is the McCain campaign part of a strategy?

The guy seems to have a lot in common with Dan Quayle, Mr Potatoe-Head.

I never would have believed it, and I really want desperately to think that he has a lousy campaign staff to blame for all this. The GOP campaign this year, (not that I wish them well, if anything, I want them to have a quick and painless death--not the long and protracted demise that they seem to be going through now), seems to have a lot in common with the revived career of Desi Arnaz.

Huh? What?

What gives?

I have to wonder if McCain hasn't been given the nod here as kind of a "thanks for your years of service" nod, a bit like Bob Dole against an all-but-unbeatable Bill Clinton in '96. You know, they have to nominate somebody, why put somebody with a future up when it is almost a sure loss in the post Bush environment. The whole point of this election is to back the party on the left into a corner that they cannot get themselves out of. In four years, when the country is still in the toilet, (and it will be, where else can it be?), the party on the right will be there, relatively clean, having not dealt with the shit that was left behind, saying "had enough?". It is a play that has worked pretty well for Vladimir Putin. Of course he is a motherf**ker, but at least you know what you are getting. And yes, he promises that you will get screwed, big time, while he and his family and friends make out like bandits, but at least he delivers on that, and isn't that what values are all about?

Stay focused.

the price of gas

In my humble opinion, which, as you know, is always excruciatingly correct, this is a pretty good article, something for the intellect to chew on for a bit.

Ask yourself if there is a candidate, anywhere, that can have any measurable impact on this kind of behavior.

We hear a lot about domestic sources of oil and natural gas, and a lot about why and why not we shouldn't be exploiting them. Like everything else, I see this as a tangled up mess of separate issues, not the least of which are these, (in no particular order) :

1) the environmental impact of exploration and exploitation.

2) the economic impact of these initiatives.

3) the issue of dependency on carbon fuels.

I am sure that there are more, but these three are more than enough to mentally chew on for decades, (the nation has not come to term with these issues since the seventies, you expect me to do it in a couple of paragraphs?); but if suffices to say that in order to make any progress, the country needs to separate these questions and get a clear understanding of what is involved and at stake, who stands to gain and lose, and the prioritize our responses.


I am not opposed to drilling offshore, to be blunt, the rest of the world is already exploting these resources, off our shores, why not us. The issues here seem to be how do we protect our environmental interests, and, since we are investing a bit of our own national capital in the effort, what is in this for the average citizen? I do not want to hear about our nations security and future and a batch of shit from the big oil companies, gasoline in Venezuela is selling for about 19 cents a gallon in US dollars. That is a tangible benefit to the average citizen from the investment made in terms of national capital. The oil companies are still raking it in, the government is still getting filthy rich from the various pools of graft and corruption that seem to sprout from sources of revenue like crabgrass on a manicured lawn, but there is a benefit to the average Jose' while we up north get screwed.

I'm just sayin'.....

The issue on ANWAR is something else. There is no competition, and the data that support drilling is a lot less conclusive. There are a lot of other untapped resources that are a lot less ecologically fragile, if big oil will just spend a bit of money looking for them rather than buying back their rather profitable stock.

That brings me to another point that is made in the artice cited above.

Why do we surrender much of our resources so a very few can get very rich screwing us out of what we own already? The energy industry is as close to an unregulated monopoly as there is today, and no one cries "free market" louder than they do. The energy consortium is owned, in large part by interests not based in the United States. They are in a position to use things to manipulate the market and therefore prices to artificially inflate the value of their holdings and sales, and to affect the economies of nations to the better and worse.

And we worry about some countries having the bomb. That friends is significant, but it is a ruse, it deflects attention from the real war.

Ask yourself who really gains and loses from the launch of a few rockets in the Persian Gulf.

You lose, to the tune of about $25,000,000 in profits per day. Those rockets? They might as well be bricks for all the military value that they have, but strategically speaking, they make the rest of the worlds arsenals look puny in comparison.

If we didn't think we were handing a box af ammo to the people holding us hostage with guns to our heads, we might be inclined to pursue a sensible domestic energy policy. But we all needa stake in it, and it needs to be a bit more than we get to go one giving all that we make to Chevron and BP and whomever.

That might be called socialism. So what? I call it progressive, and realistic. Definately necessary.

Finally. There has to be a better way. I cannot sit here at my computer and say what it is, but I know that if we do not adopt it, we will die off within another generation or two. If the nation/state is to survive we must take care of ourselves first, yes even to the exclusion of others, then reach out and help others adopt similar ways. We must be willing to negotiate, but not compromise.

I don't know if that is possible. I believe that the crop of candidates that we have know these things but continue to bellow the same old BS that resonates so well with TV camera's and pundits that have an attention span not much longer than, well, you know....

I'm glad I am the age that I am. call me a coward, but I really don't want to go through a lot of this.

Think this through, do what you think is best.

Stay focused.

Confidence

Johnny Carson used to host a program called "Who Do You Trust?".

Walter Cronkite was often referred to as the most trusted man in America.

And we had John Wayne.


Look what we have today.


