Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Usually, you know, he wears a suit with the sleeves down. But in this picture you can see his forearms and everything. I wonder if he will get a burn that way. Probably keeping the sleeves down at most outdoor events is a good idea.

Why didn’t I get a pony for my 16th birthday?

Democracy is about the will of the people, right?

In a democracy, the will of the people is expressed through their votes, right?

Well, if you count up all the votes from all the primaries, who has the most?

Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton has the most votes.

The will of the people is for Hillary Clinton to be the next president.

Tennessee Representative and superdelegate John Tanner endorsed Hillary Clinton for President yesterday, in news ignored by the Mainstream Media but just as important in determining the outcome of the national presidential primary election! Congressman Tanner is just the sort of moderate American politician who appeals to ALL Americans, and his decision to support Hillary Clinton is a sign that Hillary Clinton can and WILL WIN in November. Says Tanner, “In my opinion, the best person to lead this critical effort is Hillary Clinton. Hillary is a smart, pragmatic leader who understands the grave situation our country faces, with a $9 trillion debt, much of which is borrowed from foreign countries. Now, more than ever, our nation needs a leader like Sen. Clinton who can work with others to return to fiscal sanity.”

Barack Obama is a nice young man, but he just decided to run for president last year. Hillary Clinton has been part of running the country for SIXTEEN YEARS! With John Tanner’s help, I will be proud to see my new president, Hillary Clinton, take the oath of office on January 20, 2009.

A while ago, I published an article explaining that mantis shrimp can be eaten, as much as many of us might like to see them alive.

I’ve always wonder how fishermen manage to get a commercially viable harvest of mantis shrimp, given the way that they can break bones or slash open flesh with their powerful front smashers or stabbers.

Out of curiosity, I’ve been looking for images of what mantis shrimp actually looks like when cooked and prepared as part of a meal.

I found a video that shows just that. If you’ve got stomatopod-loving kids in the household, cover their eyes.

I am now officially admitting that I am politically depressed.

I think I’ve been politically depressed for several weeks now, but I haven’t allowed myself to acknowledge that depression. The news today puts me over the edge, way past deniability.

Hillary Clinton is releasing advertisements on television that strongly imply that if Barack Obama becomes President, we may likely be attacked by Osama Bin Laden, and Barack Obama won’t be able to handle it. It’s an absurd attack, that preys on the fears of American voters.

The sad thing is that, like the Clinton 3:00 AM telephone call, it works. Voters buy the message. They’re willing to sell their hopes out for the sake of fear. Clinton’s consultants know this, and they’re going whole hog because, above all else, they want to win, win, win.

A few voters get it. They see how despicable this line of attack is. The rest don’t care. They really believe it. It’s these voters, and not even the Hillary Clinton campaign, who depress me.

It depresses me to live in a nation where people are too cowardly to live in freedom, and too lazy to get involved in their own government, and too stupid to tell the difference between a scare tactic and “experience”.

I’m not writing this to try to score points for Barack Obama above Hillary Clinton, and try to affect any election. You know why? I’ve finally realized that I am too little and too powerless to have any affect. In a nation of 300 million people who care more about whether Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake have really finally broken up than they do about the Bill of Rights, I’m not going to be heard. I’m not going to make a difference.

If I try, I’m going to fail.

I’m going to keep on trying, just because it’s a damn old habit that I don’t think I can shake. Nonetheless, I no longer have any expectations of success. My voice won’t be heard. Things won’t get better. America is on the way out, and the American government is just going to get uglier and uglier.

Tonight, Pennsylvanians are going to reward Hillary Clinton for her scare tactics. Hillary Clinton will stay in the race, gleefully running around cheering “I won! I won!”

And then we’ll go on to Guam… and Indiana… and Nebraska… and the next state… and all the way to the end… and Hillary Clinton’s tactics of never asking the American people to think big or step out on a limb will be vindicated.

It will be a stalemate, and although Barack Obama will have won the majority of primaries, and have gotten the majority of primary-elected delegates, Hillary Clinton will be made the Democratic nominee, just because she has more powerful people who owe her favors.

We’ll slump on toward Election Day, and maybe Hillary Clinton will win and maybe John McCain will win, but most Americans won’t really care. They’ll just want to make sure that the election coverage on TV doesn’t interfere with their favorite weekly TV show.

