary Mapes is posting now over at Huffington Post or at least she had two posts recently. Whether she will be a regular or was just an infrequent contributor remains to be seen. One of her post dealt with Dan Rather and some recent remarks he made, and she used the occurrence to comment on what goes on behind the scene at CBS news. I believe Dan has got a book coming out and he knows how to play the book release game.

Here's her post.

I wrote up my comment to her post, but since I ran across her post several days after it was posted, the comment section had been closed out, so I'm going to post it here in my own blog because I have some important points to post.

First, Ms. Mapes, who supplied you with those memos, real, fake, factual, or otherwise? That's the 500 lb gorilla of a newsbyte missing from your post. That's the major news left unreported in this story, because of course, no one leaks on leakers. Leakers to news types like you are the best kept secrets in DC.

If you watch current events or even study history, it would seem nothing can be kept secret in Washington for very long. Everything in the government is subject to leaking. However, whoever leaks these secrets is never known. Never – except when they admit it themselves, like Deepthroat. Or the importance of their leak such as the "Pentagon Papers" – the history of how the U.S. got so involved in Vietnam – required the leaker to be identified. It was Daniel Ellsberg. But mostly leakers names never go reported. Never.

News types don't leak on other news type's snitches. Here we have an organization, a calling, a profession that is all about reporting the news, and yet, there is no safer secret in Washington than who is leaking what to whom. It's the best kept secrets in Washington.

The name of the person who leaks news worthy information is new worthy itself since most leaks are probably "spin". I don't know this to be a fact since, because as I said, we don't know who's doing all the leaking. We got a glimpse into the world of news makers and news reporters during the Libby trial – a story about a leak. Information came out that Cheney used the Sunday morning news talk shows as an opportunity to spin the news. "If it's Sunday morning, it must be Spin the Press." Even Ms Huffington blogged about what we today call professional journalism as one big clubhouse.

And so, Ms Mapes goes on and on about how the questionable memos and her and Dan's story was trashed by the blogs – conservative blogs, that is – and how what they reported was true and the facts in the memos were true. But! Not one word about where she got the memos. Even though she trashed her colleagues at CBS News, even though she lamented being turned on by her fellow journalist, even though life is not fair, she maintain the journalistic code. She didn't say who supplied her the memos. The taint on journalism is maintained.

Second, home cooking in the Guard is as old as the Guard itself. Preferential treatment in the Guard is as American as apple pie, mom, etc. And that is especially true for sons of major politician, and it's not just the Guard. You can bet whatever you got paid that everyone from the Commandant of the Marine Corp down to the platoon sergeant knows who is over Sen. Jim Webb's son. And he will no longer be treated as just another grunt. Bush's preferential treatment in the Guard was never news to anyone familiar with how the military works.

So, as it turns out, the only really newsworthy aspect to the whole preferential treatment/fake memo story is who supplied those memo, and of course, that stills goes on unreported.

So it goes.

Winslow Homer, "The Veteran in a New Field"

2007-05-28T17:09:00.002-04:00

I once saw a documentary on America or more to the point America as seen through its art. Some famous guy originally from Australia whose name I cannot remember or Google up, talked about American art, visual art, and on the whole it was very good and interesting and filled in that time between supper and bed quit nicely.

But when he talked about the above painting, I saw something he did not see. This show was some time ago and I'm only now bringing to anyone's attention, but that's what blogs are for.

I've since went out and did some Googling on the subject and what I can find agree with what I heard earlier. The art work represents all kinds of Civil War related things. This site represents what I heard several years ago. References to Cincinnatus, swords into ploughshares, Lincoln assignation, and even the soldier's having mown down troops as he does the wheat in the painting are listed as commentary on the piece.

I had seen the work before it showed in the PBS story. When I saw it – a picture book probably – I knew that Homer had been in the Civil War, and what I saw was nothing like what I've saw on the PBS special or read elsewhere.

This is what I saw:

The soldier knows how to thresh wheat. He had done that since he was old enough to stand and work, and was sent into to the field to work all day. The drudgery of physical labor with no end in sight, for a young man, must have been a terrible future when he was young and working day after day in the field. No future but hard work in the field.

And then the Civil War came along and he went on an adventure. The war offered an escape from the wheat field and a chance to be with other men. Of course, it became all the terrible things mentioned in the usual commentary of the painting, the killing, witnessing friends and comrades being killed, and the life changing experiences more eloquently noted than I could. And the soldier survived the war.

On the way home, maybe at the fields that surround his home, he comes upon that once hated task from which war had offered an escape. For one brief moment he could return to the time before the war. He picked up the scythe and began to do what had hated just a few short years ago, only now it was a labor of love.

If he moved just right, he could capture that boyhood motion and for one brief moment return to a home that is forever gone. No matter how much he has to work in the field from now own, that boy that had hated it so and that veteran that returned to so loved it will always be with him.

Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and White MSN Sucks

2007-05-22T21:55:00.000-04:00

In this weekend's morning's newspaper, I came across an AP story in the local news about some rather gruesome murders in Knoxville, Tennessee. What caught my attention was mention of blogging. This blog storm seems to be more about the coverage of the story rather than the story itself, which is just another day in the blog world – but I digress. I make it a practice not to follow trails in general – the Libby Plame name leak trail being a most major exception, which in itself is indicative of the reason for this post.

A blog at NPR sort of round ups the story of the story with the conservative blogs pushing this lack of national attention and slamming the liberal media in the same post. The NPR blogger offers a site that refs the O.J. Simpson trial as proof that national news will cover black on white crime. NPR blog. (The OJ trail story is one of the major reasons I don't follow that sort of thing. Besides the OJ trail story is proof that if you got enough money, color don't matter.)

A day later, Editor and Publisher published the AP story I read in my local paper although it included a ref about the InstaPundit. Maybe I miss the ref in the original story I read; I was negotiating a warmed apple turnover (Oh American decadence! I do what I can for conspicuous consumption.)

So I jumped over to see what the InstaPundit had to say, and Glenn points to a site Crosblog that round ups also, but point out that in the Duke rape case – which has been used as proof of reverse racism – the prosecutor sought press cover while the Knoxville prosecutors have not. Crosblog is eat up with links to stories of murdered victims and stories that probably deserve more coverage than they are getting. However, Crosblog does not link to the conservative blogs that are raising a hate ruckus about the coverage.

I found Crosblogs arguments and punditry interesting and have bookmarked it for a return visit. I put it in other. I'm not sure if it's conservative or liberal or something in-between. Thanks Instapundit

Like I said above, I don't follow trials of this sort, but I can see what this story needs. People are wanting more attention and "more attention" is just a phone call away.

What this story needs and doesn't have are a couple of white guys like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. They would go to Knoxville, organize demonstrations and get face time for themselves and the story on TV. Get that coverage that some think this story needs.

Jesse marched with a man that now gets a holiday all his own so he's got that new buzz word from rap: street cred. (Sorry Imus.) Some white dude with that kind of street cred would be a MSN suck, and would pull in the coverage. And he could be like Jesse in that some of the colors of his rainbow coalition are brighter than others What rainbow isn't without its colors that are more intense than others -- it's jus tthe way of rainbows. The Jesse-like white guy could come up with a catchy saying that rhymes but that would enhance but not reduce his white cred.

The Al Sharpton-like white guy could go to Knoxville, march, and accuse the prosecutor of being in on the rape of the two kids.

The problem with those conservative mouth pieces trying to do it is the taint of racism. Unlike Jackson and Sharpton, they have no race cred.

That's what's missing from his story: white MSN sucks with race cred and street cred. And Oh Yea! White cred. That's what is needed to get this story off its ass and get some face time with pouty-lipped ingenue news talking head telling us about it. And they need to be blond pouty-lipped ingenue news talking heads.

If only.

..

Dear Senator Clinton,

2007-05-19T08:57:00.000-04:00

(I sent this to Senator Clinton. She is playing this whole voting for Iraq all wrong. I submitted it at her Senatorial site and quickly got a reply. I don't live in her state, and although she appreciated my email, she had to concentrate on her constituency. I can understand that she's got a lot on her plate right now, but that doesn't reduce the import of my message: Don't apologize or make excuses for the vote to support Bush.

At any rate, here's my message to Senator Clinton.)

Do not apologize for voting to authorize President Bush's invasion of Iraq.

Never regret or apologize for standing up for the security of the United States of America. Hope that when you become President, you can depend on those of the other party – especially those of opposite ideologies who seem to have a personal hate for you – will support you during a time of national crisis just as you did President Bush after 9/11.

Foregoing party politics in a time of national threat is what makes Americans different. Your vote in support of the President needs no further analysis than standing in defense of our country.

You made your decision with the information provide you by the administration. 9/11 was in the state you represent in Congress. To not come to its defense would be the greater wrong.

Promise the opposing party (and the rest of us), you will not let your own political leanings color the intelligence to the point that it is not just wrong, it is misleading.

Promise all of us you will not be so afraid of national embarrassment or loss of face over a decision you made that you would jeopardize America's integrity, security, and image in the world. (Bush's embarrassment is no where near what Senator Clinton suffered at the hands of her husband, so this would not be a stretch for her.)

As evil as Saddam was (and he certainly was a tyrant and persecutor of his people), he was not a threat to the United States. While we know that now with an absolute certainty we did not have before the invasion, we had available then serious doubts, but ideology as a driving force pushed out rational, professional vetting of intelligence. Promise not to cherry pick the intelligence to justify your ideology.

