Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Woo hoo! The more I look at Sarah Palin’s political record, the more it looks like a political fun house… or a mad house, maybe.

Now it turns out that Irish blogger Maman Poulet managed to catch Sarah Palin in a big fat lie that the mainstream media never even bothered to check out.

Sarah Palin said that she had lots of foreign policy experience because she had been to Ireland, Germany and Kuwait. Better revise that, GOP. It seems that Palin wasn’t being honest about the Ireland part.

Maman Poulet discovered that Sarah Palin’s supposed trip to Ireland consisted of a layover of an hour or two in a sequestered part of Ireland’s Shannon Airport when her plane on the way to Kuwait stopped for refueling. Does that count as visiting Ireland, and having foreign policy experience there? Sure, if you’re running for Vice President of the Wasilla High School Student Council.

It’s a shameless padding of Palin’s resume that indicates more about her lack of experience than about her qualifications to succeed John McCain and become President of the United States.

Hidden in the murky estuaries of the River Thames, the central corridor of power in the British Empire, a secret has been kept for years - a secret that now has been revealed: Seahorses.

New Scientist tells us: “About five short-snouted seahorses (Hippocampus hippocampus) have been spotted during routine conservation surveys over the last year or so, leading scientists to think they have probably established a resident population. The news has been kept secret until now.”

Why were the seahorses kept a secret, and why are we hearing about this now?

People like to think of seahorses as a friendly sort of creature, what with its slow swimming habits, its big round tummy, and its gently grasping tail. Friendly? Have you ever talked to a seahorse? No. Seahorses don’t talk to people. You know why? They don’t know English.

There has never been a seahorse that has lived in an English-speaking country that has bothered to learn to speak English. Does that remind you of anyone? It should: Illegal immigrants.

So, now we learn that these seahorses (unnaturally mixing land animals and ocean animals) have “established a resident population”. Residents, but not citizens. It kind of reminds me of George W. Bush’s idea of “guest workers” - except the stinking little seahorses aren’t doing any work. They’re just swimming around slowly in the River Thames, not contributing to society, but having babies (that the fathers are expected to take care of while the mother goes out and has a good time) and then expecting the government to take care of it all.

“Conserve my habitat!” they would say, if they could speak English. Well, what have the seahorses done to conserve their own habitat?

They think that they can come in and just set up their little river camps, driving down property values, without going through Customs? Where is their respect for the law?

Of course, some people would say that the seahorses don’t know about the law. Well, ignorance of the law is no excuse.

I think it’s worse than that. Just consider what Al Quaida could do with a group like this. They don’t have anything to do but seethe with resentment against the success of the English people. They’ve managed to learn how to cross borders without being protected, and they’ve been kept secret by the government.

These malcontents on the River Thames look like a classic terrorist sleeper cell to me, and given the government’s involvement, it looks like an inside job to me.

But now the secrecy has been lifted. Do you know why? Parliament has just passed a law that gives special protections to the seahorses, so that they can go about with their little nefarious schemes without bothering to hide anymore. They’ve been made untouchable.

Why is that law coming into effect now, in 2008? Is this some kind of October surprise, in April, designed to tip the American presidential election toward a certain candidate? The coincidence in timing is difficult to ignore.

What’s really going on at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City?

The cover stories for the repeated failures of the opera Tristan und Isolde are appearing increasingly thin. Five different actors have had to be used in the title roles of Tristan and Isolde:

Gary Lehman
Ben Heppner
Mac Master
Deborah Voigt
Janice Baird

Now, there is to be a sixth: Roger Dean Smith… or so he says.

What’s going on? Performances of Tristan und Isolde have had to be cancelled more than once, due to “mishaps”.

The tenor has fallen off the stage. Scenery has nearly killed the singers. There have been mysterious plagues that the publicists are dismissing as “stomach ailments” and “viruses”.

Nobody believes it, of course, and Manhattan’s elite opera scene is abuzz with rumor of what is really happening behind the curtain of the newest production of Tristan und Isolde.

To understand today’s dramatic events, one needs to go back to the time of the composition of Tristan und Isolde. It was in 1849, and Richard Wagner had to flee the city of Dresden because of what the establishment describes, euphemistically, as The May Uprising. Conventional history says that the May Uprising was a political battle between a repressive government and a mob seeking democratic rule. Conventional history is wrong.

