08.13.08--This post has already attracted a few comments--quite surprising considering it is the first thing I have written in two months. It addresses passionate subject matter with a partisan eye, and was written not to attract adherants or offend/persuade those opposed to my point of view--it was written to vent and verbalize many of the things I find most troubling about our world right now. I appreciate the comments, and if others want to leave more of them, knock yourselves out--but be advised that I am not going to read them, or at least not for a long time. If you were hoping for a restaurant post, you will shortly be satisfied. If you hate George W. Bush and think Barack Obama is the Messiah, those opinions constitute a right properly afforded you by our Bill of Rights. I've got too much crap piled inside of me right now to engage in comment debate such as I have done here and there previously.
"...the election is a choice between Larry(D), Curly(D), or Moe(R)"--Mark Shea
"...so, the choice is between a giant douche or a turd sandwich..."--Stan Marsh
Well, Larry is out of the race--besides that everything else is pretty much status quo.
There is a youtube video, which I think might be a clip from Boston Legal [I've never seen the show] that is William Shatner, in character, describing his personal platform and outlook previous to a possible run for the presidency.
The Shatner character is honest. He has solid positions and opinions, and while obviously designed for entertainment [and slightly farcical as a result], the clip really illustrates what is so incredibly, indelibly wrong with our government and our electoral process. You get the idea that he is going to establish a platform of ideas to run on. Period. Does anyone else remember when candidates ran on real issues? When they simply worked as hard as they could to attract as many people as possible who believed what they believed and wanted what they wanted.
There was one Reagan and one Mondale. No matter whether they were talking to old white veterans, young black men, housewives from the south, loggers from the pacific northwest, Cuban immigrants, West Virginia rednecks, or Manhattan socialites. Their inflections and accents did not change--much less their policies, opinions, and values--from group to group and speech to speech.
Mondale, while a good-hearted man and tireless public servant was also a socialist, and as a result he lost all but his home state--the same state by the way that later elected a pro wrestler and bad actor its governor and is now entertaining the possibility of electing a failed broadcaster and bad comedian as one of its senators. Reagan understood that to defeat evil one must fight evil--he also differed from our current President in that he could verbalize that understanding [and everything else] to the American people with flawless ease. You always knew where Ronald Reagan stood--and if you didn't agree with him you were going to mad about it for quite some time also, because no amount of polling, lobbying, or protesting was going to change his mind. The same man who became President in 1981 was the same man re-elected in 1984 was the same man who ran for President against a same-party incumbent in 1976 was the same man who previous to that California's governor was the same man who would at his end tragically succumb to the worst possible fate for a man who lived his life being so utterly self-possessed.
I'm no fan of John McCain. I think he is an honorable man, an intelligent man, and a man who must, due to his imprisonment, truly understand both the nature of despair and the value of self. Any man who spent years living in what amounts to half a refrigerator without going insane has to be supremely confident in what he can and cannot do. He is however, not a fan of conservative governance.
John McCain is a senator, as is his opponent, and there is a reason that only two senators have ever ascended directly from the Senate to the White House. They simply aren't leaders. Of the two that succeeded, one was a philandering criminal [Warren Harding] who was killed either by someone who was cheating him, someone he cheated, or possibly even by his wife who was tired of being cheated on. The other of course was our last democratic messiah, John F. Kennedy--the beneficiary of a actually corrupt and hijacked election the likes of which Al Gore and his rabid, entitled supporters couldn't even imagine. Illinois must have looked like a George Romero film on election day 1960 with all the thousands of zombies gleefully heading to the polls to vote democrat over and over again courtesy of Sam Giancano. In a bizarre twist that defies general convention, it was Nixon's civility and concern for his country in 1960 that precluded the legal challenges his supporters were screaming for. Ah, the good old days.
Senators do not make good Presidents--thankfully they make even worse candidates and rarely even sniff the golden ring as a result. As a group they are lazy, elitist douchebags who fall out of touch with and become contemptuous of their constituents from nearly the moment they are sworn in. The fact that they are at risk for their seats only every six years allows them 51/2 years to languish in their arrogance and ineptitude while spending our money and ignoring our wishes. John McCain is certainly less guilty of these things than most of his contemporaries, but he is still guilty. I have no doubt that he will keep us safe, and I have no doubt...well, that's actually about all I have no doubts about with regard to the senior senator from Arizona.
What McCain represents, to my horror, is the lesser of two evils. McCain's opponent, the wholly vacuous, completely disingenuous, and more than slightly sinister Barack Obama is simply terrifying to behold as a presidential possibility. If he wasn't so deadly stupid, his voting record coupled with his numerous speeches to left-wing fringe groups would also paint him as a possible "Manchurian Candidate"--but I doubt the conditioning would stick in one so smoothly devoid of real substance. I know that he can learn, because he has clearly graduated from the Joe Biden/Ted Kennedy Senatorial Arrogance School with flying colors--but, other than mastering condescension and outrage, I cannot tell what else he actually has learned.