I’ll still care, but I don’t expect that this year’s election will change anything. Clinton won’t bring soldiers home from Iraq, and she won’t close Guantanamo, and she won’t have the Patriot Act repealed, and her health care plans will be forgotten within a year, and we’ll continue to watch America slouching into the margins as Bill Clinton has one last fling at sexual independence with some middle-aged barmaid he meets on the outskirts of Peoria.

We had a chance to do something better with this country, but people just don’t give a damn. Damn it all to hell.

Oh, dear Zoroaster wake me up! The ABC News presidential democratic debate, likely one of the last opportunities for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to earn the support of voters, should have been a lively event.

Instead, the first 45 minutes was spent on superficial nonsense like 1960s Weatherman bombings, who’s bitter, Bosnia, and disowned preachers, with followup questions.

Then, Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous went hunting for inconsequential distinctions such as who, between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, thinks that Iran should not have nuclear weapons the most.

Help me! I want to care. I want to be motivated. I want to be active and a good citizen, but I have been struck by the ABC News hypno-mind-mister laser beam, which has caused me to hear the words coming out of Clinton’s and Obama’s mouths as if they are spoken in Czech.

Is there an antidote?

Am I the only one who found this last weekend’s Faith Forum at Messiah College in Pennsylvania to be an excruciating display of humiliating and yet pointless pandering?

America is having a presidential election. We’re not selecting an interim minister for a church. Yet, religious groups have pushed to be granted the power to submit presidential candidates to an onslaught of religious test, interrogations designed to see whether the candidates are sufficiently Christian to be President.

For a reason I wish I didn’t understand, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton agreed to go along with the parade of shameful faith-based nonsense.

Here’s just a short selection of the irrelevant nonsense that came from the Messiah College team of inquisitors (read the rest):

“You said in an interview last year that you believe in the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. And you have actually felt the presence of the Holy Spirit on many occasions. Share some of those occasions with us.

CLINTON: You know, I have, ever since I’ve been a little girl, felt the presence of God in my life. And it has been a gift of grace that has, for me, been incredibly sustaining. But, really, ever since I was a child, I have felt the enveloping support and love of God and I have had the experiences on many, many occasions where I felt like the holy spirit was there with me as I made a journey.

It didn’t have to be a hard time. You know, it could be taking a walk in the woods. It could be watching a sunset…”

Why on earth do we need to know whether Hillary Clinton really believes in the doctrine that heaven contains a Father, Son, and Holy Ghost? What does that have to do with being President of the United States?

They might as well have grilled Clinton and Obama about what their favorite color really is. It would have been about as relevant.

Senator Obama, I know that you say that blue is your favorite color, but as we all know there are a lot of different shades of blue. Will you finally get specific about what kind of blue is actually your favorite?

In the context of Barack Obama running for President and everything, with questions about the worthiness of his Christian church, or whether he’s a secret genetic Muslim, I thought it would be important to bring news of a pretty shocking statement that a radical black activist made about “religious bigotry”.

He said, “We must never adjust ourselves to religious bigotry.”

Well, how dare he say such a thing, insulting religious people like that!? He must be just an elitist who, as Hillary Clinton said of Barack Obama, doesn’t understand the importance of faith in ordinary people’s lives! How could we allow someone who could insult religious people, saying that people of faith are nothing but bigots, to go anywhere near the White House?

Oh, the inhumanity! Oh, the pathos! Oh, the outrage! Guard your women and children!

You won’t believe it when you hear who this radical black activist leader is. Did you know that he spent time behind bars? Hmm. Wait a minute… where did I put his name?

Oh, never mind. You can find out here.

Dear, oh dear. It is an outrage, isn’t it?

The moral character of the Republican Party is revealed in a shameful state by its consideration of Condoleeza Roce as a vice presidential candidate.

Condoleeza Rice was already infamous for deceiving Congress about the nature of the briefing given to George W. Bush just before the attacks of September 11, 2001. Now her name will be forever linked to torture.

At a meeting with Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Colin Powell that was approved by George W. Bush himself, Condoleeza Rice gave her strong endorsement to the use of torture by CIA agents against prisoners.

Rice told the CIA, “This is your baby. Go do it!”

What kind of sadist would refer to torture as a “baby”? The Condoleeza Rice kind of sadist.

If John McCain chooses Condoleeza Rice as his running mate, we’ll know that he is that same kind of sadist as well.