The truth is that Richard Wagner had been dabbling in ancient folklore a little bit too deeply, and he came across some folkways that should have been forgotten: The dark arts of necromancy. Richard Wagner thought that he was writing a new opera to celebrate the culture of teutonic peoples, but really, he was casting a black spell to raise the dead. The May Uprising was not about politics. The truth is that the battle was an attempt to defend the living residents of Dresden from a zombie seige.

Just look at the history books. After the zombies started rising out of Dresden’s cemeteries, Richard Wagner ran away, because he didn’t know how to control his creations. The government soldiers in Dresden are then recorded as making a last stand in the Zeughaus.

Do you know what Zeughaus means, when translated into English? It means “House of the Undead”. The government soldiers went to the heart of the problem, to find the answer for the dreadful question: How do you kill somebody when they’re already dead?

The answer to that question was lost to history, but obviously they found some kind of way to control the zombies.

Richard Wagner, in the meantime, set up his operations again in Zurich, and this time he finished what he had started. He finished a final, revised draft of Tristan und Isolde, which still included some elements of necromancy, but not as much as in his first draft.

So, that’s what the people at the Met are facing right now: Black magic. It’s not as strong as when Richard Wagner first tried it in Dresden, but it is potentially deadly nonetheless.

I can’t tell you what’s going to happen for certain, but I can tell you this: There are just a few more performances of Tristan und Isolde at the Met, and I won’t be setting foot in Manhattan until after they are done.

Tonight I was researching various topics on paganism and ancient revivalism when I came across a Wikipedia article about a group of pagans in Greece who were trying to gain equal rights in the eyes of the Greek government. It seems that prior to 2006, all religions except Christianity, Judaism and Islam had been banned. An Athenian court seems to have overruled that.

The story regarding this can be found here (I may post a separate diary entry about this later).

When I read about their desire to be allowed to worship in the Parthenon, I looked it up on Wikipedia for clarification. The article listed pollution hazards and I found myself curious enough to read on. It seems that acid rain from the growth of Athens and the exhaust from cars has caused irreparable damage to the sculptures in the Parthenon.

Pollution is a bad thing, not only for the harm it does to ourselves and our environment but for the harm it does to our history. When historical landmarks and wonders of the ancient world are threatened by our pollution, isn’t it time to do something?

I see this and then I see conservatives calling for less restraints put on pollution control and I find it hard to believe that they could be so caviler and arrogant not to see the harm that is already happening. Is there nothing at all more important than grabbing for that extra dollar?

A couple of days ago, there was a little bit of a dispute, in response to my first mantis shrimp blog entry, about whether people eat mantis shrimp. It turns out that the Italians do indeed eat mantis shrimp. Here’s one recipe: Canocchie alla Pezza.

It will be noted, however, that this recipe does not call for the use of tawdry cocktail sauce. Instead, it suggests lemon, garlic, salt and olive oil. A much lighter taste.

For a better read, catch the same blogger’s visceral repulsion to the stomatopod, in her article entitled: The Horrible Mantis Shrimp. Fun fact from that article: A few mantis shrimp species have sufficient strength in their front claws to break through the glass of aquarium tanks, and scuttle around your home in fury for a while before dying.

Another blogger, Astron, refers to mantis shrimp meat as “tender and sweet”. Oh, the humanity!

Yesterday was the 90th anniversary of the World War I battle of Passchendaele: a horror in which 3/4 of a million soldiers were killed.

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), one of the WWI poets, wrote this, not about Passchendaele particularly, but about that war — and all other wars.

AFTERMATH

HAVE you forgotten yet?…
For the world’s events have rumbled on since those gagged days
Like traffic checked a while at the crossing of city ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you’re a man reprieved to go
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare
But the past is just the same,—and War’s a bloody game….
Have you forgotten yet?…
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you’ll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz,-
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench,—
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, “Is it all going to happen again?”

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack,—
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads, those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?
Have you forgotten yet?…
Look up, and swear by the green of the Spring that you’ll never forget.

RED DAVE

There’s news today that some people are accepting as a confirmation of global warming. Others of us, however, are willing to look beneath this superficial interpretation, and see what’s really going on up at high altitudes.

Experts say that the Aletsch glacier in Switzerland is retreating, and fast. For example, Laudo Albrecht of the environmentalist group Pronatura says, “It should retreat, but not so fast. The glacier is in rapid retreat.”

These environmentalists purport to have some explanations about why the glacier is retreating, but I never hear them really ask the question that would provide a reasonable description of what’s going on. Sure, the Aletsch glacier is retreating, but these so-called experts never ask what the Aletsch glacier is retreating from.

