What libertarianism really is, at base

It doesn't get any closer to the truth than this: 

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted,
socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The
other, of course, involves orcs.  

 This was a quote from writer John Rogers, I couldn't have put it any better myself, and yes, I know idiots obsessed with both novels, right Greg?

On Robert Gibbs's remarks regarding the "professional left"

With all of the calls for him to resign or to even be fired (the latter coming from Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson), you have to wonder if Shakespeare ever imagined political theater so hollow, so empty that it's not even entertaining anymore, just pathetic. Why bother? Indeed. Gibbs's remarks were to the Moonie-owned The Hill, a staunchly conservative paper, meaning a cargo cult-within-a-cargo-cult, and apparently the outgoing press secretary felt quite at home in making the statements that he did. Why wouldn't he? He's the same kind of cretin. Yet, why? Why make such stupid remarks?

The answer is simple. He and the administration that he represents aren't especially different from--say--the GOP itself and hate their base at least as much. What choice are we left with here in a roundly rightist political culture that doesn't reflect or even acknowledge the views of the majority of Americans on social issues? That's what's known as a political crisis since there really is no opposition party in American politics, only two branches of one pro-business one; one that represents an oligarchy but not the public. Yes, now the president is worried that his agenda will be endangered (a good thing in the end) and is engaging in some last minute social spending such as a paltry $3 billion for those who have or will lose their homes. Then, there's the diehard municipal/teacher/police vote that was paid for with much more and will likely ensure more Democratic votes--the primary motive for doing it at all. This kind of a mess is nothing new to American history, but it is a regression, back to the bad old days of the 1880s-90s when the "robber barons" (now we simply call them the "rich," "CEOs," and "Wall Street"). Once again, thanks Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon, but you couldn't have done it without those wily Democrats.

Like an atomic clock going off exactly on time, a slack-jawed denizen on Facebook hit me with: "In the real world, what better candidate that can actually be elected would you suggest?" Besides being the usual straw man argument one gets from the unfortunate few middle-class whites who bother to vote (which is why registering poor and minorities is always a good idea), this kind of a comment ignores how rigged the electoral process is and that they keep voting for people who wish to impair it over and over again once they're in office, and that's for starters. There's a point where you're just another battered wife, a dupe, a mark, a moron. There was a better candidate than Barack Obama and Gibbs worked to take him down in 2004, for the the DNC and the Kerry campaign: Howard Dean. Yes, they've beaten Dean down into submission and made him parrot their absurd talking points, but there was a time, not so long ago...

But it was the Foghorn Leghorn-like Gibbs that worked overtime putting out attack ads against Dean and his reasonably progressive agenda--too reasonable for the DNC and its biggest backers. Dean's also from Alabama and has been advising on a Southern strategy for the Obama campaign/administration for some time. These are the same people that wanted Barack Obama in office and not someone like Dean since he might actually come through for the public and not Wall Street. In addition, when Team Clinton came onboard, we got more of the same cronies from that sordid, pro-business administration, making for a curious form of non-nostalgia. Why am I one of the only people in America who knows that Hillary Clinton has served on the board of Wal-Mart and is a major shareholder, for example? Thanks to a compliant media, never mind all the high talk of the Obama administration having to confront a "combative media," most Americans don't know this. One wishes they were combative, at least for the right reasons, which would be a very real change.

Gibbs is right(ist): I'd trade the Pentagon for a Canadian-style health care system in a heartbeat. For those who think we need defense spending that's 600 times greater than the next highest spender, you're the ones who are "crazy," and if you don't live to see the tyranny you're constructing, your children certainly will. With luck, it's all going to collapse before then anway. You've been lulled into a Pavlovian call-and-response--you feel fear when the political and economic establishment rings 'dem bells. What does that make you?

Would I be satisfied with "Kucinich as president"? Damned straight I would. Fire all of them. Fire the next ones if they're the same. Fire them all, and shut them out of the political process forever, and anyone like them that doesn't serve the public interest, let alone won't listen to them. Eventually, the public will stop speaking and start acting. At that point, Mr. Gibbs will have a lot of explaining to do. Will it be too late? Who knows, but he's going to own a part of the social chaos if it does in fact unfold, and as much as any Bush II operative. That's not a stretch since the Obama administration has kept most of them onboard.

