An Epic Blunder!

The Bush Administration continues a long record of hideous foreign policy mistakes with their implementation of a missile defense shield in Poland. What, you may ask, is there to defend against? Nothing. This move is designed to continue the long standing neo-con lunacy of encircling Russia with some form of military presence, either via the creation and/or acquisition of military bases, or, in this case, nukes. Total Spectrum Dominance, the central insane doctrine of neo-con foreign policy, will be seen by those generations that survive the attempt to enact it, as a catastrophic failure, responsible for massive fraud and financial waste, a generation of mutilated, scarred, or dead young American men, a sundered middle eastern nation, and possibly the unthinkable, nuclear war.

Look no further than the aforesaid doctrine as the reason for the latest Russian incursion into the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, where a U.S. stooge was throwing his weight around in a manner that provoked an overpowering military response. The Olympics may have the spotlight now, but the greatest game going these days is the the one initiated years ago by the neo-cons to secure the U.S. as the globe's dominant military and economic power. It's a game we could never win, even briefly, but lose it we shall, in a hail of tattered hubris, monetary meltdown, and finally, civic and political chaos. A more successful search and destroy mission has rarely, if ever, been achieved.

What can one do to prepare for all the mayhem coming down the pike? Exchange dollars for precious metals, stock up on food that can sit in your pantry for more than a few weeks at a time, and short of relocating to another country, which most of us either can't or won't do, keep your gas tank full at all times. Present trends in the dollar, up, fuel, down, are all very temporary and should be seen as gifts. Make your preparations now and good luck!

Abort McCain!

The nation, or at least certain retrograde elements that reside within it, (and ones that I wish would vanish immediately without a trace), obsess about the fitness of candidates for the highest office in the land based on one issue above all others. Unfortunately, this issue shouldn't even be an issue. In truth, due to its very private nature, abortion, like religion, should have no part in public life at all. But lamentably, here in Freedom's Land, it does, and so, John McCain, who knows he must attract crazed Jesus freaks and their ilk to his cause, lest Barack Obama trample him at the polls, offered- in what is becoming a typically pandering approach- to thunderous approval from a congregation of evangelicals, his view that life begins at conception. Obama, perhaps a bit less desperate than his shriveled Republican rival, and one hopes as a result of being in possession of a mind capable of grappling with complexity, sensibly offered his thoughts on when life begins with something less designed to cause myopic and fevered evangelicals to twitter with unbridled joy. Just so. And this development is, in some sense, a microcosm of the choice facing Americans at the polls in November.

Don't get me wrong, I'm hardly an enthusiast for Obama, and am deeply skeptical of any good coming from our shabby and corrupt two party system, but how can one in good conscience vote for a candidate who would pander to fundamentalist wing nuts? Were McCain being nominated for President of a newly formed nation inhabited overwhelmingly by fundamentalists, (of any stripe), why I'd happily pull the lever for him. But, alas, such is not the case. In the meantime, we have very serious problems, make that crises, crises that far outweigh the non-issue issue of abortion, and we can't afford to elect any more officials who act as ombudsman for the cretinous agendas of the dumbest of the dumbed down.

Spanish Stench of Bigotry at The Olympics.

Somehow the Olympics seem to be suffering a bit this year. Practically on the very first day of the games an American couple were brutally attacked by a knife weilding assailant leaving one man dead. Then, on a far grander scale, war broke out in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Now, the Spaniards, not known throughout history for being terribly enlightened on the subject of race or religion, have marred the proceedings with an utterly boorish photo taken of the basketball team collectively "slanting" their eyes. Somehow the team thought this would be amusing, which just shows them up to be a truly dim witted and and classless bunch of cretins. What may be worse is that the team seems to have no idea why people are upset and offended. And though in the wake of the uproar they caused the Spanish basketball team appear to be apologetic, I still look forward to seeing the inhabitants of the country that gave the world The Inquisition get crushed (by the U.S. basketball team, a squad composed entirely of players of African descent) like so many Iberian grapes underfoot.

