Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Why couldn't we have a shadow government that didn't suck?!
Like a hypochondriac who won’t go to the doctor because he thinks he’s just being hypochondriacal, I have doubted my own assessment that the US government is controlled—essentially owned—by wealthy oligarchs who pay for the elections and votes of our politicians, that the Executive and Legislative branches (at least) of the US government are simply an elaborate puppet show designed to appease the masses with illusions of self determination. Finally, much to my chagrin, a former chief economist at the IMF says I’m right. Fuck! I knew it all along—wishing whole-heartedly I was wrong. (Original article.) This dude at the Rolling Stone takes a different tack to say practically the same thing and spells it out with more detail in a ridiculously long article. So, all you paranoid conspiracy hounds, rest easy; there really is a “shadow government” controlling your nation and your fate.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
SOS
OK, so I've been keeping my thoughts to myself for a while. ‘Fraid I usually stop paying attention so closely to politics after an election, because no matter what the result I feel basically helpless to affect anything once the ball gets rolling—not that I ever have any power beyond my one little vote. But, this blog is only for my personal gratification anyway, so I guess I’ve just been lazy.
I’ve been watching the Israel-Palestine conflict, like I always have. This article and many others like it are particularly disheartening. I am glad to know that so many Americans feel the way I do about it—that the US has been enabling the oppressors and that we need to stop if there is to be any justice and peace, but I’m blown away that the administration fails to grasp our undermining role. For all of the positive and negative “internationalist” finger-pointing, Obama is after all either a poor student of the I-P conflict or he is on the wrong side of the philosophical debate about US’s role. The US has a moral obligation to support the underdog and when it fails to do so, it is usually if not always for transparent political or economic motives. Turkey has been a much better ally than Israel, WTF do we need Israel for? Are we trying to keep them paid off so that we don’t have to fight them? The ass-kissing is one-sided. When do we get something back from them for our support? Idunno.
The whole domestic sustainable power thing is looking like a hamster wheel. We have all this money we just said we were gonna inject into the economy. But, the guys with the power are bickering about investing through deficit spending—Yeah, it sucks, but ya got another idea? I want my goddam sidewalks, so I can walk to the store. What’s it gonna take to get you jackasses to gimme my goddam sidewalks!?!? I see no reason why we can take a chunk of that money and put it directly into wind turbine factories and the purchase of property to put ‘em on. Yeah yeah. Socialism. Blah. The private sector aint doin’ it. The gov’t forced me to pay for the Iraq war and subsidize Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, they can damn sure force some SUV-driving Limbaugh listener to pay for a sustainable energy system.
SOS. Same ol’ shit.
I’ve been watching the Israel-Palestine conflict, like I always have. This article and many others like it are particularly disheartening. I am glad to know that so many Americans feel the way I do about it—that the US has been enabling the oppressors and that we need to stop if there is to be any justice and peace, but I’m blown away that the administration fails to grasp our undermining role. For all of the positive and negative “internationalist” finger-pointing, Obama is after all either a poor student of the I-P conflict or he is on the wrong side of the philosophical debate about US’s role. The US has a moral obligation to support the underdog and when it fails to do so, it is usually if not always for transparent political or economic motives. Turkey has been a much better ally than Israel, WTF do we need Israel for? Are we trying to keep them paid off so that we don’t have to fight them? The ass-kissing is one-sided. When do we get something back from them for our support? Idunno.
The whole domestic sustainable power thing is looking like a hamster wheel. We have all this money we just said we were gonna inject into the economy. But, the guys with the power are bickering about investing through deficit spending—Yeah, it sucks, but ya got another idea? I want my goddam sidewalks, so I can walk to the store. What’s it gonna take to get you jackasses to gimme my goddam sidewalks!?!? I see no reason why we can take a chunk of that money and put it directly into wind turbine factories and the purchase of property to put ‘em on. Yeah yeah. Socialism. Blah. The private sector aint doin’ it. The gov’t forced me to pay for the Iraq war and subsidize Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, they can damn sure force some SUV-driving Limbaugh listener to pay for a sustainable energy system.