Your vote in support of the President was not wrong. The bill to authorize the invasion of Iraq was. Using national and international resolution to solve the problem of terrorism for some pet peeve against Saddam is wrong.

Lots of luck – you're going to need it.

(That's what I wrote her. I gave here my real name, mailing address and email. So far I've only got what I think is an auto-response robotic answer. Maybe when my state has its primary, her people will send my people something in the mail asking for money, support, and of course, our vote.

So it goes. (Vonnegut still lives.))

Calling All Bloggers, No Vacations for Anyone

2007-05-13T20:41:00.000-04:00

If it is important for the Iraqi Parliament to remain at work and not take a vacation this summer, how about the U.S. Congress and the President? Why should anyone in America take a vacation while our boys and girls are giving their all with repeated tours, extended stays, and stop loss in Iraq?

If our troops can't take a vacation over there, then neither should we over here. Taking a vacation is a traitorous act. If you are planning on going to the beach or Disneyworld this summer, you are an agent for terrorist. Support the troops, stay home.

"Stay the course", don't desert, "surge" your work in the "new way forward" by not taking a vacation.

Calling all bloggers, get out the postings. Get the word out in the Blogosphere. Cause a stink for a good cause, the exploitation by the administration of the military in Iraq. Contact your reps in Congress and tell them that the right thing for the Iraqi Parliament to do is right thing for the U.S. Congress to do. Also, there will be no vacation to Crawford, Texas, this summer. Sorry George, that brush and undergrowth will just have to go unattended.

With U.S. policy in its last throes, there is no time for vacations. No vacations for anyone until the mission is over whether it is accomplished or not.

I've been banging away all over the internet trying to drum up support for "No Vacations for Congress" and so far I got nothing. I posted and commented something like the above on all the "A" listed blogs trying to galvanize the blogosphere for a no-vacation Congress but I don't think I had any effect. So it goes. (Vonnegut's passing is still fresh.)

Somebody needs to do something in Iraq or something is going to happen in Iraq.

Vonnegut died. So it goes.

2007-05-05T11:15:00.000-04:00

Kurt Vonnegut is one of the most important discoveries I have ever made. Along with Mark Twain, Charles G. Finney, and to some degree Charles Dickens, Kurt Vonnegut influenced my eventual writing style more than anything else. I do hope it shows.

I was in the Navy, standing an engine room watch, when I discovered Slaughterhouse-Five stuck in an angle iron. It is one of the few books I have ever read cover to cover at one time. It grabbed me, pulled me in, and wouldn't let go until I finished it. I told the rover not to wake up my relief until I had finished the book.

I read everything Vonnegut had written, read everything he published, and continue to do so until we both got old and taste changed as is the way of men. I recognized immediately that Vonnegut was not a science fiction writer but a writer who used sci-fi as a vehicle for delivering an idea or message. His disjointed, non-flow style some how told a story. Looking back on my life, I sometimes feel as if I were a clueless Billy Pilgrim unstuck in time, and yet with simple wisdom that comes from the ages. If only it were true.

The style of writing in Slaughterhouse-Five, with its short sentences in short paragraphs with a line space between each paragraphs, blew me away. I fell in love with that style and have never left it entirely. It lends itself well to blogging.

I wonder if there is some young soldier stuck in the hell that is Iraq of good purpose and ideals whose temperament is being forged in ways they he or she will only appreciate years later. Will they share the results their experiences with us in some book or maybe even a posting in a blog?

Comparisons have been made here and elsewhere of Iraq and Vietnam. The Walter Reed neglect story is only the beginning – next comes the comparison of Iraqi vets with that of Vietnam vets.

So it goes.

.

Halberstam, Thanks for the Fish

2007-04-28T09:00:00.000-04:00

"Fuck off, kid!"

If only Halberstam had said that to me, I would wear it like a red badge of courage. If an icon spitting on you isn't a passing of the baton, I don't know what is.

The genesis of this post was a comment on a post at Slate about David Halberstam by Press Box press critic Jack Shafer. Thinking on my comment, I realized Hablerstam was owed an obit of sorts, and so is Kurt Vonnegut – perhaps even more so, but I can't link to a future post.

After partying, or at least trying to, way too much at the sacrifice of my grades, I was drafted and had to serve in a war I knew was wrong, but I never confused duty with politics – a problem many people seem to be handling badly today.

As any vet can tell you, most of your time in the military is spend in an extreme state of boredom, and so I read. I looked forward to being free of course required reading and return to my favorite: science fiction. But what little bit I paid attention in school must have had an affect; I could no longer read as I had read before. It lacked the depth and style of what I had been forced to read. I found myself analyzing what I just enjoyed before. Eventually, I read the stuff I was assigned to read in school but didn't.

