some politics stuff

i am kind of tired of blogging. my attitude towards blogging is sort of like that of dr. philo drummond, who also has some problems with it that he wrote about in his blog a few months ago, in the second of only 2 blog entries he ever wrote. i think my most recent post about religion is kind of stupid, like most of the crap i write for this stupid blog. so i just want to post something to replace it as the top item showing on my blog, even if it isn’t that much better. i am going to talk about politics mostly, i think, because i have been watching some c-span and getting back into reading blogs and news websites again, which i hadn’t been really doing for awhile.

ok so first of all, presidential candidates. i think most of them, regardless of party, seem to be perfectly well-meaning people who want to do something good. but with human fallibility, nobody has all the right answers, and a lot of these characters are going around spouting nonsensical bullshit. now not all of the stuff they say is bullshit, by any means. but each of the candidates seems to spend at least part of the time saying stuff that is bullshit. usually anything the candidates say regarding religion is wrong. and this is true for both democrats and republicans. republicans are more full of bullshit on this, by far. but this institution known as christianity that all the candidates belong to is such an eclectic mix of old traditions, newer traditions that people think are old, silly superstitions, sound moral values, corrupted or skewed moral values, real science, pseudoscience, sound logic, twisted or circular logic, and social clubs known as churches where people can talk to each other in a friendly, encouraging manner. religion is such a mix of good and bad, but usually people have to either take it or leave it, with regard to the whole thing. i find it funny that there are couples where each parent is a different religion and the children are raised in both spiritual traditions and given a choice of which to follow. religion, science, and politics are all tainted by human fallibility, the tendency of people to just be plain wrong about things and not realize it, or to actually do bad things, which is even worse. science corrects for this with peer reviews and the scientific method, and politics has things like elections and polls which work okay but are not that great at keeping misinformed fools out of office. in religion, people mostly vote by deciding whether to participate or not and which religion to be a part of, and which congregation to be a part of. so in a sense there is somewhat of a self-correcting democratic mechanism. but self-absorbed self-righteous pompous blowhards who think they know everything broadcast propaganda on the radio and on religious television networks, and these tend to be the most misinformed preachers who have the least understanding of science and logic. and people like that, people who claim to have all the answers to everything, seem to be the ones who attract the most followers, for whatever reason. i, for one, have a profound distrust of human fallibility and its byproducts, and do not wish to participate in institutions that encourage devolution and maximization of one’s fallibility. i do not want to try to be as wrong as possible. so while the religious candidates for united states president all recognize islamic terrorism as a major religiously motivated threat, they all seem to have a serene confidence that their religion is the one true religion and that none of the problems of the terrorist version of islam occur in american christianity. i see things differently, and i see all religions as similar to each other, and all as creations of the human imagination, all subject to being perverted and ruined by people when the religions, instead of trying to stamp out wrongness, encourage wrongness. encouraging people to believe in 6-day creationism followed by 1 day of rest is no doubt much less dangerous than encouraging people to become suicide bombers and blow up large crowds of innocent people in order to get 72 virgins in heaven. but the parallel is very important to recognize: in both cases, people are being encouraged to have a completely dead wrong point of view about something. and in the presidential candidates, all of them are right about some of the issues. most of them are actually right about most issues they talk about. why is this? because they do not want to be saying unpopular things, so they make sure what they are saying is popular before saying it, and they also only say things they believe in, so that means there is some amount of testing of whether their ideas are true before they actually say them in front of large crowds. but this only catches some of the errors, and the human fallibility of each candidate is such that they are still wrong about at least some of the things they talk about. i appreciate the good intentions of politicians in both parties. but politicians cannot be trusted, because their human fallibility is too great. you can trust a lot of them to always do what they think is right, but adolf hitler thought it was right to commit genocide against the jews. politicians cannot be trusted to be right about the difference between right and wrong, or about what is best to do. they usually do what they think is right, but they have a tendency to be wrong, despite the fact that democracy teaches them the right answers on at least some of the issues. like, for example, health care. a politician who has heard lots of people complain about not having health care is not likely to say that people who don’t have health care don’t deserve any health care and should continue having it denied to them. a politician who has heard the uninsured and wounded veterans complain about lack of health care is far more likely to advocate some sort of solution whereby these people have health care of some sort. the problem arises in how to provide this health care, and who pays for it, and who is in charge of it, and all those messy little details. those are the parts politicians are likely to get wrong. but the general idea, almost any politician will get correct, which is, when lots of people are complaining about a problem, fix it. the real problem is, politicians usually have no clue about how to fix these problems, they just know something has to be done, and when they pick a solution, it is actually somewhat random.