SOS. Same ol’ shit.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Retards for Palin
Do I really need to say anything about this? Probably not. But I will anyway. Is there any better way to illustrate that you're a fanatic that stripping half nude and painting your body as a banner for your cause? Well, you could burn a symbol of your enemy...but let's not got there. Need I say that the more fanatical someone is the less rational he/she is likely being about his/her cause? Ugh. The pic comes from here. It's from an article about "Palin Dudes," who dole out the idiotic quotes as quick as they make complete tools of themselves: "You rock me out, Sarah." Way, Dude! Rockenroll! One dude "wore a 'Proud to be voting for a hot chick' button," as if that's a good reason to vote for someone and that he should be proud of thinking with the little head. "Who can't trust a mother?" Maybe a kid whose been drowned by one or a husband who had one sleep around on him or hide her pregnancy from him. What kind of dumbass would stereotype someone into being trustworthy? She's a politician, dipshit. "Marry me, Sarah." You get the picture.
The article then goes in an entirely different direction describing a segment of the men who have come to distrust men and deeply want female leadership, but not just any female leadership, her female leadership. They see her as a woman as a woman should be--a wife and a mother, a woman who would marry a man like them. They don't want an intellectual woman or a woman who has had to masculate herself in order to climb the political ladder. They don't want a woman who stresses stereotypically feminine issues like education. Because she likes hunting and generically tough-guy stuff, she is nonthreatening. Aside from her being marginally doable, she's possesses nothing typically feminine. She is effectively a "dude" like them--moreso than McCain even. So, they're voting for themselves but repressing this fact and representing their choice superficially as a vote for radical (which tough-guy feminism is) change. Rationality apparently never comes into the equation.
These are weird times.
Briefly, Regarding Windpower
I have assumed, correctly I think, that people want very badly to exploit alternative energy sources. By alternative, I mean “not fossil fuels.” It is very tempting to add nuclear to the category, since, if we had more practical alternatives, nuclear would immediately be taken off the table. While “utility scale” wind generation is growing rapidly, it is years and billions of dollars away from the needed degree of implementation. This has left poor jokers like myself to consider household scale alternative energy production. This is a topic I spend way too much time thinking about particularly considering that I can hardly afford anything more than the most trivial household generator. But, apparently I am not alone. The linked article details just how impractical if not imprudent and how unaffordable household generation systems are. But, by virtue of all these points, it illustrates how desperate people are for alternative energy sources—because they buy the systems despite the great impracticality.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Let me tell you, my friends
The last dozen times I’ve sat down to write anything here one thing came to mind: where do I begin? McCain trying to keep the campaigns focused on personality and emotion rather than about the issues, McCain recklessly selecting an incompetent and unworthy VP candidate, the bizarre appeal of Palin to so many voters, …. One thing keeps me from bothering to write anything: the fact that people see and hear what they want to see and hear--my self included.
But a couple things struck me about last night’s debate that I thought might be worth putting down. The first is the reason McCain put his name on McCain-Feingold. He thought it was the way around the party chiefs who held him back in 2000. He realized, later, of course, that he could just sell his soul to them instead, and he didn’t need to get the rest of the Senate’s support to do that. It was also striking that this failed piece of legislation was the sole thing he could (or did) identify as evidence of his being a reformer. After decades in Washington, that’s all he’s got? Weak.
A second observation is that if the challenges we face are unprecedented, as McCain said, what is all of his experience good for? Twenty years of doing not a heck of a lot doesn’t make him stand out as the guy to lead the way into a new era with challenges we, nor he, has ever seen before.
Lastly, I thank you for these questions, my friends. They are such very good questions, and as President I will answer them clearly with my strait talk as you, my friends, know so well. Can you say condescension? Is this the 1930s. WTF does he take us for?
