Rambling discouragement

This blog is going to ramble more than usual. I remember going to buy a car several years ago and after getting most of the paperwork done, we had to sit down with the financial guy who tried to sell us an extended warranty on the car. His technique was to tell us all the things that were bad about the car; all the things we could expect to go wrong with it. I should have said, "if you don't think this is a good car, then I won't buy it." But, of course, I didn't and after some uncomfortable arguing we got out of there without the extended warranty.

That's a little the way I'm beginning to feel about the Democratic primary. We started with a lot of enthusiasm, with a bunch of great candidates, and now we are deluged with all the things that are wrong with both Hillary and Obama. Each will be a disaster we are being told. The problem the Democrats face is that people may actually start to believe them and, unlike me, decide that the car is so flawed they need to shop around for something different.

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Official Website of the Libertarian National Committee

Take the test and see where your political leanings lie. This site also has one of the best descriptions of the terms liberal, conservative, etc.

Daydream Believers

Question of the Day: Who was both the youngest and oldest Secretary of Defense? (answer below)

Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power by Fred Kaplan is a fascinating book regarding the false assumptions made by Bush et al in going into Iraq. One of the great ironies of the fall of the Soviet Union is that it made the United States less strong rather than more, according to Kaplan, and this is something that was completely missed by the administrations following 1991. Because the world was no longer divided into two spheres of influence, which dominated the political landscape, countries were now free to basically ignore the wishes of the United States and go their own way. It was impossible, politically and militarily, to field a large enough imperial army to dominate. It was thus imperative that we develop alliances and coalitions to achieve our goals. This both Clinton and the Bushes failed to do. This made our influence much weaker.

The prevailing theory was that we could fight the same battles we had prepared for under the old Soviet threat. But we failed to allow for rebuilding what had been destroyed.



Donald Rumsfeld: 32 under Gerald Ford and 68 under George W Bush.

Now things will get messy

I know the pundits will laugh themselves silly, but then again they laughed at my prediction I made over a year ago that McCain would be the nominee. With Hillary's win in Texas and Ohio, the super delegates will be much less likely to commit to Obama and risk pissing off Bill to whom many of them owe their allegiance. Hillary and Barack will trash each other over the summer, much to the delight of McCain et al, and they will go to the convention with no clear leader in delegates but lots of negatives about each other. The convention will deadlock on at least the first ballot with neither side willing to concede and guess who will come riding to the rescue: the man who has run the most subtle campaign for the last 4 years - Al Gore. He beat Bush once and has turned himself into the statesman for environmentalism. He will be acceptable to everyone and a Gore/Obama tkt will look unbeatable. He will also have the advantage of forcing the McCain campaign to completely change tactics.

Plausible? I think it's very likely.

Relevant quote from George Carlin

"

The closest I can get to that [anger] is to say that, at some point there leading into the '90s, I divorced myself from any stake in the human adventure or the American adventure. That sounds kind of pompous so let me just break that down. What I decided was that I didn't give a fuck about what happens on this planet to these people. I mean, I see the nice things in people, I see the good things, but I also see what a depraved, sick species we are, the only species that kills its own for personal gain.

I'll go back to square one on this: We squandered a lot of gifts. Human beings were given a lot of great gifts. We were given the ability to reason, this extra-large brain, walking erect, having binocular vision and the opposable thumb, and all of these things, and we had such promise, but we squandered it on goods and superstition. We gave ourselves over to the high priests and the traders, and they are the ones we allow to control us. I think that's a huge mistake and it's disappointing to me. Now, the corollary is, America was given great gifts, this ideal form of government, this most improved form of self-government that has ever come along up until that time, and we squandered it. And once again, on the same two things: gizmos and toys and gadgets -- goods, property, possessions -- and also this country is far too religious for its own good.

So at some point, I drifted away from feeling any allegiance. Abraham Maslow the psychologist once said, "The fully realized man does not identify with the local group." Boy, when I read that, I said, that's me. I don't identify with city, state, government, religion, association, county, organization or species, even. And what I realized was that this feeling of alienation from all that gave me a kind of emotional detachment that was very valuable artistically. To be able to look at things and not give a fuck. To not have a rooting interest in the outcome. I don't really care what happens in this country. I'll be honest with you. I don't give a fuck what happens. I don't give a fuck what happens to this earth, because it's all temporal and it's all bullshit."

The full interview is at: http://www.salon.com/ent/tv/int/2008/02/28/carlin/