Dog's Breakfast

There’s a movement afoot by those who somehow managed to miss living through the 20th century to take us back to the 19th in the area of civil rights, economics, and war, not to mention the rule of early Victorian self-serving hypocritical religion. In fact, they seem to want to go right back to the good of days of the Spanish Inquisition.

Well, they want to live in the 15th century? Great, let them.

They sternly warn us that “evolution” is just a theory? Fine. They don’t have to believe in evolution. But they also need to stop using electricity – electrons and electromagnetic forces are just a theory, based on all kinds of little bitty invisible things not even hinted at in the Bible. In fact, that means they need to stop using not only computers and the internet, but electric lights, telephones, television, all aspects of modern medicine – since all those drugs were concocted on the basis of complex biochemical theories, not to mention the theory of light on which diagnostic microscopes are based, and weird unBiblical things like electron microscopes and magnetic resonance imaging and nuclear radiation, which are used in diagnosis and treatment of so-called “diseases” like cancer – a disease which these people obviously don’t believe in anyhow, since they’re very happy to undo the environmental protections that were put in place to keep more modern people from getting cancer.

They need to stop sending mail, which gets shunted mysteriously around the planet using vehicles that are suspiciously unlike horses, camels, and donkeys. For sure, they need to stop driving cars – not only do cars require electricity to work, but they’re also crammed with absurd theories concocted by some guy named Isaac Newton, who came up with notions not only about gravity and light (used in microscopes) but so-called “laws” of “physics,” ideas like “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” without which an internal combustion engine could not exist.

In fact, they’ll have to go back to fighting the wars they love so much with Biblical weapons like slingshots, because modern weapons are all based on theories about chemical interactions, the molecular qualities of depleted uranium, and those pesky Newtonian theories about force again. As for putting nuclear weapons in space, why, forget rockets – can’t use ‘em, Newtonian theories again; and subatomic particles are obviously blasphemous.

And the earth would spring back into much better shape if all those who disbelieve in those theoretical chemical reactions destroying the ozone layer, as well as building up carbon dioxide to theoretically cause global warming, had to stop producing all the pollutants that are feeding those reactions.

Yes, I think this would be perfectly fair. Let the people who base their science on the Bible stick with Bible science in all ways, and we will have a safer world. You can kill a guy by hitting him on the head with a rock, but it’s really, really difficult to destroy the planet without the theories of modern science. Those should only be wielded by people who are capable of understanding them, and more importantly, their consequences.

Democracy in this country is dead. I don't know how many elections of the past have been tampered with, but for sure all major ones in the future will be. Maybe they'll starting fixing things right down to the county level once they really get a foothold.

It makes me laugh to see so many Democrats blaming Kerry as a weak candidate and spinning themselves into the ground with "Where did we go wrong? We'll run a better campaign next time!" Kerry certainly had his flaws as a candidate, but I would say George Bush had a few as well.

All your campaigning and getting out the vote is just an extremely expensive and soul-sapping distraction. The elections themselves can't be trusted, and so there is no democracy. My suggestion is, in the next election, nobody in the opposition vote. Let George or whoever their next front man is, win with 100% of the vote like the rest of the dictators. Why help them disguise it?

Fix the electoral system or nothing else you do will matter.

It’s really not George Bush that Kerry is running against. He’s running against Karl Rove. It would be a highly educational move for the public if the Kerry campaign were to explain this, because although probably many people recognize “that those ads are full of lies,” it’s not likely that they realize to what degree.

I don’t understand why Karl Rove is so feared and considered to be such a genius. He’s not a genius. He’s simply unscrupulous and criminal. There’s nothing too low for him to pull. Plus he’s worked out a few simple tricks that have been successful time after time merely because they’re unbelievable. He has a pattern of attacking somebody directly on his strengths. Who would imagine – I’m sure Kerry didn’t – that Rove would have the guts to attack Kerry on his war record? Because it’s so outrageous, and because the innocent public probably imagine that nobody would simply invent from scratch such a massive lie, they think there must be something behind it.

It’s almost impossible to defend yourself against a completely baseless accusation. (As Lyndon Johnson famously recognized, insinuating that his opponent was a little too intimate with farm animals.) The attacked person flounders and looks foolish. Well, the correct way isn’t to refute the lie, especially since the press isn’t much interested in refutations. They like attacks. So what you do is attack the correct target, and attack with truth, not lies. Attack George Bush – but more than that, bring the fight directly to the real enemy, Karl Rove. Don’t let him hide in the background! Give him the celebrity he deserves! You probably can’t prove what he’s doing in this particular election. But pick out every filthy trick he’s been shown to have done in the past and draw the parallels. Show how Bush via Karl has fought election after election with jaw-dropping lies. Detail them. They make great copy. Let’s see the Bushies do some refuting for a change.

Remember that most people are ignorant about both Bush and Kerry and everything that’s been going on under their noses. They probably base their voting decision on only one or two bits of information they picked up somewhere – something memorable. If you can memorably discredit Bush’s whole campaign he will have nobody left but his groupies to re-elect him. And it’ll be a lot harder for Karl Rove to push through outrageous lies when everybody’s saying, “Oh, here comes another illegitimate black baby!”

