moron the presidential elections

yes, the title of this post, “moron the presidential elections”, is a pun. much of what is said about elections is stupid. people ought to vote for whichever candidate they think is best, not whoever they think is “electable”. why do you think john kerry lost in 2004? because democrats stupidly chose the candidate they thought was most “electable”, rather than going with the correct choice, howard dean, who is awesome and would have made the best president ever.

oh, and if you are new to this blog you may wonder why i use lowercase. well some poet named e. e. cummings or something like that always used lowercase. it is simpler if everything is all in the same case, and uppercase would look like yelling. a lot of people on the internet do use proper capitalization, but misspell everything, and i prefer to spell everything correctly but keep everything lowercase. a lot of people spell rupert murdoch as rupert murdock when talking about how evil the bastard is, for instance. i am obsessed with accuracy and hate inaccuracy, but i do like sticking with lowercase because it is more efficient to just use one case. and then in rare instances i can write something in all capitals to get attention or put emphasis on it. i can also use a bigger font or put it in bold or underline it too, of course. like one thing that bugs me is when people who are anti-united states like hugo chavez (duly elected president and communist dictator of venezuela) are called anti-american. it is simply untrue. hugo chavez loves at least part of america, namely latin america, and he wants to help elect communists all over latin america (or as he calls them, “socialists”). but i refuse to dignify hugo chavez with the title of socialist, because socialism is good and hugo chavez and other communists are bad. most wealthy industrialized countries practice socialism, especially ones like canada and sweden. but they are democracies. also, vladimir putin is a communist. or, at the very least, he is a totalitarian dictator. the recent elections in russia were a complete fraud. world chess champion gary kasparov was not even allowed to participate in the elections, despite the fact that he once defeated a computer built by ibm in the game of chess. if you look at how vladimir putin destroyed the company yukos and put its billionaire ceo in jail, or how he assassinated many dissidents and journalists, it is clear that putin, like hugo chavez, is a communist dictator with a cult of personality who tries to brainwash everyone into making him dictator-for-life. now pakistani dictator pervez musharraf, no longer a general, is no communist, but he has failed miserably in the war on terror, allowing al qaeda to have safe haven in the western tribal regions of his country, despite the fact that the united states has given him tremendous amounts of military aid. musharraf is also no supporter of democracy. another foreign leader who is just plain awful is mahmoud ahmadenijad, president of iran, who, like these other foreign presidents, was elected in fake, rigged elections, and is a major league asshole, but unlike the others, ahmadenijad is completely batshit insane. of course, i think u.s. president george w. bush also belongs on that list of evil assholes who are ruining the world, but at least he is not trying to be dictator-for-life like hugo chavez, vladimir putin, and pervez musharraf. now officially, the only communist nations are china, cuba, north korea, vietnam, and i think maybe laos or mongolia might also be officially communist, but i am not sure, i think mostly it is just china, cuba, north korea, and vietnam. out of those nations that are officially communist, the only one that is afflicted with a severe case of communism is north korea; the others only have it midly. in the case of china, the government is actually much more like a fascist totalitarian regime than a communist one, because it is pro-business and pro-capitalism. quite different from russia and venezuela, which i consider to be communist despite neither of them officially claiming to be so. now some other nations in latin america like bolivia, brazil, ecuador, and nicaragua (i think) are led by socialists who are allied with hugo chavez and venezuela (who is allied with cuba and the fidel+raul castro regime). but none of them are as seriously committed to extremely radical left-wing socialism as hugo chavez, and none of them has a cult of personality like hugo chavez or has a leader trying to become dictator-for-life like hugo chavez. i actually used to think hugo chavez was a good guy and the united states was bad for supporting a coup against him in 2002. (he was democratically elected, after all.) but then again, adolf hitler was democratically elected. maybe the united states was right when it tried to overthrow hugo chavez 5 years ago. i don’t think it was right, it was probably wrong, but i am not sure; i think the coup backfired and hugo chavez would not be so anti-united states if we had not tried to overthrow him. anyway, he did try to do a military coup of his own in the early 90’s (similar to how hitler tried to do a military coup called the beer hall putsch but it failed and he was sent to jail and wrote mein kampf while in jail and he got out of jail and ended up being elected german chancellor). anyway, i think george w. bush is a horrible misleader for our nation, but many other nations have even worse national misleaders, and i hate all of them. i suspect french president nicolas sarkozy will turn out to be absolutely horrible in the next few years, worse than former italian misleader silvio berlusconi or former british misleader tony blair. of course, the worst government in the world would have to be either saudi arabia or sudan. there is only one nation in the world whose form of government has been anarchy for over a decade, and that nation is somalia. it has not worked out too well for them, so i think a government is unfortunately necessary. without governments we would return to feudalism or tribalism.

anyway, now for moron the elections. there are some good videos on theonion.com about the elections. here are the 3 so far specifically about the 2008 u.s. presidential election:


