Some stuff I've been thinking about. Sometimes, I get this swirl of ideas -- I liken the process to watching something being flushed down a toilet -- and they don't go away until I write them down:
1. On the Looming Federal Budget Battles:
A great Kabuki Theatre of the Absurd. We all know that Obama won't cut a thing and any appearance of a cut is simply for show and spun as a disaster for the country, and that despite the GOP's protests they'll also be very selective about what they cut (i.e. anything that costs them campaign contributions or elections will be spared). This battle is one of propaganda between two competing philosophies; one which has been historically proven to be a complete and unsustainable failure, and the other an attempt by a once-proud-and-principled brand name to recover it's market share and good name.
If the Great Budget Battles to come were a marketing campaign, Obama's ad would basically say "Try New-and-Improved Crap, now with 10% More Less!", and the Republicans can be said to be in the same position that Tylenol was in after the great cyanide scare of the 1980's; They have a product which still works, but now they have to regain the public trust.
Both parties are afraid to tell the truth about these coming battles in this regard: neither will step up to the plate and say "we've fucked up, and the process of un-fucking it up will be long and perhaps bloody". If they did, you'd want to know what they fucked up and how they did it, and then you'd want them tarred and feathered, and perhaps ass-raped, as well. Unfortunately, the job of reigning in the federal budget, and limiting the reach(around) of government into our lives, is not going to be pain-free, and overflowing with rainbows and gumdrops. Sorry Welfare Queens, but you might have to start working for a living.
The only real interest I have in this looming budget fight is this: if, at the end of the day, we still have a welfare state (and that goes for Ethanol Subsidies and keeping GM on life support, too), we still have some hints or vestiges of ObamaCare, if the Department of Education (that's a $1-trillion wasted right there!) still exists, if Fannie and Freddie are still underwriting mortgages and there is no plan to liquidate their assets, if every department of the Federal Government still has a 'Civil Rights' division (we already have a Justice Dept., thanks!), if Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups are still being federally-funded, and if we do not get a better, fairer, less-complicated tax code out of the bargain, then we're fucking doomed.
The problem we face is that approximately 50% of the members of Congress depend upon either expanded Federal spending or being able to grab pieces of that huge-and-overflowing "Discretionary spending" budget in order to keep their positions -- they must bring home the bacon, in any way they can -- there being no other discernible reason for them to be there, otherwise. That 50% number represents the Retards, Apparatchiks, Fixers, Poverty Pimps, '60's Retreads, and Race Hustlers lodged within the U.S. Congress. If you doubt this, take a good look at the New York State Congressional Delegation, and see if you can then find grounds for disagreement. There never was, I should think, a greater advertisement for Birth Control.
(As an aside: it's a toss-up as to who has the worst Galaxy of Retards representing them in Congress -- New York, Illinois, Michigan or California. I think if you take the number of welfare recipients in a state, multiply it by the number of burned out ghettos and abandoned factories, and then divide that number by the percentage of the population which are high school dropouts, you can arrive at a pretty representative Douchebag Factor for each state. The state with the highest Douchebag Factor is almost guaranteed to be the one with the worst Congressional Delegation).
Those members of Congress depend upon their ability to game the system in order to justify their existence, which is why prying any money away from their pet 'projects' is going to be like pulling teeth...from an alligator. Good luck with that, Republicans.
2. On 'Democracy in the Middle East':
The only things a 'democratic' Middle East will ever bring is more of the same. Don't think so?
Palestinians voted for Hamas. Iraqis voted for Al'Sadr. Lebonese voted for Hezbollah. Syrians voted for Ba'athists (like Saddam Hussein). Seeing a pattern here? If given the chance to vote 'democratically', Muslims vote for terrorists, religious douchebags, and dictatorial regimes. It's in their blood, it's in their nature, it is at the very foundation of Islamic Culture.
It's so ingrained now that oppression is the natural state of life, and one brand of repression is as good as the next -- but the best kind wraps itself in the Koran -- that it's probably a genetic feature, perhaps even a biological imperative in most Arabs by now. The need and ability to consistently make the wrong choice -- war over peace, religion over reason, terrorism over negotiation, brutal dictatorship over freedom -- is probably firmly-ensconced within their DNA.
When one of these nascent Arab 'democracies' finally gets around to purging itself of it's worst elements, establishes a clear divergence of faith and state, lets it's women loose to work outside the home, or even better, to wear comfortable clothes that don't express their second-class status with an unmutilated clitoris, when an Arab finally makes something useful that doesn't explode and is actually salable on an open market, when the AK-47 and RPG are replaced by the two-car garage, and the whole Islamic Culture finally emerges from the filthy mental sandstorm of constipated 7th-century doctrinal oppression, THEN I'll believe there's hope for 'democracy' in the Arab lands. Not one second before.
A clear example of what 'democracy' means in the Middle East is something I remember being said by the Jordanian Foreign Minster on FoxNews a few weeks back. When asked if the Jordanian government was worried that an Egyptian-style popular uprising could occur in Jordan, the Minister said (paraphrasing) that such was impossible. That if Jordanian democracy ever 'got out of hand' the King would be there to whip back into shape. In other words, a Monarch with the power to dictate to Parliaments and to reshape the political landscape with a decree, is somehow the guarantor of democratic government.