If these people would look at the map of the region around the glacier, they would see the answer right away. Look at the map yourself, and you’ll see, clearly marked, the word “Munster”. As everyone knows, munster is the Swiss word for monster. The Aletsch glacier is retreating from a monster. Well, wouldn’t you?

What is this monster like? We can’t say, because the environmentalists are keeping it secret from us. They’re afraid that if the world knows what is really causing the Aletsch glacier to retreat, they’ll realize that global warming is just a conspiracy theory dreamed up to conceal the presence of monsters lurking below glaciers around the world.

Thousands of people protested against the visit of George W. Bush in the streets of Rome yesterday, expressing widespread opposition to Bush’s foreign policy among citizens of Italy.

Some protesters lit smoke bombs and threw bottles. Police tried to control the protesters by firing tear gas at them.

“Bush Out!” the protesters in Rome demanded, expressing opposition to the continued American military occupation of Iraq. Bush responded by asking whether Italians had thought enough about national independence for Kosovo.

In touch with the pulse of the planet as usual, that Mr. Bush.

On the other hand, it’s a pity that a few protesters ruined the event for the rest. The Guardian is even reporting that one or two protesters broke flower pots.

What were they thinking? Damn flower pot! I’ll teach you to support the ocupation of Iraq!

They told you that buzzards were only scavengers. They told you only rotting carrion had anything to fear. They were lying.

In northern Spain, residents are finally telling the truth. Vultures are no mere scavengers.

A group of hungry vultures has been seen to attack a mother cow and her calf, murdering them before eating them. This seems to be the new vulture ethic: Create your own carrion!

If vultures in Spain can switch from searching for dead animals to eat to looking for live animals to eat, then they can evolve their behavior again. One more change like this, and those vultures could be hunting human beings. Once they make such a switch, the territory available to them would nearly worldwide, including such hunting grounds as Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle, and Los Angeles.

Don’t be afraid to spread the warning. The emperor has no clothes! Protect your children! Reinforce your windows with plywood! The vultures are coming!

Bush does it again. Everyone remember when King Shrub II got John Bolton jammed into the UN? Welp, he’s repeated his antics only this time with Belgium. Let’s read, shall we?

Bush Bypasses Senate to Name Ambassador

Bush bypasses Senate to name ambassador
By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer 38 minutes ago

President Bush named Republican fundraiser Sam Fox as U.S. ambassador to Belgium on Wednesday, using a maneuver that allowed him to bypass Congress, where Democrats had derailed Fox’s nomination.

The appointment, made while lawmakers were out of town on spring break, prompted angry rebukes from Democrats, who said Bush’s action may even be illegal.

Democrats had denounced Fox for his donation to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during the 2004 presidential campaign. The group’s TV ads, which claimed that Sen. John Kerry exaggerated his military record in Vietnam, were viewed as a major factor in the Massachusetts Democrat’s election loss.

Recognizing Fox did not have the votes to obtain Senate confirmation in the Foreign Relations Committee, Bush withdrew the nomination last week. On Wednesday, with the Senate on a one-week break, the president used his power to make recess appointments to put Fox in the job without Senate confirmation.

This means Fox can remain ambassador until the end of the next session of Congress, effectively through the end of the Bush presidency.

“It’s sad but not surprising that this White House would abuse the power of the presidency to reward a donor over the objections of the Senate,” Kerry said in a statement.

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he plans to ask the Government Accountability Office to issue an opinion on whether the recess appointment is legal.

Recess appointments are intended to give the president flexibility if Congress is out for a lengthy period of time, such as the four-week adjournment in summer. But Dodd said the law was not intended to circumvent lawmakers’ approval.

“This is really now taking the recess appointment vehicle and abusing this beyond anyone’s imagination,” said Dodd, a candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. “This is a travesty.”

Bush also used his recess appointment authority to make Andrew Biggs deputy director of Social Security. The president’s earlier nomination of Biggs, an outspoken advocate of partially privatizing the government’s retirement program, was rejected by Senate Democrats in February.

Presidents since George Washington have made appointments during congressional recesses to fill positions in the executive and judicial branches. Bush has used the authority more frequently than some — but not all — of his most recent predecessors, making 171 so far, compared with 140 for President Clinton over two terms, 77 by his father in one term and 243 by President Reagan during two terms.

Some of Bush’s more notable recess appointments include John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton arrived at the U.N. in August 2005 after being appointed during a congressional recess because he twice failed to be confirmed by the Senate. Still unable to get Senate backing, he stepped down in December.

