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They certainly appear to be a randy bunch, don't they? The Senator (Ensign), and now the Governor (Sanford). And don't forget former moralists Larry Craig and Newt Gingrich. Add in a handful of Born-Again Charismatic Charlatans from the TeeVee Ministries, and it adds up to quite a stud farm. Maybe that's why there was such outrage against Bill Clinton. A lot of the opposition party felt he had strayedonto their turf.
In any event, with the Presidential Hopefuls from the Republican Party rushing, Lemminglike, over the cliff, it now seems that Sarah Palin will be a shoo-in for the 2012 Republican Presidential Nomination. She, at least, is a whole generation removed from extra-marital sexual escapades, having left that sort of thing to her daughter Bristol.
Bottom Line: The Democrats have more power, but the Republicans have more fun!
...Or perhaps What Are They Smoking? It says Here, in The Washington Post: "In recent days, GOP leaders have invoked the unambiguous Cold War rhetoric of Ronald Reagan as the model for the message Obama should be sending to the demonstrators..." My God! Where did these guys go to school? California? I'd really be interested if Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham are referring to when Ronald Reagan sent undercover agents to Tehran to bribe the Ayatollahs with weapons to attack Iraq; or are they talking about when Reagan sold Nerve Gas to Saddam Hussein to use against Iran (and also his own Iraqi Kurds)?
The record of Ronald Reagan is actually pretty clear. Whenever the United States was actually attacked, he retreated and negotiated. All the while talking big. Iran? He bribed 'em. Lebanon? He pulled the troops out.
On the other hand, he won Big Time in Grenada.
So I guess he wasn't a Total Wimp.
In The "Good Old Days" (which probably weren't really all that good), most people thought the best way to Defend Marriage was to forbid Divorce. Force people who didn't want to stay together to stay together. (Note: the Catholic Church, only now emerging from the 17th Century, still espouses this concept).
Today, most people think the best way to Defend Marriage is to forbid ermm... Marriage! Force people who do want to stay together to remain apart.
I have a Third Way: Don't let people who are going to get divorced get married! How simple is that? Only allow marriage to those who will stay married.
Hey, it could work! What's certain is that neither of the two strategies I mentioned above is worth that classic Bucket Of Warm Spit. They have been time-tested and found worthless.
Full Disclosure here: I really do not understand the fierce drive many people have to Get Married. At Any Cost.
Equally, I even more really do not understand the fierce drive some people have to decide who can and can't get married.
It's all a big riddle to me.
So, perhaps I shouldn't even be bloggerizing about it.
Brinkmanship. Yes, back in the Good-Old-Days of the Cold War, when pugnacious superpatriots like John Foster Dulles were running things, There were lots and lots of Warnings - like this one: NKorea warns... being tossed around, by a lot of people who really should have known better. But...
North Korea, of course, is still stuck in the middle of the 20th Century, thinking that this sort of thing will do something positive for their sad little state. A lot of people in saner (or less insane) countries are worried.
Maybe, just maybe, these guys are crazy enough to start the shooting war.
They certainly sound bellicose enough! In fact, they sound a lot like the (fortunately now former) President George W. Bush, with his casual talk of evildoers; axis of evil; and, of course, the personal favorite of Kim Jong-Il, "pygmy".
Well, insults aren't exactly the stuff of a peaceful approach to international diplomacy, but then N. Korea is also noted for ringing denunciations, loud warnngs, and direct threats.
The thing is, there's a lot of history to indicate that there's at least one person in N. Korea who's sufficently aware of the real world to understand that an attack by N. Korea on, well, on Anybody, would mean the End Of The World (of North Korea, anyway). The continued existence of that country requires them to stay strictly inside their own boundaries with the rare exception when they can sally forth and diddle the United States, for instance, with some action like the siezing of the USNS Pueblo. That was, of course, forty-one years ago. At a time when we were deeply involved in a losing war in Vietnam. Where we had no business to be. But someone in N. Korea took note, and estimated (correctly, it turned out) that the US wouldn't go to war for a historic Casus Belli, like the siezure of a ship on the high seas, when already involved in a war for economic reasons.
