POLITICS AND NATURE

And They're Off. (warning: this one is long but it is well worth it, in my opinion anyway)

Well they have done it. The you-tube Republican debate on CNN captivates just how close the race really is becoming. Eight bitter men fighting the ravages of twenty first century politics with vengeance in their hearts and viciousness in their eyes. The first bout, reminiscent of the last Democratic debate, was a tightly fought toe - toe battle between Mitt, the Man from Mass Romney and Rudy Red Scare Giuliani.

It didn't seem to last as long as the battle between Hillary and Barack, but then the crowd was overjoyed by the sight of blood on the mat. They fought long and hard over the next two hours, trading blows, ducking and weaving, boxers in their prime provide no better a site than this years Republicans duking it out over the biggest prize in the land.

The difference between the last two debates of the opposing parties is that Joe Biden stood up quickly, joking about his lack of exposure, and chastised the rest of the candidates for not dealing with the issues, and the other candidates pretty much listened, except for poor John who sulked on his side of the stage for the rest of the evening. The GOP hopeful would have none of that. John McCain, my Senator, who I have voted for twice now, tried to take the edge off but was quickly derided by Tom Tancredo for trying to stop the spectacle.

Those squeamish about negative campaign ads and the debilitating effect of repugnant political contests will want to move to Canada for the next year if this debate is anything like the coming season's quest for the gilded home on Pennsylvania Ave. You may want to move to Mexico but if Tancredo gets in, good luck gettin back. Illegals took up a good portion of the debate.

He Who Bleeds First.

That's what Mitt and Rudy fought about at first, Mitt said Rudy ran a sanctuary city, Rudy retorted 'I did not' to which Mitt returned the lob with a stern 'yes you did' and on it went. Then the tides turned and Rudy said Mitt's own beloved liberal state of Massachusetts was a bastion of sanctuary cities, to which Mitt threw back, 'it is not' ....and.... you get the picture. Rudy was booed for saying Mitt hired illegals cause, apparently, some company doing work on Mitt's mansion had illegal workers doing the labor, and it all got pretty tiring to the point that even the crowd booed again to stop the madness. Although, it was pretty darn funny in a mean spirited, Grand Old Party sort of way.

Then they all pledged to veto any amnesty bill. It wasn't discussed what constituted amnesty but who really cares about such a silly point.

Fabulous Fred threw out that "A nation that won't secure its own borders won't continue as a sovereign nation." Fear? If you don't vote Republican and we don't build a fence, shoot people, disrupt what wildlife corridors there are along the border, you will cease to exist as a nation. Hmmmm.

Good old Fred. Most of the time, it looked like he was dreaming about what sort of sandwich he was going to have when this dang thing was over and done with. You can see it in his mind...'Hmmm, another question, I suppose I can answer that, I'll secure the borders, no plan, no realistic assessment of the situation, just no amnesty, now, what was it that I wanted for supper?'

The crowd actually booed John McCain for suggesting that his bill was not an amnesty bill. He continued to explain himself in a clear and concise manner, but that never seems to work in these debates on either side of the political aisle. Alluding to Mel Martinez, Senator from Florida who must have been in the audience, and with whom he co-sponsored legislation that was shot down mainly because of Republican intransigence but that is another tale altogether.

It was here McCain meekly proposed he didn't think they were doing any good bickering.

To which Tom Tancredo replied he liked the way the debate was going and he would stop all immigration totally, no guest workers, none, zero, zip, nada, never again open those borders, seal them shut and call it good.

Duncan Hunter added that he built the fence in San Diego (he actually said "I built that fence" I don't know how much work he put into it and maybe he did a lot, but it seems eerie that someone makes a claim that sounds like he did it with his own two hands.....but that's just me), two humongous walls with a road in between. Hunter says it reduced crime substantially in both human and drug trafficking which appears logical.

However, it's still debatable whether the United States is a nation of walls. Bill Richardson, whose border in New Mexico, I think, is a bit longer than San Diego's believes there's no need for a wall. Maybe the wall is important by Tijuana but there are other options elsewhere.

Mitt and Mike Huckabee, affectionately known as Huck in his native Arkansas, got into it over immigration. Mitt called Huck a liberal. Huck provided scholarships to high achieving high school students who were children of illegal immigrants. He admitted it and it sounded like a good idea. But, Mitt was in the mood to attack. Huck has taken the lead in some polls in Iowa and is getting under Mitt’s skin, he’s too close, the Man from Mass can feel the dirty southerner’s breath on his neck and he doesn’t like it. But, so is everyone else in the race. Mitt's a marked man and he knows it.