I read classics, and for the first time, I began to read nonfiction. I wanted to know how my ass ended up in Vietnam, and one of the best books I read was Halberstam's Best and Brightest.

It is one of the most important books I have ever read. I noticed the run-on sentences Shafer mentioned in his post. Faulkner came to mind. There must be a period somewhere in those long paragraphs other than the end, I kept telling myself as I stop reading and look back for the period. (When you are in a state of continuing utter boredom, you grab any mental exercise that comes along.)

At any rate, after reading about how even the smartest policy makers and implementers (deciders) blundered as well as everybody else could, I decided that after my military commitment was completed, rather than stand on the sidelines and watch these type of guys drive the U.S. into the ground, I would go in there and blown the whole thing myself.

Thus:
BureaucratMan was born, with my trusty sidekick, RedTape, I have the power to say: "You won't get that, today!"

It's no missing white girl, but…

2007-04-22T09:24:00.000-04:00

No one would be so crass as to suggest the administration is relieved that national attention is drawn away from the ongoing foreign policy debacle especially when Iraq is in the midst of some of its bloodiest days - yet. Or at how lucky they must feel that the worst killing spree in American history followed on the heels of the Imus story, another attention diverter.

Besides shutting up Imus provided a benefit beyond his distraction from the war as he was stoking the fires on the Walter Reed neglect story. "Republicans support the troops, Democrats support the vets" is not the message the administration wants but its better than the constant evidences of a foreign policy failure pouring into people's homes day and night from their televisions.

Even the tribulation Alberto Gonzales and investigation of lawyers being mistreated show keeps the tragedy that's become the Iraqi Civil War from the lede story in the evening news cycle. But this contains the explosive potential of undoing the administration. Will those missing emails be the missing 18.5 minutes on Nixon's White House tapes? Will this fulfill the curse?

What will next week bring?

Imus: Shakespearian Tragedy

2007-04-15T22:02:00.000-04:00

Like mimes, no one really cares if a shock jock is brought down. But Imus was different. Imus was a shock jock but he became more than just a shock jock. He evolved, or he is the result of his own intelligent design.

At any rate, his show Imus in the Morning became the go to show for those in power, wanting more power, or access to power and could handle themselves – or at least thought they could – in a live situation. In an age of reality TV, Imus offered reality politics and everyone who was anyone tuned in, and I did because I knew they did.

I'm a late arrival to the Imus phenomena and he did not discover Wonkette or MoDo, or any of the other NYTimes columnists or the TV or newsmagazine reporters and editors – I came to Imus already familiar with them – but it was interesting to see them and hear them speak in what Frank Rich call the most conversational interview on the air, anywhere.

Either he or the format of his show was way better than the spin that occurs on Sunday morning. I pay as much attention to that as the constantly displayed footage on cable news. Tell me your political position and I can tell you what you're going to say. Some how, Imus had one of the most interesting perspectives in the coverage of the Plame name leak and the Walter Reed neglect stories.

Perhaps the embarrassing situation of new reporters being news makers in the Trials of Scooter like Tim Russert and the behind the news clubhouse or Andrea Mitchell outright caught carrying the Republicans' water or John Dickerson's sitting in the courtroom crowd and suddenly his mug is flashed up on a the big screen during the prosecution's case was a harbinger of Imus own embarrassing moment to come. A good Shakespearian tragedy needs a harbinger.

Oh, and Imus is a hero. He could trash Rep. Joe Barton all he wants for shelving a bill to help autistic kids. Imus fought in support of troops coming home not just going over to Iraq. His ranch for kids with cancer, and his reputation as a fund raiser all punch his hero requirement ticket for a Shakespearian tragedy.

Imus gets kicked off TV and radio while Limbaugh clowns someone's Parkinson's and Glen Beck questions the patriotism of a recently elected U.S. Representative for no other reason than he is a Muslim and they are still on the air. Perhaps if Imus had been trumpeting the conservative cause instead of a bunch of kids with cancer, he'd still be on the air too.

Why does street talk win Grammies but is taboo for white guys. Is black rap like the n-word and only blacks can use it with immunity? What is the exact number of kids with cancer Imus has to run through him camp as penance for his racial, gender slur?

The two supposedly spokesmen for the black community have not apologies for their misuse of their public influential powers and yet they hold Imus to a higher standard than they themselves could pass. Rich opened up early in his Sunday column the thought that the women players at Rutgers where the only non-hypocrites in this drama, and that would be true if none of them had rap on their ipods trashing and demeaning women in the same tones as Imus. They probably don't. Rap is more a male thing -- but do any of their boyfriends have it on their ipods? If the glove do fit, you can't commit.

I will miss the Imus show more than I will miss Imus.

Life evolves but is not evolution

2007-04-01T11:04:00.000-04:00

I came across a piece by Brain May who played guitar with Queen and has gone back to finish his PhD in astrophysics and for some reason post opinions in the NYTimes Life is Evolution (behind the wall).