so mitt romney won this iowa straw poll. the funny part about this whole thing is, he spent millions of dollars on winning this thing, and basically bought the votes. the second place finisher was a surprise, arkansas governor mike huckabee. and the third place, also a bit surprising, was kansas senator sam brownback. what these old white men all have in common, besides being republican politicians, is they are all men of deep christian faith who like to talk about it a lot. they are all anti-abortion. they are “family values” social conservatives. now rudolph giuliani and john mccain were not even competing, and did quite badly there. internet sensation ron paul also did quite badly. and tommy thompson did so badly he will probably drop out of the race to be replaced by the other thompson, fred thompson. fred thompson is incredibly annoying as a public figure to deal with because he is not officially in the race, even though everyone else is, even though everyone knows he has a campaign staff and is going to run. it is just not official. and that is incredibly stupid and dishonest and reduces his credibility quite a bit. it is like how wesley clark stayed out of the 2004 presidential election for quite a while, until he finally joined. he did not actually do that well after he joined. i have a lot more respect for someone who is able to tell the truth and say they are running for president, and not try to hide behind pretend indecision about whether or not they will run. or if someone actually is that indecisive, they certainly are not presidential material. anyway, the point of this is that the republican race had its front-runners giuliani and mccain chosen by the media at first. but now the republican party base, the hardcore social conservatives, are tearing those 2 guys a new one, and neither of them stands a chance. neither of those 2 candidates is “conservative” enough. out of all the people left once those 2 are removed, the only one with lots of money is mitt romney. and mitt romney can simply use his money to buy the election, and become the republican nominee. that is all there is to it. mitt romney will buy his victory with cold hard cash. rudolph giuliani and john mccain are both incapable of winning the republican party base, because the party base is full of misinformed superstitious silly people.

hillary clinton is kind of an annoying person to have to deal with. there are so many people who are anti-hillary and who have books or websites denouncing her, and it has been a cottage industry for years. back when i first got to college in the year 2000, the campus republicans were recruiting freshman with the slogan “hate hillary?”. i never quite understood the crazy hatred of her that right-wing fanatics have, because they seem to think she is this evil twisted liberal feminist communist hippie revolutionary who will have everyone smoking marijuana. they still have this crazy hate thing going against the hippies, who were basically just one big joke that nobody should have ever taken seriously in the first place. in reality, hillary clinton is not liberal at all. she is a centrist democrat of the type joe lieberman used to be before he became independent. she is a democratic leadership council-style “new democrat”. what this means is, she supports having the corporate ruling class establishment continue making all the decisions, and doesn’t want to rock the boat at all. if she became president, one of the few differences about her from her predecessor would be the opposite gender. another difference would be a slighty (but not that much) higher intelligence, and the people in power would shift from the “conservative” wing of the ruling class establishment to the “liberal” wing of the ruling class establishment. now, that is totally different from the real conservatives and the real liberals, who form the respective bases of the republican and democratic parties. the ruling class establishment is actually half neoconservative and half neoliberal. they like to reinvent themselves every 5 minutes in order to make more money, so of course they are “neo-”. it is just the golden rule. whoever has the gold makes the rules. hillary clinton raises more money than anyone else running for president. and she is #1 in the polls.

but what about howard dean? he raised the most money and was #1 in the polls 4 years ago, in the year 2003. his campaign fell apart leading up to the iowa caucus. who knows what will happen? hillary clinton or mitt romney could easily implode like that, any time between now and january. barack obama or john edwards could replace hillary clinton as the front-runner. barack obama is more likely. but most likely of all is hillary clinton winning and having barack obama as a running mate. barack obama is notable for not trying to pander to each different special interest group as much as some of the other politicians. and he has the most bipartisan appeal, despite his strong antiwar stance. so, in a sense, barack obama is the best candidate of all. but would he be the best president? who knows. i feel sorry for all the less-well-known candidates, especially mike gravel. mike gravel’s candidacy, like the hippies, is basically just one big joke. he is not too serious about things, and he is kinda playing the role al sharpton played the last time around. mike gravel is like the class clown out of the democratic presidential candidates. he has one campaign video that is nothing but a campfire burning, and another that is just some guy throwing a rock. it is stupid. he says it is “art”, but basically he is just trying to mess with people’s minds by having unconventional ads. bad idea. it won’t work. mike gravel is just making a fool of himself. but i think he is having fun. at least dennis kucinich is serious about it. he would probably make the best president out of any of the candidates. i voted for him in 2004 in the primary. he deserves to win. that is why he won’t.

now for congress. congress has a very low approval rating. they failed to impeach bush, they failed to end the war in iraq, and while they have good debates on the congressional floor, democrats keep letting the republicans win even though democrats are the majority in congress. i do not know why the congressional democrats have embraced a strategy of self-destruction and letting the other side win. but recently there was a bill that passed to “update” the foreign intelligence surveillance act to allow alberto gonzales to wiretap whoever he wants, and to legitimize all lawbreaking that has occurred in the past with bush’s violations of the foreign intelligence surveillance act. it is interesting that republicans want to enforce our immigration laws but not the foreign intelligence surveillance act. they want the rule of law to apply to non-citizens, but not to the president of the united states. some are more equal than others, eh? equal protection under the law, a thing of the past. rule of law? no way! selective enforcement! the unitary executive theory! let the president of the united states get away with whatever he wants! that is how they think things ought to be done! and what is the democratic strategy in congress? concede defeat, let republicans win, and move on to other legislation so the same thing can keep repeating, with republicans winning again and again despite being in the minority. this all happens thanks to the blue dog caucus, the democrats whose party affiliation may be democratic but whose loyalty to the party is virtually zero. my congressman is actually part of this blue dog coalition. the main strategy of blue dogs seems to be to threaten to nancy pelosi that they will become republicans unless she meets their demands. and then she goes ahead and meets whatever their demands are, and they stay democrats. it is really the opposite of how tom delay ran the house of representatives. the inmates are running the asylum. this must be 1984.