Beyond 'Coming Together'

I apologize for the late start.  Scooter the cat didn't come in last night until 3a.m.

     The Iowa caucus set into motion a curious self-reinforcing feedback loop of inspiration -- that an African-American political leader could win an important primary contest in a Wonder Bread state, and that all Americans (especially white Americans) could "feel good" about living in a country where such a thing is possible. This is an understandable sentiment. Whatever else Americans have been conditioned to be lately -- blubbery, debt-crushed, tattoo-etched, Jesus-haunted, multiply-addicted TV zombies -- a residual kernel of fairness seems to persist underneath all that cellulite and avarice. Catching a glimpse of our formerly better collective selves, we seem moved to discover that it's still there, although the element of self-congratulation gets tiresome quickly.
     In any case, it was satisfying to see Barack Obama whip Hillary Clinton's entitled, presumptuous ass in Iowa last week, and by a very healthy margin. All other things aside -- like, what he actually thinks about the state of the nation -- Obama is a more reassuring figure than the Lady Macbeth-like former first lady, with her retinue of policy earls and thanes, and the creepy figure of her Mac-husband ever-grinning upstage.
     I could get behind Obama, if it comes to it, but these days another feeling dogs me -- that we live in a nation where a lot more people than just Hillary Clinton need to get their asses whipped (and then some), and I like John Edwards a bit better in the role. On the night of the Iowa caucuses, John Edwards made an appeal to the audience that just seemed more reality-based to me than Obama's platitudes about bringing people together.
     Edwards seems to recognize that there are some people -- like the health care executive he cited who retired from his job with over $100 million in the policy-holders loot -- who don't deserve to come together with anything except a grand jury. Edwards is willing to gaze past the kindergarten emotions of primary politics and see the stupendous ugliness and unfairness of a land that is being sucked dry by corporate vampires. I believe he will righteously kick their asses, and that they need to get their asses kicked, so I'm more inclined to support Edwards. I believe he means it, too.
     I was impressed that night by the TV commercial that followed Obama's speech. The commercial promoted a hydrogen car that General Motors is pretending to develop. It was very slick, of course, since GM can get the best TV production talent money can buy. It featured a light-skinned African-American man (not unlike Obama) playing a sort of Mr. Science Teacher role among a flower-strewn meadow full of schoolchildren with a modest GM sedan at the center of the picture. Mr. Science Teacher was telling the kids how this new GM wonder car would run without any nasty gasoline, and out of its tailpipe would come nothing but pure clean water, and wasn't the future-according-to-General-Motors a fabulous thing! It was all very heartwarming, except it was complete mendacious bullshit. GM will never produce a commercial line of hydrogen-powered cars, and America will never set up a supporting infrastructure of hydrogen production and retail fueling stations. And GM knows all this.
      General Motors deserves to have its ass kicked for misleading the public so shamelessly. I think Edwards is the only candidate who would kick their ass. I'm not quite sure how he would do it, or what he would say, but here's how I suggest he should frame the issue. "General Motors, can you take some of the money and human capital that you devote to misleading the public about hydrogen cars, and see if you can apply it instead to producing some decent up-to-date rolling stock for the US railroad system, which we have got to get up-and-running again -- or I WILL KICK YOUR ASS." Something like that.
     I can see Edwards dealing effectively with Wall Street, too. As president he would probably find that there are some agencies all saddled up and ready to ride, like the Securities and Exchange Commission, and certain offices within the US Department of Justice, which could be motivated to ask some of the questions that various boards of directors have overlooked for some years now -- such as. . . how come Mr. Disgraced Executive is backing up his Lincoln Navigator to the loading dock of Acme Banking and Trust, and piling in sacks of the shareholders' money (after presiding over $10 billion worth of losses in acting as counter-party to an illegal trade in his company's own engineered fraudulent securities. . . ?
      So, these are some of my own dark thoughts coming out of Iowa and heading right smack into the New Hampshire primary. I'm reasonably confident that Hillary will stagger out of the Granite State with a stake through her heart. I hope Edwards can stay on his feet long enough to make make a run going into the SuperDuper gauntlet of primaries that follows. He may even condition Obama to toughen up some and realize that bringing people together (to be chumps and saps for the ghouls who sell them Cheesburgers) is not the sovereign remedy for what ails Clusterfuck Nation.
     I don't much care for the moment what happens among the Republicans. Their party is doomed. They're the Whigs of the 21st Century, and their grandees will be remembered in the same way that we revere William Henry Harrison and Millard Fillmore (whose birthday is tomorrow, by the way -- NY State employees take note!). It's been fun following the adventures of Huckabee, but only in the way that it was fun following Elmer Fudd as a six-year-old.
   