To determine what life is, it must be reduced to its most basic form. We are a complex system based on a simple unit, the cell. However, the single cell is still a complex system even unto itself. Even in a single cell, we must find the simplest to get a grasp on what life is.

Life is chemistry: a chemical reaction. While chemical reactions have occurred since electrons formed after the Big Bang and matter cooled enough that the potential difference between elements cause them to combine to form molecules, life’s chemical reaction is different. This chemistry has a purpose, and that purpose is to continue the chemical reaction and reproduce it.

While the physical world and the whole universe seem to be a chaotic system with planets, solar systems, and galaxies the strange attractors in a chaos theory, the strangest of all strange attractors is life. Life is chemistry with an attitude. To be alive is to exploit the immediately surrounding environment. Life is the capability of a group of molecules to utilize the potential difference between elements and other molecules in the immediate environment and either reproduce the capability, enhance it, or protect it.

The article did point out one glaring problem in modern biology: how did it all start. Once the DNA molecule is present on earth or its precursor, evolution takes care of everything else. Perhaps this is where the confusion arises between what is life and what is evolution.

The idea that life started in some idealistic muddy pond begs the question. Until we find out differently, the precursor molecules to life should be forming all the time. The problem is that we have not looked in the right place or in the right way, or these molecules came from outer space. Since higher life forms eat lower life forms, even Darwin thought that the precursors to life are quickly devoured.

Not until the 1970’s did we come to know the complexity of life around deep ocean thermal vents based on chemosynthesis. Perhaps clays laid down in sedimentary layers or accumulating in smokers where exposed cross-sectioned by earthquakes and fissuring to produce life’s precursor molecules, and then again perhaps not.

While we’ve yet to find life anywhere else but earth, everywhere we look on and in the earth, we find it. So far as I know, we haven’t found it in molten lava or fires – extremely hot and caustic fluids, yes, but the hottest on earth, no.

Live does not violate the second law of thermodynamics. After all chemical reactions occur that are needed to maintain life, all energies and matter are at a lower state. It is the concept of life that appears to violate the law. Life is organization in the midst of universal chaos.

Given that life co-ops its surroundings and evolves in doing so, eventually the whole earth will one day become alive.

Government Lawyers – of all things

2007-04-01T09:18:00.000-04:00

Waiting for LBJ’s Curse on the Second Term to be fulfilled, I wondered if it would be something from the rapid run up to the Iraqi war and the fixing of the intelligence, or maybe the Plame name leak, or perhaps the googling of phone conversations without any authorization.

The secret prisons and the snatching of people off the street to take them there and the most indefensible prison for a country conceived on the notion of unalienable rights, Gitmo, ought to be fertile ground for bringing a president down. I thought the use of signing statements to rewrite what would shortly become law certainly begged impeachability.

But no. The big scandal is the firing of government lawyers. No one argues that Bush does not have the power to do so. The Patriot Act gave him the power to do so without Senate approval. The controversy is over how he fired the lawyers he had the power to fire anyway. Of all things, why this?

No matter how much I study Americans, I can continue to be amazed at what sets them off.

Is this a great country, or what!

Writing to Write

2007-04-01T09:08:00.000-04:00

Blogging has scratched an itch I had forgotten I had.

Guys don’t keep diaries. Although one of the most famous diaries in literature is a very old one kept by a man long ago, Samuel Pepys, today, guys might keep a journal, or even more technical or scientific, a log, but generally, there will be no post to dear diary or anything that would jeopardize our manliness.

I’ve seen all manner of recommendations that it is therapeutic, but I could never keep it up for long. The closes I came to keeping a journal was based mostly on what our son got for Christmas, because I can remember getting things but I can’t remember which year it happened, and I wanted him to know what I sometimes wonder about my own youth. One day he will find it in the records I leave behind.

I found a letter my mother’s father left his children in her records after she died. He died before I was old enough to know him and this letter he left his children is one of the best insights to who he was. I have read it several times.

When I was young and in high school, a girl talked me into joining the Dramatics Club. The sponsor said we needed money and we should do something such as put on a skit and that I should write it. Until that moment, I had never thought about being a writer. I was going to be a scientist, an inventor.

I wrote the skit. I plagiarized the Addams’ family. The short skit had a duel plot the climaxes of which came together at the end, and the whole experience surprised even me. I went from wanting to be a scientist to wanting to be a writer. I loved reading and wanted to do to others what I felt when I read something that especially touched me for one reason or another.

And so, I majored in journalism because that sounded like writing. God punishes us by answering our prayers. I should of asked to be a storyteller. I can write but I don’t have anything to write about.

