Barack Obama: or why I agree with Pat Buchanan

I honestly never thought that it would happen, but I am in agreement with Pat Buchanan's remarks which can be found in his blog, here: http://buchanan.org/blog/?p=810

I also have considered the media storm which has surrounded Obama's remarks about meeting with heads of state from what might be considered "Rogue Nations" and found the whole thing to be ludicrous. It's not as if Obama said he was going to invite each of them over for spankings and blowjobs, he just said he would be willing to meet with them.

Isn't that what a president is supposed to do? How can the "leader of the free world" lead if he keeps himself in isolation? I see this as a bold move toward a less isolationist policy which could be greatly beneficial for the United States in the years to come. By setting up lines of communications between these mostly anti american countries perhaps we can begin to heal the rifts that are present between US and them.

Take Fidel Castro (or more likely his brother Raul) for instance. For almost fifty years the bastion of communism has existed but a few scant miles outside of American waters. An embargo has been in place since 1962 and has done everyone a fat lot of good. We even went so far as to make the embargo into law in 1992 with the passage of the Cuban Democracy Act which aims to "bring democracy to the citizens of cuba." Yes, we all know how good the United States is at delivering democracy to small nations. Maybe we can do better if the nation we're democratizing is closer to our borders, but I doubt it. The whole thing reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw recently: "Don't piss off America, or we'll bring Democracy to your country."

Buchanan points our, correctly and convincingly, that presidents have met with leaders that are much worse than those that Obama proposes to initiate contact with. I think the strongest arguements come in the form of the FDR/Truman meetings with Josef Stalin and Eisenhower's meeting Yuri Andropov. By comparison, Obama's proposal seems very tame.

I know that James will probably chime in with the point that Obama is inexperienced or some such, but it seems like he gets more savvy every day. Such comments made by Hillary Clinton are now quite obviously rebounding as Obama takes the moral high ground, affording him the opportunity to attack Clinton's support of the War in Iraq, which is shaping up to be (like every other war-time election) to be the central issue of the coming election.

I personally believe that Obama is milking this portrayal as a virtual outsider in the political arena for all it is worth. I think he understands the public frustration with the entrenched politicos both inside and outside the Bush camp. If he continues to strive for moderation and keeps his head up while ducking punches as skillfully as he has done so far then it is possible that America will be electing it's first black president in 2008.

Necrophiliatic Scumbags and the System that Allows Them

Let me ask you a quick question. Would you consider necrobeastiality immoral? If you know the word (it means to have sex with dead animals) then I hope you just answered yes and I’d be inclined to agree with you. Even though we consider it immoral it should be noted that it is not necesarily illegal.
Now I’m not exactly sure that sex with dead animals is alright under Wisconsin Law, but sex with dead humans sure is according to a recent ruling by Grant County Circuit Judge George Curry.
The case involves three men who were apprehended attempting to dig up the body of a woman killed in a motorcycle accident. They had seen an obituary picture and had, for some reason, concocted a plan to dig her up and violate her corpse.
A provision of the Wisconsin sexual assault law applies penalties regardless of the victim being alive or dead. However, under Curry’s interpretation this is meant to be applied only in cases of a rape-murder or murder-rape.
Quite simply this means that the three men will only be charged with misdemeanor attempted theft for trying to take the woman’s body. Is grave robbing really a misdemeanor?
Now normally, I would be against government interference on morality based issues especially in matters of sexual prediliction, but this goes beyond the bar of acceptable.
What two or more consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home (or in the woods when no one is around) is there own business, but when a person (or three) take to grave robbing to have relations with a corpse that they thought looked attractive in an obituary photo that may be when a common decency law needs to be brought into play.
In the first place, there is no way for a corpse to be a consenting party, unless the empty wrapper of flesh that was once a human being was given in a last will and testament to be used for that specific purpose.
I furthermore take issue with the burying of bodies that have been pumped full of formaldehyde. This process is gross, inhumane and without regard for the perfectly natural process of biological decomposition. If a sanitary method of disposal needs to be had, rather than allowing corpses to break down in the earth, then I would put forward cremation as the best method. Not only would this take care of sanitation concerns and save on land space, but it would completely deny access to those disturbed individuals who consider graverobbing and necrophilia (having sex with the dead without the added animal angle) to be a well spent evening.
Not only that, but think of the savings to families that won’t have to pay for a burial plot or a casket. A modest place in a cemetery can cost up to and beyond $3,000 with a casket running anywhere from $500 to $10,000.
Both sex and death are as natural a part of life as breathing. But when the two are put together they paint a sickening picture of the sickening depths to which societal graces in America are falling.
There will always be disturbed individuals who attempt to get away with such things, but it is galling when the legal system sees fit to sit by and allow it.

