Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

I’ve got a theory about Bill Clinton’s obnoxious behavior, coming up with inaccurate and crude slurs against Barack Obama. I think he knows that he looks like a jerk, and I think he knows that it disgusts voters, and I think that’s exactly what he wants.

The Hillary Clinton for President campaign has never sought to build a real network of grassroots support – not of the kind we saw developing in 2004. They know too that Barack Obama is attracting new voters to the presidential primaries, and that new voters are those who are the most likely to lose their resolve and not show up to vote when they become discouraged.

Hillary Clinton’s support, on the other hand, tends to come from the institutional Democratic Party and its extensions at the state and local level. Longtime Democrats who have been regular voters are more likely to support a candidate who reminds them of Democrats in the past, rather than someone who challenges Democrats to break with the past.

If voters are getting turned off by Bill Clinton’s smarmy attacks against Barack Obama, and want to stop participating in the 2008 presidential primary elections, it’s more likely that those who walk away in disgust will be Barack Obama’s supporters. I think that Bill Clinton knows that, and is purposefully trying to create low voter turnout in the Super Tuesday primaries, so that Hillary Clinton can win.

Consider how, every time that one of Bill Clinton’s stupid comments gets publicity in the news, he doesn’t apologize and back off. He comes out the next day and says something even more outrageous. Bill Clinton knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s trying to drive everyone out of the Democratic primaries except for the people who are supporters of the establishment Clinton machine, and will put up with anything that Bill Clinton does.

At the American Museum of Natural History, a group of people calling itself Virgin Galactic has revealed its development of a spaceship that will take people off the Earth and into outer space for “Galactic” travel. There’s a catch, though. You have to be rich in order to get on board. Reservations for tickets begin at $200,000 each.

The question that discerning minds now must ask is this: Why are rich people willing to pay $200,000 to get into outer space away from the Earth’s surface? Rich people have the money to get information about things that the rest of us will never know about… until it’s too late.

Here’s what’s telling to me: These rich refugees from planet Earth are not content to merely get off the ground, even miles high up in an airplane. A standard airplane can get miles and miles above the surface of the Earth, but that’s enough for these skittish fat cats. Why?

It seems that it’s not so much the ground that the refugees desperate to board the Virgin Galactic spaceship are eager to escape. It’s the Earth’s atmosphere. It seems that our own planet’s atmosphere is on the verge of becoming deadly to human life. But how?

A “man” living in the United Kingdom who enigmatically calls himself “Bob the Alien” offers a possible explanation as he reflects on his oddly personal eyewitness experience on the planet Venus: “The cloud that covers Venus is not like the cloud that we have in our skies. It is full of deadly sulphuric acids droplets, not water droplets as on Earth. Nearly all of Venus’ atmosphere is made up of carbon dioxide, a poisonous, suffocating gas which would kill any living creature if it was breathed in.”

It seems that “Bob the Alien” believes that Earth’s atmosphere will soon change to become more like the atmosphere of Venus. That’s why he is offering to take some Earthlings with him on his space ship the next time he lifts off. “Join me and my dog, Bobsdog,” he says urgently, “for an exciting journey around your Solar System and beyond. We will visit peculiar planets, mysterious moons, amazing asteroids, crazy comets and, if we have time, we can look at some stars too!”

I don’t know this “Bob the Alien” character, but he seems quite a bit more compassionate than Virgin Galactic.

The Bush Administration is threatening to veto legislation that would improve health care at Native American reservations and would require that federal contracts active on those reservations pay people fairly.

Why? Who would the Bush White House do such a cruel thing, especially just as the American economy is heading into the gutter again?

“The Bush administration said in a statement that the labor provision would violate long-standing administration policy,” says an official Bush Administration statement.

Long-standing administration policy? What long-standing administration policy? Oh, yeah, the long-standing policy of the Bush Administration to screw over American workers whenever possible – whether they’re Native Americans or not!

Equal opportunity cruelty. How reassuring.

The Dow Jones Industrials Average has just plummeted more than 450 points in just three minutes.

So much for putting trust in the fossil fuel economy. So much for the idea that corporations are going to provide a secure foundation for the American economy. So much for steady employment in exchange for the cubicle conformity of corporate life.