For conservatives the situation is the same now as it was in 1976, after Reagan's attempt to re-take the Republican Party for the conservatives failed. To vote for Gerald Ford was to vote for a "country club" republican, a decent and genteel man nevertheless wholly lacking any determined conservative compass--he was the lesser of two evils--and while the four years following Carter's win were four of the darkest years in our history, the Republican Party re-emerged as a viable conservative entity led by Ronald Reagan and he brought us as a country back to the light.
What differs from then and now are two very important things. First, while I have no doubt that Senator Obama would be at least as inept as Carter should he be elected--Carter was still an honest man. President Carter had the best of intentions, he was just an absolute and utter failure--Senator Obama is by comparison so contrived and superficial that the true concept of things like "values" and "consequences" may be wholly foreign to him. Secondly, while Jimmy Carter destroyed our economy, hamstrung our military, and birthed modern terrorism by abandoning our embassy in Tehran and allowing terrorists to win, we were still able to survive him and prosper afterward. In 2009, the result of electing an ignorant, America-hating socialist as our President may well spell the end of our country as we know it.
Hate him if you want, but we are currently safe because there isn't a militant in the world who isn't terrified of George W. Bush--Barack Obama ehh...not so much.
John McCain will continue the current tradition of "taking the fight to them", and that will keep us safe--but what then? Our government has become so corrupt, on both sides and on all levels, that status quo bullshit isn't going to cut it anymore. If not for September 11th, I believe our country and my political party could have made some real headway towards coming back to earth--to daily addressing problems and at least attempting solutions. As it was, one day [that was decades in the making] changed the whole ballgame. Now, I want someone who can articulate and demand the common sense that we need to survive and prosper in the coming century--the problem is that there is no one in the running who can or will do that.
I haven't written for awhile because I have been evaluating alot of things recently--both about the small things in my daily life as well as the big things in the world around me. I've done some traveling and I've made some plans. I need to get a bunch of stuff written out here over the next few weeks because it is choking my brain, but after that I don't know. I've been thinking about a move...
"...the election is a choice between Larry(D), Curly(D), or Moe(R)"--Mark Shea
"...so, the choice is between a giant douche or a turd sandwich..."--Stan Marsh
Well, Larry is out of the race--besides that everything else is pretty much status quo.
There is a youtube video, which I think might be a clip from Boston Legal [I've never seen the show] that is William Shatner, in character, describing his personal platform and outlook previous to a possible run for the presidency.
The Shatner character is honest. He has solid positions and opinions, and while obviously designed for entertainment [and slightly farcical as a result], the clip really illustrates what is so incredibly, indelibly wrong with our government and our electoral process. You get the idea that he is going to establish a platform of ideas to run on. Period. Does anyone else remember when candidates ran on real issues? When they simply worked as hard as they could to attract as many people as possible who believed what they believed and wanted what they wanted.
There was one Reagan and one Mondale. No matter whether they were talking to old white veterans, young black men, housewives from the south, loggers from the pacific northwest, Cuban immigrants, West Virginia rednecks, or Manhattan socialites. Their inflections and accents did not change--much less their policies, opinions, and values--from group to group and speech to speech.
Mondale, while a good-hearted man and tireless public servant was also a socialist, and as a result he lost all but his home state--the same state by the way that later elected a pro wrestler and bad actor its governor and is now entertaining the possibility of electing a failed broadcaster and bad comedian as one of its senators. Reagan understood that to defeat evil one must fight evil--he also differed from our current President in that he could verbalize that understanding [and everything else] to the American people with flawless ease. You always knew where Ronald Reagan stood--and if you didn't agree with him you were going to mad about it for quite some time also, because no amount of polling, lobbying, or protesting was going to change his mind. The same man who became President in 1981 was the same man re-elected in 1984 was the same man who ran for President against a same-party incumbent in 1976 was the same man who previous to that California's governor was the same man who would at his end tragically succumb to the worst possible fate for a man who lived his life being so utterly self-possessed.
I'm no fan of John McCain. I think he is an honorable man, an intelligent man, and a man who must, due to his imprisonment, truly understand both the nature of despair and the value of self. Any man who spent years living in what amounts to half a refrigerator without going insane has to be supremely confident in what he can and cannot do. He is however, not a fan of conservative governance.
John McCain is a senator, as is his opponent, and there is a reason that only two senators have ever ascended directly from the Senate to the White House. They simply aren't leaders. Of the two that succeeded, one was a philandering criminal [Warren Harding] who was killed either by someone who was cheating him, someone he cheated, or possibly even by his wife who was tired of being cheated on. The other of course was our last democratic messiah, John F. Kennedy--the beneficiary of a actually corrupt and hijacked election the likes of which Al Gore and his rabid, entitled supporters couldn't even imagine. Illinois must have looked like a George Romero film on election day 1960 with all the thousands of zombies gleefully heading to the polls to vote democrat over and over again courtesy of Sam Giancano. In a bizarre twist that defies general convention, it was Nixon's civility and concern for his country in 1960 that precluded the legal challenges his supporters were screaming for. Ah, the good old days.