In The Know: Candidates Compete For Vital Idgit Vote


Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters


Poll: Mitt Romney Is Candidate Most Voters Want To Get Into Bar Fight With

so those videos are quite informative and full of made-up nonsense but also very insightful and full of more insight than almost anything about the elections from the so-called “mainstream” media. the 2nd of these 3 videos, about bullshit being the most important issue, singles out hillary clinton as a leading purveyor of bullshit, and that part of the video is no joke. hillary clinton is actually the weakest democratic candidate when it comes to the general election, at least according to this story at alternet.org. and guess who is winning in iowa now among democrats? barack obama. check it out here. and the blog post i just linked to also shows that mike huckabee is now the republican front-runner, leaving other contenders such as mitt romney, rudolph giuliani, fred thompson, john mccain, and ron paul in the dust. far-right-wing radicals have already started going after mike huckabee with anonymous smear campaigns. mike huckabee is the only true christian^tm running for president, having had the correct religious right-approved positions on all the social issues for many, many years. as a former southern baptist minister, nobody can question his commitment to christianity. mitt romney, on the other hand, recently gave a speech on religion that actually praised religions other than his own, and mainly called for a greater role for religion in politics, quite the opposite of what john f. kennedy said in his speech on religion before he was elected president (with the help of the chicago mafia). but this time around, barack obama has the full support of chicago, most notably the billionaire talk show host oprah winfrey. anyway, i am an atheist and supporter of separation of church and state, and i find the views of people like mike huckabee and mitt romney on religion and its role in politics to be, quite frankly, unconstitutional, in violation of the first amendment and the separation of church and state. and i also think that nations where religion plays a great deal of a role in politics, like iran, tend to be quite a bit more wacko than nations like the united kingdom where tony blair had to keep quiet about his religiosity in order to appear sane to voters. a new movie out now, the golden compass, is based on a book written by an agnostic (not an atheist!) and in the story the main character actually does meet god at one point (so it is not even an atheistic story), but religious people are up in arms about how the main villain in the story is something called the magisterium, which is actually the roman catholic church. now, after the crusades and inquisitions and all sorts of other atrocities they have committed, the roman catholic church ought to be apologetic for all the bad things it has done in previous centuries, and willing to admit it is imperfect and that the pope is not infallible. but bill donohue, leader of the catholic league, takes an entirely different approach, viciously attacking anyone who ever dares question his religion. now granted, he is not a member of the catholic clergy and does not officially speak for that religion. but he has spoken out in the media on many issues over the years and has always proven himself to be a right-wing radical who wants the government to censor anything that he finds objectionable, anything that questions his religion. and he attacks the golden compass movie for promoting atheism! even though god actually appears as a character in the story, and even though the author has no position on whether or not god exists! this right-wing religious radicalism that is pro-censorship, pro-oppression, and anti-freedom is exactly what led the taliban to blow up giant buddha statues, and exactly what is used to govern nations like iran and saudi arabia, and exactly what led people to kill each other over a bunch of silly cartoons of the prophet mohammed in a danish newspaper. why, in saudi arabia, women cannot drive cars, and a victim of gang rape was given a quite nasty sentence by a government that decided she was the criminal. that is the type of government you get if you let too much religion into politics. but i think mike huckabee will win the republican nomination, because the republican party base is made of religious zealots, and none of the other candidates have the right positions on the issues that matter to these religious radicals. well perhaps mitt romney has the right positions now, but he is a flip-flopper who used to be socially liberal before he became socially conservative, plus he is mormon and that is considered a “cult” by members of the rival cult known as the religious right. what is the difference between a religion and a cult? a religion is treated with respect by the media and the general public, and a cult is condemned by the media and the general public. religions usually have more members than cults, but some religions such as judaism have hardly any members, and some cults such as scientology have a whole lot of members. but basically, religions and cults are the same exact thing, except cults might go a little further with overt attempts at mind control and enslaving people and getting them to give all their money to the church. however, if you look at how the catholic church operated before the protestant reformation, back during the middle/dark ages when 99% of europeans were illiterate, they brainwashed people just like a cult. and even today, right-wing protestant evangelicals operate in quite a similar fashion, as do islamic fundamentalists in the middle east, hindus in india, and certain ultra-religious sects of judaism in israel. religion and cults all promote belief in the supernatural. but all belief in the supernatural, all faith in that which cannot be proven or even observed, it is all irrational and wrong. so i oppose not only religion, but also belief in space aliens that come to earth, also fortune cookies, also horoscopes, also belief in ghosts, also belief in magic, also psychic services that have 900 numbers to call on the telephone, also belief in zero point energy and other mad science, also people who think the world is flat or that the geocentric model of the universe is correct or that the big bang never happened or that evolution or global warming is wrong. we need to follow logic, reason, and science. and while none of the democrats really follows logic and reason perfectly, they do it a lot better than the republicans, at least when it comes to whether someone is too religious. now if someone is “spiritual” instead of religious, that is usually not as bad, because at least they are not blindly following whatever some wacko tells them is true. someone who is spiritual instead of religious probably thinks for themselves instead of blindly following some official dogma, but unfortunately, they come to the wrong conclusions and end up believing in all sorts of supernatural nonsense. now there are 5 basic belief systems regarding god, in my view. #1 is polytheism, where someone believes in multiple gods. #2 is monotheism, where someone believes in one and only one god. #3 is weak atheism, where someone does not actively believe in any god or gods, and also does not make any claims regarding whether or not the existence of any god or gods can be proven or disproven. #4 is agnosticism, where someone believes that it is impossible for anyone to tell whether or not any god or gods exist. #5 is strong atheism, where someone firmly believes that no god or gods could ever possibly exist under any circumstances. the default view people are born with is #3, weak atheism, the middle of the 5 positions, the one that does not make any claims about anything, where someone admits they do not know but does not claim that they know that it is impossible for anyone to know. if someone is unsure about whether or not god exists, and perhaps they think there is a 75% chance god exists or a 90% chance god exists, they are a weak atheist. positions 1, 2, 4, and 5 are all ones where someone actively claims they know for sure what the answer is, although in the case of #4, agnosticism, what the person is claiming they know for sure is that nobody knows the answer. which position do i take? well... heh heh... it depends on how the term "god" is defined. depending on how you define that term, i could take any of the 5 positions. i think it is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of god as long as the condition exists that there is no universally agreed-upon definition for the word “god” (and god is just a word like any other as far as i am concerned, so no need to capitalize it). but i do not believe in agnosticism, because i think you could prove or disprove the existence of god if you defined god in such a way as to make that outcome possible. and ultimately, a word such as god is a creation of society, part of language, something whose definition changes over time like every other word in the language, perhaps also changing its spelling and pronunciation as well (which is how new languages arise from old ones). so, in that sense, if god is just a word, i believe in god, since i believe that the word “god” exists as a word in the english language, so god exists, albeit only as a word (so thus i could take position #2). or if we assume society can never agree on a definition of the word “god”, then i would be agnostic, since you can neither prove nor disprove the existence of something that cannot even be defined. or i could just decide to define god as, for instance, any living organism that exists. then you, me, every animal, every plant, every microorganism, are all gods. thus i would take position #1, polytheism. or if god is defined as omniscient and omnipotent (all-knowing and all-powerful), this would mean god does not exist, since the properties attributed to god would be self-contradictory, as god would know everything that will happen in the future but have the power to change things to happen differently than predicted, thus contradicting being all-knowing. in that case i would take position #5, strong atheism. that is actually the way most people define god. but i take the position #3, weak atheism, the neutral position that makes no claims, because i do not think the word “god” has any universally agreed-upon definition, and so existence or nonexistence cannot be proven at the time being, but it is possible that things may change and the word might actually have a meaning people can agree on, and in that case, proving or disproving the existence of god would become possible. i used to be a strong atheist, but when i talked about things with people who did not adhere to the dogma about god being an omniscient, omnipotent, anthropomorphized being, i realized that a large percentage of people believe in a god who does not even remotely adhere to the definition you would find in a dictionary. some people say god is love. quakers say there is part of god in everyone (so the quaker god is sorta like a large vegetable or piece of meat or some other kind of food that was chopped up into little pieces, except unlike most food, the quaker god is still alive). and back in the old days, the early jews believed in many gods but thought only their tribal god, jehovah, would watch over them and protect them, and that while other gods existed and could do neat stuff like turn sticks into snakes, jehovah did not want them praying to other gods because he would get jealous and then smite them. in northern europe, people believed in the norse gods. the greeks and romans had their gods, whose stories are still well-known to this day. and the hindus still believe in many gods, and are quite superstitious and believe in all sorts of supernatural silliness even today. in india, people do crazy things like get married to animals because they think they would be cursed by the gods otherwise. and most native americans were polytheistic, as well as the people of africa who believed in animism. so early humans, tribal societies with no technology, were almost all animists or polytheists, and gradually, people have believed in fewer and fewer gods, until they got down to one, and then zero. and now the debate is mainly between the one and zero folks, which probably pisses off the people who still think there are thousands or millions of gods. anyway, my point is, irrational stupidity is still very popular, and that is why mike huckabee will win the republican nomination. as for the democrats, i am quite hopeful that barack obama will win, because he is starting to be ahead of hillary clinton in some of the polls such as the ones in iowa. barack obama is a true liberal/progressive democrat, but hillary clinton is just a centrist/“moderate” democrat. hillary clinton has been so demonized and attacked on all sides, from the right and the left, that she has “triangulated” herself right into the center, trying not to take any positions that could possibly piss anyone off. perhaps all the criticism of her is a bit unfair, especially since barack obama seems to get nothing but praise from anyone. but i think her image, her public persona, is quite damaged, and that would not matter too much if i trusted her judgment to make the right decisions on important issues. barack obama has proven himself to have much better judgment. however, i think barack obama might be a bit too timid to attack others or go negative, just like john edwards was in 2004 and is again this time. i read an article about how john edwards’s failure to go negative against bush and cheney like vice presidential candidates traditionally do cost kerry/edwards the 2004 election. the relentless positivity of john edwards simply did not work. and perhaps barack obama is too positive, too nice, too timid about viciously attacking other people’s reputations, motivations, credibility, and personal lives. perhaps, to be president, you have to be a complete asshole or bitch. the one good thing about hillary clinton is that if she wins the nomination, i can at least trust her to viciously trash her opponent in the general election, which i do not think barack obama or john edwards would ever do. and that is what is needed. just remember how bush viciously trashed john kerry in 2004, with some help from the swift boat veterans for bullshit. kerry and edwards were far too timid about attacking bush, which cost them the election. still, i would like to think that someone positive like barack obama could win the election. and hopefully mike huckabee will be too positive to attack anyone. i think huckabee is locked into a cycle of increasing poll numbers and popularity and then news stories about his increasing poll numbers and popularity, which will then give him even more increasing poll numbers and popularity, and this cycle will continue at least until super tuesday in february. we will hear about how mitt romney spent many, many times as much money as huckabee and still lost, and people will think romney is a loser, and giuliani and mccain and thompson will all do badly in the early primary states as well. mike huckabee’s victory will be a big defeat for the club for growth and other groups that don’t like him. and the decades-long alliance between religious zealots who want to legislate morality and rich people who want low taxes and deregulation will come to an end. the wealthy elites will someday ultimately realize their true allies, the people they should really throw all their support to, the people they can really count on: the libertarians. people like ron paul and lew rockwell, and groups like the cato institute, reason magazine, and the ludwig von mises institute. and then the libertarians will either have to take over one of the 2 main political parties (probably the republicans), or they will have to win elections as the libertarian party, becoming a successful 3rd party. the religious right will probably ultimately self-destruct and cease to exist as a viable political force with any real influence. and that is when the republican party will all become libertarians, unless the libertarian party manage to become as big as the democrats and republicans. although ron paul will lose this 2008 election, his candidacy is jump-starting a movement that will end up taking over this entire country, years from now. and i will try to defend liberalism, progressivism, and socialism (socialism like in canada and europe), although i completely agree with libertarians on social issues and may vote for them if i feel they are more in sync with my views than the democratic candidates. but if you look at how religion is in decline and is self-destructing, and the libertarian movement is getting bigger and bigger all the time, and how libertarians agree with the wealthy on all the issues that matter to rich people, it seems obvious that someday the libertarians will win. as for other third parties? well, the reform party that ross perot founded never really had any clear agenda, and split up because nobody could agree on what they all believed in. the green party advocate the exact same things as the most left-wing liberal democrats. and the constitution party advocates the exact same things as the most right-wing conservative republicans. the green party and constitution party are mainly pressure groups on the democrats and republicans that threaten to take away votes if the 2 big parties stray away from what their party base wants them to do, and get too centrist. the greens are ultra-liberal and the constitution party people are ultra-conservative. so neither of them will ever get anywhere. only the libertarians have a chance as a third party, since they are the only ones advocating a third way, something completely different from liberalism or conservatism. but it will take years, and i will probably not support them, although i might. of course there are countless other tiny political parties (besides libertarian, green, and reform), such as the natural law party, the socialist party, the communist party, the socialist workers party, the socialist equality party, the democratic socialist party, the workers world party, the nazi party, etc... and there are parties that are only in 1 state, like in new york state we have the liberal party, the conservative party, the working families party, the independence party, and the right to life party, among others. the working families party is actually very powerful in binghamton, because they chose mayor matt ryan and they now control the city council. but the working families party is just an oddity of new york state. the working families party is the same thing as an activist group known as citizen action that is very active in binghamton and in several other places in new york state. the mayor of binghamton has been having things called neighborhood assemblies where he and other politicians meet with whatever local citizens from a neighborhood decide to show up, and then they just talk about stuff. and the neighborhood assemblies are all organized by citizen action, or in other words, the working families party. the mayor has even gotten taxpayer money to go to citizen action for this. now personally i think it is unethical for the government to give money to political activist organizations. but i do not live inside the city of binghamton, only next to it, so it is none of my concern. and the candidates supported by the working families party won fair and square. it is just odd that the activists of citizen action and the working families party now control who wins democratic primaries for local elected offices. whoever they endorse always wins the democratic primary, and then almost always wins the general election. i think the reason they carry so much clout is, binghamton has a pretty small population and very few activist groups, and almost all the activist groups are left-wing. besides citizen action/working families party, most of the left-wing activist groups are pacifist groups that hold peace vigils and do not really do much in the way of politics. the right-wing people of binghamton are quite disorganized, since they rely almost solely on the republican party and do not have separate activist groups. and the democratic party in the binghamton area is now a puppet being controlled by the working families party, since the working families party is able to use the primary process of the democratic party to control it by selecting which candidates to support ahead of time and then doing lots of grassroots effort to get them elected, and not many people vote in primary elections. i suppose there might be some other parts of the united states, other locales where third parties have somehow managed to take control of everything. it seems the best way for a third party to win is to hijack the primary process of the democratic or republican party. it really is a brilliant strategy, and i commend the working families party for their success in conquering the local democratic party. of course the local democratic party leaders are not too happy about this, and neither am i, but i admire the success the working families party has achieved here in binghamton, controlling both the mayor and the city council. i think the local democratic leaders will probably think of a way to counteract the influence of the working families party (who had amazing success in the 2007 local elections last month in november). but by law, they have to remain neutral about who to support in the primaries, which is why an outside group can come in and hijack the primary process if they have enough volunteers. with that in mind, perhaps it would be a good idea for someone to do likewise and hijack the republican primary process the same way it was done to the democrats. anyway, i do not trust the working families party or citizen action. perhaps it is just because i am such a loyal democrat that i do not like outside influences taking over my party. but i do support the political agenda that the working families party and citizen action espouse. and i suppose i do support binghamton mayor matt ryan as well as new york governor eliot spitzer. nobody is perfect... i just wish these neighborhood assemblies could have been organized by a politically neutral group rather than a progressive left-wing activist group, because the government is actually giving money to an activist organization, and i think the government should keep its money out of politics. likewise, george w. bush’s justice department and other departments have become politicized and have actively worked to help the republican party and hurt the democratic party, such as with the u.s. attorney scandal, and selective prosecutions of democrats but not republicans. in many foreign countries, governments spend money on campaign commercials for whoever is in power, and try to control the media. anyway, this citizen action/working families party group has managed to take over the mayor’s office and the city council in binghamton, and has basically taken over the local democratic party, but i think the democrats here are going to fight back. i am not sure which side to take, because on the one hand, i agree with the working families party and citizen action on the issues, but on the other hand, i think their actions are unethical and undermine the democratic process. at least in the national elections for president i am starting to have hope... barack obama is the great hope of this country, the only one who can save our nation. but even if he loses, i can still take heart... hillary clinton will utterly demolish mike huckabee or whoever else the republicans choose. unlike obama and edwards, she has not typecast herself as a positive person who never goes negative or attacks anyone else. if obama or edwards goes negative and attacks, they get labelled as a hypocrite and flip-flopper for pretending to be all nice and positive and then changing their mind. but obama has the mystical power to unite this nation and end our divisions and partisan bickering. he also has powers of telepathy, telekinesis, mind control, time travel, teleportation, invisibility, flying, mind control, god mode, and the ability to shoot lasers from his eyes. he is an alien, a robot, a ghost, a pirate, a ninja, an angel, a demon, a vampire, a zombie, a mummy, and an international man of mystery. also, he is the reincarnation of jesus christ as well as the buddha. basically i am saying, it is ridiculous to think he can magically end the partisan divisions in this country, because that will never happen, and that is as ridiculous as those other things i just made up. but if hillary clinton is elected, partisan divisions will just get worse than ever. she can unite republicans... against her. oh well... i am such a silly person. i need some rest because i am quite sleepy and getting to be rather ridiculous in all the silly things i say. i have given up on dennis kucinich. for the time being, i am supporting barack obama, just like oprah winfrey is doing. but my support is not very deep and i could still change my mind. one thing is clear and that is, i will vote party-line democrat in the 2008 election, no matter who wins the primaries. nothing can change my mind about that. i am quite upset at the democrats in washington, d.c. after reading recent news reports that they are planning on sending bush more money for the war in iraq, before the end of this month of december, without any conditions. they had promised not to do that. they had better get their act together and end the damn war already, or there will be hell to pay. still, i will vote for them no matter what they do. i do not have much of a choice, because the republicans are way more pro-war than the democrats, and the democrats at least claim to oppose the war, even though they keep funding it and do nothing to stop it. i prefer someone who at least pretends to be on my side to someone who adamantly opposes everything i stand for. the democrats may not do what they say, but neither do the republicans. at least i like what the democrats say. i hate what the republicans say. and when it comes to actions, i am disappointed with everyone. the only way to end the war is to cut off funding, and nobody has done that. only a few democrats in congress are trying to do that, and it never works. there is so much cowardice about politicians being afraid of being branded as not supporting the troops. you know what? if we really supported the troops we would bring them home and stop putting them in harm’s way in hostile muslim countries. if we really cared we would stop putting them in danger and getting so many of them permanently disabled or killed. our nation is in danger, but the biggest threat is not foreigners, it the threat of us destroying ourselves. we are destroying ourselves through going into debt, as individuals, as businesses, as government. and our money is becoming worthless. we are destroying the other life forms on this planet. we are using up all our natural resources. we are spending all our money on useless crap we don’t need. the gap between rich and poor is getting bigger and bigger, and most people are not well educated. our healthcare system is broken. and all our jobs are going to foreigners. meanwhile, people in the highest levels of the government are planning an endless series of wars for world domination to steal the natural resources of other nations and bring in a new colonialism, new imperialism, a new world order, with the united states conquering any nation that dares oppose it. this pax americana will never work, not like the pax romana did. we are the ones who turn the rest of the world against us, through our actions, or rather, not the actions of our private citizens, but the actions of our government and our corporations. perhaps we should adopt the somali system of government. it has worked quite well for somalia, don’t you think?