 

 

Comments

[SolubleFish]

Make that Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, dammit.

[Rudi]

Come on you master wordsmiths! I just put in over a dozen pieces I wrote with lots of references and URL's. People other than me are editting content now. Please, dir sirs and kind ladies, won't you post a little prose for your ol' prole' friend R?

http://spectacularpolicy.org/

[Uncle Yarra]

Post here, search over there (the wiki). Seems no worse than typepad.

[Rudi]

Since I won't ever run the script again, that means any URL's posted here in 2008 or later will never be indexed. The proposal would logically lead to a half-archived blob since the links will never be updated.

I would call this a case of Cyberban Sprawl.

[upnatpishtim]

obamba sed the same things as jesse jackson. that is hope and change and faith.
and bringing people together.
the problem with moderm uh-merikan politiks is that we vote for strangers.
who are these people. obamba came out of no wheres. and so, come to think of it did the clintons.
how can i vote for someone i dont know?
whose whole persona is some sort of scripted act?
cant do it.
even local politiks is voting for strangers. i can see why people vote for yaller dawgs. dogs mostly make better people.my mayor, dont know 'em. council members? dont know 'em.
so you see it's easy to rip off and trick folks you dont know. and who are you going to take care of? people you do know.
it's the old monkey sphere at work.
scientitsts (whom i dont know) say that monkeys with small brains can
only hold a certain number of same species monkeys in thier in group.
small monkeys have maybe 5 other monkeys in that sphere.
larger monkeys with bigger brains can have more in group members.
when we get to the top monkeys, that is humans, we can hold up to 50 other monkey people in our human sphere. everyone else is dehumanized. you can see this in action in attack blogs on the internet.
because mst folks have to work for a living and then take care of personal business like house cleaning or food shopping or dealing with monkey sphere family
problems they are disadvantaged
to spend more time at politiks.
thus we vote for sound bites and
slogans not people. think about it. you vote for a candidate based on his/her propaganda not his/her
performance at solving problems.
although many may be good at solving problems, like how to stick a bunch of money in thier own pockets without getting caught.
but i recommend we all become blacksmiths and spin flax into thread and make our own beeswax candles and churn milk into butter. hook up the oxen and get out there and get the winter wheat in that south forty.
same old sameold, heh?

[andris]

I thought one of Obama's parents was Kenyan and the other was white American?
How come he is called African-American?
(Or doesn't that matter?...)

Andris from Aust.

[Johnny Rico]

Tsunami Of Drool

Today in 1789 was the first Presidential election. And they didn't even have a campaign back then. Most of the first 7 or 8 Presidents wouldn't dream of engaging in such a ridiculous spectacle with all the money and corporate greed and what not. Yup, I listened to my Fresh Air on NPR today.

Fuck Obama. Fuck all these idiots. And GM might not have a Hydrogen car but Honda sure as fuck does. In production, In California, and leasing for $600/month on a "specialty" basis. You have to be picked to drive. I read it in the New York Times. They will hook your house up to hydrogen somehow. It's the future.

And that isn't USNews & World Report TOD is on. It's a blog. Blogs run by major news outlets suck. They get less attention then real blogs.

