The Election Is Window Dressing

Nope, it's not an abyss, it's a canyon. An abyss implies that you can't see the bottom and with a canyon you can. An abyss is dark, whereas with a canyon you can see the details. And the details of the Iraq war, from the flawed and untruthful beginning to the no way out for the innocent and not so pretty end, have been revealed in frightening clarity for Americans to see. The rest of the world saw the current situation for what it really was. A McGuffin, designed to mislead the public until irrevocable damage had been done.

While the citizens of this country were distracted by the rah rah antics of the crew without a clue (or a conscience); their civil rights have been terminated; they were beguiled into spending money on homes they couldn't afford with the promises that the sun would always be shining and the value wold always go up; they were encouraged to buy goods to support the economy, unfortunately it just didn't happen to be ours; the education system was reduced to a shambles and most of their jobs were shipped to another country so that the corporations could continue to make obscene profits for those who already had more than they need.

The so-called ownership society isn't about you owning your own home, it's about you having to bear all responsibility for every action and reaction around the globe while your ability to do so is reduced incrementally. One paycheck at a time. Until you don't have one.

Health care is overly costly and preventative care is virtually nonexistent and they still want you to pay for insurance that looks for ways to deny you coverage when you need it because it is a corporation in the business of making money and not actually providing the health care that they supposedly sell.

Foreclosures are increasing and that was before the latest round of job layoffs. In another six months they will reach levels never seen, mainly due to the increase in population but nevertheless it will be damaging. Many more people will be hurt by the rise in gas prices and when you're unemployed, paying your Cobra premium out of your rapidly dwindling and poor interest paying savings or putting food on the table while you still have a roof over your head, becomes less important with every nickel rise in gas. So, you wait until medical problems become emergency room visits, which is what the President recommends.

As acres of McMansions become empty and food becomes scarce, due to either a rise in prices or the inability of truck drivers to drive to outlying areas, some hard choices will have to be made. As a nation. And the election isn't going to solve, or even mitigate, the ruinous path we have trod. None of their plans or rhetoric actually deal with, or will have any positive impact on, the majority of Americans.

Those people who have already been forced out of the system already know this. The decreasing graduation rate from high school and the increasing rate of incarceration are not good trends and have quite a bit to do with each other. Meanwhile outside of the US, the world is becoming more technical but we won't be graduating students capable of competing on the world stage. And we will have to compete on the world stage because almost everything we need, we have to get from somewhere else. Because we shipped the jobs there.

Is it any wonder that our troops don't have the equipment they need to do their jobs and be properly protected? We don't manufacture anything so after five years of steady confrontation, we still can't make appropriate body armor for our soldiers. And then when they get hurt and become damaged beyond usefulness, some people expect them to take care of themselves. How nice.

The candidates all talk a good game but each of them have drawbacks, all of which will prevent them from making the changes that are needed and wanted by the American people. Another round of tax cuts won't solve the problem and neither will mandating that people pay for something they can't afford. Our infrastructure is falling apart and taxes need to be directed toward the public good, not the corporate trough. Our roads, bridges, dams, hospitals and schools need the help first, not some shareholder who's gambling with his money and your kid's future.

BBB and Debsweb.

What If The Earth Is Just One Big Science Experiment?

Biblically correct, now that's a mouthful. A book written by many men (Ruth and Esther were tokens used to prove a point but Mary, the mother of Jesus and a major part of a world religion, gets scant mention much less her own book, why is that?) to reflect their point of view and the parts that didn't fit in, were discarded. Now some of the "believers" are conducting museum tours and explaining to the young and impressionable that thousands of years of history never happened. Oh sweet Jeebus, how much dumber is our population going to get? Tyrannosaurus Rex was a vegetarian because Adam and Eve hadn't sinned yet, so there was no death? What planet do these people come from? They most certainly didn't evolve from intelligent humans. That Bible belt is cinched a little too tight and preventing oxygen from circulating through their very little brains. No wonder there are very few "American" doctors in practice, you have to have a science education in order to understand how the body works. Praying doesn't help cure disease.

This will really throw a spanner into the works. Not only is the moon not made of cheese, but it isn't even made of the same materials as the Earth and Mars is made of something completely different than the other two. Maybe since we are supposed to be made in God's image, he's just trying to find out whether intelligence waxes or wanes with each succeeding generation. I think we are in the wane phase.

Funny how when I was growing up on an Air Force Base, science was accepted as tradition and you were expected to do well in it. I got kicked out of Sunday School (Southern Baptist) for asking impertinent questions like "if you lived on an island and had never seen a white man, does this mean you go to hell because you never heard of the Bible or Jesus Christ?" When I was told yes, I answered "I don't think God does that, he wouldn't punish innocent people for an eternity just because they had never heard of him." And out the door I was pushed and told never to return. Forgiveness seems to be a sin, unless you're a Republican who has committed a sexual indiscretion.

Then I got involved with the Pentecostals. Now that was an adventure. Reality went on a long hike because only a chosen few will be saved. Once again I was shown the door. This time because I thought it didn't make sense that a person who had committed murder, rape, robbery and other trespasses of the Ten Commandments could repent on his deathbed at 75 and he would go to heaven, but a person who had followed the Commandments to the letter would go to hell because he hadn't accepted Jesus Christ as his savior. An exemplary life doesn't count but crying and begging for forgiveness of heinous crimes does. Didn't sound logical then and it doesn't sound logical now. Jehovah's Witnesses are sure I'm not going to heave either. That's okay, it doesn't sound like a very happy place.

Almost 7 billion people on the planet but just 144,000 are going to qualify to go to heaven. One would have to ask what kind God would do something like that. Maybe a scientist who was looking for deviant bacteria and a way to inoculate the space population from contamination would be my guess.

BBB and Debsweb

Jonah Goldberg: Still an Idiot

As demonstrated (for the umpteenth time) by this piece in today's L.A. Times, advocating the abolition of public education.

Because, you know, private schools are just better. Milton Friedman says so.

You can get a sense of the sharpness of his argument from this Worst Analogy Ever candidate:

Americans want universal education, just as they want universally safe food. But nobody believes that the government should run 90% of the restaurants, farms and supermarkets.

Sure, Jonah...and nobody but Ron Paul believes that the government should run less than 100% of the restaurant, farm, and supermarket inspections. So what's your point?

Anyway, Jonah's argument crashes and burns if you consider a couple of elementary points:

1. To the extent that private schools 'perform better', they do so because they get to cherrypick their students. Make them deal with the same issues public schools deal with, and you'll see the same crappy performance.


2. The current crappy state of public schools is a direct result of the de-funding campaign by anti-tax fanatics (e.g., Proposition 13 in California, before which our schools were the best in the nation). And sure, Jonah has the standard glib response to this ("If you think more money will fix the schools, make your checks out to "cash" and send them to me."), which besides being hopelessly facile is also beside the point. If Jonah thinks de-funding schools doesn't make them drastically worse, he's welcome to turn over half his paycheck to me; after all, it couldn't possibly have any effect on his ability to function.

Besides the sheer stupidity of the thing, what impresses me most about this column is what an anachronism it is. It's as if the last six years hadn't happened--as if his contempt for the common good hadn't already been put into practice across the board, as if it hadn't proven a complete disaster, as if people (beyond the 27 percenters) still had an appetite for this sort of idiocy.

But then I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that Jonah is the last to get the memo.