Unabashed

General Wesley Clark, an Obama supporter, never missing an opportunity to smear the opponent of his preferred candidate, had this to say about McCain’s service record:

Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president

And if you read that within the context, understanding that Clark was asked about how Senator McCain’s national security policies might be influenced by his military service, you realize two things:

1. General Wesley Clark is a stooge for the Democratic party.
2. General Wesley Clark is an asshole.

For starters, Clark has an opportunity in this interview to take the high road, but makes it abundantly clear that he is in this game only to smear the McCain camp as much as he can. Especially when you consider that his argument against McCain began with “in the matters of national security policy making, it’s a matter of understanding risk, it’s a matter of gauging your opponents and it’s a matter of being held accountable. John McCain’s never done any of that in his official positions.” To which an open-minded observer might ask: And Obama has? And that is the point: taking every chance to smear the opponent. Thankfully, the interviewer noted the remark and added, “I have to say, Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down. I mean…” To which Clark has to crawfish, saying, “But Barack is not–he is not running on the fact that he has made these national security pronouncements, he’s running on his other strengths. He’s running on the strengths of character, on the strengths of his communication skills, on the strengths of his judgment, and those are qualities that we seek in our national leadership.”

To Senator Obama’s immense credit, he’s distanced himself from the statement. His campaign spokesman said: “Senator Obama honors and respects Senator McCain’s service, and of course he rejects yesterday’s statement by General Clark.”

In the end, I can only observe that Clark has done no harm to the McCain camp, and no good for the Obama camp. He’s only proven two things, and I listed those above.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: clark, Interview, mccain, obama

It’s no great mystery that I live in a primarily conservative state. Alabama is a red state, and it’s hard to imagine that changing very much. I generally don’t talk politics with friends or family, unless I’ve already got an idea of how they’re inclined to think, because there aren’t many more futile things to do. They believe one way, the right way, and there’s no changing that, no altering it, absolutely no pliancy. I do have my conservative leanings, but I’m far, far to the left as far as most folks around here are concerned. So, in order to keep from being considered “wacky” or “goofy,” I keep my politics to myself. But this weekend when I was visiting with my mother, my step father began talking and I felt my blood boil. He began by telling me what lousy shape we were going to be in if Obama becomes president.

“We’re already in lousy shape,” I replied. “And you can blame that on Bush.”

Surprisingly, he nodded at that. I couldn’t really believe he was agreeing with me, I thought I was traipsing way out on a limb, but evidently it’s more commonly accepted that W has placed a noose around all our necks than I’d thought. Even among my fellow Alabamians.

“But it’ll get worse if Obama is elected,” he said.

“Why is that?” I asked.

“You just watch, if he gets elected, he’s going to give that preacher of his a job in his cabinet. Maybe even Secretary of State.”

Whoa, was he talking about Jeremiah Wright, the controversial reverend who Obama’s publicly disassociated himself with? “But he denounced that preacher,” I said. “Publicly.”

He nodded, knowingly, with his smug expression, as if he had all the answers in the world, and said, “You just wait and see if he doesn’t. He’s going to side with the Muslims.”

At this point everything kind of happened in a blur. I accused him of slander. I reminded him that his beloved Ronald Wilson Reagan was predicted to be the anti-Christ at one point early in his presidency because he had six letters in each of his three names, which made it obvious to some people that he was from the devil. I told him I wasn’t convinced who I was voting for, but it damn sure wasn’t going to be based on the information I’d gathered from the Bubba crowd of ill-wishers who think the country has to be run by a Republican or it’s going to go up in flames, especially when it is, right now, in as bad a shape as it’s been in since the Great Depression, and it was a Republican who drove it into the fire. I also told him that I was convinced that the good ol’ boy network wasn’t going to vote for him because he’s black, and that they’ll do anything to sabotage his campaign, even resorting to petty slander and baseless character defamation when they’ve got nothing solid to use.

At that point my mother told me I needed to calm down a little bit. And I realized I was raving, and I regretted it immensely. This is exactly why I don’t like to talk politics, I thought, but it was too late, I’d already accused my step dad, essentially, of belonging to a racist Bubba faction of conservative politics. Things got really quiet for several long minutes. And then my step dad said, quietly, “You know, I would have voted for Colin Powell if he’d run.” And of course he would have, because Powell would have run on the right ticket. He couldn’t be evil because he isn’t a liberal. I pointed out, politely, that Powell’s politics were a lot less conservative than most Republicans and left it at that.

