November 4, 2008 archive

Twas the Night Before Election

But my life is entering DefCon 5, Red Alert, man the battlestations and tack up the Apocalyptic horse.  Still unemployed, Dad is in the nursing home and Ma is failing fast behind him yet in checking the sources I came up with this piece I had to agree up until the very end conclusions.  It tries to debunk the End Time prophecies centered around the year 2012 and offers many reasons why this is just not true.  It includes the futurist analysis technique of saying it may happen because we believe in it.  

The American Automotive Nightmare

When everyone is mad, only madmen are respectable. The sharp collapse of automobile sales in America is supposed to be a dire omen of economic failure, and pressure is mounting on the government to “save” the US auto industry. But on closer inspection, the US auto industry has been encouraging wildly wasteful and environmentally destructive behavior for decades, and “saving” it is the last thing we should do. This industry should be shut down and rebuilt from the ground up. Here is why:

1. Automobiles are ecologically and socially destructive. Producing, fueling, and disposing of them consumes vast amounts of precious resources. Yet their impact on world society has been to spread unsustainable living patterns and isolate individuals from contact with their neighbors.

2. Automobiles have been sold as disposable fashion merchandise, an extremely wasteful practice. There is no reason an automobile cannot be designed to last 20 years, like a refrigerator, stove, or washing machine. (The billionaire founder of IKEA drives a 20 year old Volvo.)

3. Automobiles generate a huge number of deaths and injuries and inflict enormous insurance costs on their owners. Actively selling “high performance” cars and encouraging drivers to drive them as fast as possible contributes to this mayhem.

4. The toxic wastes produced by automobiles are substantial. Discarded tires alone account for a huge problem, since no efficient recycling system has been developed for them. Similarly, vast amounts of plastics and toxic fluids are dumped into the ecosystem because of artificially stimulated junking of cars to permit the frequent replacement that is vital to the current industry model of selling cars as fashion statements.

We need to stop this madness. The world auto industry should be producing only about 1/3 of its current output of cars, and these cars should be engineered to last indefinitely, with a minimal negative environmental impact. GM, Ford, and Chrysler should be shut down, because they are unlikely to reinvent themselves as “green” vehicle manufacturers. New organizations should replace them, and the US government should provide appropriate research and development subsidies to help these newcomers rebuild the US auto industry.

The future of the world automotive industry should be grounded in sustainability, not disposability. We literally cannot afford to keep making and buying cars as we have for the last 60 years.

Open Thread

Have you heard about Obama’s Antie Zeituni?  Been a last minute flurry of rightwing vituperation over the leaked story that she is here illegally, as her request for sanctuary was denied.

Except the ICE has known this for a long time, yet didn’t decide to do anything about it until now, right before the election.  Oh those rascals!

Duke, over at the Sanctuary has this story down:

Obama’s Aunt is emblematic of everything wrong with immigration, both systemically and as a political issue.

Without knowing the specifics of her case it’s hard to say why in fact her status is what it is, but we do know that:

1. The authorities have know about her status for some time

2. DHS was ordered not to deport until after election

3.  The second person to leak the story came out of the Administration

4.  The timing of the story was orchestrated by Murdoch/Rove for maximum political effect.

Basically, the authorities have kept her under wraps until they could use her as a pawn for political gain.  

And here is where I see her as symbol for the whole immigration debate.  

The right wing has used 12 mil people as political pawns from the start of this current debate. If we look at everything they’ve done from passing HR4437, which they knew would never get through the Senate, to the failed CIR attempts, to the current fascists crackdowns…it’s all been nothing more than political theater. played against the backdrop of real human suffering.  

And now they wheel out Obama’s Aunt.  

They could have finished her case and deported her ages ago if that was in fact their intent. But it wasn’t. They’re intent was to keep her around to use as a pawn to whip up the base, and peel off independents.  

And is that really any different from anything else that’s been going on for the last few years to the rest of the migrant population?  

Of course not.

Thread away at will!

1.9%

1.9%

According to the website 538.com there is now a 98.1% chance that Senator Barack Obama will become the next President of the United States of America as compared to a 1.9% chance that Senator John McCain will emerge victorious in tomorrow’s national election.

To put that into perspective, there is also a 1.9% chance that, tomorrow, you will spontaneously start to secrete massive quantities of pure maple syrup from your sweat glands, allowing you retire from your job in order to finance that cozy bed-and-breakfast in the Hamptons.

Similarly, there is a 1.9% chance…

One Day Out

(I wasn’t going to cross post this from WWL, because it is weird, but maybe this crowd is more likely to get me. It got nothing there… so I won’t be offended if it doesn’t here either. LOL… I’m just me;)

*******************************

…and so much on my mind!

Douchebag chickenshit nasty crone of the year award?

Woman denies Halloween candy to Obama supporters

Fox 2 News says a sign posted outside Nagel’s house, about 12 miles west of Detroit, served notice to all trick-or-treaters. It read: “No handouts for Obama supporters, liars, tricksters or kids of supporters.”

Other reports had her grilling even tiny children at her doorstep, and even if they didn’t answer “I support McCain” because they were too young to even know politics, she sent them away crying.

When asked about children who’d been turned away empty-handed and crying, she said: “Oh well. Everybody has a choice.”

One has to think her house has moved waaaaaay up on a LOT of people’s Devil’s Night list for next year.

If only dreams came true. Next up?

In the “Diane really has weird dreams and is often the heroine of them…” vein, last night I had this trippy scenario:

Not my Commander in Chief

Glenn Greenwald, writing for  Salon,  calls it “the single worst expression in American politics.”

You may have your own nominees for that distinction, but his is “Commander in Chief,” which is used these days as a substitute for President.

He quotes Joe Biden on the stump:

After next Tuesday, the very critics he has now and the rest of America will be calling him something else – they will be calling him the 44th president of the United States of America, our commander in chief Barack Obama!

Actually, I won’t be calling him that if he wins on Tuesday.  I got my discharge papers in 1970.  I’m not in the military any more.  And neither are most Americans.

Says Greenwald:

This is much more than a semantic irritant.  It’s a perversion of the Constitution, under which American civilians simply do not have a “commander in chief”; only those in the military — when it’s called into service — have one.

The President is Commander in Chief only of active duty military personnel — and only in wartime.  (Some, including George Bush and Dick Cheney, would argue that we are now permanently “at war” on terrorism.)

Last Minute Anxiety Attack

Well, there are other places where you may feel constrained from expressing last minute doubts that our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over.

Not here!

New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Indiana- McCain runs the table.  Heck, even Stars Hollow turns to the experienced maverick and his oh so cute and smart successor, our very own Caribou Barbie!

Sackcloth and ashes for progressive hopes and dreams.

Ah well, it’s the fight I’ve always hoped for- to the death against impossible odds.

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