I wrote a short story once a long time ago called “Futuring by JetAge”. Only two characters are in the story, Scout29c and the Bearer. That one character has a name and the other was only a work related reference was part of the story. I sent it around and got all kinds of rejection slips. I plan to publish it here on the net, and that is why I’m posting this here post.

To a journalist, publishing is everything and though this little blog might not be much: it’s the publishing that makes all the difference. I seem to be able to post week after week. Sometimes I even feel the pressure to meet a weekend deadline – since it appears I’m a weekend blogger.

Part of the problem is that the place I work has a policy against blogging. So I’m not suppose to blog – and I don’t most of the time. Usually I’m to busy to either blog or read blogs. I write reports and I can read reports on the web, but I’m not suppose to blog – that is the policy. I’m not sure what they would do if it came to a head and I was reading a technical blog. Probably say that any blogging is wrong since that is against policy. But they are wrong. DEAD WRONG!

Blogging or some form of daily posting is to a writer what practice is to a musician or daily running to a marathon runner. What they are asking me to do is run a marathon ever so often but I’m not allowed to go run except on the day of the marathon. What kind of marathon would that be?

People who want to be writers and are waiting for inspiration to strike before they begin writing are wasting their time. When or if a great idea were to come to them, the difficulty in turning it into words would get in the way of the endeavor.

My writing of analytical reports has greatly improved because of my weekend blogging. The words come easier. And after I realized this effect, I did it even more.

I’m writing to write.

Dien Bien Phu in Iraq

2007-03-02T10:52:00.000-05:00

The British plan to leave Iraq could leave the U.S. in a precarious position. The part of Iraq that the British currently holds contains the supply lines for Americans. Leaving protection of America’s supply lines to Iraqis offers a good place for an ambush.

If it looks like a good place for an ambush, it usually is.

Not that Americans couldn’t retake Basra or re-supply through Kuwait or even re-supply by air, but a humiliating political defeat would be handed to the Bush administration if they had to do so. Given the current political environment, any major setback could mean the end to any meaningful continuation of Americans in Iraq. The “New Way Forward” would appear neither new nor forward.

Whenever a certain faction in Iraq determines that it is in their best interest for the Americans to leave, the area vacated by the British would be an ideal place to strike. Eventually, some group is going to feel that can take power, and seize the government. Americans will be in the way and a plan to get rid of the Americans will have to be exercised.

The American military has no doubt taken that their back door is in shaky hands into account and planned accordingly. However, the political arm of the administration has shown repeatedly, they cannot interpret intelligence, cannot respond to real world events in a timely manner, and most importantly, cannot own up to their own shortcomings, and unlike our highly professional military, plan accordingly.

Their only hope: somehow blame the liberals for which they do have an arsenal with which to respond or a white girl will go missing.

Scanning Anonymous Sources

2007-02-18T09:50:00.000-05:00

Why watch any setup reality TV, when you got the real thing going on for real. The recent “event” in the release of information for a new type of roadside bomb was weirder than any reality TV and certainly more theatrical. I don’t mind anonymous sources as long as I know they are the administration’s official anonymous sources, and I like political drama as well as anyone else.

The anonymous official sources within the administration recently stated that roadside bombs were getting much more sophisticated with explosively formed penetrator (EFP) to pierce the armor currently in use on Humvees in Iraq. This munition is much difficult to make and is not so improvised as a artillery shell fixed with a detonator.

The mixing of shaped charged explosives and a specifically manufactured casing indicate that these bombs were not put together (improvised) in some shack or hunkered down in a clump of tree. The Bush administration says it’s coming from Iran. They danced around whether the leadership of Iran knew, but I agree with the sentiment that it’s hard to believe that in a country like Iran, they didn’t know. Wherever the EFP’s are coming from, I’ll bet the Iranians know.

Of course, I was wrong about Saddam and WMD’s. I saw the footage of dead Kurds. If that’s not proof, I don’t know what is. But Saddam did not have WMD’s.

He was bluffing – bluffing Iran, more than us or the UN. Saddam’s greatest fear was Iran and an insurgency in his own country. The fear the US might invade was down the list, maybe third on his list of greatest fear. Bush called Saddam’s bluff and won the pot, which turned out to be Saddam’s greatest fear. Bush now has a problem with Iran and an insurgency he can’t do anything to stop. The more things change, the more they "stay the course" same.

Along with knowing now that Saddam was bluffing, we also know that our intelligence in that area sucks, and what little bit we did have, was cooked. There is nothing worse than cooked bad intelligence when you’re trying to make a decision.

So, how good is the intelligence of what is obviously no longer improvised and where are these munitions coming from? Why would it benefit the Iranians for Americans to be attacked and killed more effectively? Don’t they want the Shiite dominated government of Iraq to succeed?