Let's hope that the clever clever N. Korean bureaucrat who figured that one is still around to let 'em know that a real attack would start a real war.
Signalling the End Of The Kingdom
There's Some Toxic Thinking, when somebody (Dick Cheney in this case) professes to believe that torturing people who are in custody and behind bars somehow Protects The Country from attacks by people who are out and on the loose?
If he were serious about such things as preventing terrorist attacks, why did he and his boss (George W. Bush in this case), the Commander-In-Chief of the huge and mighty United States Armed Forces, let the Terrorist-In-Chief (Osama bin Laden in this case) slip away, time after time after time. One might almost believe the real purpose was to keep a fearsome enemy afield with which to frighten small children and gullible voters. Here's CIA director Leon Panetta, giving voice to the suspicion that, yes, the Dark Master of the anti-American Neo-cons would be delighted if the terrorists he nurtured during his tenure would now rise up and strike at his successor (Barack Obama in this case): CIA chief believes Cheney almost wants US attacked
Sadly, I find this quite believable.
At All Cost!... As it says here, the leading lights at PETA are deeply saddened that the scapegrace employees at
Pike Market are being so disrespectful of the salmon: Seattle's Pike Place fishmongers under fire.
Still, as Jeremy Ridgway, a manager at one of the fish stalls says "I mean, the fish are dead,..."
I gotta admit, it makes me a little bit crazy when people become so focussed on a single issue to the exclusion of all else, that they lose track of what's real in the world. I suppose it's nice for them to be able to worry about Dead Salmon, rather than have to worry about the fact that Live Salmon are being driven to extinction - partly because of their own heedless selfish and self-centered unsustainable assault on the environment.
To quote the Judge from the long-gone TV show "Picket Fences"; I Order You All To Get Real!
Than I Thought!
I. Santayana's Surmise: A man who forgets his past is desstined to repeat it.
I.1. Maunder's Corollary: A man who remembers his past is likewise destined to repeat it.
I.1.1: Maunders Lemma: Not only do men not remember their past, they don't even remember the present!
According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the airlines, or at least most, or many, or some, will continue to lose money in the forseeable future.
This is not at all unusual. Most air carriers actually make their living off government subsidies anyway (the new GM business model). However, it need not be so. Airlines could easily return to profitability, even with the reduced passenger load, with one simple change. Charge by the Wheel for "Carryon Luggage. Let the Oh-So-Modern travellers who disdain to actually carry their carry on luggage, or put backpacks on their backs, pay the freight, as it were. After all, they already seem willing to go to considerable extra expense and effort to affix wheels (Wheels! - OH MY!) to objects ill-suited to them. The only good part about all this wheeled luggage, making up in some small way for the damage they do to unwary travellers ankles, is watching the physically-challenged passengers trying to hoist the ovesized and overweight "Hand Carry Bag" into the overhead rack. Why so many find it needful to travel with more of their stuff than most people on the planet possess is a topic for another day.
The Late, Great State of California, mired in a financial disaster largely self-made, is considering now if they can save money by halting Welfare Payments: (Budget plan could doom CalWORKS aid to families, children). Thus truly "Ending Welfare As We Know It."
Well.
I have a better idea.
Close the schools! It's pretty obvious that they aren't doing much good anyway. If you look at the state of the California Civic Body - the voters, that is. They want Money. They want State Services. They Don't want to spend the Money on the State Services. Ahhh, the sweet smell of Something-For-Nothing. It's pretty clear that all that money spent on Civics Classes and Math and Economics Classes has been money wasted. Why keep spending on something that doesn't work?
Prop. 13 didn't cause the collapse of the once-heralded California State School System. It proved that the education system had already failed, having produced a voting population of Idiots!
So It's Time, People: Let's finish the job. Close The Schools. Maybe the kids will end up smarter than their parents.
It's certainly worth a try.