politics is a waste of time

getting involved in politics is generally a waste of time. most notably, if you want to help get your favorite presidential candidate elected president of the united states. you will probably have no effect at all unless you are a billionaire or live in iowa or new hampshire and have a lot of friends who vote who listen to what you say. you can have much more of an effect in local political races if you volunteer or campaign, or actually run for office yourself. but if you try to run for office, you will probably lose, unless you are an insider. if you volunteer and campaign, you will not get to see the direct results of your actions, and even if the candidates you support win the election, you can never be sure if your support even mattered at all, or if everything would have turned out exactly the same way if you had done nothing whatsoever. but the least you can do is vote. at least vote. everyone should vote, except stupid people or people who make wrong decisions. you need to vote based on the issues that matter to you, and get educated about what the candidates’ stances on all the issues are. i have found, for instance, that my stances on the issues very closely match democratic presidential candidate dennis kucinich. but the so-called mainstream media ignores him and never seriously considers him as a candidate, even though he is the closest match to my beliefs and my core values and my stances on all the issues, and probably a lot of other people would also find him to be the closest match to them as well, if they bothered to take online tests to see which candidate is the best match for you. none of the republican candidates are even close to my beliefs. the only republican candidate i like at all is ron paul, because the issue most important to me is the war in iraq. i believe the war was wrong and that people should have seen right from the beginning, before the war even started, that it was wrong. now granted, i was raised in a quaker background and taught to be a pacifist. but i did support the american invasion of afghanistan (that osama bin laden called unjustified in his latest message), despite the fact that i am normally a pacifist. anyway, the war in iraq is completely based on lies, and they changed the justification of the war again and again and again, and each time it was a lie, and the united states has no national interest in maintaining an occupation in a hostile muslim country on the opposite side of the world. our troops are sitting ducks for the terrorists to attack, and it is asymmetrical warfare, and we have nowhere near enough troops to pacify such a large country as iraq. and even if we could achieve victory, it would still be an unjustified war based on lies. “might makes right” is not a valid moral principle. even if we achieved total military victory in iraq and eliminated all opposition to our occupation, this would not justify anything we have done there. we replaced a strong, totalitarian government that was able to maintain order with a weak, divided, bickering government that has little power and is distrusted by all the citizens of iraq. revolutions against unjust dictators like saddam hussein are a good thing, but they must be carried out by the citizens of the country, not by foreign invaders. for example, i and many other people hate president bush and think he is absolutely awful, but would i like a foreign country to invade the united states and remove him by force, and put in place a puppet government run by that foreign nation? no. we americans will deal with president bush ourselves; we have our own democratic process for peaceful transition of power through elections and term limits, and we can speed it up with things like impeachment. and if bush tries shit like what hugo chavez is doing in venezuela to be dictator-for-life, or what pervez musharraf has been doing to stay in power in pakistan, or what vladimir putin has been doing to stay in power in russia... well... i would still say, let americans take care of choosing our government, and foreigners should mind their own business. and this means, in applying this principle around the world, we should mind our own damn business and stop trying to overthrow governments around the world, no matter how much we might dislike them. as long as those nations have not attacked our nation, that is. and saddam hussein did not attack the united states, nor was his third-world shithole of a country ever a threat to anyone except tiny-ass countries next door to it like kuwait. in the lead-up to the war in iraq, the bush administration officials made such ridiculous public comments, so hyperbolic and the-sky-is-falling, it was completely obvious that they were completely full of shit. it was obvious they were full of irrational hysteria about dangers posed by a small, unimportant third-world hellhole on the opposite side of the world. they could just as well have gotten all worked up about the dangers posed by bhutan, equatorial guinea, luxembourg, or trinidad and tobago (all countries that, like iraq, posed absolutely zero threat to us). any idiot dumb enough to fall for the rush to war in iraq does not deserve the high honor of being president of the united states. so it really pisses me off that hillary clinton is still the democratic front-runner according to the so-called mainstream media. what the hell has she ever done in her 7 years as senator or 8 years as first lady? i have no idea. all i know is, everybody hates her. she has really high disapproval ratings. she would obviously be the weakest candidate of all the democrats, and if she were the democratic nominee, this would give the republicans the greatest chance of winning the white house. well okay, maybe a few of the democrats might do worse, to be fair. i am not sure which ones. i am not completely familiar with all of them. anyway, there is a lot of ridiculous anti-illegal-immigrant hysteria nowadays. i have a modest proposal. genocide. that would completely eliminate the illegal immigrants, once and for all. the final solution. inspired by adolf hitler, who killed 6 million jews. i bet lots of people would actually go for genocide, and approve of it, if they were asked about it in a poll. i bet if a powerful president tried to carry out genocide, with a congress full of sycophants from the same party, it would be quite successful. now of course i think we should treat illegal immigrants humanely and not do anything outrageously mean and evil to them. but i really get the feeling that there is such hatred towards them, a lot of people really would want to carry out genocide if that option were on the table. that is the real ugly side the republicans are showing now, their hatred of illegal immigrants, especially coming from tom tancredo, although he is a nobody. but another thing about politics that bothers me, besides all the idiots who supported the iraq war and then stopped or still support it and will continue no matter what, and the idiots who hate illegal immigrants, is the religious idiots who have completely screwed up american politics. if you hate gay people and think women are subordinate to men and oppose embryonic stem cell research and believe in creationism instead of evolution and also think global warming is not happening, this makes you a “values voter” and means you have “moral values” and are part of the “moral majority”. religion is a set of beliefs based on faith, which is unthinking, illogical, stubborn belief in something without any evidence. every single one of the presidential candidates in both political parties believes in the religion of christianity. now is christianity any better than the religion of islam that turns people into suicide bombers and makes people fly planes into buildings? yes, but not that much better. christianity is still based on irrational faith just like islam, and both religions require people to have values systems that have become antiquated due to recent advances in moral reasoning and human society, such as the development of democracy, an end to aristocracy and feudal class systems, recognizing human rights like freedom of speech and right to a fair trial, abolition of slavery, equality for women, equality for different races of people, and equality for people of different sexual orientation. religions were once used to justify the autocratic rule of kings and emperors, around the globe, from europe to china. they were used to justify slavery and the supremacy of whites over other races, the supremacy of men over women, etc. and there were great religious wars, including the crusades, and people were also killed in inquisitions and witch hunts. christianity is only better than islam nowadays because christians today are much more civilized and worldly than the primitive, uneducated christians who lived centuries ago, in times such as the middle ages or when the “new world” was first colonized. but there are many other religions besides christianity and islam, and christianity and islam are both very complicated and have a lot of denominations that are different from each other. but all of this complexity and variety among religious denominations and beliefs hides one common factor: all religions are based on irrational faith in things that cannot be proven, and all of them mislead people away from thinking and acting rationally based on facts and reality. in practical terms, this means that a president who is very religious, like george w. bush, is a lot more likely to make bad decisions than someone who is more of a freethinker, like thomas jefferson. recently there has been a controversy at oral roberts university, and this shows directly the irrationality of religious belief. the son of oral roberts was in charge of the university and he kept claiming that god told him stuff, when it seems perfectly obvious to everyone else that this “god” who keeps talking to oral roberts’ son is just a voice inside that guy’s head. not really his conscience, though. more just a voice in his head that tells him that whatever he feels like doing is ok and he can go ahead and do it and it is righteous and it is god’s will. and why should i capitalize the word “god”? nobody even agrees on what the word means, and capitalizing it would imply there is only one god, one god that the believers in god can agree on, but the believers cannot agree on anything, really. that is why there are so many different religions. if religion really were true, there would only be one religion. the fact that there are so many demonstrates the fact that religions are all the creations of humankind, and all of their beliefs are made up by people, and this is the reason they cannot agree on anything, because people feel attached to things that they made up or things they believe in that they were taught by someone else who made them up. so the more religious a presidential candidate is, the less i like them, the less qualified they seem for the job. recently tony blair, in an interview, talked about how he has strong religious faith but felt he had to keep quiet about it or else voters in britain would think he was crazy. and rightfully so! that is exactly what people ought to think of religious people! i am glad that the british public have the proper view that someone who is excessively religious, whose mind is filled with irrational faith-based beliefs that have no basis in fact or reality, is too nutty to be the leader of their country. unfortunately, even my favorite candidate, dennis kucinich, is a man of faith... all of the presidential candidates in both the democratic and republican parties are people of faith. it is quite a sad situation. anyway, out of the “leading” presidential candidates, the closest one to my views on all the political issues facing the united states is without a doubt barack obama. on every single one of the policy disputes he has had with hillary clinton that made the news, i found myself agreeing with him and disagreeing with hillary clinton, who always takes the more conservative policy when compared with barack obama, who is always the more liberal of the 2. i find it absolutely ridiculous how much republicans and conservatives hate hillary clinton and how much they claim she is a far-left-wing liberal in disguise. i would really like it if that were the case! i would really like it if, secretly, hillary clinton were as far left-wing as dennis kucinich on all the issues. but sadly, that is not the case. in fact, she is almost as right-wing as rudolph giuliani. most of their positions on the issues are indistinguishable. of course, rudolph giuliani is far too liberal on many issues to be a conservative republican. hillary clinton and rudolph giuliani are basically both diehard centrists. now mitt romney is the guy who used to be liberal on all the issues but is now conservative on all the issues, unlike giuliani, who is still liberal on all the social issues, just like arnold schwarzenegger, the governor of california (who is not running for president). fred thompson is a hollywood actor that richard nixon called “dumb as hell”, and used to be a pro-abortion lobbyist, and his campaign is going nowhere. john mccain is hated among republicans for his correct stances on immigration, campaign finance reform, and torture, stances that are quite unpopular in his party. and ron paul is a libertarian, which is far too radical for most conservative republicans, since on many issues he actually agrees with liberals. the religious right is left with only one candidate who is actually one of them: mike huckabee. the only problems with him, as far as conservative republicans are concerned, are how he raised taxes (which is considered the worst possible thing anyone could ever do, ever, since taxes must always be cut and never ever be raised no matter how deeply the government goes into debt), and how he actually spent state