A Few Rules of Mine for Other People to Ponder (or adopt)

Everyone needs to have rules they live their life by. It doesn't really matter what they are, so long as you yourself find them to be acceptable. Some people, for lack of creativity, simply accept the rules of conventional society and move along their merry way never bothering with the lack of fairness in some of those rules.

Now I could have started off talking about how everyone needs laws, but I don't honestly think everyone does. Some people need laws because they would otherwise be unable to determine proper, civilised behavior. Everything one everyone wanted from law could be solved if everyone just followed the old and tested golden rule, but neither I nor any other sane person would even attempt to say that everyone could live by any single rule no matter what precious metal it were made from.

All of this having been said, I'd like to share some of my personal life rules with you all. Some of these are straight forward and others take some interpretation.

1. There is an exception to every rule.
2. Some rules have no exceptions.
3. When going out on a dinner and movie date, go to the movie first.
4. Avoid universal qualifiers (all, every, etc.) and negators (never, none, etc.)
5. Don't dive in unless you know how deep the water is. Jumping in feet first is acceptable.
6. If you've spent the last 5 hours trying to find the answer to a problem then it's probably time to go to sleep and worry about it in the morning.
7. Blowing something up is not the same as fixing it.
8. Beating your head against a wall doesn't solve anything unless your problem is not having bruises on your head.
9. Everything is true, nothing is sacred. Nothing is true, everything is sacred. (stolen from Robert Anton Wilson)
10. When sober, always do what you said you would when you were drunk. It will teach you to keep your mouth shut. (Also stolen, from Hemingway I believe)
11. Even if you hate them, courtesy should be extended to all people. If they snub that then all bets are off.

Pulling your proverbial leg.

As part of my job (I'm a journalist with a small town newspaper) I'm often required to go to small town fairs to get pictures of various events that are taking place. Some of the events are cute, like a childrens talent competition. Some of the events are interesting, like a chainsaw woodcarving artist. Other events are ones that I find to be completely asinine, like the tractor pull.

If you've never been to a tractor pull then you really should sometime. Then you can see what rednecks with too much time on their hands can do with a tractor. For the uninitiated, let me explain how this works. A given tractor hooks on to a special vehicle called a skid. The skid has a special sliding device that makes it harder to pull the further you go. Operators take turns pulling the skid as far as they can. There are seperate weight and category classes. Weight classes are mostly useless, as almost every operator will continue to add weight to their tractor to compete in as many classes as possible. There is a seperate class for modified tractors which usually resemble drag racers, only they're tractors so it's not nearly as cool.

Once a first round on winners is determined, the three or five best pullers in each weight come back to pull again to determine the winner. Then prizes are handed out and everyone goes home.

Now as you might imagine, many of these supped up tractors are quite loud. Not only that, they smell like shit as they burn through enough diesel fuel to get a bus from Minnesota to Texas. At a time when gas prices only seem to be going up I think it's great that we can get together and waste fuel in such a pointless exercise. Oh wait, that's not great. As a matter of fact it's the exact opposite of great, horrible. I really can't think of any stupider way to waste diesel fuel. Well, maybe just straight up burning it, but that's another story.

Also included in town and county fairs are things called "horse pulls" which, if possible, are more boring than tractor pulls. The difference is that horse pulls waste nothing but time which is actually a benefit in a small town. Again, let me digress into explaining what happens at one of these pulls. A sled is loaded with concrete blocks. Two-horse teams are then hooked to the sled. The team has 10 seconds to pull the sled 20 feet (I think that's the distance). If any team is unable to pull the full distance then the weight of the sled and the progress they do make is marked as their final score. This seems simple, but weight is added gradually and each team pull once a round. It can take over 40 rounds before a winner is declared. So really, all there is to watch is a teams of horses pulling a steel sled back and forth over the same 60 ft of ground for two hours or more.

There is also a "pony pull" which is the exact same thing only with ponies instead of horses and the distance they must pull is less. I am informed that the east has a similar contest, the "ox pull" only the sled moves a matter of inches in each pull, I'm sure that it must be even more riveting.

Now, I'm not saying that any of that is "cruel to animals" or "bad for the environment," even though I could easily make that case. The fact is that these animals have been bred and trained for exactly this purpose, so to not use them in such a way is an insult to their genetic structure. The tractors have been painstakingly rebuilt and revamped to perform their best and the pulling is probably the closest alot of the viewers ever get to having "fun."