A Requiem for the Ramp at "Ground Zero"

New York City, New York--It was an exquisite ramp, a 460 foot-long one that ferried construction and recovery workers into the gaping 80-foot-deep chasm that used to be the foundation of the World Trade Center, but its time had come.

It was a sad day when they made the announcement on December 10, 2008: No more photo-ops, no press junkets, and no more political careers would be built across its span and on the bones and the ashes of the victims whom they were inhaling on their visits. George W. Bush, the Nazi Pope, President-elect Barack Obama--just about all the somebodies came out of the woodwork to be photographed visiting ground zero.

The end of the Bush II era is the filling of this grave and in the construction of a new building complex there. The Bush II administration built two illegal wars, Guantanamo, illegal rendition, illegal domestic surveillance of the American people, torture, and a lawless chaos in government at home that could become a fully-functioning police state. Oh yes, and they were instrumental in wrecking the economy, yet somehow we're still not calling for impeachment in Congress, it's shameful.

The mythology behind 9/11 can no longer be milked as it was in the immediate aftermath of the event, and future attacks are probably coming from the imbecilic overreactions that followed the September 11 attacks. Reacting the same way--with military force--will continue to prove disastrous. The best way to prevent terrorism is to stop engaging in it abroad militarily. If President-elect Obama thinks he's going to use 9/11 in the same way as George W. Bush, he'd better think twice.

The Cult of the Dead Soldier has morphed into the Cult of the Dead Terrorist Victim (never mind the Cult of the Dead Cop). That's a very risky iconography to be toying with, deifying the dead to use as a rallying cry for war. Watching that ramp go is a good thing, its time had come.

The Bush II administration will leave behind no triumphal arches, no libraries but a presidential one to hide his sins a little longer, no parks through public works, no cleaner air or water. While they ruled, all they had to offer was the grave, a hole in the ground in Manhattan. All the warning signs were there. No one heeded them, revanchism (and the ability to profit from it) won out. So mote it be.

The Moon landing & Tin-foil Hats

If you want to gauge how truly insane and moronic some Americans can be, just do a google search on "Moon landing conspiracy."

So contentious is the issue that the topic on Wikipedia is now blocked from editing. What idiocy! We have a President spying on most of us, three wars, and THIS is what 6% of us find most important?! Yes, according to a Gallup Poll in 1999, 89% of us believe that we landed on the moon in 1969-onwards, while 6% do not.

Amazing, and we know how they vote. I'm not giving any of the living-proponents of this crap theory any advertising, so here's the deadite who started it all: Bill Kaysing. Kaysing was generally a transient who worked a short time as a technical writer for Rocketdyne (like "Yo-Yo Dyne" from Buckaroo Banzai) until 1963, but was generally a bum who found a new way to make money. He could be called a former "disgruntled employee."

Fox News' overly-credulous 2001 special on this goofy conspiracy theory just goes without saying about the quality of their programming and of their viewers.

Some theories have Stanley Kubrick being part of the conspiracy, helping with the same effects he used in "2001: A Space Odyssey." But, it seems movies have probably played-a-hand in most of this.

In a brief scene in the James Bond thriller, "Diamonds are Forever" (1971, three years before Kaysing's book) there is the faking of a moonlanding! In 1978, the movie "Capricorn One" increased the popularity of this theory.

I saw Capricorn One when it was first released, and it is more relevant as an expression of post-Watergate cynicism towards the federal government than anything. Oh yeah, O.J.'s in it, nuff-said, it sucks.

Today, the tin-foil hat crew are rejoicing: NASA says it cannot-find the original master tapes of the video-feed from the first moonlanding. Big deal, we have copies from it, and I'm betting they locate them soon. It all reminds one of how much "aliens" from abduction accounts resemble aliens from bad 1950s B-movies. I'd chock-it-up to the fact that many people don't understand allegory and metaphor--they can only view the world, movies, books, words, as literal reality (like the Christian Bible). This makes them crazy, of course, and dangerously stupid. We now know the political results of this lack-of-consciousness. We saw it 60+ years-ago in Germany...