money on educating children who happened to be illegal immigrants, instead of deporting them immediately. anyway, my point is, all of the republican candidates are incredibly flawed and have a ton of stances on issues that their potential supporters will all disagree with. the democrats do not seem to be as out of touch with their own base, except for hillary clinton. back in 2004, of course, joseph lieberman ran for president as a democrat, and his platform was so wildly divergent from the democratic base, so centrist and pro-republican, it was ridiculous, and he was pretty much running in the wrong party. in fact, i think rudolph giuliani is probably a better democrat than joe lieberman, in terms of how well his stances on the issues match the democratic base. rudolph giuliani and hillary clinton are basically the same thing. it is ridiculous how giuliani got the endorsement of pat robertson. that is like if adolf hitler said his favorite television show was seinfeld. anyway, i do not really know too much about john edwards, joe biden, chris dodd, bill richardson, and mike gravel (sorry if i left any out). i mostly just know about hillary clinton and barack obama, since only they get in the news, and about dennis kucinich, since he is the one i like enough to find out more about him. i feel pretty positive about all the democratic candidates except for hillary clinton. and i also feel positive about the republican ron paul. but anyway, i think the 2-party system sucks and we need more parties. or maybe no political parties at all, which is what george washington wanted. maybe political parties could get proportional representation in legislatures like congress, so if one party gets 23% of the vote nationwide, they get 23% of the seats in congress. i also think unicameral legislatures are more efficient, and executives like governors and presidents should not be allowed to veto anything. that would make things much more efficient and eliminate gridlock. executive leaders like presidents and governors need to have as little power as possible, and all that power should be transferred to legislatures. when voting for a single office, in a situation where proportional representation would not apply, it would be best to use the condorcet method of voting, or at least instant runoff voting, rather than simply having a winner-take-all system awarding the office to whoever wins a plurality (the most votes). and of course the electoral college needs to be completely thrown in the garbage and replaced with nationwide popular vote using the condorcet or instant runoff voting method. and the system of having voters in iowa and new hampshire decide who the candidates are? throw that in the garbage too. combine primaries and general elections into one single massive election that all happens at once, and the condorcet or instant runoff voting method will allow voters to pick their favorite candidate and the most popular one (or least unpopular one) will win. so why is politics a waste of time? my favorite candidate is going nowhere in the polls, and my least favorite democratic candidate is #1. i do not live in iowa or new hampshire, and i have hardly any money, so i have basically no influence at all on who gets elected. and i detest the republicans, at least in general. and i am glad none of their candidates are acceptable to them. it means less of them will vote, so the democrat will probably win. hopefully we can get a better nominee than hillary clinton as the democrat. if the republicans want a good chance in the general election, i would recommend ron paul, since, as he says, “freedom is popular”. but i am not a republican and i do not agree with ron paul on free market capitalism or about all the government agencies he wants to abolish. people might complain about oppressive governments. but look at what happened when the soviet union collapsed, or when saddam hussein’s government in iraq collapsed. the united states government might be a bit oppressive, sort of like those governments, but if ron paul is elected, his dismantling of the apparatus of government oppression might happen too quickly, and cause disorder and chaos, a rise in crime, economic collapse, major increases in pollution, or other problems. who knows what would happen if we legalize everything, dismantle all the government agencies, and deregulate everything? we all would like a little more freedom, but perhaps ron paul would give us too much freedom... he would give us enough rope to hang ourselves. i am not sure if we need this united states government, but i think we probably do, and it would be risky to try experimenting with anything too close to anarchy like libertarianism. anyway, ron paul has no chance of being elected as the republican nominee, regardless. that is unfortunate, though, because i think he would help advance the national debate a lot if he were the republican nominee, even though i think a lot of his policies might be dangerous. but you know what? hillary clinton has been my senator for 7 years and all i know is she voted for the patriot act and the war in iraq and i am not sure what else she has done, but i disagree with her overly interventionist foreign policy positions, since she wants to basically control the governments of every country in the entire world, once she is president (i exaggerate a bit but you get the point). barack obama is still a bit interventionist but he is not afflicted as severely, and he is more prone to having us mind our own damn business for a change and stop messing around in things that are none of our business that will only get us into trouble with “blowback” about our foreign policy fiascos. like for instance, iran. hillary clinton has a tough stance against iran, possibly a pro-war hawkish stance, whereas barack obama is basically antiwar. one thing i don’t like about joe biden is he has a plan to partition iraq, which is pretty much just a case of us meddling in iraq’s internal affairs, something that is none of our business. it is up to the iraqis how to govern themselves, as long as terrorists do not take over that country’s government and attack the united states from abroad. we have no business telling iraqis to undo de-baathification or pass an oil law or form a coalition government with the sunnis. and if the kurds want independence for kurdistan, fine. it is none of our business. as for the israeli-palestinian dispute, it is also none of our business. we should not be subsidizing the israelis or the palestinians with aid from our government. and if they want to negotiate, let them do it on their own. there is no need for a mediator. getting a mediator and traveling across the world to america is a waste of time for them. the israeli and palestinian leaders ought to sit down and meet in jerusalem or somewhere close by, and meet every single day until they have peace. but that is just a suggestion. we americans, on the other hand, ought to mind our own business, and not directly interfere in such things, only offer polite suggestions like that. most of our so-called “allies” in the middle east are actually, in some ways, functioning as our enemies. iraq, saudi arabia, israel, qatar, pakistan, turkey, and others... all of those nations are supposedly our allies, but have done things that are not exactly what you would consider the behavior of a true ally, or of someone you would want to be allies with. so why do we only have 3 official enemies in the middle east (iran, syria, and hamas-controlled gaza strip)? our leaders have cozied up to the leaders of other countries that are not really our friends, but just pretend to be our friends. and we give out lots of aid, for free. aid to the militaries of totalitarian theocratic regimes, to help oppress their own people. but anyway, politics is a waste of time. there is nothing i can do about any of this. i am helpless to solve any of the world’s problems. i have virtually no say in who gets elected, and once elected, the politicians will do whatever the hell they want, without regard to public opinion, since they will just use the corporate media to disseminate their propaganda and get people to agree with whatever policies they decide to put in place. public opinion will change to match whatever the politicians want it to be, when they use the media to manipulate the public. and both political parties will cooperate in this. but joining or voting for a “third” party is a waste of time and a wasted vote. it will only make things worse. ralph nader got george w. bush elected, since nader mainly kept liberals from voting for al gore, while having no effect on conservatives. in our current winner-take-all system, third parties can only act as spoilers, and the only real way to have influence is to take part in choosing major-party candidates through the primaries. but i learned in 2004, when my favorite candidate howard dean did quite badly in the primaries, how flawed that system is, and how the stupidest voters are the swing group that ends up deciding everything. people were so focused on finding someone who fit an arbitrary media-created definition of “electable”, they completely lost sight of all of the issues. iowa and new hampshire are all about pandering to locals, and those states are almost all white people, and more conservative than the average state. so ethnic/racial minorities have pretty much zero influence in choosing who wins. the entire system is corrupt, because whoever raises the most money wins, and you raise money by selling out to the special interest groups whose interests pretty much always are the exact opposite of the general public interest. and the way things are turning out with the bushes and the clintons, we might as well have a hereditary monarchy, since that is basically what this country seems to be turning into. what will the line of succession be? george h. w. bush, bill clinton, george w. bush, hillary clinton, jeb bush, chelsea clinton, jenna bush, paris hilton, britney spears, lindsey lohan, hannah montana? well if so, i hope we get to the post-jenna-bush phase soon, when paris hilton becomes president. then we will finally be out of the monotony of alternating between bushes and clintons. of course, all of those young ladies will have married into the bush and clinton families by then! so it will be george h. w. bush, bill clinton, george w. bush, hillary clinton, jeb bush, chelsea clinton, jenna bush, paris clinton, britney bush, lindsey clinton, hannah bush! why? because most women still change their last name when they marry! we will never get out of this endless repeating loop! if only immigrants were allowed to be president! then henry kissinger could save us, with his secret doomsday device! i actually have a proposal for a doomsday device. the heaviest naturally occurring element on earth is uranium, and gravity naturally pulls most of the planet’s uranium into the inner core. simply drill a hole to the center of the earth and drop a nuclear bomb down there. since the center of earth’s core is made of highly fissionable uranium, a nuclear chain reaction would be triggered, causing a huge explosion that would blow the entire planet into itty bitty bits. all life forms on earth, even cockroaches, would be completely exterminated. no more need to call tom delay, the exterminator! all thanks to the doomsday device, which would save us from the endlessly repeating cycle of bushes and clintons. of course, we could just vote for someone else. but that would be too easy. and how could we ever get enough people across america to mobilize for a vote that is for neither a bush nor a clinton? are human beings even physically capable of voting for candidates whose last names are neither bush nor clinton? only time will tell. but as for me, i have not donated any money at all to any political candidates. and i am glad about that. it would be a waste for me to give money to a politician, since i would get nothing in return. they would only end up losing the election, and someone i hate would win anyway, like always. that is the genius of american democracy. the nation is always led by someone who is universally despised by half the population. and we spend so much time arguing amongst ourselves, we are ripe targets for foreigners to attack. it is impossible for us to unite behind a single leader because we all hate each other. instead of hating hate and fearing fear, we hate fear and fear hate. we have had the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on terror, and even the war on christmas. which comes next? world war 3 or civil war 2? we can only unite as a nation if we have a common enemy that everyone in our nation can fight, such as the rest of the world combined. that adds up to about 200 nations that would be our enemies in the war on anti-america (anti-america is everything that is not america). since we have already alienated the rest of the world and become the most hated and feared nation in the world, it is time to exercise our national sovereignty by declaring all alliances and treaties with other nations null and void, and declaring war on every single nation in the entire world, including ourselves. then we can pursue the goal of complete world domination and a pax americana that would happen afterwards, using the doomsday device as a negotiating tool. we can follow andy rooney’s advice and make english the only language in the entire world. it will be the end of history, as predicted by francis fukayama. the bush-clinton dynasty will alternate in control of the entire globe... a new world order. of course, none of this will happen unless i get the doomsday device built for henry kissinger. if the doomsday device is not built, the world will be taken over by islamic fundamentalist fire-breathing dragons, illegal aliens from outer space, and giant lesbian marxist gorillas... that is, prior to the robocratic revolution.