And Christopher Hitchens just TOTALLY KICKED JHK's ASS writing about Obama today.

http://www.slate.com/id/2181460
"To put it squarely and bluntly, is it because he is or is it because he isn't? To phrase it another way, is it because of what he says or what he doesn't say? Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois is the current beneficiary of a tsunami of drool. He sometimes claims credit on behalf of all Americans regardless of race, color, creed, blah blah blah, though his recent speeches appear also to claim a victory for blackness while his supporters—most especially the white ones—sob happily that at last we can have an African-American chief executive. Off to the side, snarling with barely concealed rage, are the Clinton machine-minders, who, having failed to ignite the same kind of identity excitement with an aging and resentful female, are perhaps wishing that they had made more of her errant husband having already been "our first black president."

Dave, you and Rudi are killing me. Keep it up.

Gotta go check my celebrity news for the day. Britney, here I come!

Over and Out, Clusterfuckers!

[Rudi]

I may, in the near future, start taking the liberty of cut and pasting some of the most exciting comments into the wiki for posterity. If somebody else helps me I'll pee my pants. If anybody objects at having their material quoted, please don't hesitate to mark it -- just say the two letter code word nq somewhere and it will mean don't copy this. "nq" == No quoting.

[Johnny Rico]

Oh yeah, here's the website for Obama's church. You'll like this. Yes, that's Africa.

http://www.tucc.org/

[Uncle Yarra]

Rico,
How the fuck do they insure a tank of H2 zipping around town? Maybe they pick people who have never had a traffic ticket or accident and who don't smoke at home.
Rules out me.

[Holmes, I presume]

Forget about all of these career politicians and detached-from-reality ideologues. Putin 2008!

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JA08Ag01.html

You gotta love Old Spengler… even when he’s (maybe) shitting around.

I can see why JHK, his politics and delusions being what they are, endorses Edwards. Hell, many many months ago (as I commented here), I thought that Edwards and Romney would run better campaigns than they have, and that it would end up being Edwards vs. Romney. I could still end up being right as to the party nominees, but more likely it’ll be Obama vs. McCain (or possibly Romney).

To the end of attempting to distinguish himself from a bible-thumping, fear-mongering, and/or isolationist pool of interparty competitors, I wonder whether Romney is receiving -- and if he has sufficient time remaining to act upon -- the only logical advice that can be given to him at this point, i.e., to toughen up and repackage himself as a clear-eyed, America-First internationalist and social conservative.

IMHFO, Nixon was a better orator than any of these clowns.

[Holmes, I presume]

*intra-party*

[Johnny Rico]

"Honda has not announced who will get the FCX Claritys or how many will be available in Southern California, where the program begins. Households will be selected, in part, for their ready access to hydrogen stations. Honda is realistic about the slow growth of a hydrogen infrastructure as well as the viewpoint that fuel cells may not seem to make much sense using current methods of hydrogen production." ...

(Alright so I screwed that part up)

..."But there are practical matters to consider as well: compared with alternatives like plug-in hybrids, the onboard energy supply is quicker to replenish and has a better travel range, 270 miles. Moreover, in Honda's full-cycle calculation, a fuel-cell vehicle can reduce carbon dioxide output by half compared with a gasoline vehicle. In the United States, where much electricity is produced from coal, it is even better than a battery-electric car, Honda says.

It will be a while before drivers selected for the three-year, $600-a-month Clarity lease program (it includes insurance and maintenance) will think about such topics."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9801E5DF113DF93AA35751C1A9619C8B63

[Johnny Rico]

I agree, Holmes. Speaking of Putin for President - check out this photo on the Oil Drum. Funniest thing I saw all day. Not bad for the Oil Drum, either. Friggin idiots spent all day arguing whether we have another Gulf of Tonkin with Iran over this weekend's "provocation."

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3479#comment-286911

[Holmes, I presume]

JR, good point... I can’t know for sure, and didn’t catch Fresh Air, but you have to think that the first 7-8 U.S. Presidents never would have subjected themselves to the degradations and foolish pandering that we see today. Of course, back then, only a limited subset of the populace even had the right to vote. That probably simplified things (at least in terms of campaigning). Just sayin’.