Let's face it folks, it has been a while since we have had anybody in government that we really admired, somebody that, even if we disagreed with them, we could still at least respect or trust to some measurable degree.


How far back do we have to go? Clinton? He wasn't too bad, but had the bad luck to be caught with his pants down, (literally), with regard to his personal life. His involvement with some less then upright financial dealings in real estate did not help matters, evn though they were nothing that a lot of rich folks did and also got away with, not really illegal but the appearance of a sweetheart deal really didn't go over with common folks.


Bush I? My impression of the guy was that he was a gentleman, and that he had some class about him. Look where it got him.


Ronald Reagan? He had some style, and was professionally likable, like Don Rickles in the White House. He was uppity in a down home way. The guy did some good things with his aw shucks style but to be truthful, he did more harm and was possibly the second most divisive president of the latter half of his century.


Jimmy Carter was the real deal, but he couldn't throw or catch real well. There is probably an object lesson there, but I don't want to get into that here.


Gerald Ford was also the genuine article. In my estimation, like him or his politics or not, he was the underrated man to occupy the oval office in its history. He was in a position of not being able to win, but worked at it anyway, and did a great deal of good during his tenure. He was able to bring the country together in a very rough time, and got no credit for it.


Nixon. No elaboration required.


Prior to that, we had LBJ, who maintained some decorum, but was a politician of the old school, a man who knew where the bodies were buried.


So, where am I going with this?

It seems to me that we have been consumed by the practice of politics, and have lost track of the purpose of the whole endeavor. In todays world, politics itself is a cancer, it serves itself only.

How do we deal with that? Who do you trust?

As I see things, one takes a candidate and works with him/her for as long as our interests coincide, then discard them. The process works both ways. A candidate takes a constituency for as long as it takes to become embedded, or to gain a certain advantage, then moves on, giving no more. This year, it appears that the candidate on the left will be elected, as his platform appears to coincide with the interests of most likely voters. That could change of course, but that is the way things look right now.

How will things look this time next year?

How will external influences shift, how much will the candidates interests and backers, (no, not the voters...) have strengthened, will the voters interests matter at that time?

What is our exit strategy from whatever path we choose this November?

Just something to keep in mind.

stay focused.

what's new with you?

yeah, I know I haven't been around as much, a lot of changes in the life of the old recluse. (funny how a lot of nuthin' can keep one so wrapped up....).


a few new developments in the past week or so, I will pontificate briefly, and leave you all to figure it all out.


The Supreme Court held, narrowly, that the second amendment does indeed permit the individual to keep and bear firearms. Judging by the comments attached to the ruling, the justices have ruled out my right to own surface-to-air missiles and a few other esoteric varieties of weaponry, down to certain popular and readily available modifications of some guns.


I don't know what to think. I stand with the second amendment, and there was a day when I would have thought that this was a common sense decision, (deep down, I still do), but I say why any restriction. If I want to own a SAM or a sawed off shotgun, who cares? If there are no ramifications to it, why does anyone care? If I were to take some action with such a piece of hardware, then some legal action might be justified, otherwise, get the hell out of my life.


Then we have George Bush.


The guy just can't let it go. Seymour Hersch reports that the US actually has troops on the ground in Iran, in reparation for an attack on that countries nuclear infrastructure.


I don't know how I feel about that notion, but I know how I feel about Bush and his cronies. I have no confidence in this administration, and frankly, this would not be happening, (and, it may not be happening, Mr Hersch is a fine reporter, but he is just a reporter and is not infallible), if there was not something in it for Bush/Cheney Corp. if a military action were to take place, it would need to be coordinated way beyond the capabilities of this administration, and would require the buy-in of much of the oil consuming world to work. The Strait of Hormuz would most likely be closed for an extended period, and a military occupation of both banks would be necessary. Think the cost of energy is high now? Be ready for a cold winter and an extended recession/depression.


And how about that Wes Clark?


There are a lot of things that can be said about John McCain and Barak Obama, but for a retired General to belittle the record of a man who spent years in a POW camp, under torture, and lived to tell about it speaks volumes about him, not McCain. General Clark needs to shut the hell up, keep in the forefront of his mind that he is no longer a mouthpiece for Hillary, and go away.

Moving right along here, according to a CNN poll, about 35% of Americans feel that a new terror attack is likely on US soil in the next several weeks, a low since the attacks in 2001.

talk about tempting fate....

I hate to say it, but the sad fact is that terror attacks are a strategic weapon, and they are likely to occur again. being strategic, rather than tactical, they will be most useful after the election cycle, they would serve to keep a new administration off balance and to keep the country from gaining any momentum in solving any of the issues that we now face. An ugly fact, but that is the way that I see it.

Ask yourself, how would either of the candidates respond to a 9/11 scale attack? It might be more relevant than you think, (or hope). Along similar lines, I see that the two (presumed) candidates actually agreed on a topic of some import this past week, amnesty for the telecoms that were involved in the illegal and, if I may be permitted to interject, fascist wiretapping that occurred and has persisted through the present administration.

Both candidates back it. Yep, even the liberal Democrat is in favor of a police state.

To hell with him.