some politics bullshit

ok, this time i just want to talk about some politics bullshit. first of all, the heroic rep. dennis kucinich of ohio successfully got an impeachment resolution on the floor of the house and after majority leader major league asshole steny hoyer tried to kill the measure, the republicans, ironically enough, voted to keep the impeachment resolution alive, wrongly thinking that it would make the democrats look bad. in the end, the democrats all voted to send the articles of impeachment to the house judiciary committee, headed by john conyers, and the republicans all voted against that. oh, and this impeachment is against dick cheney, not george w. bush. anyway, the media barely covered the fact that the impeachment of dick cheney has begun, and the few pieces they did do all ridiculed dennis kucinich and the idea of impeachment. so in a way the republicans were right when they thought this would make democrats look bad. although a majority of americans favor beginning impeachment proceedings against dick cheney, the media is badly out of touch with america, and things that most americans think of as common sense seem ridiculous and stupid to the out-of-touch elitists in the media.

now the democrats did manage to override a veto of president bush’s for the first time. of course, all of bush’s vetoes so far have been completely unjustified and wrong and everything he vetoed should have been passed into law. this includes things like stem cell research, ending the war in iraq, and the state childrens’ health insurance program. bush’s justifications for vetoes are always full of lies and misinformation but it seems the crazy weirdos in the bush white house actually believe all the bullshit they say. like for the childrens’ health insurance, there were lies about how the program let adults and illegal immigrants and people in the upper middle class collect benefits, all of which were completely untrue. and some republicans in congress actually told the truth about how they oppose any government involvement in healthcare, rather than hiding behind lies and bullshit like the majority of the republicans, who falsely claimed they wanted to renew the program. so anyway, this veto override was a water projects bill, which authorizes many government-sponsored projects all around the country, all related to water, most notably in the areas affected by hurricane katrina, and in the everglades of florida. the bill (actually a law now) authorized all these programs but did not provide any funding for them; they have to be funded separately (but actually they do not have to be funded; congress can decide to only fund some of them or only fund them partially). so really there was no reason to veto this water projects bill since despite bush’s lies, the bill did not contain any spending, but rather authorized future legislation to contain spending. more recently, since this veto override, the house passed a tax bill without a single republican voting in favor. the tax bill would eliminate the alternative minimum tax, a tax which neither party likes and everyone wants to eliminate, and pay for this by raising the taxes on hedge fund and private equity fund managers from the capital gains tax rate to the income tax rate (which is over twice as high, at least for rich people). i am not sure of the exact figures, but i think i read that something like 26 million people would get a tax cut by having their alternative minimum tax eliminated, and only 50,000 people would get a tax increase because they are private equity or hedge fund managers. something like that, those numbers might be different. anyway, that is like 500 times as many people getting a tax cut as a tax increase. but the republicans, liars that they are, continually called this measure a tax increase, even though it would only be a tax increase for a very small number of very wealthy people who pay hardly any taxes under the current law, and all the bill does is make them pay their fair share just like everybody else, instead of getting away with tax evasion by taking advantage of legal loopholes in the current tax law. time and time again, republicans prove that they only care about the ultra-super-mega-wealthy and nobody else. then again, who do you think donates all the money to republican campaigns? republicans trick ordinary people into supporting a tax system that favors the wealthy by tricking people into thinking they have more than a snowball’s chance in hell of becoming wealthy someday. since people are tricked into thinking they may someday become wealthy, they incorrectly vote for politicians who help the super-wealthy and hurt everyone else. and those people never become wealthy; they only think they will become wealthy. wealth is becoming concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals, and the gap between the rich and poor continues to widen. republicans promote policies that make this gap even worse, thus creating a situation where class warfare may at some point in time occur, with poor people taking up arms and stealing all the things that belong to the wealthy, at gunpoint, in a mass uprising of thieves. the only thing protecting the wealthy from this is the government and its police and laws (and maybe bodyguards and home security systems too). anyway, one of the main purposes of government appears to be to protect the wealthy from having any of their wealth stolen from them by those who are less fortunate. so it is perfectly reasonable for the government to collect taxes in exchange for protecting the wealthy from the angry masses who despise them. the wealthy should be happy to pay the taxes, since they do not really need the money anyway since they have too much to even spend, and the government will use it to protect them from anyone who wishes them harm. now the mindless idiot republicans all want to eliminate the alternative minimum tax without any tax increase or spending cut to prevent this from increasing the budget deficit and the national debt. why are they such mindless idiots? well they fail to realize that any tax cut that occurs now will cause a decrease in government revenue but no change in government spending, thus increasing the budget deficit, which will be added to the national debt, and then the government will have to pay all the money back, with interest... very high interest. in other words, any tax cut that occurs now will require a much bigger tax increase in the future, to pay for it. future generations will bear the burden of paying off the mountain of debt accumulated by short-sighted politicians who cannot manage money. neither party is good at managing money, but republicans have proven themselves time and time again to be the worst possible stewards of our nation’s finances, continually cutting taxes and raising spending to create ever-higher deficits and debts that future generations will need to pay off. all of the republican propaganda about cutting spending along with taxes and being fiscally conservative turned out to be complete and utter bullshit, and republican politicians in washington deserve no trust whatsoever from anyone. well, most of them at least... there may be a few good republicans, but i doubt it.

and that takes us to rep. ron paul, republican of texas, a congressman running for president. i have observed that all over the area i live, someone or a group of people have posted ron paul for president signs pretty much everywhere. all over the internet, whenever people are posting things about which presidential candidate they support, ron paul gets way more support than anyone else. the other day at work i saw someone wearing a ron paul button. on c-span it seems most of the callers who call in are ron paul supporters. and i have read about how on every college campus, ron paul has a much greater number of students organized to support him than any other candidate. i find all of this pretty puzzling, since this dude is a republican after all, and he supports all of the policies that favor the wealthy, and opposes universal health care as well as most existing government programs, and is anti-abortion. he is pretty unique as a republican, opposing the war in iraq and the patriot act and supporting the constitution. but he wants to take the united states out of the united nations. and he has the support of the john birch society and all the right-wing conspiracy theorists, as well as many neo-nazis such as david duke. of course, i do not really believe in guilt by association to the extent that garnering support from bad people is a bad thing. after all, the communist party of the united states did everything it could to get john kerry elected in 2004, but that should not reflect badly on john kerry. just because all the neo-nazis support ron paul, that does not necessarily mean anything bad. but ron paul is more than a little wacko. i support dennis kucinich, the guy who is trying to impeach dick cheney. dennis kucinich also voted against the iraq war and the patriot act like ron paul, but kucinich is a progressive and supports universal health care and does not want to dismantle most government agencies like ron paul. a vote for ron paul is a vote to dismantle the federal government of the united states of america. he is a libertarian, which is very very close to anarchist, except libertarians want to leave behind an itty bitty little government that is just barely big enough to prevent any other government from forming. ron paul wants to dismantle the entire public education system and replace all public schools with private schools. kinda wacky. now the only thing really weird about dennis kucinich, besides the fact that he has a really really hot new wife who has her tongue pierced and a british accent, is that he claims to have seen a ufo. also, recently dennis kucinich speculated that president bush is insane, and that got some media attention, but i agree, bush is insane. anyway, this ufo thing is the only thing about rep. kucinich that really gives me pause, besides his low poll numbers (but ron paul has low poll numbers too, in the official conspiracy polls). anyway, rep. kucinich simply said that he couldn’t identify what the flying object was; he did not say it was aliens or anything. it could have just been a plane or helicopter or bird, or a funny-looking weird-shaped dark cloud. so i don’t really think it should be too big of a deal. so he saw something weird in the sky and couldn’t tell what it was? so what? i still think he is the best candidate. and his hot wife would make the best first lady evar! now i keep hearing how more and more democrats are backing hillary clinton, and more and more republicans are backing rudy giuliani. and rudy’s closest associate, bernard kerik, who was police commissioner when rudy was mayor of nyc and was a business partner of rudy’s after he stopped being mayor and was recommended by rudy to be secretary of homeland security, this bernard kerik guy, guess what, he is a complete crook, and was arrested and indicted for a long list of very serious crimes. and rudy giuliani comes from a mafia crime family (although he did become a prosecutor and fight the mafia despite his own mafia upbringing). his own dad was in the mafia. anyway, rudy giuliani has the support of pat robertson, despite giuliani being pro-abortion and pro-homosexuality. apparently, the issues that pat robertson has claimed are most important to him, for many years, are not important to him at all anymore. so pat robertson has basically proven himself to be a right-wing republican political hack and not really a religious leader at all, just a complete fraud. all of the religious beliefs he claimed to have... well... they don’t matter anymore and pat robertson is supporting a candidate who goes against everything he claims to believe in. well, rudy giuliani, with friends like bernard kerik and pat robertson, who needs enemies? as for hillary clinton, she is the most conservative of all the democratic candidates... the establishment candidate... the one who will maintain the status quo in washington, d.c. and by the way, washington, d.c. is the most undemocratic place evar! its residents cannot vote for representatives in congress or the senate. they have no representation! and their city government has its powers limited because politicians in congress get to make laws that only affect the district of columbia, and they actually use it as an experimental testing ground for new right-wing policies that the residents of washington, d.c. oppose (or at least, they did so under the republican congress for many years). the residents of our nation’s capital do, luckily, get to vote for a mayor and city council, and they do get to vote for president of the united states. but they need representation in congress! why do they lack this? pure politics... and pure racism. since the city is full of black people who vote democrat, there is no way in hell republicans want washington, d.c. residents to have any more political power, or any representation in congress. just remember what kayne west said on national tv after hurricane katrina: “george bush doesn’t care about black people.” if the republicans actually gave a damn about black people, they could show it by letting black people in washington, d.c. have representation in the house and the senate. by staunchly opposing voting rights for residents of our nation’s capital, republicans have shown their pettiness and their racism. and they have failed to uphold the principle our nation was founded on, “no taxation without representation”. residents of washington, d.c. should not have to pay any taxes based on laws passed by a congress that they have no representation in. residents of puerto rico pay no income taxes. there should be no taxes in washington, d.c. except those going to the city government, until its residents get voting representatives in both houses of congress. anyway, i am sure dennis kucinich supports full voting rights for residents of washington, d.c. i will still support him, even as i observe all the media saying hillary clinton and rudy giuliani both have their respective nominations lined up, even as i observe that in actuality, ron paul has way more supporters than anyone else, but this is being covered up by the media. the thing that disturbs me most about the ron paul phenomenon is that people are changing their party registration to republican just to vote for him in the primary. that is all well and good in the short term, but what if these people actually end up becoming loyal republicans, after they officially join the republican party with their voter registration? i certainly hope none of these people changing their registration to republican actually plan on supporting any republicans besides ron paul. haven’t we as a nation let the republicans do enough damage? as for the democrats... well... the democratic leadership certainly tries quite hard to repress people like dennis kucinich. they keep funding the war, they take impeachment off the table... and some of the failures of the republican congress that preceded the democratic congress continue to this day, such as not getting any of the regular funding bills passed. a bill needs 60 senators to get through the senate, and if the president opposes something, it needs a 2/3 majority in both houses. but that is no excuse for all the failures of the democratic congress. and these failures are the responsibility of the leadership of both houses, not the rank-and-file members. what is with all the bills that pass one of the 2 houses of congress but not the other? why can’t the leaders of the 2 houses pass the same bills in both houses? i think congress has gone from working 2 days a week to 3 days a week, or something like that. i am glad they increased it, but they should really be working 7 days a week, and have no vacations at all. they should be passing 100 times as many bills as they do now. they need to be worked like slaves. after all, they are “public servants”, and as a member of the public, i demand service from my servants! do whatever i say! i am your master! impeach the president and vice president, remove them from office, end the war in iraq, and pass universal health care... or else! and as for what is going on in turkey, did you notice that general pervez musharraf justified his actions based on a supposed threat of terrorism that he claims justifies taking away individuals’ civil liberties, and on “judicial activism”? sounds just like the republicans! if the democrats had not been elected in 2006, we would probably be headed on the same path towards dictatorship just like pakistan, and we would have permanent one-party rule just like communist china. the “permanent majority” of karl rove. and the doctrines of “executive privilege” and the “unitary executive theory” are both euphemisms for “totalitarian dictator”, by the way. executives have the privilege to do whatever the hell they want, under the unitary executive theory, with no oversight by anyone else, and they are not answerable to any courts, and any courts who dare challenge violations of the constitution are “activist judges” who need to be removed and replaced with judges who will always side in favor of government power and the executive branch. the bush administration keeps all its legal opinions secret, and tries to keep pretty much everything secret, because they have something to hide, or rather, many, many things to hide. if they had nothing to hide they would not try to keep everything so secret, after all, since all it does is make them look guilty as hell. it is ridiculous that they cannot even reveal whether they consider waterboarding to be torture and whether they think waterboarding is legal or illegal. they should all be impeached, removed from office, and tried and convicted for treason! now i am not an extremist. i do not advocate the death penalty for these cases of treason. i think life in prison without parole would be enough punishment for the likes of bush and cheney, even though that is not the maximum sentence. after all, these people do not know the difference between right and wrong, so they could use the insanity defense, and it would be valid. so perhaps we should just try and convict them of treason, let them use the insanity defense, and then put them in psychiatric hospitals for the rest of their lives. but how many bush administration officials deserve such punishment? just bush and cheney? or how about others like don rumsfeld, john ashcroft, alberto gonzales, condi rice, etc.? if we put all of them in psychiatric hospitals, there would be overcrowding, because there are so many bush administration officials! so we should probably just focus on the most high-level cases and let the lower-level ones get off with maybe a fine of $100 trillion each instead of prison. of course bush and cheney should also have to pay the fine too, along with their lifelong imprisonment. unfortunately, it seems these criminals will probably get away with their crimes and their countless violations of the constitution, with no punishment. hopefully we can at least make their lives miserable for the rest of their lives, somehow. like you know how, after o.j. simpson was acquitted for murder, everywhere he went, people yelled “murderer” at him? well we can probably just treat everyone from the bush administration like o.j. simpson once they are out of office. and foreign governments can treat them like henry kissinger (who cannot travel anywhere because of all the countries who have legal cases pending against him for crimes against humanity). they ought to be kept under house arrest, at the very least, like pervez musharraf has done to benazir bhutto. it is hard thinking of a punishment that fits the crimes of the bush administration. oh, i got it! we can just send them all to iraq, and leave them there, with no passports or return flight home! that is the ultimate punishment, the same one condi rice is trying to do to the diplomats of the state department! perfect!