Others include include William Pryor and Charles Pickering (news, bio, voting record) as federal appeals court judges, in 2004, and Otto Reich as an assistant secretary of state, in 2002.

Fox, a 77-year-old St. Louis businessman, gave $50,000 to the Swift Boat group. He is national chairman of the Jewish Republican Coalition and was dubbed a “ranger” by Bush’s 2004 campaign for raising at least $200,000. He is founder and chairman of the Clayton, Mo.-based Harbour Group, which specializes in the takeover of manufacturing companies.

Fox has donated millions of dollars to Republican candidates and causes since the 1990s.

In answer to questions about the Swift Boat donation, Fox has said he gives when asked, insisting he was not involved with the writing of the ad scripts and never saw them before they aired but had been aware of the general thrust of the group.

Fox issued a statement saying he is “delighted and honored” to accept the ambassadorial appointment.

“As the son of a man who fled Europe to find freedom and a better life, I am especially humbled by the opportunity to return to that continent as this nation’s representative,” he said.

Right wingers, loathe to accept the idea that people will need to exercise self-restraint in order to continue to thrive on Planet Earth, are lashing out at the science of climate change much as many people once rejected the idea that the Earth is round. At the 60 Minutes site on Yahoo, one such person comments,

“There is no global warming and sea levels are not rising. This is coming from the communist Left, which is incompetent at science and hates technology. Yes that’s what has always been behind 60 Minutes. They won’t let you hear the other side. Do not worry. Global warming is not proven by localized events.”

The fact is that global warming is already causing sufficient increases in sea level to cause localized events around the world. Coastal communities in the south of England, for example are already being forced to make decisions about which areas will receive sea wall protection, and which areas will be allowed to flood. Michael Byrnes at Reuters writes that local adaptation to rising sea levels is “already happening in the south of England, where local councils and governments could not afford to protect all areas from sea water erosion as land continued to sink.”

There is a massive amount of evidence of the reality of global warming. There is no evidence, however, of international Communist plot involving 60 Minutes to trick people into accepting the idea of global warming.

You may not have heard a lot about it here in the United States yet, but over in the United Kingdom, it’s whopping big news: Prime Minister Tony Blair, before he leaves office in disgrace, is trying to push legislation through Parliament that would build a new generation of nuclear weapons for the British government to use.

It’s bizarre psychology, isn’t it? Tony Blair gets so hyper about rumors that Saddam Hussein is trying to develop nuclear weapons that Blair joins with kook-in-arms George W. Bush to go to war in Iraq, even though there is no good evidence to substantiate the rumors, which turn out to be bogus. But then, a few years later, Tony Blair engages in exactly the same behavior that he said made Saddam Hussein an unacceptable danger.

Many Britons are expressing their outrage at Tony Blair’s efforts to build a new generation of Trident nuclear missiles. The outraged include members of Parliament in Tony Blair’s own political party. Two Labor MPs, Jim Devine and Nigel Griffith resigned from their positions in Parliament in protest of Blair’s nuclear weapons plans.

The vote in Parliament’s House of Commons over whether to build new nuclear weapons is scheduled for tomorrow, but today, Greenpeace UK sent a clear message today, unfurling a gigantic banner outside of Parliament today that reads, “Blair loves weapons of mass destruction.”

Among those British celebrities opposing the vote to build more Trident nuclear weapons is Emma Thompson. Golly, isn’t she great?

In stunning news that has sent zoologists scrambling for explanations, a group of camels has been caught hiding a bomb in their enclosure at the Hanover Zoo in Germany!

The camels were moved to another zoo last month, after they had begun exhibiting suspicious behavior. Apparently, they did not have time to remove their bomb from their hiding place, over six feet under the ground, before they were relocated. The bomb was found by earth moving equipment after the camels were taken away. Anonymous reports of electronic listening devices planted in the zookeepers’ offices are as of yet unconfirmed.

So far, the camels have refused to talk. No one knows what the camels’ specific target was. No chances are being taken, however, as teams of experts are being sent to search the cages recently inhabited by camels in zoos all over the world. So far, only a few old videotapes of Lawrence of Arabia have been found, suggesting that the camels may have an informant who tipped them off about the searches before they took place.

Where will the camel terrorists strike next? It could be at any place, at any time. Remember, camels can go a very long time without drinking water. They can afford to wait. It’s a matter of when, not if, the next attack will take place!