I guess you could say I’m pessimistic, but I’m really not looking forward to November.

I’m certain now that the only way the Republicans are going to win this presidential election is if they cheat. And you know they’re going to, there’s evidence that they’ve been doing it already one way or another in a number of locations – that we've heard about. Throwing away Democratic voter registrations in several states, sloughing off thousands of alleged “felons” in Florida – again – intimidating elderly black people, etc., etc., etc. Trying all the same old tricks again. And who knows what other tricks we haven’t heard about yet. And of course, all this is not to mention the very real fears most of us have about those weird little gambling gadgets they’re calling touchscreen voting machines.

The real horror is going to begin after the polls close on November 2 – when every damn precinct in the country erupts with some kind of lawsuit. Okay, maybe only two-thirds of them. I’m afraid the upcoming election aftermath is going to make the 2000 one look like a snooze on the beach.

You already know that the Republicans, if they lose the Presidential race, will flatly refuse to admit defeat. They’re not going to abandon power merely because they were outvoted. And the Democrats, if they lose, will be profoundly, unshakably suspicious they were cheated. It’s going to be a knock-down, drag-out brawl, and I’m afraid that however the results come out, this country will be more divided than ever.

If Kerry becomes President, you know the Bush true believers will never give him even the chance that Clinton got. Let’s hope he at least has a Democratic majority in the Senate to work with. Regardless of that, it’ll be nag, nag, nag, lie, lie, lie, squabble, squabble, squabble, for his entire term, no matter what he does. If Bush stays on, the whole world will turn its back on us, and half of this country will be in hysterics. Or there’ll be an unprecedented emigration. And if in fact it is finally decided that Kerry is going to take over in January, God knows what the neocons will come up with in the time remaining before they have to go. After all, the last thing this administration is going to want to happen is to have somebody come in who hasn’t already agreed to grant them amnesty for every move they made over the last four years.

Come to think of it, maybe Kerry should simply volunteer to do that right up front. Although the administration will scream and yell and scoff, it might calm them down a little in the long run. Maybe. On the other hand, it’ll more likely be taken as a sign of weakness and he’ll just be attacked that much harder once the crooks have made their getaway.

No... I’m definitely not looking forward to November. Or the next four years. And – my goodness, if he does actually become President, look at the catastrophic mess the poor man is going to have to clean up! Poor John Kerry, I feel for you. I feel for us all.

I cannot stand any more. I was feeling a bit hopeful about the November election, but it’s almost certain to me right now that nothing is going to stop the Bush administration from stealing it. Or rather, whoever is behind the Bush administration, as they are only the tip of the iceberg. I don't know the whole story and I doubt anyone does, but it's very obvious that Bush is merely the anointed front man, though his family has major connections with power.

The main reason they’ll get away with it is simply that they’ve learned, obviously, that they can just go ahead and do what they want, right out in the open (or nearly), and there won’t be more than a twitch of criticism. People don’t even see what they do. It’s the most freaking unbelievable thing. They will stop people from voting (blacks mostly) and they’ll get away with it 90%. They will rig electronic voting machines which are well recognized by election officials as being easily rigged and/or hacked and in any case highly untrustworthy even when not tampered with. They’ll miscount ballots and obfuscate when called on it. Like that ludicrous nonsense at the last election, when perfectly obvious ballots were tossed out as “can’t figure out what the voter wanted,” and even Pat Buchanan admitted that all those elderly Jews sure didn’t vote for him. They’ll make sure they win in several key states while everybody’s obsessed with watching Florida, though for reasons of pride I expect they’ll make sure they win in Florida as well.

And that’s not counting the ridiculous, blatantly lying smear campaigns they’ll go on running right up until the election. Every time one begins to lose steam or be too heavily discredited they’ll come up with another one out of left field. Because nobody could ever imagine the chutzpah of these people. They invariably attack a guy on his strongest points. The thing neither he nor anybody else could ever have imagined was a weakness, they’ll come out with wild lies about. As happened to John McCain, Max Cleland, and now John Kerry. And as with Kerry, the media that is supposed to protect our right to know will obediently accept this blatant political maneuvering as interesting and controversial, and give tons of play to it, and make little or no attempt to systematically investigate its truth or falsehood, leaving people with the impression that there must be something in it or they wouldn't promulgate it in that fashion.

The media is the biggest criminal in this whole affair, but that’s not by accident or even their own stupidity. That was carefully engineered by the powers that be some time ago. Honest journalists lose their jobs, like those two who did an expose on Monsanto and BGH (bovine growth hormone) a couple of years ago. I believe they actually worked for Fox. (That's another story for another time.)

I doubt that the Republicans will even find it necessary to have a terrorist attack. They might bring out Osama or some other guy they play up as being the big enemy, but that’s just for fun. I don’t know if they could actually engineer a major attack, but they can easily blow up some little incident (as they’ve been doing all along, grabbing people and waving them around and sticking them in jail [later to be released without fanfare by less party-loyal judges]) or receive some “great intelligence” about an attack, or whatever. Even though lots of people can see through that obvious manipulation, people likely to vote for Bush evidently can’t.