reflections on those in power

here are a few reflections of mine on those in power in the united states, mainly the bush administration, republicans, and big business... (the democrats in congress are unable to wield power since it requires 2/3 majorities in both houses of congress, since the president opposes everything good they ever try to do, and enough republicans go along with him in congress so he always has his way)

1) the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen year after year. people who do not have enough money to afford things like cars, houses, and computers have been given more and more credit, more loans, more debt, and bought things they cannot afford, with things such as subprime mortgages. now, this whole system of enslaving people with debt by using advertisement to trick them into buying things they cannot afford is starting to collapse, with people losing all the things they bought, and going bankrupt. who is winning? the banks are. the banks get to reposess everything the people bought that they couldn’t afford, and people will have to work the rest of their lives to pay off their debt, and all that money will go back to the banks that tricked them into getting loans. we are also seeing this happen with student loans that people use to pay for college, people being unable to pay those off for many years, and a lot of colleges actually had secret deals between their financial aid departments and banks, which was uncovered by new york state attorney general andrew cuomo. and as for the standard of living in the united states? official statistics calculate per capita gross domestic product by dividing the total value of goods and services produced in a given year inside the country’s borders by the population of the county. this includes goods and services produced by illegal immigrants, in many cases. however, illegal immigrants are not counted in the official population statistics. this makes the per capita gross domestic product, or per capita gdp, look artificially high. the effect of this flaw in how per capita gdp is caluclated is far greater in the country of luxembourg, which, according to official statistics, is the wealthiest country in the world. this is a lie. luxembourg is not that wealthy. luxembourg is a small country between france and germany, a manufacturing center, full of factories, but the country has quite a small population. a large percentage of employees in the factories of luxembourg actually live in france and germany and commute to luxembourg for their factory jobs. thus, if you divide the amount of goods and services produced in luxembourg by the population of that tiny country, you get an inflated figure, and luxembourg ends up with a ridiculously high per capita gross domestic product in the official statistics. this is despite the fact that all those factory workers from france and germany live in houses or apartments in france and germany and spend a good portion of their income in france and germany. similarly, illegal immigrants in the united states send a lot of their money back to relatives in their home countries, as a net loss to the u.s. economy. and the jobs that illegal immigrants in the united states do are ones that u.s. citizens would be willing to do if the employers paid enough. but the employers do not want to pay enough! they want to pay low wages, lower than minimum wage, and are unwilling to pay any higher, because it would cut into their profit margin and make them less competitive with other companies that also employ illegal immigrants. meanwhile, republican politicians have for years cut taxes on the wealthy while increasing the tax burden of the poor. republicans propose replacing the income tax with a national sales tax, which they call a “fair tax”, but it is anything but fair. the “fair tax” would take the same percentage of income from someone who only makes minimum wage as someone who is a billionaire. that is far worse than the progressive income tax we have today, which, at least in theory, taxes the wealthy at a higher rate than the poor, because the wealthy have enough money to afford to pay such a tax, whereas the poor need all their money just to buy the essentials to survive. why is it that poor people are able to buy houses and big flat-screen televisions and nice cars and pay for expensive private colleges? because they get loans... free money! free money that they have to pay back... with interest. people are tricked into getting loans because their stupidity is exploited... stupidity they have because they are financially illiterate and have no idea how to handle money. and the big businesses that sell them things and give them loans have no intention of teaching people how to handle money, because that would reduce their sales and their profits. our entire economy is based on people buying things they cannot afford with borrowed money, and most of the stuff they buy is imported from countries like china, made by workers in sweatshops or in other bad working conditions. we in the united states import far more than we export, and how is this all paid for? our government itself is deeply in debt and cannot manage money, year after year spending far more than it takes in in taxes, going further and further into debt. some of this debt is to wealthy banking interests in the united states who are profiting at the expense of the american people. and some of it is to other countries like the chinese communist regime. the war in iraq costs the u.s. government hundreds of billions of dollars, and will probably go over a trillion dollars, and where does the government get this money? the money is all borrowed, and none of it is paid for by taxes. future generations, young people like me, will have to pay off this debt in the future, when taxes will be much higher... that is, unless the government goes bankrupt or has debt forgiveness like some third-world countries have managed to obtain from their creditors. the wealthy banking interests who loan money to the united states government by buying treasury bonds are the ones who finance most government activity, since republican politicians keep lowering taxes, and the money has to come from somewhere. perhaps republicans periodically lose elections on purpose when the government’s finances go south, just so they can force the democracts to raise taxes to pay for the lavish spending the republicans did on wars and other things they could not pay for. and raising taxes looks bad. so then after democrats raise taxes, which is of course essential in financing the government and paying for everything the republicans put the government into debt spending money on, the republicans can use raising taxes as a cheap political issue, manipulating the public into bringing back incompetent republican mismanagement of the government in the next election.