All I'm saying is that I think it's boring. Really, really boring. Maybe I need to get drunk to enjoy the spectacle, it seems to work for everyone else.

Things I Hate Pt. 2

I just spent some time poking around on Facebook, so I think it's about time for another rendition of Things I Hate.

Part of my job is to run around with a camera and take pictures of people doing various things. Sometimes they're working in their garden, sometimes it's a large group of people to show who's involved in a particular activity. The point is that there is usually a reason for a picture in the newspaper looking the way it does. Please note from this that I have nothing against photographs in general, nor against digital technology (other than the beef I have with all technology).

There is however a particular type of photograph that I really dislike. The pressed heads. This is the photo that results from a bunch of people getting their heads really close together and then taking a picture. Essentially what you're doing is creating a line-up of who was with you when the picture was taken. You get faces and little else. Digital technology has only made this type of shot more prevalent by allowing people to press heads and hold their digital camera out at arms length to take the picture themselves without fear of wasting a shot. Unless you all have some sort of crazy facepaint on this picture is pointless.

Now I know that this picture might be useful to you later when you're trying to remember who exactly came to the bar while you were busy dumping tequila down your throat, but it really isn't very interesting to anyone else.

Perhaps a better idea would be to hand off your camera to your designated driver (assuming that you have the intelligence to have one) and let them take pictures of you when you're shaking it on the table to Abba's Dancing Queen. Now that would be a picture worth showing off later.

I suppose that since I'm on the topic of people taking drunken pictures I should mention another common one. The "WOOOOO!" shot is that picture with a large group in which everyone's face is scrunched with eyes closed and mouth open as they're screaming loudly. I know you're drunk and everything, but it doesn't take much to recall that photos don't include sound. At best you look like you're trying to swallow flies or are part of a constipation support group.

Look, I'm not saying that taking a camera isn't a good idea. How else are you going to remember all the stupid things you did (not saying that like it's a bad thing). But maybe you could try taking some good pictures every once in a while, something interesting, rather than yelling heads.

Biological Terror in Our Own Minds

Once again I have a newspaper column I wrote that I want to get some more play out of. So here it is (apologies for the strange spacing)

Last year it was the e. coli contamination in our spinach. The year before that it was the Asian bird flu. The year before that it was SARS. And before that it was the Africanized honey bee.
We’re always looking for it here in America, the next big epidemic, that latest and greatest danger that will finally be arriving to usher in armageddon and end us all.
Are we really so gullible as a people? Do we really just believe everything we see on TV?
In the 1997 movie “Men in Black” Tommy Lee Jones says to Will Smith, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.”
I find that this quotation is uniquely suited to this situation, as I am more afraid of aliens invading the earth than I am of Asian bird flu.
Let’s look at the numbers. between 2003 and 2005 about 150 people worldwide died of the dreaded bird flu. Let’s compare this to some other random cause of death. How about car accidents, which account for 43,000 deaths in the US every year. That’s just over 117 deaths per day, about five deaths per hour.
But Ryan, you say, “you were talking about diseases, car crashes aren’t a disease.”
Well neither are bees, but I see your point. Let’s take our examples in a different direction.
What if bird flu had killed 7.2 million people worldwide in 2003? Then I might be a little bit concerned about it. Except bird flu didn’t kill 7.2 million people worldwide in 2003. No, that number is people who died of heart disease.
Who is worried about heart disease? I am now that I looked up the numbers, that’s for sure.
Next year I expect to hear about Guatemalan Kissing Sickness. Followed the following year by Kuala Lumpur Syndrome. These are just guesses of course, but now that they’ve been printed you should expect to see them showing up in other places. (I actually made those two up, so there’s no need to stop kissing).
But why oh why are these things being blown like they have been? What is the purpose of trying to scare honest, hardworking American taxpayers?
I have a theory. If the general populace were to actually feel threatened by Avian flu or any of the other outbreaks mentioned, there could be massive repercussions.
What if 80 percent of the population would no longer gather in public places for fear of infection? Public and commercial transportation including planes, trains, and buses would be hard hit. So would all professional sports. Churches could go either way, it depends on whether people want the comfort of divine presence or the safety of staying home more.
Surveys have been done which suggest that in light of an actual breakout most parents would keep their children home from school.
And what would everyone do while they were sitting in their homes shivering with fear and wolfing down anti-viral medications? They wold watch television, the very thing that informed them of the outbreak in the first place. Fear of disease and a “need” to know any news of the spreading biological menace would keep them glued to the tube, allowing advertisers to hold sway over a captive audience.
Maybe this all sounds a little over the top, but I told you before that it’s just my own theory.
Staying informed of the possibilities of new diseases is probably a good thing for you and your family, obsessing over them and worrying yourself sick over a foreign disease that might spread to the U.S. is pointless.