Senators do not make good Presidents--thankfully they make even worse candidates and rarely even sniff the golden ring as a result. As a group they are lazy, elitist douchebags who fall out of touch with and become contemptuous of their constituents from nearly the moment they are sworn in. The fact that they are at risk for their seats only every six years allows them 51/2 years to languish in their arrogance and ineptitude while spending our money and ignoring our wishes. John McCain is certainly less guilty of these things than most of his contemporaries, but he is still guilty. I have no doubt that he will keep us safe, and I have no doubt...well, that's actually about all I have no doubts about with regard to the senior senator from Arizona.
What McCain represents, to my horror, is the lesser of two evils. McCain's opponent, the wholly vacuous, completely disingenuous, and more than slightly sinister Barack Obama is simply terrifying to behold as a presidential possibility. If he wasn't so deadly stupid, his voting record coupled with his numerous speeches to left-wing fringe groups would also paint him as a possible "Manchurian Candidate"--but I doubt the conditioning would stick in one so smoothly devoid of real substance. I know that he can learn, because he has clearly graduated from the Joe Biden/Ted Kennedy Senatorial Arrogance School with flying colors--but, other than mastering condescension and outrage, I cannot tell what else he actually has learned.
For conservatives the situation is the same now as it was in 1976, after Reagan's attempt to re-take the Republican Party for the conservatives failed. To vote for Gerald Ford was to vote for a "country club" republican, a decent and genteel man nevertheless wholly lacking any determined conservative compass--he was the lesser of two evils--and while the four years following Carter's win were four of the darkest years in our history, the Republican Party re-emerged as a viable conservative entity led by Ronald Reagan and he brought us as a country back to the light.
What differs from then and now are two very important things. First, while I have no doubt that Senator Obama would be at least as inept as Carter should he be elected--Carter was still an honest man. President Carter had the best of intentions, he was just an absolute and utter failure--Senator Obama is by comparison so contrived and superficial that the true concept of things like "values" and "consequences" may be wholly foreign to him. Secondly, while Jimmy Carter destroyed our economy, hamstrung our military, and birthed modern terrorism by abandoning our embassy in Tehran and allowing terrorists to win, we were still able to survive him and prosper afterward. In 2009, the result of electing an ignorant, America-hating socialist as our President may well spell the end of our country as we know it.
Hate him if you want, but we are currently safe because there isn't a militant in the world who isn't terrified of George W. Bush--Barack Obama ehh...not so much.
John McCain will continue the current tradition of "taking the fight to them", and that will keep us safe--but what then? Our government has become so corrupt, on both sides and on all levels, that status quo bullshit isn't going to cut it anymore. If not for September 11th, I believe our country and my political party could have made some real headway towards coming back to earth--to daily addressing problems and at least attempting solutions. As it was, one day [that was decades in the making] changed the whole ballgame. Now, I want someone who can articulate and demand the common sense that we need to survive and prosper in the coming century--the problem is that there is no one in the running who can or will do that.
I haven't written for awhile because I have been evaluating alot of things recently--both about the small things in my daily life as well as the big things in the world around me. I've done some traveling and I've made some plans. I need to get a bunch of stuff written out here over the next few weeks because it is choking my brain, but after that I don't know. I've been thinking about a move...
posted by last one home at 8:12 PM
3 Comments:
Oh my God your alive!! Was beginning to wonder what happened to you.
It strikes me as I ponder your post is that in a nutshell just how many years in the last 40 the US has NOT had an actual leader at its helm.
I fully agree with you on the utter totality that our governments at all levels is failing its taxpayers.
I live in Texas and currently at the state level its getting ridiculous. I am looking forward to US Sen. Hutchinson taking on our seated Gov in the next election.
Examples-we no longer build highways we build tollroads including a planned multiple artery monster(freight road, passenger road, light rail, and freight rail). This includes easements going to the building contractor/operator a French firm that they can use for development purposes. We are talking square miles of land here between the major cities.
example 2 Energy deregulation-a joke at the consumer level
I am paying double per kWh that I paid when I 1st got a light bill with same provider which was just allowed to sell itself to investment bankers. The cost of power is tied to natural gas pricing which is tied but supply isnt directly related to cost of oil. Bulk of natural gas is obtained from gas wells in state rather than foreign oil wells. Yet the primary source of power generation is wyhoming sourced coal until peak demand time of summer when off-lined gas plants come online.
Loved the political analysis and would love to here more specifics on why Obama is not fit for the Big House.
As a country, we have lot of complex problems with no easy solutions.
Unfortunately, for the most part our legislative branch isn't even trying to address these problems because they are too busy amassing the absurdly large war chests that have become prerequisite to election.
Fortunately, this is one problem that has a simple solution: bar political advertising on television. Without the ability to spend hundreds of millions on television advertising, there would be little electoral difference between war chests of $20M and $200M. This would go a long way towards allowing the return of men of principle to Capital Hill, rather than having them doomed to succumb to the overwhelming financial force of those men who are willing to prostitute themselves seemingly without bounds just to get another big campaign contribution.
Sadly, we can't expect our current generation of incumbents to so much as discuss this...it's an idea they can't fathom.
nor to resist giving themselves pay and pension raises despite most of them being much more well off than the average taxpayer.
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