But a couple things struck me about last night’s debate that I thought might be worth putting down. The first is the reason McCain put his name on McCain-Feingold. He thought it was the way around the party chiefs who held him back in 2000. He realized, later, of course, that he could just sell his soul to them instead, and he didn’t need to get the rest of the Senate’s support to do that. It was also striking that this failed piece of legislation was the sole thing he could (or did) identify as evidence of his being a reformer. After decades in Washington, that’s all he’s got? Weak.
A second observation is that if the challenges we face are unprecedented, as McCain said, what is all of his experience good for? Twenty years of doing not a heck of a lot doesn’t make him stand out as the guy to lead the way into a new era with challenges we, nor he, has ever seen before.
Lastly, I thank you for these questions, my friends. They are such very good questions, and as President I will answer them clearly with my strait talk as you, my friends, know so well. Can you say condescension? Is this the 1930s. WTF does he take us for?
Monday, September 29, 2008
The Debate
The debate…well, I frankly had a hard time paying attention. Whether it was the white noise coming from the candidates or the third beer or just being tired, it was mind-numbing like reading a grammar textbook. A Virginian caller to C-span Saturday said what was on my mind pretty well; “I think the American people were the losers last night….” (His comments are here—go to recent programs > Saturday, 27th > “watch entire program” > and scroll to 15 minutes.) I brought away two main things and a few lesser points.
Like the caller to C-span says, both candidates are “warmongering”—declaring nations “rogue states” and aggressors without weighing the facts. It doesn’t surprise me that McCain does this, but to have the left wing candidate participate in this insanity is just baffling to me. Being too busy to rewrite what I wrote the other day, I said to my brother, “For both of them (and, I am particularly disappointed in the case of Obama), I found the tough talk (if not "warmongering") against Russia, Venezuela and Iran deeply troubling. I believe strongly (though it is very hard to be certain with the lack of factual media coverage) that Russia was rightfully defending S. Ossetia which is populated by ethnic Russians with Russian citizenship, which was only included in Georgia fairly recently as a matter of post-Soviet convenience, and which has a history of being treated brutally by Georgia. It baffles me that we/ our politicians stand with the oppressor against the liberator and call us the defender. Iran, i think, we ought to deal with via hyperdiplomacy--simply try to build some sort of cultural understanding. Economic times should make this more acceptable than trying to beat the antiAmericanness out of them. The hyperbole of Ahmedinezhadorhoweverthefuckyouspellhisname is blown up to be all sorts of crazy genocidal rhetoric by the west while he's just just saying what he thinks he needs to say to get elected (all too familiar). Fucking Chavez--he's a Democratically elected president of an American nation, and I think most USAmericans fail to understand that Communism is an economic system absolutely compatible with Democracy, which is a political system. In fact the US has gone around the world for fifty some years now undermining democracies over and over again because when given Democratic government, the people frequently choose a Socialist or Communist leader. This is the reason that Chavez spews his antiAmerican rhetoric--because we (US tax payers) have sponsored a coup attempt which successfully (though temporarily) deposed his democratically appointed administration and subsequently have sponsored the opposition media which lays a constant barrage of attacks against him. Thereby we have encouraged him to use hateful rhetoric against us. We have given him reason to clamp down on the "free press" (can you imagine if China was so rich that they bought our media and used it to shape US public opinion re. our leaders? We would have a fricken fit too.) and attempt to appoint himself permanent ruler. If instead we took him by the hand and said, "hey we really admire what you've been able to do for your people by using oil wealth for the general good and we hope that you'll strengthen your fragile democracy and your nation by abdicating your office and letting someone else have a shot at it," we could have a MUCH more productive relationship.”
Oh hell; I need to get to work. This is the rest of the e-mail to my brother:
“Another 5% was that McCain is again aiming really low. By not looking at Obama the whole time, I think he was trying to send a message that Obama is inhuman or unworthy of acknowledgement or something. He had to have some psychologist on his staff telling him to do this, because it was just so obviously intentional and such an unnatural/artifical interaction (or lack thereof). He's aiming for some gut response because he can't compete on substance...again.