2) the war in iraq is based on lies and there is absolutely no reason for the united states to have military forces in that country. “we” took saddam hussein out of power (we is in quotes because i personally did not participate as a soldier or in the government and i did not even vote for anyone behind that war except senator hillary rodham clinton), and we caught him from his “spider hole” (what a joke, saddam looked like a crazy homeless guy when we caught him), and we put on a show trial and executed him. originally the war was supposedly about weapons of mass destruction: chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. dick cheney stated as fact that saddam hussein had reconstituted his nuclear program. we were told ridiculous tales of unmanned robotic flying machines that would spray poison around our major cities. colin powell made a presentation in front of the united nations of all the fake evidence our intelligence agencies had doctored up against saddam hussein’s regime; i watched that whole presentation, and it was obvious to me that the evidence was all fake, and i lost all respect for colin powell, who had been the only person in the bush administration i had any respect for at all. there was even talk of saddam hussein being connected to 9/11, sometimes even from president george w. bush. in fact, george w. bush continues to try to connect 9/11 and iraq in his speeches, even today, despite the fact that there is no connection and it is a big lie. none of the 19 hijackers were from iraq and there is no evidence of any connection, except for 2 smaller lies. one of the lies is about a meeting between representatives of saddam hussein’s government and al qaeda operatives that supposedly took place in the czech republic. that meeting never happened and the whole story was fabricated by an intelligence agency. another one concerns abu musab al-zarqawi. zarqawi was in northern iraq, the part saddam hussein did not control, and was in a small section that was not controlled by either of the 2 leading kurdish factions that control most of northern iraq. he was in a section controlled by ansar al-islam, an islamic fundamentalist group tied to al qaeda. and mr. zarqawi was also tied to al qaeda. however, this part of iraq was not controlled by saddam hussein, and saddam hussein had nothing to do with ansar al-islam, abu musab al-zarqawi, or al qaeda. zarqawi later went on to found a terrorist organization inside iraq that later renamed itself “al qaeda in mesopotamia”, but which is referred to as “al qaeda in iraq” by the united states government. zarqawi was used as a bogeyman by the united states, who blamed him for most of the biggest terrorist attacks inside iraq after the invasion, and his group publicly took credit for those attacks, as well. however, his group probably took credit for many attacks carried out by other groups, just to gain prestige and infamy. eventually the united states military killed mr. zarqawi, but we continue to blame most of the big terrorist attacks in iraq on his group, regardless of who actually carried them out. anyway, back in the fall of 2002, the united states was trying to get a resolution passed by the united nations security council against iraq. syria, which was on the security council, wanted nothing to do with it. our diplomats convinced syria to vote for the resolution by lying to the syrians and saying that we were not going to attack iraq if the resolution passed. of course, the resolution passed (unanimously because of our lies and manipulations towards the foreign diplomats), and we ended up invading iraq early in 2003, proving to the world that our nation was governed by untrustworthy liars and that nothing we said could be trusted. the resolution required iraq to send the united nations a report accounting for all weapons of mass destruction, and iraq complied. the resolution called for weapons inspections in iraq, which were done by hans blix and mohamed elbaradei. the weapons inspectors went to iraq and did robust inspections for a short period of time, searching all over iraq for weapons of mass destruction, with the full cooperation of saddam hussein’s government, and finding absolutely no weapons of mass destruction. the united states told the weapons inspectors to leave, while they were doing their job, and started a war based on the false premise of weapons of mass destruction, even though the weapons inspectors had been actively searching for weapons of mass destruction! president bush told saddam hussein he had 48 hours to leave iraq before they would begin bombing. that was an outright lie! we began bombing less than a day later, right where we thought saddam hussein was! and yet some idiots still trust president bush, even after he has proven himself to be an outright liar, so many times! and then we began the campaign of “shock and awe”, or, in other words, terrorism. shock and awe are very similar in meaning to terror, but basically, we were dropping giant bombs everywhere and killing innocent civilians. and our soldiers in iraq use depleted uranium munitions, which poison people, causing cancer, birth defects, and other health problems. the iraqi forces quickly surrendered to the might of the united states military and a very small number of coalition partners, the so-called “coalition of the willing”, mostly tiny countries who had been bribed by our government into giving us token assistance of very small numbers of troops. the only major contribution from another country was from the united kingdom, led by tony blair, who was stupid enough to fall for the neoconservative theories of foreign policy and become a true believer in neoconservatism, completely brainwashed. of course, now that the united kingdom is led by gordon brown, he is trying to end british involvement in iraq as fast as possible, falsely claiming that the british have achieved victory in the area they controlled, mainly basra, when in fact they are fleeing in defeat. anyway, before the war, dick cheney formed his own miniature intelligence agency, inside the vice president’s office, because he did not like what was coming out of the cia and did not think they justified the war strongly enough or had a strong enough case against saddam hussein. so dick cheney brought in people like ahmed chalabi to give evidence against iraq. ahmed chalabi is a chameleon-like figure... in washington, he is a neoconservative who advocated war with iraq and produced false evidence against saddam hussein justifying a war. in iraq, he is a politician who distances himself from the united states and tries to pretend he is independent and a patriot. and in iran, he cozies up to the mullahs and tries to show that he is really one of their allies. dick cheney’s chief of staff, “scooter” libby, was deeply involved in all of these operations of producing false evidence to justify a war with iraq, and later he was convicted of perjury in the investigation of the affair of how the bush administration leaked the identity of cia agent valerie plame as revenge against her husband joseph wilson, who had written an article detailing how the bush administration lied to get us into war in iraq. the forces of saddam hussein’s government disbanded and refused to fight us, keeping their guns and weapons and going into hiding, thus allowing us to appear to win the war against them quite quickly. within less than a month the former regime was completely toppled. and then george w. bush dressed up like an air force pilot and landed on an aircraft carrier for a big photo op with a giant “mission accomplished” banner where he declared “major combat operations in iraq are over”. of course he was never a real soldier, and had used his family connections to get into the texas air national guard during the vietnam war to avoid serving in vietnam, and then he actually went awol, but his official records did not say he went awol, because, again, he used his family connections. george w. bush is a man who, throughout his life, just like j. r. “bob” dobbs, made a million bucks every time he screwed up. always an incompetent fool, who had a c average at yale, he kept getting onto corporate boards despite his stupidity and lack of business sense... all the businesses he ever ran went bankrupt. anyway, “major combat operations in iraq are over” turned out to be a big lie, and we have actually increased troop levels since that declaration, most notably in this so-called “surge” that bush started in early 2007, even though the voters in the 2006 elections elected democrats who promised to end the war. the whole “surge” is bush’s way of saying “fuck you” to the american electorate who elected candidates who promised to end the war just 2 months before the surge started. and who is profiting off this war? well, the war is not financed by taxpayers, since republicans have not only failed to raise taxes in order to pay for the war. they actually lowered taxes while we were at war, the first time in our nation’s history. that is their way of saying “fuck you” to the young people of our country like me who will have to work hard and pay taxes in future years in order to pay off the massive national debt these idiots keep racking up every time they lower taxes and increase spending with their voodoo economics and their fuzzy math and their laffer curve. and as dick cheney said, “reagan proved deficits don’t matter”. thanks a lot, asshole. democrats had to raise taxes to keep the government from going bankrupt, due to the massive deficits year after year caused by reagan’s voodoo economics, and the democrats’ reward in 1994 was newt gingrich and the republicans coming to power. anyway, this war just keeps on going and going and going, like an energizer battery with that pink bunny that keeps hitting its drum. at first, the iraqis were fighting an insurgency against our occupation forces, while paul bremer made himself emperor of iraq and there was a council of iraqi exiles brought in to advise him who had no real power. and paul bremer disbanded the iraqi military and did de-baathification and tried to privatize the iraqi oil industry so that big oil companies could buy up iraqi oil fields cheaply. all of those policies of paul bremer turned into massive failures and fueled the insurgency against our troops. just like when president bush said “bring ’em on”, inviting terrorists to attack our troops. but what does he care, since neither of his kids has any chance of being sent to war, since they are both girlies? he cares nothing about our troops, and keeps sending more and more of them off to get killed senselessly in pursuit of a failed strategy. and what about the no-bid contracts to companies like dick cheney’s halliburton? rather than having competitive bidding so that the most qualified company that is most efficient and best able to contain costs wins military contracts in iraq, the bush administration gave out contracts without bidding, to companies run by their friends. and everyone knows that a large number of top bush administration officials are former oil company executives... and bush himself was good friends with ken lay, the ceo of enron when it went bankrupt, the company that manipulated california’s energy markets, one of the companies whose leaders probably participated in dick cheney’s secret energy policy meetings back in early 2001. but war profiteers are not just limited to companies that have contracts with the defense department. the state department, too, is wasting taxpayer money on war profiteers, with its contracts with companies like blackwater. blackwater is the company that the iraqi government wants out of the country within 6 months, because they killed innocent civilians using excessive force, in several separate incidents. and blackwater employees are paid much higher salaries than u.s. soldiers, who are just as well qualified to do the same job protecting our diplomats in iraq. these excessive salaries are part of the war profiteering... it would make much more sense and be much cheaper to have u.s. soldiers do the same job that blackwater has been doing. and the same goes for other private security contractors used by the united states in iraq. why, then, do we use these private security contractors, if they are such a waste of our government’s limited financial resources? for one reason, the companies are led by people with close ties to the republican party who give a lot of donations to republicans (at least that is true for blackwater and halliburton). another reason to use these private mercenary armies is that the united states military simply does not have enough soldiers for iraq. we might have enough soldiers if we withdrew our troops from all the other countries around the world where we have troops stationed. over half the countries in the world have united states troops stationed in them, by the way. we have over half the world under military occupation (although perhaps that language of “occupation” is a bit strong for me to use). anyway, the iraqis do not want us there, according to all the opinion polls in that country. the iraqis think of us as their enemy and think it is justified to kill our forces. so actually, the people killing our troops are not terrorists. they are fighting to free their country from foreign military occupation. the patriots who founded the united states similarly fought to free the united states from british military occupation. of course, the iraqi government wants to keep our troops there, but only because that is the only thing protecting the iraqi politicians from all the people who want to kill them. iraq has become the most violent country in the world, since we invaded it, and our military is the only thing protecting the iraqi politicians, who get to meet in the green zone, the only safe part of iraq. so of course the iraqi politicians want us to stay, because if we leave, their own citizens will rise up in arms and kill them, because hardly any iraqis view their government as legitimate. the iraqi government is viewed as american puppets, and rightly so. as for all the sectarian violence between sunnis and shiites, i think that was actually instigated by our military as part of a “divide and conquer” strategy against the insurgents. originally, sunnis and shiites fought an insurgency against our troops, side by side, fighting for national liberation from their foreign occupiers. but the united states managed to turn the sunnis and shiites against each other and get them to fight each other, rather than our troops, as part of a strategy to reduce the killings of our own troops so we could establish permanent bases and occupy iraq forever. now more recent developments in northern iraq are interesting: the kurdish separatist group known as the pkk, which the united states and turkey both call a terrorist group, is holed up in mountainous areas in the border region between kurdish-controlled northern iraq and turkey. the pkk are carrying out terrorist attacks against turkey, and turkey has already started making military incursions into northern iraq, although they are trying to keep that from being reported on. the turkish parliament has authorized a full-scale invasion of iraq, and there is public outcry all over turkey calling for an invasion of iraq, calling for war, protesting against the inaction of the turkish government and its failure to have already invaded northern iraq. the united states commander for northern iraq has said that he will do absolutely nothing to fight the pkk, and will not interfere if the turks invade, or offer any support to either the turks or the pkk. so it seems the conflict in iraq is spilling out into neighboring countries already, and destabilizing the entire region, which is actually what the neoconservatives wanted to happen all along.