What America is learning now is that everything that they have given away to corporations – all their independence, all their privacy, all their local identity, and even their own influence over the democratic process – has been for nothing. The corporations, and the Wall Street financial institutions that back them up, are not competent to run the economy.

We’ll all pay the price for this Wall Street and corporate ineptitude. Don’t think recession. Think depression.

The corporations have taken away America’s economic safety nets, and our national treasure is being blown to bits in Iraq.

Hunker down, people, and prepare for some tough times.

There’s an interesting story about people seeing lights in the sky in Texas. Some say that they’re alien space ships. Others say that they saw military jets chasing the lights.

MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network, is on the scene, “investigating”. Helpfully, Kenneth Cherry, the leader of the Texas chapter of MUFON, announced to reporters that “We believe there is some sort of phenomenon in action here.”

What an expert opinion. A phenomenon? A phenomenon in action?

You mean that something happened?

Thanks for the insight, MUFON. We none of us could have figured that out. Keep up the good work.

Thanks to the Associated Press too, for reporting that essential insight.

I was taking a look over at the blog of Bill Mollison, leader of Permaculturalist movement, this morning, and though I appreciate a lot of the ideas of Permaculture on a horticultural level, I found Mollison’s political ideas to be a badly formed compost of discontent. Here’s the core of what he had to say:

“If we gather our friends, and students of good design, we vastly out-number the few who have joined “left right” parties. We can take control. We can legislate to restore the earth, to save and generate forests, to secure water and clean food supplies, and to live to assist all people to survive, not to war on them….

All permaculture graduates know how to design life-enhancing houses and farms. Many are involved in aid programmes, or consult with landowners and builders. We have, in effect, many thousands of people–years of experience in building sustainable systems. We have served our apprenticeship as worthy designers of living systems.

Thus, we believe it is time to take charge of legislating for sustainable living. Why should we, the majority, put up with the stupidities of the Liberal/ Labour, Republican/ Democrat, Tory /Socialist dichotomies, whose efforts are to defeat each other, not to assist all people?

No, we must now vote them all out, and start the urgent repair of society and the earth itself. Oil men, coal miners, and wood chippers can between them destroy all of us, for greed. In this, they are assisted by “our government”. To tolerate this is madness…

Most politicians arise from sportsmen, public broadcasters, film stars, lawyers, and businessmen. None of these can be trusted to evolve sensible policy; almost all of them operate on conviction based on personal beliefs. (no basis for sustainable society)

No, policy must be based on well-researched, extant, working models, and constantly refined by feedback from all levels of users or “consumers” of that policy.”

Keep in mind that Mollison is writing internationally, but from a Tasmanian perspective, so he’s not really speaking particularly for an American audience. Even given that, I just can’t make sense out of what Mollison has to say.

Strategically, Mollison is making no sense. Yes, there are thousands of graduates of Permacultural design courses around the world, but does Mollison really believe that these thousands constitute a “majority”? Does he really believe that they outnumber the members of the established political parties around the world? If so, Mollison needs a refresher course in mathematics.

I’m also bothered by Mollison’s contention that government policy must be based upon researched “models” concocted by designers instead of by “conviction based on personal beliefs”. It seems like an elitist technocratic concept of government that fails to connect theories like Permaculture with the reality of people’s lives and the ideas that shape those lives.

Perhaps that’s been the conceit that has limited Permaculture. It makes a good deal of rational sense, but is disconnected with the human desires that more strongly motivate the choices that people make. If Bill Mollison thinks that he can overtake the institutional power of political parties like the Democrats and Republicans without appealing to people on the basis of their personal wants and beliefs, using only a few thousand people scattered throughout the world, then he’s sorely out of touch with the most important foundation of good horticultural and agricultural design: The reality of the ground as it exists.

“Vote them all out” because of their “stupidities”, Mr. Mollison? Stupid is as stupid does. Consider that the established political parties have managed to gain and keep power, while Bill Mollison’s Permacultural movement has remained at the fringes despite years of campaigning. That’s not just because there’s a conspiracy to suppress alternative models of living – it’s because Mollison’s movement has failed to take its head out of its theory, and speak to where people are living right now.