Other recent events here at home have shown us the way to answer those questions. The Scooter Libby trial showed a part of the press we know existed, but we never really got a behind-the-scene view of what is now know in DC as professional journalism. It’s a good ol’ boys club with rules and guidelines just like any private club and the females just add another aspect to how The Club is run. (Seems those golden aspen weren’t the only thing at their peak.)

Also, recent revelations and investigations of the intelligence prior to the invasion of Iraq show that we were getting a lot of bad intelligence and manufactured intelligence referred to as disinformation. One of the most famous uses of disinformation was during WWII and the invasion of Europe. This one may rank right up there with it.

The Bush administration was played for a sucker and snookered by disinformation into overthrowing Saddam for special interest in the Middle East. Perhaps Saddam’s third greatest fear was doing the work of his greatest fear.

However, also coming out is that there was some good intelligence. The old Knight-Ridder papers reported that their anonymous sources were saying that the NYTimes anonymous sources – which turned out to be the administration unofficial official leak – where getting it all wrong. Seems the NYTimes was snookered by the same disinformation as the administration.

So, DC journalists have anonymous sources that are right, wrong, and spinning them or playing them for what their worth.

How could we use this asset to our advantage?

Why not get the DC journalists to canvass their leakers and snitches as to how good is the intelligence on these special shaped charged explosives? Each anonymous source would be awarded points for whether they are elected, appointed, contracted, or hired, how high up they are, and how many degrees separate them form Kevin Bacon. Points would be subtracted for sources that have a special interest in which way the vote goes. These points would weight their response, and when we tally all the anonymous votes, we’d have a consensus on just how good this intelligence is. Or, lack of consensus would also be indicative – at least a local known unknown would become a known known (I’m going to miss him.).

We publish the tally and post it on the internet for all to see. We put all the anonymous votes together clumped by major media name such as NYTimes, WaPo, NBC, and by all means, Fox.

It’s more weighted political gossip than some political soul since to talk to reporters unofficially about the office is for an official the same as selling your soul, but that’s not our problem. Our problem is how to use this situation as an asset – how to milk this bitch. With a canvass of anonymous sources we would have the information reporters have – and don’t report.

The texture of all the anonymous sources available to us all.

The DC leakers’ sway.

The snitch report.

Is this doable or what?
..

I'm not a real journalist, but I play one in DC

2007-02-10T09:31:00.000-05:00

Given the heighten attention given to high profile investigations and trials, I make it a rule to ignore them until a decision is made. However, I’ve been drawn to the Libby trail by some blogs I’ve seen. As Ms. Huffington pointed out in her post here and here, the Scooter Libby trial for lying to the FBI and grand jury is illuminating more than just the inner workings of the administration. What Arianna calls the Washington Club of politicos and "journos" is one big happy and secretive society.

While secretive clubs are not new to politicians, it is just the sort of thing on which journalist are suppose to be reporting instead of being members in good standing.

It's as though you turned on the light at night in an infested room to see a pack of mice scurry for cover, and even scarier, you caught the cat socializing within the vermin's midst. If that's the case, how do you determine which is vermin? By what the cat says!?! I don't think so.

By the testimony from the news people and those of the administration, we know this special secret club has rules of engagement. What are these rules? Seems that would be newsworthy – and yet, it goes unreported.

William Powers at the National Journal offers up a discussion that we are seeing things the way they are and not some idealistic view of journalism. A "to lay down with dogs you got to break a few eggs" view of journalists in Washington. To report on politicians, you must act like one, you must become one with them. Is that in The Club’s rules?

A story in WaPo, notes that the halls and cafeteria in the building where the trial is occurring is like high school with too many people with too much history with each other trying to look professional. Meg Greenfield's analogy rules.

A blog point to by Huffington called JustOneMinute offers up a very plausible scenario in which Russert had to lie to the FBI and on the stand because of were he had actually learned about Ms Wilson's CIA position. NBC in general and Russert in particular are covering up an even bigger story than who leaked what to whom.

The problem with that scenario goes back to what I’ve been harping on here about the MSM – especially DC MSM – if the problem was liberal bias we would be better served than what we are getting now. Andrea Mitchell, Dick Gregory, and Tim Russert having that kind of information and not running with it, belies the attention – in this case, air time – grabbing circus we now call professional journalism.

The only reason I can think of for why they would keep something like that secret is The Club’s rules. Maybe they feared more being kicked out of the club for reporting the Vice President’s office was trying to smear the name and reputation of a public servant regardless of who sent whom than the attention they would have received for reporting that to the rest of us.

In sports I’ve heard of something called a fans reporter or something like that. This sport reporter does not go down into the locker room or become good buddies with athletes on which they are reporting. They keep the perspective of the fan and report what they learn -- less insight but a more objective point of view. I don’t read sports enough to know how effective it is in the sports world, but it is a noble idea and journalism is eat up with stuff like that.