[wisewebwoman]

This is how I think the scenario is working.
Repugs are putting their shoulders behind Obama who is black, inexperienced and full of vague slogans "pull together" "hope" change" and is backed heavily by Big Pharm Dollars.
He hasn't got a hope in hell against any Repug they field.
They are already wetting themselves with his success in Iowa and if this continues, America you are triple-fucked sideways. By mad Rudy G.
Evaluate the whole scene with different eyes. Get your country back!!!!

[thal]

bud4,

Lobbyists can buy plane tickets, too. And they will, wherever power is concentrated...it's concentrated in a roster of names (no matter whether present in Washington). Given the opportunities to cause trouble (or get one's way) it only adds a modicum of inefficiency. In fact, it's probably easier to approach power when out of the limelight (the eye of the cameras) than slather your blather and honey your money and truck your fuck in cesspool Washington.

[thal]

GB,

"beat up on the east side or the west side of town"...no shit, still hurts!

[thal]

Rudi,

With Dave on this one. Why should I want my pathetic posts searchable to the world at large? I get plenty embarassed enough reading what I wrote last night, while smashed (and special thanks to JR for pointing those out). This is fine as it is.

[Johnny Rico]

Oh Man, you guys are gonna love this.

Rolling Stone's 14 Biggest Dickheads of the year awards by Bill Mahar (with Photos).

http://www.rollingstone.com/photos/gallery/17538811/dickheads_of_the_year

[FutureNukeEngineer]

Has JHK actually done any research on Edwards' energy proposals? Anybody who follows his campaign or hears him in debates knows that he has a hard-on for ethanol, but read this bit from the Edwards campaign site:

"Help U.S. Automakers Modernize: Edwards will provide $1 billion a year to help U.S. automakers advance and apply the latest technology, including biofuels, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and electric cars, hydrogen fuel cells, ultra-light materials, and drive train improvements. He will also invest in engine efficiency and low-carbon fuels for the freight, aviation, and maritime transportation, such as biodiesel for truck fleets. These resources will be financed from the New Energy Economy Fund and also help manufacturers meet higher fuel economy requirements. Edwards will also use federal procurement policy to encourage freight companies with government contracts to use low-carbon fleets. With a strong ethanol industry that includes cellulosic ethanol and hybrid and electric technology, American cars and trucks can be virtually petroleum-free within a generation."

http://www.johnedwards.com/issues/energy/new-energy-economy/

Not only will President Edwards not kick GM's ass for pretending to develop hydrogen cars, he'll give them a billion dollars to continue to pretend to develop hydrogen cars (and presumably, serenade the American people about a hydrogen economy that will never arrive). As for the notion that President Edwars will be a champion of railroads, I have found nothing on Edwards' campaign site that even makes mention of America's railways. I'm not sure Edwards is even aware that trains are still used for personal transportation.

I must say, I am quite disappointed about JHK's latest post.

[thal]

Gary49,

There seems to be this big deal whether getting cooked alive is natural or human caused. What's the fucking difference? EVERYTHING is natural, including our sorry selves, all nuclear material, all "artificial" chemicals, solar incipient radiation, lead poisoning, mercury free tuna.

[thal]

Bless your black sweet heart , JR

[Johnny Rico]

I know, really, thal ;^) Rudi, part of the magic here is that after 4 weeks what you write disappears. If we wanted our stuff to be read by the unwashed masses in India or wherever you said you were from, Nudge would probably use her real name.

Speaking of Nudge, check this out, Baby.

Strong Argument for slow decline
http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/2008/01/317-strong-argument-for-slow-decline.html

And this is a winner, too, if you haven't already seen it:
JIM KUNSTLER: WORLD'S SHITTIEST FORECASTER

http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/2007/12/325-jim-kunstler-worlds-shittiest.html

JD fucking hates JHK. Why Westexas(Jim's best buddy) still lnks to his website offa his, I have no idea - I guess that's good sportsmanship.

[thal]

If Rudi wants a representative, I'd vote for Nudge as sacrifice. Everyone else can swap calliope circus songs without exposure to the larger world. The interested can either venture here, and take they's chances, or be blind to the clusterfuck.