3) the libertarians pose quite a problem. libertarians are people who claim they want to maximize individual liberty and freedom. libertarians want to shrink the size of government to be very small, legalize as many illegal things as possible, cut both taxes and government spending as much as possible, and deregulate everything. they want to take us as close as possible to anarchy without actually having anarchy, while still preserving a minimalist government, one that is just barely big enough to prevent any rival governments from trying to establish themselves, just barely big enough to maintain order. now, while i agree with libertarians on social issues, on drug legalization and things like that, i think they are completely wrongheaded when it comes to economic issues. libertarians, just like republicans, have a faith-based approach to economics, putting all their faith in the free market and the invisible hand of adam smith, thinking it is best to deregulate and privatize everything, and accusing anyone who disagrees with this as being a socialist. they view economics in black and white and not shades of gray, thinking you either support capitalism or socialism, and there is nothing in between, and that capitalism is much better. libertarians have a presidential candidate running in the republican primaries, ron paul. many libertarians rightly oppose the war in iraq and the patriot act and illegal warrentless wiretapping and other abuses of power by the bush administration. libertarians get pretty much everything right, except for anything that has to do with economics or the environment. libertarians have a long history of opposing the environmental movement and a lot of them are skeptics of global warming, or even if they believe in global warming, they do not want the government to do anything at all about it. the basic flaw with their view of economics is they do not account for 2 things: negative externalities and market failure. negative externalities and market failure are the 2 circumstances where free market capitalism fails and government intervention is required. one type of negative externality is pollution. if a factory is dumping toxic waste into a lake that people like to swim in that is used for a town’s water supply, libertarians would not do anything at all to stop this. if we followed their policies of deregulation and legalizing everything, there would be no punishment for poisoning everyone in your town. libertarians also want to privatize the educational system, and some even want to privatize the entire military. libertarians have some influence in the republican party, but only on economic issues. only on the issues libertarians are wrong about. not on the issues they are right about. on most of the issues libertarians are right about, democrats agree. of course there are a few exceptions, such as legalizing things like drugs and prostitution and gambling. but democrats are definitely more permissive in social issues about legalizing things than republicans are. republicans want to regulate sex. they do not like birth control or family planning or abortion or homosexuality or sex outside of marriage. republicans think that the only sex anyone should ever have is with someone they are married to, who is of the opposite sex, who is not part of a polygamous marriage, where no birth control is involved, no condoms, and it has to be standard coitus, where the penis goes into the vagina, and both people are 18 years of age or older, and all other types of sexual intercourse are outlawed. at least that is the view of the religious right, which is the largest republican constituency and the 2nd most powerful, after big business. perhaps republicans do not actually agree with these regressive policies towards sex, but only pretend to, and do token gestures to appeal to the religious right without actually enacting anything into law to further regulate sex. libertarians correctly oppose regulation of sex, as do democrats, but many libertarians wrongly vote for republicans, simply because of their wrongheaded ideas on economic issues. libertarians, in voting republican, fail to realize that democrats agree much better with libertarians on most other issues besides the economic ones. the punishment for drug users/abusers ought to be drug treatment and rehab, not going to jail (especially not a long jail sentence under new york state’s rockefeller drug laws). why not simply legalize drugs? a main part of the appeal of drugs, especially to younger people, is that they are illegal, which makes them cool, something rebellious, a way to stand up to authority. well what if authority and the laws said drugs are legal? then it isn’t so cool anymore. then druggies are losers. then there is no point in doing drugs in the first place. this is just about the only issue that libertarians get right that most democrats get wrong. but if we followed libertarian economic policies, it would simply make the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. and the minimum wage and child labor laws are both things libertarians want to get rid of... bad idea. i see the libertarians as a problem because i think people might become libertarians as a reaction against republicans and neoconservative foreign policy and big brother and the government doing warrentless wiretaps and detaining people indefinitely without trial in defiance of habeas corpus. and then they would be misled and end up fighting against the environmental movement and fighting for lower taxes on the wealthy and deregulation and other things that help big business and hurt everyone else. one of the major influences on many libertarians is ayn rand and her objectivist movement, who advocate a back-asswards system of morality where selfishness is good and actually giving a damn about other people is evil. to objectivists, the most moral person is the greediest person, and the least moral person is the most generous person. ayn rand escaped the soviet union to come to the united states, and her entire philosophy is based around her strong opposition to communism, and her desire to form a philosophy that is the exact opposite of communism. but it is an overreaction, and is reactionary, and goes too far towards the extremes of “free” market capitalism and radical individualism. libertarians fail to recognize that if they dismantle the government and prevent it from oppressing the people, the corporations and all the former government entities that got privatized will oppress people even worse. corporations are theoretically only accountable to their shareholders, but most corporations are not even accountable to them. there have been some shareholder revolts lately, with shareholders upset with how the corporations they owned were won, but lately it seems top corporate executives have been able to outmaneuver shareholder activists who try to hold them accountable. corporate executive salaries are going through the roof despite declining incomes for average people, and shareholders are unable to do anything about it, despite the fact that they own the corporations. it is madness to put more power in the hands of corporations, since they are, in practice, accountable to nobody at all. that is why i do not want people to be misled into becoming libertarians or supporting ron paul. people ought to be democrats. sure, the democrats are not perfect. nobody is. but at least democrats want to take us in the right direction, even if they do not fight hard enough. at least they want to end the iraq war, even if they continue to fail to do so. most of the failures of the democratic congress that took office in january of this year are due to republican obstructionism, both by republicans in the senate who filibuster everything, and by the president who vetoes everything. if it weren’t for republican obstructionists, we democrats could get a lot more good things done for this country. of course the republicans have every right to be obstructionists, under our constitutional system. it just means the people need to vote them all out of office in the next election. if democrats had a 2/3 majority in both houses of congress and had the presidency, then maybe we could start getting things done for real. maybe we could do something about how only 2 out of 9 supreme court justices were appointed by democrats, and 7 out of 9 were appointed by republicans. and 4 of the 7 appointed by republicans are right-wing extremists: antonin scalia, clarence thomas, john roberts, and samuel alito. 4/9 of our supreme court are right-wing extremists. it just takes one more and then you can say goodbye to all your freedoms like habeas corpus, and all the rest. and republican presidential candidates, except for ron paul, all support the president’s failed strategy in iraq, the “surge”, and are very hawkish towards iran, meaning, if one of them gets elected, it will mean more pointless and stupid wars based on lies that waste countless lives and countless billions of dollars, and a supreme court filled with right-wing extremists. and if ron paul became president? well then you can say goodbye to the united states government. of course, you probably hate the united states government and would like to get rid of it. so then go ahead, vote for ron paul. but then don’t come crying to me about negative externalities and market failure once everything is privatized and deregulated and legalized.

my sister had a baby

last week my sister had a baby. here are some pictures of it. you can read about it on her blog. the baby is a girl named erica renee watson. so now i am an uncle! yay! i don’t really know much about what goes on with my sister, since she has lived far away from me for years, first at a private school in poughkeepsie, then at beloit college in wisconsin, then in texas, and now she has been living in vienna, austria, ever since january of this year. it was maybe 2 years ago that she got married to matt watson, whose name is not really matt watson, or at least matt isn’t his first name, but his middle name that everyone uses to address him or refer to him. my mom is over there in austria with my sister and her husband and the baby and 2 vicious beastly dogs. and i am here in upstate new york with my dad and my silly little cute fluffy dog.

you know, i went to work today, and got sent home, because there is no work for anyone on my project today. my project is for a new york state government agency, and they don’t have any work on national holidays. there is still work today for people working on private contracts, the ones with other companies.

so anyway the weather is really hot today. this hot weather must be the result of global warming, caused by the heat coming up from hell as record numbers of sinners’ souls are sent down there for eternal torment. or maybe global warming is caused by greenhouse gas emissions like all the so-called “scientists” say. but aren’t these “scientists” the same ones who believe in ridiculous theories like evolution, gravity, or the world being round? an award-winning economist and new york times columnist, thomas friedman, wrote a book in 2005 called the world is flat. and yet so-called “scientists” continue to insist that the world is round, the same ridiculous theory that christopher columbus believed when he landed in america and thought it was india. join the flat earth society or the creationists or the people who deny global warming, or the antigravity coalition. there is a famous girl on youtube called lonelygirl15 who used to do video segments called “proving science wrong”. i am sure she has a lot of fans in the republican party. after all, those are the people who believe in “intelligent design”. personally, i support the theory of “retarded design”. there are some “scientific” theories that are actually just pseudoscience, though... there is no evidence to support superstring theory, other than the fact that it does not directly contradict any observable facts about reality. but anybody can make up a crazy theory that does not contradict any observable facts. most of the harebrained theories that the religious right comes up with, however, are not that well thought out, and actually do contradict observable facts about reality. all of their nonsense about “moral values” is repulsive because they think hating people who are different and being greedy and not caring about other people are good values. i find it hilarious that the religious right cannot find a conservative republican wealthy old christian white male who is hateful and evil enough for them to like him. they want a candidate who denounces evolution, who denounces homosexuality, who denounces any sex outside marriage, who denounces divorce, who denounces abortion, who denounces birth control such as condoms, who denounces interracial sex, and who basically advocates that everyone mindlessly pair up with the first person of the opposite sex and the same ethnicity who is willing to pair up with them, without asking any questions, and marry them and make lots of babies and never ever divorce even if your spouse beats you and cheats on you, and brainwash all the babies to be hateful bigoted mindless drones. it seems most of the religious right’s obsessions outside of denouncing proven scientific theories are with limiting access to sexual intercourse with a long list of rules about unacceptable circumstances for sex, so that there is only one type of sex left, namely sex between married spouses of opposite genders but the same race in the missionary position with no birth control. as for whether the marriages are polygamous, or if they are incestuous ones between first cousins, well, as the fundamentalist church of jesus christ of latter day saints has shown us, the exact rules for sex may vary between christian fundamentalist denominations. but, i think the best way to think about religious right churches is that they are basically dangerous mind-control cults, except much larger and more dangerous and influential. they preach a crazy and stupid message about how the end of the world is coming soon and everyone who does not share their exact same beliefs will go to hell for all eternity. the republican party has had close ties to these cults ever since ronald reagan became president or maybe even earlier. and preachers like pat robertson and jerry falwell got to be so famous and influential because they had wealthy backers such as sun myung moon, the infamous crazy korean cult leader who to this day publishes the washington times, which ronald reagan famously called his favorite newspaper. most of these religious right cults at least claim to be christian, and most of them are not led by people claiming to be jesus christ or the messiah. but it is hard for me to see much of a distinction between crazy cults and “mainstream” religions. it is all the same bullshit, the same brainwashing. and i am sick and tired of it. and the fundamentalist followers of one religion vigorously denounce all other religions. a fundamentalist christian denounces islam and cults such as scientology. and most of those criticisms are correct. but they fail to see the faults in their own belief system. some of the criticisms made are just irrelevant from the standpoint of a nonbeliever, like how fundamentalist christians denounce mormons or jehova’s witnesses for having different theology from in their denominations. there are good resources like the skeptic’s annotated bible, luckily. oh, and for a good example of a hateful right-wing christian fundamentalist fanatic, i highly recommend watching the videos of venomfangx... the harder he tries to promote his religion, the more he does to discredit it. i love how he denounces “evolutionists” as evil and satanic. he is such a self-parody!

anyway, my sister had a baby. i do not really know all that much about it since i live on a different continent from her and the baby and the baby’s daddy, and even my mommy is now over there in europe. my daddy was over there earlier this year to visit them. i think that even at this early stage in her development, the baby erica renee watson is probably at least 10 times smarter than the venomfangx idiot on youtube. both of erica’s parents are geniuses and scientists, after all. erica will probably be the first person on mars or invent a cure for cancer or something.