Ned's Review of Elections

We would like to provide our many friends with our humble review of the past several presidential elections, starting with that of 1968. In this election, Richard Nixon edged Humphrey by a whisker. The impact of this was hard to tell, other than it led to Watergate. We feel that HHH would have enmeshed the country as far into Vietnam as Tricky Dick did, and so a HHH election would have made little difference. 1972: Here, regrettably McGovern, a true hero and fine all around man, would have made a much finer president that a second Nixon term, but the stars were aligned against him, so we got what we got. 1976: Carter edged Ford, and it probably made little difference because both were honorable men. However, Ned recalls being torn as to whom to vote for. At the last minute, Ford came out and endorsed a constitutional amendment to ban abortion, and this sealed his fate in Ned's eyes. 1980: The country's great Descent Into Horror began with the election of Reagan. Ned voted for Anderson who had the courage to tell Americans something they didn't want to hear: that they needed to pay higher gas prices. And so the Script Reader was elected, who then proceeded to run up budget deficits as far as the eye could see, all the while cementing his reputation as a "small government" man. Moreover, the pandering to the Ignorant Masses, always dangerous in the country where ignorance is a prince if not king, began in earnest. 1984: Never in doubt, but we voted for Mondale, in spite of his selection of Geraldine Ferraro as his VP, a Limousine Liberal if there ever was one. 1988: We naturally voted for Dukakis, having been repelled by the extent to which George HW Bush prostituted his principles to get the nomination, and then ran the disgusting attack ads against Dukakis. Sound familiar? The Bush presidency was a disaster, solely because he chose Clarence Thomas for the SCOTUS, one of the most glaring mediocrities ever nominated for public office since Caligula made his horse a Consul. This continues to curse the country to this day. The Clinton years were as a breath of fresh air-forget about sexual shenanigans that would make any European laugh.
Then we come to 2000, and wonder to this day how Gore managed to lose--the electoral vote of course. The 'selection' of Cheerleader George Bush may have set this country on a course of unavoidable decline, leading to the overweening hubris of Iraq, and "Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside US." But more maddening to us is the re-election of Bush in 2004, facilitated by the Dems choosing just about the only candidate who couldn't beat him. We fully supported Obama in 2008, and note with contempt and disgust the racially-motivated hatred of him by the GOP.
We predict an Obama victory tonight, but await the outcome with fear and loathing. A Romney victory would cement this country as consisting of an electorate far too stupid to be entrusted with the vote, but we shall see.

Why Do They Hate Him?

Ned continues to be amused at the quandary the pundits and thinkers wallow in, in their attempts to explain why Obama is so hated in the South, especially among white men. They raise their hands and piously declaim that 'it can't be racism,' because 'Clarence Thomas, Condolllleeezzzzza Rice and Allen West are popular.'
As a southerner who long ago asked for and received political asylum in the Reality Based part of the US, Ned will patiently explain it to them so they can go back to dithering over whether American Idol or X Factor is 'more American.'
In the south, there are, and always have been, two kinds of black folks, according to the pinhead mentality of the southern white: Uncle Toms, and Uppity N---ers. The black folks in the former group are viewed as servile and 'know their place.' So, they are tolerated, even admired. In the later category falls Obama, or so they think. His wife, ditto.
Thus endeth the lesson.

A New Executive Order? God Forbid!

An individual with the unlikely name of F. W. Lee Badgett, or something similar, and an even unlikelier title, has written an op-ed in the NYT decrying "workplace discrimination" against gays, lesbians, transgenders, transponders, and just about anyone else with an "alternate lifestyle." This individual also calls upon Obama to sign an executive order to "ban" such practices.
Ned respectfully hopes Obama hasn't taken complete leave of his senses and ignores such cockamamie advice. It goes without saying that we wish the best for our alternate friends, but we call upon our many readers to imagine what the rabid dogs of the evangelical nutcase Christianist wing of the GOP would make of such a thing? They would immediately forget their obsession with Romney's cult membership, and the fracas over abortion funding. They would immediately pick up their pitchforks, stir up every troll-like creature from under their rocks and march (figuratively) on Washington. Obama would galvanize these creatures like nothing else he could do. Remember Clinton and 'don't ask, don't tell?'
So God help the Dems if Obama does any such thing.