"Jailbird" by the late Kurt Vonnegut

I don't have it in me today to post about politics, which it seems this blog has been primarily concerned with so far other than yesterday's bit about television.

So, as promised, I will be trying to review Kurt Vonnegut's "Jailbird."

Published in 1979, "Jailbird" is about a man you've never heard of who was stung by the Watergate scandal. Walter Starbuck's life seems, in most respects, to be a giant joke with a punchline of prison. Not very funny but then again books about economics rarely are.

If you think you didn't read that last sentence correctly, then I invite you to try again. But rest assured that this book is, in a manner of speaking about economics. It's basic philosophy is one of waxings and wanings that are ridden like surfers on waves by people participating in the system.

The main character is, by the end of his stay in prison, ready to be pushed around by the waves rather than swim against them. This lethargic floating leads him on a journey that takes only two days in reality but seems like much more as the years the old man has lived float by almost as if they were seperate protagonists themselves.

The oddity of the years, or so the author tells us, is that they really are like people. Each distinct with it's own markings and features, each belonging to groupings of other years. To this end, thoughout the novel years are written out and capitalized rather than being presented in numerals.

Vonnegut plays literary jokes like this all the time, another with numbers can be found in "Hocus Pocus" (1990) regarding how many people Eugene Debs Hartke has killed, which is incidentally equal to the number of women he's had sex with.

Yet another joke of Vonnegut's makes some play in the book, the appearance of pulp sci-fi writer Kilgore Trout.

Vonnegut himself thought that this work was one of his best, giving it an A when he self-rated it in chapter 18 of "Palm Sunday" The only books to score higher than A are Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five which got A+s.

I feel less generous. I don't think that Jailbird deserves ranking equal to other Vonnegut works. It is a solid work, but nowhere near as engrossing as "Mother Night" which also got an A from Kurt.


While I am regretful to denegrate any work from a master like Vonneguy, the lack of focus in the novel was too great to entirely overcome. It jumps around from economic matters to love, to war and betrayal.

For this reason Jailbird receives a B+ from me.

You Know What I Hate?

Yesterday, while I my girlfriend and I were hanging out with a friend of ours, the TV was tuned to an old staple of Network Television, "Full House."

I remember watching this show when I was a kid and thinking how stupid it was. But a show's lack of believable plot, less than cheesy voiceover and shooting locations doesn't keep a cable television network from rolling out reruns in one hour blocks.

I was reminded of one of my many rules of life, cultivated over many years of television mind captivity. TV shows that have to add a laugh track to tell you when a moment is funny really aren't that funny (every rule has exceptions, this one's is M*A*S*H*).

If you don't believe me then I'll pull out some anecdotal evidence andl use it as if it were scientific fact.

Just think back to a time when you had a few friends. Let's say for sake of our story that you and these "friends" of yours went out to a movie. Now the movie is kind of cheesy, but has a full audience. Jokes that normally you would smile at become laugh out loud funny when a group of people around you is laughing. All it takes is one person to start the laugh avalanche. I call this the Principle of Laugh Crescendo.

Now, what a standard network sitcom does is artificially inducing the PLC by means of laughter planted in the show's soundtrack. They've been using that same laughtrack since "I Love Lucy" in the 1950s the people you heard laughing on Friends, and still hear laughing on Dharma&Greg, are at least 77 years old. Either that or they're dead, and with the age expectancy at about 72 in this country I'm betting on dead.

Social Security or Why We're Screwed in our Old Age

I wrote this column a while ago and it just saw print in the paper. In order to get more mileage out of things I've already done, I think I'll put it here too. Because it was originally in newspaper column format the spacing will be a little weird.