Down here, people pick their political parties like they pick their trucks, or their favorite sports team: Ford or Chevy, Republican or Democrat, Alabama or Auburn, and they support them no matter what. It’s a marriage of sorts, and it’s intended by God (obviously) to last one’s entire life, no questions asked, right or wrong. Even the Democrats vote blindly for their party, as I’m sure most of the country does, too. And that’s the biggest problem I have with the two-party system. People want their team to win, and even if the other party has a vastly, obviously superior candidate, they’ll still vote in their dumdum, just because they want their party to win. And if they lose, they’ll never be convinced that the president will ever do anything worth doing. They just criticize, non-stop, in hopes of getting their team’s candidate elected the next time. It is for that reason alone that I will not claim a party. I will try my best to look through the party lines, to see where they stand on actual issues that I care about and then vote for them. And I am sick to death of hearing the one side slander Obama and the other side slander McCain. It’s almost impossible to know what any candidate actually believes and stands for, because there’s always going to be one faction who’s convinced that the opposing candidate is the enemy and must be slandered at all cost. I hardly ever hear anyone touting their own favorite candidate, giving me their policies and positions, I just hear people trying to rub dirt onto the candidate they’re not supporting. My policy is simple: If you begin talking politics and say anything negative, I will shut down and not listen to anything you say. Give me the good of any and all sides and I’ll be raptly paying attention, with genuine interest, and I’ll let you know what I think when you’re done. This goes for all you candidates, too: smear campaigns do nothing for me. I won’t listen to them.

Politics suck; God bless America; Roll Tide!

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Alabama, America, Barack Obama, Conservative, Democrat, John McCain, Liberal, Lines, Party, President, Republican, Ronald Wilson Reagan

Go and read this. Spend your money accordingly. Vote for change.

the direct costs of the Iraq war exceed the maximum cost estimate for a manned Mars expedition, infrastructure and all, by 20%. If we take $20Bn as the cost per mission and $450Bn as the cost to develop the technology to go there, the direct cost of the Iraq war would be sufficient to develop a gold-plated Mars expeditionary capability and send six crews of astronauts to Mars (and bring them back afterwards).

Thanks, Charlie, for this observation that puts perspective on a situation that we should all be very, very concerned about.  

written by Matt Mitchell

From Cory Doctorow, quoting Matt Mason:

Pirates are out there figuring out all the ways that products and services might catch on, outside of the realm of the managed, slow-moving corporate environment. It turns out that there’s a market for DVDs sold on blankets on Canal Street; that the public likes using BitTorrent even if it starts slow and doesn’t stream; that there’s a bottomless appetite for short, embeddable clips, and that the audience wants to do all the work of selecting, converting, uploading and tagging them.

If you want to get rich off the pirates who are leeching off you, just copy their best ideas.

“The problem for artists isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity”

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Cory Doctorow, piracy

Politics, lately, is all I’ve been reading of. Found this tidbit and thought it interesting, although I don’t imagine it would happen (even though there are those who would welcome it).

A well thought out and provocative look at the 1962 work of sociologist James Davies, who laid out seven preconditions for violent revolution. The author stresses the point that all of these preconditions have now been met to one degree or another in the current U.S.

The seven conditions are:
1. Soaring then crashing standards of living
2. Rising class war/disillusionment
3. A generation of abandoned intellectuals (hey that’s you guys)
4. Incompetent government
5. Failure of leadership
6. Fiscal Irresponsibility
7. Inept and inconsistent use of force

Do you think a revolution is coming? Personally, I don’t. The reason is simple: when the dollar crashes we won’t be thinking about anything but survival, much less revolt. Whoever gets elected president is about to inherit a big busload of crap to sift through. More on this later…

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: dollar, hegemony, revolt, Revolution

Reflections by Comrade Fidel. Oh yeah, he should get a blog, or at least set up RSS for these articles.

El Jefe is jefe no more, handing the reigns to brother Raul, ending the tenure of the Last Great Revolutionary. What does this bode for Cuba, pearl of the Caribbean Sea? Not much in the immediate future, as Raul is fundamentally and ideologically as hard-line as Fidel. But Raul will likely want to leave his own mark in the history books of Cuba, rather than being a simple note at the end of Fidel’s paragraph: “At this point Raul assumed power and everything was the same as before.” I believe Raul will do something, but what that something will be I have no idea.