The 'Uprisings' in Egypt, Libya, Qatar, Algeria, et. al., are simply the visible symptoms of a disease which infects all the Islamic World. It was the same disease which once infected the Eastern Bloc nations, and the Soviet Union. There are legions of unwashed, hungry, pig-ignorant people in the streets of Middle Eastern capitols today who are simply doing what frustrated people always do; they're turning on the people they blame for their misery. The difference is this:
The Soviet Union, when it fell, at least degenerated into a series of semi-democratic, Western-style states and governments. We can argue about whether there is true democracy in the former Soviet lands, but one cannot argue as to whether or not at least some of those countries are on their way to something recognizable as Western Democracy. In the Middle East, there's a critical difference between how we view democracy and how the typical Arab Douchebag in the Street views democracy. To us, democracy is a system of checks and balances, of rights and corresponding responsibilities, of social contract and law. In the Middle East, democracy means
installing Sharia under whichever brutal strongman manages to exert enough control over the security services and make himself President for Life.
Islam cannot tolerate democracy, much like Communism couldn't tolerate it, and even if those people in the street have the best of intentions, because they are so stupid, so desperate, so lacking in basic material from which the thread of a democratic tradition can be spun, they will fail.
The people who rioted in the streets and shouted "Goodbye Mubarak" are the same people who formerly rioted in the streets screaming"Death to America!". Once their short attention spans turn from the heady wine of revolution and begin to turn to the problems of actually forming a democratic system, they'll be back to shouting "Death to America!" again, in short order. Why? Because they'll fail, a distinct possibility because they don't have the mental and social tools to succeed, and it'll be OUR (America's) fault. Why? Because it always is with these idiots, and besides, the Imams will make certain that Mohammed Q. Public actually believes that.
Expect more airliners-cum-WMD's from all those new 'democratic' nations very soon...
3. On China;
If I were the President of the United States, I could bring China to heel in about 30 seconds; I'd make an apparently off-hand, and off-guard, remark about China that would set the financial markets all a-flutter. Naturally, the comment wouldn't be off-hand and off-guard, but that's the point. The President of the United States could bring all of China to a screeching halt with a press release.
Yes, there would be some resulting economic damage done in this country if that were to happen, but here's the really neat trick; this country has the capacity to recover from it, China does not. China depends upon an inflow of Western cash, and access to Western Markets, in order to build it's Potemkin Villages with Bird's Nest Stadiums in the Smog.
To those who would complain that China will simply stop funding American debt if played that game, I say. So what? There's an old expression on Wall Street that goes like this:
"If your banker lends you $10,000, he owns you; if he lends you $1,000,000, then you own him."
Now, just how badly do you think we own the Chinese when we owe them several trillion bucks?
It's funny that Lenin was quoted (paraphrased) as saying that 'Capitalism will sell us (the Communists) the rope with which we will eventually hang them', and here it has come to pass in exactly the opposite fashion.
Fuck China. In another 20 years it will disintegrate into violent revolution, again, once the new middle classes begin to demand political rights in order to safeguard their newly-won personal fortunes. The first enemy all people strive to defend their nest eggs from is usually their own government.
4. On Iran:
This one is too easy. The next time Iranians take to the streets to protest against the theocracy and the sycophantic lunatic fringe which serves as it's visible face, I'd move an aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf. I'd airdrop 1,000,000 cell and sat phones, Wi-Fi cards, and spare batteries into Tehran. I'd make certain that Facebook, Twitter and Internet access were available by means other than those controlled by the Iranian Government. I'd also distribute copies of the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence --in Farsi --all over the country.
Then I'd bomb the fuck out of every nuclear weapons site I could find or identify, and leave the Iranian people to the grisly business of killing each other over which faction, religious or political, gets to hold the dubious honor of running a ruined country. It is, after all, what they're really, really good at.That ought to keep them busy for the next 500 years, and continued inbreeding from all that cousin marriage will do the rest. Then I'd be building nuclear power plants and drilling for every last drop of fucking oil we know we have, and encourage American Enterprise to make the oil-producing states the industrial version of the dinosaurs.
5. On North Korea:
I'd transmit pictures by any means available to the North Korean people of Americans sitting down to a sumptuous Thanksgiving feast. I'd make the obvious comparisons; Americans have food. Americans have so much food that they can afford to sit down and engage in gluttony. I'd also transmit pictures of Americans throwing food away. See? We have so much food, we can afford to waste it! I'd show them Americans feeding their dogs table scraps-- we have so much food, even our dogs enjoy steak!
Wall-to-wall beer advertisements with busty babes. Pictures of hotdogs grilling. Lovely Scratch-and-Sniff, menu-quality photos of a Wendy's Taco salads, a nice Big Mac, a juicy T-bone, lobster in drawn butter, fresh vegetables and fruit, a nice, fresh loaf of Italian Bread, all airdropped by Stealth bombers all over the peninsula. If it were possible, I'd contrive to have the aroma of a lovely roast chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy, biscuits, and a lovely side of baby peas and carrots wafted over North Korea's largest cities. I'd gather all them Travel Size toiletries and liberally bomb the entire country with them; tiny tubes of toothpaste, bottles of shampoo, the little soaps you get in the hotel, and quite a few of those airliner bottles of Jack Daniel's, Absolut, Beefeater's, Johnny Walker Black.
What do you have, North Korea? Are you eating well? Do you have beer, or even clean water to drink? Do you have booze? Do you even have soap and toothpaste? No, you don't? Then why don't you march on Pyongyang and remove that demented little paper-hanger you call 'Dear Leader' and get with the program? Workers of North Korea: You have nothing to lose except your malnutrition and head lice!
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