Yessirree Bob, Mitt feels the teeth at his heels. Jack Frost is nipping at the life of the Romney campaign and Mighty Mitt doesn’t like it.

Ron Paul was asked whether he believes there’s a conspiracy by a secret society to build the uber social order by building a mega highway from Central America to Canada which will eliminate independence and sovereignty for the United States and destroy the Republic as we know it. This was the second reference to our sovereignty being under threat. He said it wasn’t a conspiracy but a reality.

Who Pays the Bills?

Good. Now that’s over. Moving on to the national debt and this will be quick. McCain blames Republicans for spending and will take out his veto pen and stop pork barrel spending like studies of the sperm count of pandas.

As if the trillions of dollars of debt are due to some grad student’s funding relating to the study of bugs or bear semen. It is one of those things that is amazing, but who will pay for the research? It is said that honey bees are a very lucrative and thriving business in some areas. Is it not good to understand about the habits of honey bees? I don’t know.

One man’s pork is another man’s pudding. And there’s a lot of pudding to be passed around from the feds to the lowly people. Somehow, Clinton worked it out. But McCain appeared to enjoy waving his black marker around in the air as if symbolizing that the pen is mightier than the sword and that was good cause that’s about as close as he’ll come to brandishing a pen on the desk in the oval office. All that can really be said is that he’s tried but he sure didn’t get anywhere while his party was the undisputed, undefeated heavyweight champion of Washington D.C.

Mitt will “go after entitlements” …. no real ideas, just platitudes. Rudy will make across the board cuts and not fill ½ of the positions of people retiring from the federal government. So that those left will be underpaid and overburdened and probably create more problems then they can handle.

Fraudulent Fred will attack any of a number of things, waste, duplication; he’s got his Social Security plan based on individual retirement accounts with matching funds from the feds, which, of course, another president tried recently and was shut down by not only his political foes but his own party. Fantastic Fred is not one to sweat the small stuff. When done with his half baked answer, he returned to his campaign strategy of seeming distant and aloof, as if all he could think of was that post debate sandwich. It would not be hard to see Fried Fred the marijuana user, pulling tubes and wandering aimlessly around the halls of the capital. Why anyone will vote for this man is simply incomprehensible, which means he’ll probably be our next president.

Ron Paul will hit the core of the problems. Get rid of the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security, and get us out of all this messy foreign affairs shit which, of course, is kind of like “no more of this nation building bullshit,” which the nation has heard somewhere before.

And that will just get Ron started. He’s on a mission to get us out of the war, bring the troops home, and reduce the size of the federal government. He has a crazed look in his eyes, but people are taking the man seriously.

Huck is going to eliminate the IRS, establish a “fair tax” or consumption tax, which will be regressive as hell, and revamp the Dept. of Homeland Security.

McCain doesn’t support the fair tax. And then he attacked Ron Paul, saying his isolationist ideas caused WWII and brought Hitler to power and the troops want to win. To which Paul replied that he got the most $ from active duty personnel, and that there’s a difference between non-interventionism and isolationism, which is true.

Nobody disputed that he got more cash from service personnel so who knows whether that’s true.

Grover Comes Alive.

Grover Norquist got a question, so much for citizen questions, and he wanted to know who would make a “no new taxes” pledge. Grover is the head of Americans for Tax Reform. He gets politicians to take a pledge and then, when reality hits them, he uses it to his advantage. There is a pledge breakers section on his website.

Grover is the man that wants to shrink the federal government to a size where it can easily be drowned in a bathtub. I don’t know the exact quote but things like the National Endowment for the Arts, the Forest Service, The Park Service, FEMA, and more are anathema to the ideals of Grover. He would look funny with his beard painted purple like the real Grover but that is neither here nor there.

It is people like Grover Norquist that refuse to accept that the size of the federal government did diminish without substantially reducing the benefits people get as a cohesive society during the tenure of President Clinton.

If the federal government is working and it gets reduced and there are still benefits out there that help people while creating a system in which business and individuals prosper, then there is no need to drown the government in the bathtub, unless you are overly guided by greed, misunderstanding, and clearly have lost your mind.

People like Grover are crazy, not because it’s bad to reduce the size of the federal government, but for the simple fact that they do not want things in the government to succeed.

They would blow the whole thing up if they could, but they will not shy away from taking a government hand out in the form of a no bid contract now and then; just a bit to wet their whistle.

This is why conservatives failed to reduce the size of government over six years of total control, the budget got out of hand, and the rest of the world turns the other way when Uncle Sam extends his hand. Even though Duncan Hunter is right, America is there for the needy and the desperate more than any other nation out there. Getting off track again.

