My Vote For President

Obama seems primarily an honest man.  Hopefully that’s an act.  Politicians and brokers of power can’t be honest.  (Just as the presence of just one aggressive party in any given group will transform the group’s orientation toward aggression.  Restate:  over time, the primary protocol employed will be aggressive.  And actually, politics seems to stem from the strategy of aggression.)

McCain mostly reminds me of my grandfather.  He was a veteran of Pearl Harbor.  McCain is being fed his lines and probably believes in the ones he can understand; the pursuit of power is the thing, which may be the definition of the Republican Party.  (That’s the $440,000 one, in case you missed the news.  [AIG])

And campaigns have to do with eye-candy.  The electorate does the actual electing, in any case the vote counters are at least suspect (maybe you have to be otherwise unemployable–like having completed parole–in order to qualify for the job) human or machine…and the promises made by anyone don’t have anything to do with what occurs or for matter what they intend.  Nor does what they intend have a lot to do with well, what they do, because that darn thing “reality” keeps getting in the way.  Or so they are advised by various agencies.  Then, of course, there’s the intelligence community which since the days of Richard Nixon says things to the president’s aide in a voice so disguised it can’t be understood, the aide rushes over and tells him (or her) that “They said it’s important”, she says “Okay”, the aide rushes back over and says (in as muffled a voice as possible) “It’s like okay” and then the Shadow melts away.  Or something like that.

And bear in mind that if you have someone with no experience trying to run a country you’d better damned well hope they can’t do much.  And that’s what democracy guarantees.   Or something like that.

–Glenn

I Lied. Darwinian Evolution of Banking??

Since when?  It’s a Slate article to which I refer.  I’m in the process of reading the article.  “”The natural course of Darwinian banking has been interrupted by this plan,” a financial analyst said.”  I’m caught between laughter and outrage.  Darwin’s first note was that “natural” evolution basically requires an open as opposed to a closed environment.  Thus once a society has come into being, evolution is in terms of it.  We humans survive with respect to our immediate environment–our society.  That’s why the majority of us can’t survive without society.  It’s in the very first place quite literally unthinkable (just think of the countless comedy movies about the city-slickers trying to…fill in the blank), because we can’t manage to even express the ideas necessary for survival.  We don’t have the knowledge to cut down trees with a chainsaw let alone an axe.  A maul?  A splitting wedge??

My point?  Banks don’t evolve naturally.  That’s beyond a contradiction in terms.  And bear in mind the root word for the industry is actually usury and was morally impossible for Christians for a long time (per the pope) thus the slurs upon the Jews…and the Knights Templar.

One other thing.  Whisper this as you may, state ownership of “public enterprise”–business–is that “communist” thing that people have talked about for years.  The attempted division that political parties have attempted since the dawn of “yellow journalism” (sorry, guys, and technically that includes me) is mythical.  [Yellow journalism of course refers to the cheap paper that the first newspapers were printed on which aged rapidly and turned yellow in the process, and which was the biggest single teacher of reading in the {god, I hate the rabid racism implicit in the phrase} civilized world.

Happiness.  I won’t even address half the issues in the article, or I’d spend the rest of my day on it.  [I was the one who when forced to take history class toward my bachelor’s contributed so much in class the teacher decided it was utterly pointless for me to take a test.]

Bah.  Humbug.  Politics.  The best part about it (I checked, last time; really and for true, I did); the candidates have no obligation whatsoever to follow anything they say while on the campaign trail.  Free translation:  it’s a bunch of bullshit.

–Glenn

Palin vs. Biden (Impalin’ vs. Joe)

I see that there are people who are championing this woman.  They even sound intelligent (and paid).

As far as I’m concerned, if McCain (now, bear in mind I’m also a Vietnam vet and come from a military background) and Impalin’ get into power, I really kind of want to live somewhere else.  Bush’s reputed philosophy just sort of evaporated.  Thankfully.  Impalin’ was saying we need to use nuclear weapons as a deterrent during the debate and mentioned North Korea specifically.  China has problems with North Korea.  McCain is 72 and apparently not in the best of health.  The idea of Impalin’ being president really scares me.

–Glenn

P.S.  Today’s a fair amount of pain again, partially weather related.  The real news on the net about security is going to sound a bit repetitive.  Keep stuff patched.  I do have one post to make, though, come to think of it…

“Stand by your man…”

How precisely fitting.  McCain says Carly (pardon me, Ms. Fiorina) is, well, just great.  She says he couldn’t run a company like Hewlett-Packard (known, of course, among geeks and cognoscenti as “HP”).  Oddly enough, he doesn’t mention her any more.  Must be his age.  He is around 72, after all.  Think of it.  That’s one guy worse than my wife and me together when he’s in a bad mood.  In control of nuc weapons?  Eh.  Is there maybe like a fast train to the Moon (Robert Heinlein, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress)?

–Glenn

John McCain

lip-syncing his way to glory.  Vaya con dios, and all that.   In a real way I hope the Republicans win.  Every time they’ve made this much of an elitist mess, they’ve basically dropped the vote to the Democrats so they could pass the blame–successfully, thus far, every time–to them.  Lines are being drawn.  I wonder how many people even guess it.

–Glenn

McCain, Obama, Town Hall Meetings

Okay.  So McCain is holding town meetings.  So?  Are you trying to tell me he’s not a politician, a power broker?  As of the end of the Nixon administration, there was an unofficial addendum that certain sorts of matters wouldn’t actually be detailed before the president because of possible or probable culpability.  In other words, tell the president and he can get blamed for knowing.

 

And that was the most pointless article I’ve read in many years.  It’s basically an article to fill space.  Every statement except that the two won’t be meeting in that venue is contradicted, practically.

–Glenn

McCain vs. Obama, an observation

I just think it might be more interesting and appropriate if there were a cage fight.  I can’t decide whether or not it should be pay-per-view, though.  This isn’t meant to offend anyone.

–Glenn