For Fidel, it looks like blogging will occupy a bit of his time for a while. And what a great blog that would be, too. No, he won’t call it a blog, but essentially that’s what it’ll be, and for the time being he’s calling it “Reflections by Comrade Fidel.” His first entry is interesting enough to make me want to read more. The enigmatic Marxist is imminently quotable, as well:

The end of a historical period is not the same as the beginning of the end of an unsustainable system.

Cryptic, yes, but he’s talking about America there, in a way that says “this is what I have known for many years.” He believes, as he always has, that America’s system won’t support itself, that it is bound to eventually fail, and he may have been right all along, even though he may not live long enough to see the resulting cataclysm.

And he says:

At this point I am dedicating myself to the adversaries. I enjoyed watching the embarrassing position of all the candidates for the United States presidency. One by one they were obliged to announce their immediate demands of Cuba in order not to risk losing a single voter. Not that I am a Pulitzer Prize winner interrogating them on CNN on the most delicate political and even personal matters from Las Vegas, where the logic of chance of the roulette rules and where one has to make ones humble presence if aspiring to be president.

Fifty years of blockade seemed too little to the favorites. Change! Change! Change! They all cried in unison.

I agree. Change! But, inside the United States. Cuba changed long ago and will now follow a dialectical path.

Yes, dialectical and mired in poverty. Dear Jefe, your life’s work is nearing its end, and left so much unaccomplished. You fought long and hard, but in the end your island gem of the Caribbean is in little better shape than it was when you firmly announced your presence.

Fidel Castro is one of those great men, the kind who walk into a room and own it without saying a word. He always had that way about him, too, it didn’t come by way of his presidency. One thing is for certain: Fidel became the revolutionary he is because he loved Cuba and he (correctly) believed the system in place at the time was corrupt. He removed the corruption, but then he replaced it with dictatorial communism, firmly believing in its core theory, failing to realize that human nature would never allow it to function as designed. 

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: America, Caribbean, Castro, Embargo, Fidel, Marxism, Raul, Revolution, Revolutionary, Trade, United States

We’re not living behind an Iron Curtain, but it sure seems like ol’ Dubya got his how-to instruction manual “How to Monitor Your Constituency…for Dummies!” from a KGB desk drawer in the Kremlin around 1978.

President Bush has failed to nominate candidates for a congressionally empowered privacy board intended to police anti-terrorism programs.

Welcome back to the Cold War, this segment sponsored by the United States of America. Oh my God.

written by Matt Mitchell

“Anonymous,” an Internet group, have declared war on Scientology, crippling a lot of Scientology websites and promising to stage a protest on February 10. It might not be as interesting as it is if the YouTube statements they’ve released weren’t so creepy.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCbKv9yiLiQ&feature=related[/youtube]

How much better would it have been if Kurt Vonnegut had started a religion instead of L. Ron Hubbard? At least Vonnegut had a sense of humor.

written by Matt Mitchell

It is time, good people of the industrialized world. Time to roll back the clocks again, yes, but more importantly it is time to ask, no–beg–the powers that be to stop screwing with the time. Daylight Saving Time might have been really important once upon a time, but no longer. Quoting a fellow blogger in his post entitled Semi-Annual Stupidity:

Here in California’s blistering-hot backward wasteland “Imperial” Valley, what the autumnal time piece tango means is that just when the weather begins to moderate a little, the powers-that-be in Sacramento and Washington mandate that we roll-back the clocks.

Which means that it’s nearly pitch-black by 5:00 PM.

And in about six months, just when it begins to get hot again, those same powers-that-be have us “spring forward” the clocks by an hour.

Which means that its often well over a 100 degrees until nearly 9:00 PM.

I wish that California’s legislature was as smart as the people of Arizona.

In Arizona, they’re too smart to waste time fooling around with clocks.

He may be a few thousand miles away from me, but I share his sentiments exactly. Working the fields is no longer the occupation of the majority of Americans, and those who do hire the help rather than wait for the kids to get home from school to start harvesting. 5:00 is too early for sunset; 8:00 in the summer is too late. Just find a happy medium and leave it be! Next spring let’s spring ahead 30 minutes and leave it at that for good. DST has become a relic, useless in modern society, and it’s time to take our clocks back. Start the revolution!