The ones who wouldn’t sign his pledge were Frugal Fred, who won’t raise taxes but won’t pledge to anyone but the American people, (I wonder if that means he’d pledge to me even though I wouldn’t vote for him if he was running against Dennis Kucinich?) of course, he has no idea what he’d pledge to the American people but whatever pledge he ever may, or may not, make; or that he might deem necessary, or if questionable, maybe not, perhaps he’ll consider a pledge somewhere down the road, but he’s a conservative damn it! Low taxes, no right to choose, first priority reverse Roe v. Wade, and he owns guns, but we’ll get to that later. It’s really too bad he wasn’t a pothead, he’d make such a good one.

McCain agreed, he would be beholden to no man! And Duncan Hunter said he’d raise taxes if there was a war or a national emergency.

Video Warriors.

Each of the contestants was allowed to bring for show and tell one thirty second video which was shown throughout the world. The following includes the gory details, filled with their assorted wet dreams of taking Hillary down and, in one case, shooting her off to Mars.

Yes, it is going to be an ugly year in America.

The Bush administration hunkered down in the foxhole, Cheney peeping over the top with his shotgun, wary of the press, except those that are bought and paid for, wondering what in the world will happen with their dreams of empire if left to the likes of that hippie woman and her cohort of fags and quasi-realistic acid freaks with law degrees, the ex-president will be running around naked at all hours, chasing law clerks invited over for tea and a little lecturing, all the while the few, the proud, the Republicans will be waving flags and making sure anyone with a military background on the Democratic side feels the sting of the sword of justice which has brought down so many heathens like Kerry, Cleland, Murtha, and Clark, not to mention any other officers of any department or any persuasion whatsoever who dared to question the motives or the methods of the party that owns the highest office of the land.

Yes. The Republican Party feels that it is the rightful owner of the house on Pennsylvania Avenue. Since 1968, any occupation by it of on of those evildoers from that other party is seen as a usurper. An outsider with no rights or privileges but to be badgered and beaten into submission until they finally give way to the real owners of the nation. The wealthy and the prosperous, those who make things happen, without whom the poor would be living in squalor worse than Darfur, and when they have that house they can do with it what they will.

This narrative exists despite the facts that their first White Knight was ridden out of town on a rail, then came the clueless one, then the savior, followed by the next one term-er (probably the most admirable of any who sat in that oval office in a long time) and later the second coming, a man so foolish and ignorant that even the most staunch of supporters has abandoned him, leaving him darn near as worthless as Carter in the polls, without that so-called capital that he never got to spend due to worthless endeavors and failed leadership.

All this with pal Igor, existing as if Darth Vader, kept alive through modern technology, inhabited the most secret avenues within the halls of power, in the dungeons where plots, which would make Lady MacBeth or Iago dizzy with envy, hatch daily to allow the merciless crushing of dissent and where copies of conventions are burned while the former Secretary reads secret incantations from historic scrolls, centuries old, that had been read at the with trials in Salem, and while the insane proctors of the Church crushed Huguenots in old world France.

Yes. It will be an revolting, repulsive, and costly year with many American ideals pounded out of the spirit of young and old citizens alike. It can be witnessed when watching the heated, mean spirited, hard core brutality of this debate and the videos these men put together.

Tom Tancredo’s video came first: He used a couple of Hillary quotes out of context on a bad attack on the former first lady.

Second, Thompson…aka: Fiery Fred: Attacking Mitt for changing views on abortion and Helpless Huck for being a tax and spender.

Next, McCain attacked Hillary with clips of her and statements on taxes.

Then Romney provided a positive message through his video about what he believes in.

Fifth, Rudy’s is a message about his own achievements with a bit of Hillary bashing thrown in for good measure.

Sixth, Duncan Hunter shows Chuck Yeager’s support and his own attributes

Seventh, Huck says he stands by his beliefs in God and anti abortion

Finally, Ron Paul says people are sick and tired of politics as usual and he will lower taxes, reduce the size of government, and return the U.S. to the republic it was meant to be instead of the empire it is being turned into by faux conservatives.

All in all, Romney, Hunter, Huck, and Paul stayed away from the attacks. Good for them. That’s four of eight but the others were quite the disappointment. Not unexpected, but disappointing just the same.