“One of them answered that first question quite succinctly--"there is no final form of the legislation, so I cant say whether i'd sign it or not." I was glad one of them could at least spit that out. Big deal about nothing.
“Re. What would you cut? McCain said basically everything but the military, and Obama wouldn't say he'd give up anything. McCain was speaking to the shortsighted antigovernment folks and I would think he alienated anyone who values anything other than war. Omaba has said in the past and should have said in that context, "I'd give up tax breaks for people making over a quarter million a year" and "I would get the heck out of Iraq"--hows that for a budget cuts. I guess he was thinking more about what not to say; must be tough to be on the hotseat. Lerher (sp) shoulda said,let me put it like this, "tomorrow, every country on earth tells it's banks and citizens, do not lend any more money to the US. How are you going to balance the budget?"
“BTW, did you catch when McCain said Obama doesnt know the dif b'tween tactics and strategy and then not two minutes later called a tactic a strategy himself?”
Like the caller to C-span says, both candidates are “warmongering”—declaring nations “rogue states” and aggressors without weighing the facts. It doesn’t surprise me that McCain does this, but to have the left wing candidate participate in this insanity is just baffling to me. Being too busy to rewrite what I wrote the other day, I said to my brother, “For both of them (and, I am particularly disappointed in the case of Obama), I found the tough talk (if not "warmongering") against Russia, Venezuela and Iran deeply troubling. I believe strongly (though it is very hard to be certain with the lack of factual media coverage) that Russia was rightfully defending S. Ossetia which is populated by ethnic Russians with Russian citizenship, which was only included in Georgia fairly recently as a matter of post-Soviet convenience, and which has a history of being treated brutally by Georgia. It baffles me that we/ our politicians stand with the oppressor against the liberator and call us the defender. Iran, i think, we ought to deal with via hyperdiplomacy--simply try to build some sort of cultural understanding. Economic times should make this more acceptable than trying to beat the antiAmericanness out of them. The hyperbole of Ahmedinezhadorhoweverthefuckyouspellhisname is blown up to be all sorts of crazy genocidal rhetoric by the west while he's just just saying what he thinks he needs to say to get elected (all too familiar). Fucking Chavez--he's a Democratically elected president of an American nation, and I think most USAmericans fail to understand that Communism is an economic system absolutely compatible with Democracy, which is a political system. In fact the US has gone around the world for fifty some years now undermining democracies over and over again because when given Democratic government, the people frequently choose a Socialist or Communist leader. This is the reason that Chavez spews his antiAmerican rhetoric--because we (US tax payers) have sponsored a coup attempt which successfully (though temporarily) deposed his democratically appointed administration and subsequently have sponsored the opposition media which lays a constant barrage of attacks against him. Thereby we have encouraged him to use hateful rhetoric against us. We have given him reason to clamp down on the "free press" (can you imagine if China was so rich that they bought our media and used it to shape US public opinion re. our leaders? We would have a fricken fit too.) and attempt to appoint himself permanent ruler. If instead we took him by the hand and said, "hey we really admire what you've been able to do for your people by using oil wealth for the general good and we hope that you'll strengthen your fragile democracy and your nation by abdicating your office and letting someone else have a shot at it," we could have a MUCH more productive relationship.”
Oh hell; I need to get to work. This is the rest of the e-mail to my brother:
“Another 5% was that McCain is again aiming really low. By not looking at Obama the whole time, I think he was trying to send a message that Obama is inhuman or unworthy of acknowledgement or something. He had to have some psychologist on his staff telling him to do this, because it was just so obviously intentional and such an unnatural/artifical interaction (or lack thereof). He's aiming for some gut response because he can't compete on substance...again.
“One of them answered that first question quite succinctly--"there is no final form of the legislation, so I cant say whether i'd sign it or not." I was glad one of them could at least spit that out. Big deal about nothing.