From Wikipedia:
?? Areas that observe daylight saving time
?? Areas that once observed daylight saving time
?? Areas that have never observed daylight saving time

written by Matt Mitchell

Purchase a copy of the trial minutes for a mere $8,333 which more or less proves the king of France conjured the charges as a way to eliminate the immense debt he owed the Knights.

written by Matt Mitchell

More gems from Mr. Edelman:

On things our government should be talking about but aren’t (and for the record, I agree with this point 100%; and maybe we all do):

We need an alternative energy Manhattan Project.The New York Times‘ Thomas Friedman has been yelling about this for a couple of years now, and he’s absolutely right. We need to pour money into research for alternative energy, and we need to do it soon. I don’t care how much squishy, flammable dinosaur you think is still left in the ground; someday we’re going to run out. But before we run out, there’s going to be a long period of chaos where prices hit the moon and the OPEC countries will really have us over a barrel. How mighty will our military be when we can’t afford to fuel the tanks and troop transports? How fabulous will our economy be when you’re paying $10 a gallon? But forget about the nightmare scenarios for a moment. Let’s think about this from the carrot side instead of the stick side: this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dramatically lessen the influence of Middle Eastern and South American despots. The neocons wants to bring democracy to the world? This is the way you’re going to do it.

Oooh. David, you had me at Manhattan Project.

written by Matt Mitchell

Fidel Castro’s written another article lambasting US policy, this time for conceptualizing a conversion to biofuels from fossil fuels. In it, he claims the United States will be responsible for three billion deaths due to starvation.

It’s easy enough to analyze the biofuel concept from the US point of view: our gov’t is tired of being reliant upon the Middle East for the health of its economy, and tired of funding a group of global malcontents with trillions of dollars to wage war on anyone whose lifestyle they disagree with. From Castro’s perspective, it makes perfect sense to assume the all-powerful US, overflowing with fat citizens and cash, is going to be responsible for the starvation of billions of people. America has always been the land of plenty while Cuba has struggled simply to survive. For Fidel, America is brimming with food, overrun with it, has so much of it they’re shoving it into their cars to keep them moving.

Castro, of course, is a Marxist. If America, too, was a Marxist state, it would not be the land of plenty, it would be the land of share and share alike. But then so would the rest of the world. And then, in Fidel’s mind, no one would be starving because the one-world government would ensure that the plenty of America was properly dispersed to the world’s needy mouths. And Fidel, of course, is blinded by his ego. He presumes the Marxist concept can work, even though it has proven time and time again that it cannot. I’m not saying America or the free trade system is perfect, I’m just saying Marxism is flawed from the word go. Sure, it sounds good, and the principles Fidel studied at University all made for great inspiration. But if the dissemination of foodstuff is bureaucratized, if all the corn in America is crated up for dispersal throughout the world, what would happen then?

• In Castro’s mind: the masses would be fed.
• In reality: half the food would rot, waiting for the right to be dispersed, subjected to official procedure in which a certain governor/statesman/magistrate would require something in return for his being so generous as to allow his people the benefit of what was in his possession. In waiting to ensure the people know it was he who provided for them in their time of need, even though in reality it was he who denied it to them and let it rot. This is Marxism in application. The old saying, tried and true and overused, has never been more apropos: “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
• The portion that didn’t rot and met with government officials who operated by the letter of the law, who promptly filed the paperwork to have the food disseminated and took his own portion for himself, would be distributed from centralized locations, where the public would come to receive their ration, standing in line. Better hope you like the flavor of the week, cause that’s all that’s on the menu.

It’s very easy for Fidel to blame America for his failures. America has always been his scapegoat. When Russia collapsed Fidel was left without sponsorship, and once again he arrogantly denied the obvious: Communism is a failure. Socialism might sound great in principle, but in application it cannot work, because humanity is flawed. Socialism is a great idea, sure, and the free-trade system sounds awful in comparison, ensuring the haves have and the have nots don’t get any. But in application, it works the other way around, doesn’t it?

The other giant life rule is, and we all live by it: If you want to play in the game, you’ve got to play by the rules. Castro never played by the rules. He made his own rules and led his country down the toilet. Could America have saved Cuba? Likely, yes. We’re in love with beaches, coffee, sugar, rum and cigars and we would gladly pay for all of them, in massive quantities, from Cuba, if only Fidel would play the game. Sorry, Mr. Castro, for participation in society you get a big, fat ZERO. You’ve failed your people, even though you’ve got them believing it’s America’s fault through your incessant slur campaign, raging now for sixty years. Everything that’s wrong with the world is the fault of America, everyone who is killed was killed by America, and if anyone in the world dies of starvation, it will be because America used corn for fuel.