$1.5 trillion and counting

Ned seems to recall that a historian, Paul Kennedy, wrote a tome years ago called "The Rise and Fall of The Great Powers" in which he described the reasons for the decline of once-mighty world powers including Spain, Britain and by inference, the United States. Ned finds Johnson's thesis to be more and more persuasive in view of the money pissed away on wars by the criminal Bush regime and, sadly, the Obama administration, which, like a grouper repeatedly trying to eat a porcupine fish, are very slow learners. Comes word today from Bloomberg News that the total cost of the misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan is at least $1.26 trillion and counting, and this does not count the cost of maimed soldiers returning with severe mental and physical problems. Adding these, and Ned gets about $1.5 trillion. It makes Ned's blood boil to think of the waste of lives and treasure carried out in the name of "defending freedom" and "protection from terrorism", not to mention, "spreading democracy."
As an exercise, Ned asks his friends to think of how this money could have been spent productively; for example, giving every city in the US a rapid transit system and paying for it for fifty years, or retrofitting every house in the country with the latest in energy-saving devices, or giving every kid with a B average a free college education, or even giving free memberships in the Delta Sky Club to anyone who wanted it--no, scratch that, Ned has to rub shoulders with enough riff-raff as it is.
One day, Ned hopes the criminals in the Bush regime will answer for their crimes with their heads, but by then the damage to the country will no doubt already be done.

The Obama 'bump'

Comes word that Obama's 'approval' rating has fallen into the high forty's, and Ned is frankly surprised it is that high. Well into his third featureless year, Ned wonders, sadly, what Obama has done to merit the public's trust? He has caved on emissions standards, caved to Republican knuckledraggers on taxes for sneering plutocrats and the Paris Hilton Crowd, caved on Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan (last time Ned looked, "NATO" was still killing wedding parties and kids there), cravenly caved on climate change, caved on Mountaintop Removal, cringed, sniveled and wet his pants at GOP knuckledragger threats to destroy the "full faith and credit of the US," and caved on the obscene "defense" budget. In short, he has caved on every single issue that required courage and discipline. Ned hopes he faces a stiff challenge in 2012 from some decent progressive candidate, and would frankly love to see the back of him. And Ned respectfully requests that his friends not start screaming 'The Republicans are worse!' That's not what Obama ran on in 08 and that's not what his supporters deserved.

Ned's forthcoming one-year anniversary: the BP saga

Ned seess to recall that he began this series of arcana about a year ago, incensed as he was about the media's and government's responses to the Macondo oil spill in the Gulf. He vividly recals the hysteria, preposterous claims, unsubstantiated dire predictions of disaster and sanctimoniously hypocritical posturing by politicians like Plyush Amrit 'Bobby' Jindal, a pompous, immodest man with much to be modest about. After a year during which the value of BP was nearly cut in half, and Obama and his goons extorted $20 billion out of the company's shareholders (full disclosure: Ned is one), as well as pressuring BP to eliminate its dividend, costing Americans and their governments billions in lost revenue, here is what we know.
* No seafood was ever found to have been tainted by hydrocarbons.
* No oil made it out of the GOM current into the Atlantic, which was a frantic prediction by a few irresponsible "scientists."
* The economic damage caused by the spill was almost entirely limited to actions taken by the federal government: needlessly closing fishing grounds, needlessly declaring a 'moratorium' on exploration in the GOM, and needlessly demonizing BP, but allowing the equally responsible Transocean, possibly Haliburton, which oversaw the cement job that failed, and perhaps even Cameron (after all they made the 'blowout preventer' that failed) to escape any censure at all.
Ned will admit that many hundreds of shore birds were killed, and he bitterly regrets that. He also regrets the loss of life incident to oil extraction in the Niger Delta and the rainforest of Ecuador, among other places. He regrets the decimation of reefs in the Persian Gulf, and he bitterly regrets the wars for oil in 1990 and 2004, costing trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives, many of them innocent. And the slaughter continues to this day.
So, yes, Ned is angry and bitter about the Gulf spill, He is angry at the clowns who ran BP, Transocean, Haliburton and Cameron, and who pay themselves obscene salaries to this day.
And hs is angry at his fellow Americans, who, if they used gasoline at Ned's rate for the past 19 years, would have resulted in a gas consumption of around 2.5 million barrels a day. Now, guess what the country's consumption was over that perod: about 18 MILLION BARRELS A DAY. So, as Pogo said, 'we have met the enemy, and he is us.'