Farm Subsidies and Other Minor Trivialities

Nobody would reduce or eliminate the farm subsidies. None of them even had the courage to say they would get rid of subsidies to large, industrial farms or farms with vacant, millionaire landowners. There was some hooha about Europe subsidizing and fairness (sounded very Democratic to me but it could be the importance of Iowa or, as Mitt pointed out, Kansas, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota etc).

McCain and Romney fought over torture. Romney, like his performance in the rest of the debate, refused to leave it out because he was pandering to the base. McCain says things are working quite well and nobody who knows sanctions torture. Go John.

And openly gay retired general questioned the candidates about gays serving openly, turns out he had some sort of affiliation with Hillary, this came out through Bill Bennett on the after the debate panel.

Duncan Hunter said most people who serve are conservative and this would not be fair to subject them to alternative lifestyles, it would harm unit cohesion. Mitt avoided the question.

They talked about family values, which they are all going to strengthen,

They’re all going to get spending in line.

They differ on the war, McCain-we’re winning, Paul-get out, Giuliani-do whatever it takes (always a good line), Romney/Hunter/Thompson/Tancredo/Huck-the same as Giuliani, nobody even discussed any sort of diplomacy.

Mitt was asked about the confederate flag, got a little upset about it, and then went on a tangent about how Democrats are tearing down the country.

And that was the CNN you tube debate with my own curious commentary laced with my own personal style of madness and attempts at humor…which I personally find really funny.

Some Conclusions.

All Republicans should just stand up and chant "We want Hillary!!! We want Hillary!!! This will prop up the evil queen and assure her ascendancy to the throne of the Democratic Party. This is the fight the Republicans are itching for.

I saw no leadership except in John McCain, who’s war record was questioned long before the swiftboaters arrived on the scene, by….guess who. McCain certainly could be trusted to lead this nation out of the gloom and darkness the current silly weasel in chief has created. He is an honorable man that I have disagreements with but I trust him.

Romney is pandering to the right wing and he waffles uncontrollably.

Rudy is trying to figure out how to pander to the right wing without going over the top with 911 like he has in the past and keeping some semblance of his dignity.

Fred…….well, then there’s Fred.

Huck is a nice guy who wants to help the poor and run the nation with Revelation in mind. It’s hard to tell what sort of leader he will be. He doesn’t believe in evolution, and the last time we got a guy in there who questions the science with no knowledge backing it……well, look what’s happened.

Tancredo and Hunter are both so far behind it is hard to even know what to say. They seem to be two decent guys who have some fucked up ideas about how to fix a problem. They are both single issue candidates and that issue is immigration and how to keep everyone out and somehow magically get rid of all those people already in the country.

Finally, Ron Paul. What to write about Ron Paul. He stands up and says what he means. He has no fear of doing that whatsoever. And it shows that his brand of conservatism is popular and growing. He has given a message that resonates with the Republican Party and he is one guy on that stage that I think is totally out of his head, kind of like Ross Perot was, but that what he is saying does make sense and will strike a cord with a great deal of conservative Americans.

One thing is for sure, most of them will fight hard and they will fight dirty. They will call Hillary, or whoever the Democratic contender is, and anyone who thinks like that person a traitor and anti American, they will say with conviction that the world will end if a Democrat gets in office; they will question the patriotism and the purity of motives of anyone who stands against them. They will be vicious, as if a van full of pit bulls were let out on a kindergarten playground.

They will not win unless thoughtful people who vote throughout the United States put an end to it and then, maybe, we can have a Republican Party that will respect differences once again and that will stand by the ideals they have so casually thrown aside while in office.

It is one of the things most bothersome about the current, Democratic leadership that they think they have won because of the War when, in fact, they won to restore dignity and order to the institutions that had become polluted by a party with all the power. They were elected to re-invigorate government and put the budget into balance. They have not accomplished what they have been elected for.

In all seriousness, the nation needs leadership and this election in 2008 will be among the most important in a generation. The ship of state needs to be straightened. It looks like we’re being pulled under by the tide and votes are the only way to get ourselves through the storm. The Republican Party wants you to be scared.

They want people to fear the Democrats, environmental awareness, Al Qaeda, losing, nuclear weapons, immigrants, and crime. Fear is their strongest weapon. The problem is that as long as fear keeps them in power, they have a perverse incentive to keep it alive without any hope of ending it or relying on the ingenuity, frugality, honesty, sincerity, and faith of our democratic nation.

This is a message that must get through and I’m telling you now, only through a thorough understanding of the options will the truth come out and the winning party deal effectively with the problems. This country will be bombarded with negativity over the next year and it will be sad and maddening and the most frustrating part of it is that negativity works. But the future is much brighter than short sighted politicos can possibly see.