Sometimes it looks as though the Democrats are doing their best to actually help their own defeat along. I doubt this, though there are probably spies and moles and plants in the Democratic party from the other guys. It’s just that these people are not capable of seeing what’s in front of them and what kind of fight they have to put up to have even a chance of winning. Even though millions of their supporters can... Maybe they are throwing the fight, after all. There’s so much truth they don’t reveal. Maybe that will change now that Kerry can spend some money again.

It’s discouraging to see the stupidity, naivete, and utter lack of judgement or ability to observe, of the American public. If even close to half of this country is willing to vote for George Bush, that’s a terrible sign. But in the end it won’t matter. I have a feeling these Bushite characters can turn a landslide around and make it go back uphill.

The long and the short of it is that they do what they want, in broad daylight, and nobody hears about it. Or only a whisper of it. And they don’t find that out until it’s too late to do anything. (Look what happened with Greg Palast’s expose about the 2000 election, nobody in the U.S. would publish it until the election was settled. It’s blatantly criminal.) I just wonder if there will be rioting if Bush “wins.” (I do not believe that he can possibly win fairly. There are a lot of deluded sheep in this country, but I don’t think it’s an actual majority.)

We’ll get a “kinder, gentler” brand of fascism than that of Hitler or Mussolini. At least for a while, for most people. For some, the fascism has already set in. But propaganda is a finer art nowadays than it was back then, although the basic principles haven’t changed. They can make themselves look good (apparently). And remember, for a long time, lots of people both in and out of Germany thought Hitler was just great. Probably lots of people still do. If you changed his name and took away his moustache, and had him do lame wisecracks instead of ranting speeches, even more people would love him. He’s good for the economy, and good for the pride of the German people, and above all, he’s optimistic! And he’s going to get those other guys who are a threat to the German people!

Or maybe we’re really being taken over by an emperor. In ancient Rome, at least they knew they had switched from a republic to an empire. We won’t find out for a while. Maybe once they stop bothering to have more than one party on the ballots.

Don’t get me wrong, I know Clinton had many faults as a President. He was under the thumb of the corporate masters like all the rest. But he wasn’t wildly emptying out all the nation’s pockets to them like our current shill-in-chief. He did try to do his job from time to time.

I just find it interesting that he gets no public credit whatosever for the fact that at least two major terrorist attacks were actively prevented during his watch, including a Millennium plan to blow up the Los Angeles airport; and that he at least tried to reorganize the FBI to prevent terrorism, recognized Osama bin Laden as an important threat to the U.S., did all he could to stop him, and attempted to warn the incoming Bush administration about him. Meanwhile, Bush is worshipped for having (despite many warnings) utterly failed to prevent, or even to take any steps towards preventing, the horrific 9/11 attack.

Now if Gore had been President and continued the Clinton procedures and managed to prevent the World Trade Center disaster, we’d probably still hear the media and Congress daily accusing the Gore administration of being “alarmist,” “obsessed with terrorism/Osama Bin Laden,” “wagging the dog,” and all that line (just as they kept saying about Clinton), as they tried to continue dealing with the terrorists.

And if Gore hadn’t managed to prevent it, we’d likely still be hearing daily attacks on him for his massive failure, if indeed the Republican Congress hadn’t already tried to impeach him. No uniting behind our great leader on this one! Yet I expect that, unless obstructed by Congress, actual valid measures to prevent future terrorist attacks would almost certainly have been put in place by now – although we’re still waiting for the Bush administration to put anything in place other than P.R. And more, the event would have been absorbed into our history rather than being a still-open wound, since Gore wouldn’t have been milking it to push through every irrelevant bee he had in his bonnet.

Though it might not be such a bad thing to use it to justify developing non-petroleum energy sources. (Why don’t we hear anything about biodiesel? And why are we wasting what petroleum is left on stupid things like burning it up in engines? It’s more useful in making plastics and other areas where it might be harder to replace. All right, all right, that’s another subject.)

From The Guardian:

MPs are planning to impeach Tony Blair for "high crimes and misdemeanours" in taking Britain to war against Iraq, reviving an ancient practice last used against Lord Palmerston more than 150 years ago. [snip]

A number of Labour backbenchers are considering whether to back the motion, though it could mean expulsion from the party.

The MPs' decision follows the commissioning of a 100-page report which lays out the case for impeaching Mr Blair and the precedents for action, including arguments laid down in Erskine May, the parliamentary bible, on impeachments dating back to medieval times. [snip]

Mr Price said he believed the case was compelling. "To dust off Victorian constitutional histories and examine precedents from the time of Charles I and Chaucer may seem bizarre. But the conduct of the prime minister has left people and parliament with no alternative if we are to preserve the very basis of democracy."

On the same record, Blair gets impeached and George gets re-elected. That's the difference between our two glorious nations!

Let's hope it doesn't all play out that way.