The Death of Bin Laden

Yesterday Obama allowed as how the killing of Bin Laden testified to the "greatness of the American people" and how we should all feel happy and unified at last. Ned wonders what prescription medication he has been abusing.
To imagine that somehow the death of Bin Laden will "unify the country" and end the "funk" that this country has been in since the financial crisis of 2007-8 is the most preposterous kind of drivel. There are tens of millions out of work, or working multiple part-time jobs for low pay and no benefits, and fifty million without real health care. We still have 40k troops in Iraq, and 140k in Afghanistan, we are bombing wedding parties and school kids every day in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And the Obama people agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts for the Sneering Plutocracy, the single greatest reason why the budget is disastrously out of balance. The other reasons? A trillion dollars flushed down the toilet in Iraq, and an obscene $800 billion a year spent on the military. All the while the sneering plutocrats get richer and more smug, while the rest of us wait, hat in hand, for crumbs to fall out of the cat's bowl.

The Hubris of Power

Ned has been musing of late on what it is that endows American presidents with the certainty that they alone are competent to address all the conflicts between citizens of any particular country in the world outside of Europe, Oceania, China and India. First we have that Village Idiot George Bush sending the country to war in Iraq, spending a trillion dollars and killing hundreds of thousands, because 'Saddam tried to kill my dad.' Then he sent mercenaries and 'volunteers' into Afghanistan, that graveyard of empires for more than two thousand years, to address tribal squabbles that have been festering since Alexander the Great's time. Now, Barack Obama has gone the Village Idiot one better. He has refused to commit to removing American occupying forces from Iraq, while increasing troop presence in Afghanistan, all using money borrowed from the Chinese. Further illustrating this monumental and infuriating hubris is Obama's reliance on 'Predator drones' to kill anyone he likes, anyone who is 'suspected' of being a 'terrorist' or just anyone who happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, including scores of children. At the same time, he prattles on about 'bullying in American schools' a concern that should sicken any sensitive person while he is raining death on anyone he chooses around the world.
And now, we have the spectacle of this country's involvement in yet another tribal dispute--this time in Libya, starring that former bosom buddy of John McCain, Muammar Qaddafi. You just can't make this stuff up.
Finally, comes word in today's NYT that this same Obama is considering 'sanctions' on the regime in Syria, which is trying to squelch a revolt from another tribe to its grip on power.
And so it goes. Dropping bombs on civilians in Japan (atomic, killing hundreds of thousands), Vietnam, Central America and God-knows-where. Killing members of wedding parties using the method of craven cowards in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and God-knows-where.
And the greatest champions of this brutality are obese, uneducated morons, sitting on their couches safely at home, many of them on 'disability' and railing about 'welfare cheats.' Or better yet, on their way to or from their latest church (read, cult) attendance, where they pray to Jesus and say the Lord's Prayer.
Ned fears that when one constantly sows the wind, one will inevitably reap the whirlwind.
And all this is done in our name.

Success in the fight against population growth!