Is biofuel the answer to America’s fossil-fuel dependency? Possibly. Willie Nelson thinks so. As for corn, well, Fidel’s not entirely wrong on all counts; America does have an excess of corn. In the past it was that excess which resulted in the creation of high-fructose corn syrup, a particularly devilish toxin that’s a primary ingredient in almost everything that tastes good. HFCS replaced sugar in EVERYTHING that sugar was previously in. You want to know why America is getting fat, check your labels for HFCS; you’ll find it in Coke, Sprite, Mt Dew, even 7-Up whose commercials report their drink ‘all natural.’ So, am I in favor of biofuel? You bet I am. It would be my sincere wish that we:

a) Stop making HFCS and use the excess corn instead for biofuel and
b) That we end the trade embargo and start buying sugar from Cuba.

I know these things aren’t going to happen. It’s not that they’re impossible, it’s just that the political machine’s wheels are greased by these specific mechanics. The embargo won’t end until Fidel’s in the grave. HFCS should have been banned years ago, but that’s another article. But biofuel–is it possible? Sustainable? Clean? Green? It could be.

written by Matt Mitchell

This article does a fine job of glossing over a problem for the benefit of not engendering any violent reprisals. Unfortunately, it’s also done a fine job of dodging the real problem, which it seems the world is well-prepared to do when it comes to the Nation of Islam. The article says that the real reason everyone’s in such a tiff is because of the potential for idolatry the cartoons threaten; the actual text:

“The drawings including one depicting the prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb have touched a raw nerve among Muslims. Islam is interpreted to forbid any illustrations of Muhammad for fear they could lead to idolatry.”

Now tell me, do you really, really believe that Muslims are threatened by a fear that these cartoons will be idolized? I hope not, because that is utter nonsense. This reporter is practicing a method I refer to as “Blind Sympathizer” reporting. They refuse to acknowledge the real problem.

Also from the article, this quote from Islamic senior cleric Mohammed Usman: “Islam says it’s all right to demonstrate but not to resort to violence… We condemn the cartoons but this does not justify violence. These rioters are defaming the name of Islam.” This statement has two important elements: 1) That Islam’s followers should not resort to violence. 2) That the Islamic rioters are defaming the name of Islam. I would like to retort that, in the modern era, violence defines Islam. The supposed reason for the riots being the defaming of Islam, it must now be neccessary for Muslims to begin killing those rioters. I know this statement is flippant; I use it only to illustrate the double-talk we’ve been getting from the Islamic leadership for years now. It’s bad and it’s getting worse, and Arafat was the master of it. Now we’ve got Iran doing the same things.

The proofs of this double-talk are so painfully obvious. For instance, how can a “peaceful Islam” account for the Nation of Islam’s constant reminder that their singular, primary goal is the utter destruction of the state of Israel. At a Teheran conference last October called “The World without Zionism,” the Iranian president called for Israel to be “wiped off the map”. He predicted: “very soon the stain of this disgrace will be purged from the centre of the Islamic world.” He warned peacemakers: “Anyone who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury.” And yet, the Islamic clerics continually preach peace. And don’t approach the argument that there are separate states of Islam and it’s only the radical sect that is preaching violence, if you do, then I believe you’ve bought into the double-speak I’m writing about. They want you to hear the message of peace while they slip in behind you with a scimitar and slice your bowels out through your back, before you have the chance to fight back.

Another quote:
“Aggression against life and property can only damage the image of a peaceful Islam”. I have to think the peacful image of Islam might also have been damaged by the hundreds upon hundreds of suicide bombers and mass murderings that have been perpetrated by this so-called “peaceful religion”. Like it or not, the most accurate representation of Islam’s evangelism today is in the vilifying cartoons that’s set their pants all afire.

Lastly, for anyone who believes I’m unfair or biased, I’ll object, because I believe that everything I’ve said in this article is based on fact. I didn’t write this to make enemies; I believe they’ve made enemies of me. I didn’t write this just to feed the fire of Islam’s righteous wrath; I don’t believe their wrath is righteous and I think the riots are a smokescreen, diverting attention away from other things, and, ultimately, their wrath doesn’t require feeding. It will burn until non-Muslims are all dead, or we kill them first. Finally, I’ll give you a lead to another blog whose intentions are to enrage. Beware, this is serious stuff.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: , allah, Cartoon, islam, muslim