Never mind the Nancy Grace screeching her outrage on CNN – school shootings are not on the rise. That’s the finding of a new study by the Centers for Disease Control. The study found that the number of people killed in mass killings on school grounds has actually remained very stable over time. In fact, since 1992, the year that George H. W. Bush was voted out of office, the number of incidents of single homicides at public and private schools “decreased significantly”.

What’s increased significantly during that time is the commercialization and consolidation of the news media. The small number of businesses that now exert strong control over much of the news we hear have found that people tend to tune in very reliably for news stories that suggest an out-of-the-ordinary epidemic in school violence, and that means that they can bring in more advertising revenue. They’re cashing in on people’s emotional fascination with the perception of escalating school violence that does not exist.

There is a solution. Turn off the TV news, and get your information from sources independent of the consolidated media giants. Starve them of the profitable attention of your eyes.

2008 is the International Year of the Potato. How will you celebrate it?

How about by NOT voting in any election, and NOT doing any research about any political issues, and NOT supporting any nonprofit organizations, and NOT volunteering your time to a worthy cause, and NOT joining in any protest.

That way, you can celebrate the potatoes of the world by joining them… on the couch… to watch the latest HBO installation of The Wire the TV show that is so true to life that it has no meaning. Oh, the existential nausea!

Was that caused by eating a green potato? Jean Paul Sartre explained – he was nothing but a disaffected pomme de terre!

June 8 was established as an international holiday in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro: World Ocean Day. Unfortunately, the United Nations has, since 1992, failed to observe World Ocean Day.

World Ocean Day matters as a holiday of solemn observance especially now because the Earth’s marine ecosystems are falling apart as a result of a combination of pollution, coastal development, climate change, and overfishing. Think of the devastation of the once-great herds of bison on the American plains, or the destrution of rain forests in Brazil, and you’ll get an idea of the extent of ecological devastation that is occurring right now in the oceans. The plight of marine life would be difficult to overstate. It’s a full-fledged ecological crisis around the world, and the only reason you aren’t seeing it is that you don’t live underwater.

What can you do? Convincing people to recognize the problem, and start thinking about solutions, is an important step. First, you can encourage the United Nations to start officially observing World Ocean Day once more. Sign Oceana’s petition to the United Nations asking for official observance of World Ocean Day to begin once more. Don’t stop there, though. You can send an email directly to the Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea at the United Nations with a similar message, at DOALOS@UN.org.

Secondly, you don’t have to wait for official recognition from the United Nations. On June 8th, you can observe World Ocean Day yourself. Go to the Ocean Project’s page of resources on World Ocean Day for ideas.

Don’t think that you can’t do anything for the ocean if you live inland. Even in places like North Dakota, all streams eventually flow to the sea. Agricultural runoff and industrial pollution far upstream still has a big impact on ocean life. Many things that we buy, including but in addition to seafood, include elements that are harvested from ocean.

World Ocean Day can be a day for all people to consider how their lives interact with ocean life, and to take action to make that relationship a more healthy one.

What in the world will poor Mike Bloomberg do now? He was all ready to buy the 2008 presidential race with his billions of dollars, on the premise that only a billionaire could fairly represent the American people. The idea, set up for him with the Unity08 public relations machine, was that there just wasn’t any room for a vigorous contest for the Democratic and Republican party nominations. As Unity08 used to whine, Iowa and New Hampshire get to determine who the presidential candidates are, and we all just have to sit back and take whatever they give us… so it would be far better to take a candidate instead that would be picked for us by the Unity08 cadre of PR hacks and lobbyists.

With the Democratic Primary in New Hampshire, it became clear that the Democratic nomination would not be decided by Iowa and New Hampshire. Now, with the Michigan primary giving a victory to Mitt Romney, Bloomberg and his Unity08 toadies can’t claim that Iowa and New Hampshire have a stranglehold on the Republican Party either.

For both political parties, it seems that the nomination process won’t be decided until Super Tuesday, February 5, and quite likely not even then. So, Michael Bloomberg sits on the sidelines, waiting, finding that the American people are not clamoring for him after all.

Don’t be sad, Mr. Bloomberg. You can always go buy yourself an island, or something.