A U.S. drone killed at least 38 presumed innocent persons in an attack in Waziristan, somewhere in the wilds of Pakistan, Ned's sources tell him. By most accounts, the people killed were village elders trying to mediate a clan dispute, a scene that would have been commonplace in 17th century Scotland, for example. It is possible that some of those murdered actually had sympathies for those who oppose U.S. policies of "kill first, apologize later", so no doubt the killings will be entirely justified. And now we can all turn our attention back to Obama's "war on bullying" in our schools and the latest segment of American Idol.

Obama Crisis du Jour: Bullying

While the president fiddles with a "crisis" of bullying in our schools and over the internets, people are dying, fighting for freedom in Libya with little or no aid from America, the EU, or NATO. However, during the past few days in Afghanistan, nine children were murdered by "NATO" troops in Afghanistan, for which the American Command issued an "apology." The latest outrage has been the murder of a cousin of Hamid Karzai, the American-installed "leader" of that country, during a night raid by "NATO" troops, although in truth Karzai is little more than the Mayor of Kabul. [Ned apologizes for the complexity of the last sentence.] The Americans issued an apology for that, too.
Ned's point is this: he is rapidly losing faith in, and becoming enraged at, the Obama administration. We are spending $800 billion a year on war and death, while the Speaker of the House, Halfbright Fellow Boehner, insults our intelligence by claiming we are "broke." Our infrastructure is decaying with the odd gas pipeline exploding from time to time to break the monotony of a day without football.
Ned is taking the opportunity to announce that he is keeping his options open for 2012, and expresses again his disappointment with, and chagrin at, the behavior of the Obama crowd. He expects nothing from the knuckledragging Republicans, but hopes someone will come out of hiding to either slap some sense into Obama, or challenge him in 2012.

Paul Broun (R, GA) Holds a Town Meeting

Rep. Paul Broun, a run-of-the-mill anti-intellectual, know-nothing Republican from Georgia, held a "town meeting" recently, and at it was reportedly asked by one of his "constituents," "Who is going to shoot Obama?" Witnesses may disagree, but several said Broun laughed nervously, then replied, "The thing is, I know there's a lot of frustration with this president. We're going to have an election next year. Hopefully, we'll elect somebody that's going to be a conservative, limited-government president that will take a smaller, who will sign a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare."
Of course, this is just the sort of reply a sanctimonious hypocrite and cringing piece of excrement might be expected to say.
Now, here is what Ned would have said:
[Long pause] "I have to choose my words carefully here." [Long pause} "I think, sir, if you were trying to make a joke, that you are an idiot and I want you out of this meeting, and I do not want your support or any people like you. If you really meant it, after the brutal massacre at Tucson where a 9 year old child was murdered, then although I am no psychiatrist, I think you are a sociopathic cretin, or even perhaps a psychopathic cretin. Where are my security people? I want this man removed from this hall, and get a very good look at him, because the police and FBI will want to be informed of this exchange. I haven't spent my whole life in this country or years running for public office to have to deal with people like you, who tarnish the reputation of our party and our country. And if anyone else agrees with this man, they can get the hell out of here as well."

Obama's "otherness"

Seems that the Republican "establishment" is trying to bring its supporters slithering out from under their rocks by a "new" tactic, trying to paint Obama as a scary black man. Oh, of course, they say they are focusing on his "extreme" social policies, although they are no more "extreme" than FDR, Harry Truman, Jack Kennedy or Bill Clinton. No, friends, what is different this time is Obama's skin color. Here's the headline of today's NYT story "G.O.P. Is Using Obama’s ‘Otherness’ as Campaign Tactic."
Chief self-appointed Republican "intellectual", ousted House Speaker and National Blowhard Newt Gingrich decries Obama as having "Kenyan" beliefs which are "unfathomable" to "ordinary" Americans, presumably meaning those who have less than an eighth grade education. Ned is not taken in by these wolves in sheepskin; having grown up in the south, he can recognize racist code when he sees it, and finds it despicable, except that it is a standard Republican ploy, which, regrettably, in today's Amerika, is par for the course. As Shakespeare had it said in Twelfth Night, "If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."