I’m a part of Generation Y, what some people call the net-geners. We grew up with the internet an use it as a tool to facilitate communication with little regard for race, color, religion or international borders.
And yet despite our freedom of communication we remain a disparate mass in the political system. While senior citizens make all of the decisions we sit on our hands and do nothing.
We find most political agendas laughable because they have nothing that interests or affects us.
One issue that continues to pop up affects us more than any other group and yet still we do nothing.
The issue is social security, that grand entitlement set up to ensure fiscal solubility to the elderly in a decreasingly family centered culture.
But now many financial analysts are predicting the dissolution of social security by 2019.
Why 2019, you ask? Because by that time there will have been an influx of 78 million baby boomers to the ranks of the retired.
That, coupled with the extended life expectancy that modern medicine offers has is currently strangling a program that is so well intentioned.
If a fix is in order then there are essentially three options, raising taxes, lowering benefits, or the establishment of personal accounts.
Now of course, the older population tends to favor the first option and abhor the second.
Young people polled favor the third option, understanding that the first two would hurt them immediately and in the future.
Really, a personal account system seems to make the most logical sense. Just let everyone pay for themselves.
But the older portion of the population is worried that such a system would leave them with no support, since it was not in place for them to pay into.
But no politician in his right mind would ever call for any of the three plans, well aware that the backlash would likely knock him so far out of elected office that he’d be lucky to end up on the city council of Moosejaw, Alaska.
The fact is that we need some sort of plan. Having none leaves us with a system that will crumble and fold in just a few years.
Something new has to be tried. It may not be comfortable for any of us, but something is better than nothing.
Generation Y is chock full of non-voters, comedian Jon Stewart has quipped that “the only way to get young people to vote is to establish a draft.”
Quite simply we’re far too apathetic about government to get anything done even though we’re the largest segment of the population.
The net effect of this is that over the next 15 years social security will be 3.8 trillion dollars in debt leaving nothing for the younger generation.
Maybe it’s time to bring out that well used political line: “Think of the children!”
Or perhaps it’s time for the children to start thinking about themselves. If social security is going to hell in a handbasket then maybe we should let it.
The years between the Great Depression and now have seen the advent of many new kinds of personal savings plans such as IRA’s and company matching 401k plans. Instead of making the federal government take care of us in our old age maybe we should take personal responsibility for our lives.
I know that social security constitutes the the majority of income for some seniors, and I empathize with them. But, if you don’t want to see the collapse of the social security system then maybe it’s time to start thinking about comprimise.
As a personal note to seniors who are gracious enough to read my outlandish ideas. Maybe when social security goes belly up you can borrow some money from your kids, god knows they borrowed enough of it from you over the years.

Running early might leave you winded by the end of the race

This year some political genius decided to start his canidate out early on the 2008 campaign trail. This means a new era in American Politics where we'll get to begin ignoring campaign ads even earlier than we have in the past. Oh what a brave new world we live in where the solution to people not caring anymore is to give them more of the same crap spread out over a longer period.

I want to start declaring right now who does and does not have a chance at office, but as my good friend James pointed out yesterday it is a little early to begin that sort of thing. For the next year or so it will be anyone's game.

The only thing I really see coming out of this is that now canidates have months to make some sort of silly faux pas that will make them the laughingstock of the voting public. Think John Kerry goes hunting or Micheal Dukakis rides in a tank only earlier and stupider. Of course with a longer period to commit these acts of idiocy in it could be that American taxpayers will just have more time to forget them or lose sight of them in the face of the latest scandal. Could we as a nation possibly have a shorter attention span?

Wait, what was I talking about again?

Taking a look at how campaigns have traditionally been run, candidates usually used primaries and the run-up to them to pander to their base and achieve the nomination nod. But with early campaigning and primaries being held earlier they seem to be stepping up their stepping out. Barack Obama for example made a comment which seems to be against affirmative action in an interview with ABC's George Stephanopolous. Hilary Clinton is catching flak from women of all people, some who think she's trying to be too "macho" by supporting the Iraq War. If the candidates aren't careful, they could end up alienating their base before primaries even get close.

If you need a reminder of how nearly impossible it is to secure the presidency without a party endorsement then I point to the glorious failure of Ross Perot.
George Washington did it, but he did have to single handedly win the country it's independence first. I understand his victory over the redcoats involved advanced mechanized tooth implants and an arm that converted into a cannon. My history is a little rusty though.

The problems aren't limited to the left. Republican candidates are undergoing close scrutiny by the media which could hurt them in the long run. Mitt Romney is having trouble with religion. As a member of the Jesus Christ Church of Latter-Day Saints (he's a mormon) he is finding that there's a fallout from long dead church dogma which allowed polygamy banned black people. He's also under fire for the church's anti-gay stance, but this has little risk since it is already part of the party base.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is having greater or equal troubles for his stance in support of abortion rights. This is a big no no if you're trying to court the GOP. Almost as bad are his wedding woes. It's hard to look like a secure family man when you've divorce twice already.

At the very least I think it can be said that the candidates, Democrat or Republican, don't plan on bombarding us with the same old party lines over and over in the next few months. But will we listen even if they're saying something different?