I do a lot of random clicking about the web looking for things to distract me while I’m slowly falling asleep so no wonder I can’t get shit done.
It’s because of my job. I use the web a lot, looking for just the right company that makes just the right component of the sort I’m looking for. Most of them are in Taiwan or somewhere and of course no one ever publishes every last bit of the information I need so I have to fill out web query forms and wait a day and a half for a reply. This puts the task on hold and since I’m male I’m really shitty at multitasking and it takes an hour to shift from that one halted task into something else that’s useful, and that hour is spent checking the news or some blog I haven’t seen in three days or just when is Bay To Breakers anyway?
Same weekend as a Scout trip to Angel Island. It is an absolute blast spending the night on Angel Island so I guess this won’t be the year I finally do B2B. (Last time I wound up exploring the subterranean innards of an abandoned Nike missile base because someone had cut the locks off the man-hatch. I have pictures. I have thousands upon thousands of pictures of all sorts of weird shit like that.)
Plus that’s also the weekend of the premier local Civil War reenactment my friend is pressuring me to go to so I guess I’ll have to tell Mister Has No Kids And Can Lose Himself In Expensive Meaningless Hobbies that I won’t be joining him. Aw, shucks.
It’s early yet but I think I’ll vote for Barack Obama for President. Why the hell not? He’s clean and articulate and not nearly the hopelessly corrupt insider most of the other candidates will be. Joe Biden? Give me a fucking break. Who fronts the money for an unelectable clown like that? People want someone new, fresh. That’s why Clinton’s gamble, staying in the ’92 race despite Bush I’s overwhelming popularity, paid off: He was new, fresh.
So was Bush II, in his way. Personable, a proven aisle-crosser. But he was the son of the penultimate insider, and was simply too foolish and weak to stand up to his daddy’s machine. Poor dumb bastard.
Anyone else running? I don’t remember. Hillary, right, but she’s annoying. Let’s see another Elizabeth Dole. (Was she annoying too? I don’t fuckin’ know. I just pulled her name out of my ass. I really don’t care about this shit enough to know anything.)
I know, I know, you’re wondering why I think Hil’s annoying while those other politicians are not. Is it because she’s a strong woman? Huh? Good question but no. I just find all the talk about her annoying. She herself would make a fine President. As with BHO, why the hell not? History has proven time and time again that almost nothing we know about a candidate before they get elected has anything to do with how well they will perform at the job. Let ‘er rip. Make history, whatever the hell that means, as if having a female or non-white President would truly prove anything of significance. Hey, if it shuts up certain class-fixated whiners, it’s all good.
Of course, Barack is no more black than he is white. But that kind of thinking gets you nowhere in this country.
All right, mission accomplished. Scribbling this stopped me web-surfing and I can get back to the next task at hand. Yay me. Yay being employed.
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12 comments:
Well, I'm a strong woman, and I find Hillary annoying.
I can't stand any of 'em. I'm not voting for an anti-choicer again and I'm not going to vote for some dope who's going to get us all killed. So that's pretty much the end of that!
I don't know which is more amusing: Bush as aisle-crosser (a myth, which surely even you have noted by now) or Bush as overwhelmed son. How can you be so wrong? Far from being a daddy's boy, Bush II is having his strings pulled by very different people. On Iraq, for instance, the Bush I camp spoke through the Baker report. Which Bush promptly entirely ignored. Bush I was what we call a realist; the neocons are idealists, which are the most dangerous people to allow into power.
And Paula, you voted for a dope who made your life more dangerous last time, so why not do it again?
Oh, look: it's an alliterative trool. How yawn.
How can you be so wrong?
By performing no research. OK, then the boy didn't back up daddy but went his own way -- or rather, the way of the pushier neocons. If you look at what a cock-up Bush I made of Gulf I, Bush II can't entirely be blamed. Not for going his own way. For cocking up Gulf II, absolutely. But I still say he's weak, and a poor dumb bastard.
Whenever I think of idealists in power I first think of the Black Republicans who drafted countless young men to re-unite the country without the continuation of the South's peculiar institution. Dangerous indeed.
Bush I achieved exactly what he intended with Gulf War I, which was a huge success.
Bush left Saddam with the means to further terrorize Kurds and Shia, and abandoned the Shia who had rightly expected support when they rose up against Saddam. I imagine for mysterious ends this is what Bush I intended, but I fully understand the impulse to correct it later.
You are wrong again. Bush left Saddam more or less unable to touch the Kurds, and he didn't care about the Shia. He achieved exactly what he intended. Bush II had a different agenda. Seeing him as trying to right his father's wrong is a mistake. Which obviously you will continue to make because it's such a simple narrative.
That your simplifications and my simplifications don't exactly coincide doesn't make either of them wrong, O Ye of Many Names. I gathered at the time (~1992?) that Bush preferred a defeated but still strong Saddam as a buffer against the Iranians to a weak and fledgling Iraqi republic. Much has been made of his failed implied promise to support a Shia uprising. I'm not saying he failed them unintentionally. As for Bush II, you say his was not a continuance of his father's policy and then that perhaps it was. Well, times change, and I will easily believe both. The neocon dreams were not entirely misguided at their core, but certainly in the implementation and the timing.
No, dude, only you are simplifying. You are creating a psychological diagnosis out of a perverse reading of events and a bit of wishful thinking.
Bush I had no intention of supporting a Shia uprising. It would have been a fucking disaster if he had. The realists who set his policy were aware of that and wouldn't countenance it.
I don't know what the fuck you are talking about here:
"As for Bush II, you say his was not a continuance of his father's policy and then that perhaps it was."
The only thing I've said about Bush II that suggesting that he intended to correct his father's wrongs is a big mistake. He in no way continued his father's policy. His intention, from day one, was to invade Iraq and destroy it structurally.
Dude, the neocon dreams are a patchwork of the deluded and the callous. You are either not all that clear on what they actually dreamed of or you are fucking evil if you do not think their project was misguided. Some (Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith others involved in their circle) believed it was a good idea to create regional instability to strengthen Israel and allow it to profit from the chaos. Others believed as an item of faith that if you create anarchy, a functioning democracy will spring up (because, insanely, they believe that the US sprang from an uncollected group of freedom-loving anarchists, rather than that it was a product of its times, and one assumes that they, like you, have no idea what a functioning democracy actually consists of or how it can be built). Others simply believe that the US has a right to corner the world's resources and should do whatever it takes to secure them. There's some overlap of course. Add to this their pandering to extremist Christians and social conservatives that want to destroy the liberal consensus that has built us societies that are not wholly horrible to live in, and I don't see people who I consider "not entirely misguided". I see people who I consider would not be missed if they all fell into a bottomless pit.
no intention of supporting a Shia uprising
All right. A quick search yields worlds like "abandonment" and "betrayal", but I was never privy to Bush I's true intentions. Like all Presidents he was a good liar.
not all that clear on what they actually dreamed of
I'm one of those who perceive it as a hard shell providing for practical implementation of the Jeffersonian ideals within (badly mismanaged by Bush). A quick searc shows me that I could be wrong, if the scathing opinions that show Leo Strauss to be antithetical to Jefferson are true. But I have no way to know without sacrificing more time than it's worth. Every editorial is spun one way or another, including all those that have influenced your opinions.
Certainly I have no reason to believe you aren't "creating a psychological diagnosis out of a perverse reading of events and a bit of wishful thinking" any more than I am. So hold to your beliefs by all means, and I'll keep shifting mine as always, given new information, none of which I ever entirely believe.
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