A fascinating piece of scientific research was announced today, though most people overlooked it, just as people on a boat in the middle of the ocean might not notice a tsunami rolling underneath their feet. Well, ignore this story at your own peril!

It turns out that 8,000 years ago, a big piece of Mount Etna fell off into the ocean and caused a gigantic tsunami to shoot across the Mediterranean Sea. This tsunami was over 130 feet tall. To understand how tall that is, imagine stacking 520 standard-sized salt shakers, one on top of another. That’s how high the ancient watery wall of death was.

What the scientists in the study decided not to publish is the fact that most of Mount Etna remains above sea level, but could drop into the ocean at any second, given the right circumstances. Such an event would create a tsunami that would make the ancient wave of destruction look like a mere ripple, and destroy European civilization south of the Alps!

Given such destruction, the European Union would surely fall apart, and the United States would have no serious rivals in its quest for world domination. Thus, a one world government would not be far behind.

Is it any wonder, then, that tidal wave monitoring equipment in the Mediterranean is not calibrated to report the scale of such a catastrophe? Why, it’s almost as if someone wants this disaster to take place, without any possibility for people to try to escape the waves.

Who is planning this attack against Europe anyway? Could it be, perhaps, the Knights of Malta, who just so happen to be promoting an “independent” candidate for President of the United States in 2008? The coincidences are too great to dismiss.

Progressives have the tendency to revile the United States as the center of Homeland Security authoritarianism, and to look to Europe for a more liberal-minded alternative. They’re correct to fear the America’s growing security state, but quite wrong to imagine that Europe will offer a refuge of enlightened liberalism.

News came out today in a new European Union report indicating that the governments of Britain, Poland, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Cyprus all knew about the program of secret, illegal CIA prisons where people were held and tortured without legal authority and without criminal charge.

The Europeans knew about it, and went along with it.

Is there no refuge in the world where liberty is still valued?

No, probably not.

On the coast of Spain, the dues of global warming are coming in stings and jolts to tens of thousands of people. I’m talking jellyfish. Jellyfish are beginning an invasion of Europe!

Millions, probably billions, of jellyfish are amassing along Spain’s eastern shores. In the last week alone, over three thousand Spaniards have been attacked and treated by the Red Cross! Those who didn’t make it out alive will never be counted.

Why? Why is this happening? Environmentalists have one answer: They point out that the oceans have been overfished, removing the predators who would ordinarily keep jellyfish in check. At the same time, warming of ocean temperatures encourages plankton blooms upon which the jellyfish can feed and swarm.

All that may be true, but I think there’s something more to it. I have a theory that, when they are assembled in massive swarms, in sea water which is electrically conductive, they form a gigantic oceanic neural net, a collective consciousness. The jellyfish are growing into a giant brain!

Think all those attacks were accidental? No way in hell! The jellyfish brain is too smart to mistake a person for plankton.

They’re up to something… and if global temperatures keep climbing, it won’t be long before that giant jellyfish brain reaches America. A jellyfish brain that large won’t be stopped at our shores. It will find a way to invade the land… Perhaps Spain is just a trial run.

Beware the coming invasion of land jellyfish!

Pope Benedict XVI, known as El Papa in Spain, recently concluded a visit there, but it seems that he left more negative feelings behind than warm relations. In his first visit to this increasingly secular nation, El Papa quickly dematured into El Bambino, throwing a temper tantrum of the highest magnitude.

When Pope Benedict was informed that Spain’s Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, would not be attending his ritual of Mass, Benedict threw a fit. The Pope said that if he could get Communist leaders Daniel Ortega and Fidel Castro to attend Mass, Zapatero surely must attend as well.

It was the equivalent of Kruschev pounding his shoe on the table at the United Nations.

What Pope Benedict seems most angry at is that he and his church have become marginal political players in Spain, which used to be a solidly Catholic nation. Only 18 percent of Spaniards regularly attend Mass or observe Catholic holy days. So, if most of Spain is secular, what right does the Pope have to come barging into the country making demands that the government’s leader submit himself to the Pope’s authority by participating in the Pope’s religious rituals? If the Prime Minister doesn’t want to attend, let him attend to more important business.

It’s not as if Zapatero snubbed the Pope. The Prime Minister met with Benedict XVI in a more appropriate setting.

This brouhaha is yet another indication that this new Pope doesn’t understand the world in which he lives. He seems to be trying to fight battles that the Catholic Church lost long ago. The Pope has no business behaving like an Ayatollah, trying to impose his religious power to interfere with the proper functioning of democratically elected governments.