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/basketball/news?slug=ro-spain081308&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

Idiot of the Month!

The Green Bay Packers were prepared to offer on again off again retiree quarterback, Brett Favre, twenty million dollars to hang up his cleats for good, but in a decision that defied even a smidgen of sense, the thirty seven year old veteran said, "No, thanks." Now, Favre, who has only toiled for one team his entire career, and is a living legend in a small city with only one major professional sports team, is fighting for a starting position with the New York Jets. And to add insult to injury, Favre is being made to run penalty laps for the first time in his career. I wonder what he is thinking to himself when he has to sprint like a twenty two year old rookie back and forth across the gridiron in ninety degree heat? Couldn't I, a man pushing forty, with a twenty million dollar incentive, have found something better to do with my time than this?

War Games

Athletes representing both small and large countries from around the world are presently engaged in civil competition against each other as part of the XXIX Olympics. But beyond the opulent confines of Bejing's Olympic Village, the world is hardly a civil place. In fact, in the sovereign nation of Georgia, a civil war is raging, and the Russians, who stand to gain from it, are lending their might to Georgian separatists. It's hard to be sure who initiated this bloody contretemps, but it couldn't be a better time for it if one desires minimal interference. After all, the world is preoccupied with a once every four years international sporting extravaganza, so who has the time or inclination to intervene between warring nations?

True to form, the United Nations is issuing toothless condemnations, and world leaders from Nicolas Sarkozy to our own President Shub are intoning about the possibility of a peaceful resolution. But it's not likely anything will be done to stop what looks for all the world like a well planned power play by Vladimir Putin's Russia. Enjoy the Gymnastics!

Never Believe a Rumor...

until it has been officially denied. Those were the sage words uttered by one of the greatest politicians of the 19th century, Otto Von Bismarck. With that in mind, I submit the following denial of treachery from The White House.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080805/ap_on_go_pr_wh/white_house_iraq

Secessionist Pressure Points/Crisis of Liberalism.

Is a Unitarian a progressive? I don't know. Frankly, I'm not sure I can reliably identify what a progressive is these days, but it seems clear that in the mind of at least one deranged, "librul" hating, southern trucker, Unitarianism amounts to an evil worthy of mass murder. And while it would be easy to dismiss the actions of the gibberish spouting homicidal maniac who opened fire on a Unitarian congregation in Tennessee as nothing more than a tragically freakish one off, I'm afraid that, from my vantage point, the desperately unhinged character is probably no anomaly. The south, and the great interior of the United States in general is full of people with similarly vicious attitudes as the rampaging, buckshot spraying trucker. And though they almost certainly don't possess the level of malevolence of the aforementioned gunman, don't for a minute think they aren't deeply hostile to liberalism, a doctrine whose hallmarks are expansiveness and inclusion.

It is almost certain that without the advent of liberalism, a creature of The Enlightenment, there would be no United States at all. Absent Enlightenment liberalism, one segment of the British social order of the day, untitled, anglo saxon, male property owners, would not have had cover for their demands for self rule and no model for crafting a system of governance which, at least nominally, enshrined egalitarianism. Over time, more and more members of the U.S. social order, descendants of former slaves, and woman, for example, have been included in the political decision making of the nation, and as a result, one can say that the the initial promise inherent in The Constitution has been, to some substantial degree, fulfilled.

The greatest crisis of liberalism in the nation's history occurred as a result of the issue of slavery, which, of course, by hook and by crook, led to a fraught political environment, insurrection, regional secession and ultimately to a cataclysmic military conflict. The attempted massacre in Tennessee, despite the fact that it came at the hands of someone who was clearly deeply disturbed, might be best viewed as a kind of recrudescence of a very old liberal crisis. With that in mind, It is instructive that a substantial part of the the Tennessee gunmen's rant was directed against gays, a group that is presently engaged in the nation's most notable struggle by a social group to acquire the full compliment of rights, protections, and privileges accorded their straight peers.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080729/ap_on_re_us/church_shooting