Maybe we need a citizens’ reporter in DC.

Reaping the Whirlwind

2007-02-04T11:50:00.000-05:00

When I posted my 8th blog ever Reap the Whirlwind, back in 2004 on the third anniversary of 9/11, that Islam would rue the days they taught hate in their religious schools, I didn’t realize I’d see the beginning of all that payback.

This year’s National Intelligence Estimate painted a grim picture for what is about to happen in Iraq. Turkey planning to move into Northern Iraq should any sort of breakup or partitioning occur, Saudi Arabia supporting the Sunnis in Iraq even if the Americans don’t leave, and Iran ever presents in Southern Iraq and they are all taught "to hate" is to be closer to God. The whirlwind is returning home with a deadlier vengeance than the violence inflicted in America and Europe.

Perhaps innocents do get virgins in heaven when they martyr, but what happen to those that send their children to die and what happens to those that allow that sort of thing to go on?

While the teaching of hatred was for non-Islamics such as the Americans and Europeans, hatred has a way of finding its own outlet, as though all that stress and tensions in those living in the hell that is now in the Middel East finds an easy pathway for expression.

Added to that the fighting between Hamas and Fatah, and it would seem Islam is headed for a religious crisis. Even the recent attempt to bring Israel back into the conflict equation did not succeed. Perhaps cooler heads in Israel have recognized its electric rod role in the Middle East.

Many a Machiavellian would say let the followers of Islam turn on themselves, we will benefit from their self-destruction. The chance that the oil will be disrupted scares more people than it excites with opportunities.

This may do more for the development of alternative sources of energy than all the conservationists, anti-global warmers, and America first-ers have been trying to do all these years put together.

Leave Iraq. Leave now. Leave Afghanistan. Whatever good we could do, we’ve done. Come home and get ready for the big one. Leave the Muslims to themselves.

What's Going to Happen in 2007

2007-02-03T15:52:00.000-05:00

I'm starting a new annual event. I'm going to publish what I expect to happen, and this time next year I'll see how I did.

Major Expectations

1. Congressional investigations of the administration will become the major news story of this year; or rather, it will lead to what will become the major news stories. Some juicy bit of information will lead to a press feeding frenzy. Given this administration’s arrogant and contemptuous disregard for constitutional “checks and balances” – a result of Cheney’s plan to reinvigorate the power of the presidency – investigations of questionable practices will lead to a Constitutional crisis. Either impeachment proceeding will have started or serious discussion of it before the year is out.

The administration will try to cover up, and mistakes will be made. It's all happened before and it's about to begin again.

2. The surge will not work in Iraq. Unexpected events or the insurgency will just escalate their activities to render the surge ineffective. Of course, more Americans will die. More Iraqi will die also, but that was going to happen anyway – that's the point.

The Iraq problem could escalate into a greater Middle Eastern war between Arabs (Sunnis) and Persians (Shiites).

I keep thinking one of the groups in Iraq is going to get enough power then the Americans will be in the way of continued growth. At that point, they will turn violently on the Americans, running a campaign of attack on Americans much greater than has been seen before, trying to rally more Iraqis to their cause. Americans may have to evacuate Iraq.

3. Castro is going to die this year. What happens after that is anybody's guess. Power struggle in Cuba, normalization of diplomatic relations with the U.S., mass migration of Cubans living in the U.S. back to Cuba – all or any of this could happen. It will be an exciting time for Cubans and their American friends.

The really, really long shot prediction

1. Bush will have a nervous breakdown. I just don't think he will be able to handle the coming pressure of investigations of his administration. In his past, whenever he fucked up royally, his dad or his dad's friends came to his rescue, however, Bush has got himself into a situation that not even his father can help him. His dad tried with the Iraqi Study Group, but Bush refuse to use their suggestions. Maybe he is still in denial about his rebellion against his dad.

With no place to run, he will have a breakdown. Cheney will become President.

2. Bush will pull Iran into his war. Remembering how people rallied to side when he decided to invade Iraq, he believes the same would occur when he goes to war against Iran.

Scoring previous predictions

My ability to predict the future is questionable. I thought Saddam had WMD's. I saw the footage of where he had gassed his own people and read he had done the same to an even greater number of Iranians during their war, so I was sure he would at least have poisonous gas. But they found nothing except some very old gas ordinance. Saddam was bluffing and Bush called his bluff. Bush is currently dealing with his winnings.

What was known unknowns. The full implication of Powell's Pottery Barn metaphor is only now becoming known.

However, I was sure the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. One of my first posts was an expression of that very thought. I knew we could overthrow the bastard, but I knew any attempt at nation building was a huge mistake. I didn't know what was going to go wrong but I knew our takeover would not work out and I am being proven right every day.

So, we'll see how these predictions fare and we'll come back here next year and score the results.