“Re. What would you cut? McCain said basically everything but the military, and Obama wouldn't say he'd give up anything. McCain was speaking to the shortsighted antigovernment folks and I would think he alienated anyone who values anything other than war. Omaba has said in the past and should have said in that context, "I'd give up tax breaks for people making over a quarter million a year" and "I would get the heck out of Iraq"--hows that for a budget cuts. I guess he was thinking more about what not to say; must be tough to be on the hotseat. Lerher (sp) shoulda said,let me put it like this, "tomorrow, every country on earth tells it's banks and citizens, do not lend any more money to the US. How are you going to balance the budget?"
“BTW, did you catch when McCain said Obama doesnt know the dif b'tween tactics and strategy and then not two minutes later called a tactic a strategy himself?”
Thursday, September 18, 2008
"Sarah Palin is..." Google Search Results
Google search results (September 17, 1530 hrs):
"sarah palin is" 878,000 hits
"Sarah Palin is unqualified" 209,000 hits
"sarah palin is a babe" 132,000 hits
"sarah palin is hot" 62,800 hits
"Sarah Palin is scary" 48,400 hits
"sarah palin is awesome" 27,900 hits
"Sarah Palin is an idiot" 24,100 hits
"sarah palin is not qualified" 15,500 hits
"sarah palin is dangerous" 1990 hits
"sarah Palin is crazy" 984 hits
"sarah palin isn't qualified" 850 hits
"sarah palin is a MILF" 823 hits
"sarah palin is a dangerous" 755 hits
"sarah palin is great" 652 hits
"Sarah Palin is a nightmare" 601 hits
"sarah palin is the devil" 574 hits
"sarah palin is the antichrist" 490 hits
"sarah palin is stupid" 386 hits
"sarah palin is a godsend" 277 hits
"Sarah Palin is hypocritical" 259 hits
"sarah palin is a whore" 206 hits
"sarah palin is fantastic" 92 hits
"sarah palin is wonderful" 78 hits
"sarah palin is weak" 76 hits
"Sarah Palin is ugly" 65 hits
"sarah palin is irrelevant" 64 hits
"Sarah Palin is a retard" 51 hits
"Sarah Palin is a fucking idiot" 10 hits
"sarah palin is retarded" 7 hits
"sarah palin is a zealot" 5 hits
"sarah palin is the spawn of" 3 hits (Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms, and the devil)
"sarah palin is the answer to our prayers" 2 hits
"Sarah Palin is a fucking retard" 1 hit
"sarah palin is" 878,000 hits
"Sarah Palin is unqualified" 209,000 hits
"sarah palin is a babe" 132,000 hits
"sarah palin is hot" 62,800 hits
"Sarah Palin is scary" 48,400 hits
"sarah palin is awesome" 27,900 hits
"Sarah Palin is an idiot" 24,100 hits
"sarah palin is not qualified" 15,500 hits
"sarah palin is dangerous" 1990 hits
"sarah Palin is crazy" 984 hits
"sarah palin isn't qualified" 850 hits
"sarah palin is a MILF" 823 hits
"sarah palin is a dangerous" 755 hits
"sarah palin is great" 652 hits
"Sarah Palin is a nightmare" 601 hits
"sarah palin is the devil" 574 hits
"sarah palin is the antichrist" 490 hits
"sarah palin is stupid" 386 hits
"sarah palin is a godsend" 277 hits
"Sarah Palin is hypocritical" 259 hits
"sarah palin is a whore" 206 hits
"sarah palin is fantastic" 92 hits
"sarah palin is wonderful" 78 hits
"sarah palin is weak" 76 hits
"Sarah Palin is ugly" 65 hits
"sarah palin is irrelevant" 64 hits
"Sarah Palin is a retard" 51 hits
"Sarah Palin is a fucking idiot" 10 hits
"sarah palin is retarded" 7 hits
"sarah palin is a zealot" 5 hits
"sarah palin is the spawn of" 3 hits (Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms, and the devil)
"sarah palin is the answer to our prayers" 2 hits
"Sarah Palin is a fucking retard" 1 hit
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