God, the whole Democratic Obama-Clinton drama is horrifying.  There is real stuff happening in the world in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and everywhere else.  Putting Obama or the Clintons in power scares the shit out of me.  I’d be happy with Romney, McCain, Giuliani, or Thompson.

Right now I’m leaning toward Romney, but I’ve been all over the map.  I like Mitt because he is one of the world’s most competent managers of large organizations.  He’s not an idealogue.  He doesn’t appear to be crazy. He’s a gee-whiz, Mormon kind of guy, but that’s OK.  At various times though I have been for Rudy and McCain and Thompson.  I guess I’m like the typical American voter.  I want to go with a winner.

The thing is though, one of the main problems with the United States government is that, in the executive branch, the bureaucracy is more powerful than the executive.  The CIA, the State Department, the Pentagon, not to mention all of the domestic bureaucracies, rule.  If anyone can deal with this, it is Mitt Romney.

I have begun scanning my father’s color slides so that they will be preserved in a digital format. Mom sent me the first of 35 boxes of slides. There were 134 slides in the projector carousel. Looking at these old pictures of interiors of our houses in Rantoul, IL or Fargo, ND, and our cars, and our shoes, and TV sets, I am struck by the fact that we, the middle class of the 1950’s lived like the poor of 21st century America live now, as far as the material world goes. Of course, being in the military, we had health insurance, but that was somewhat unusual. Insurance or not, we were vulnerable to polio and scarlet fever and other such since-conquered afflictions.

Thomas Babington Macaulay in 1830 (via David Frum):“If we were to prophesy that in the year 1930 a population of fifty millions, better fed, clad, and lodged than the English of our time, will cover these islands, that Sussex and Huntingdonshire will be wealthier than the wealthiest parts of the West Riding of Yorkshire now are, that cultivation, rich as that of a flower-garden, will be carried up to the very tops of Ben Nevis and Helvellyn, that machines constructed on principles yet undiscovered will be in every house, that there will be no highways but railroads, no travelling but by steam, that our debt, vast as it seems to us, will appear to our great-grandchildren a trifling encumbrance, which might easily be paid off in a year or two, many people would think us insane. … We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us, and with just as much apparent reason. … On what principle is it that, when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us? “

I think Romney is toast. I watched JFK give his speech and answer questions from the Christers last night on CSPAN. What a contrast. Kennedy was civil and gracious, but very clear and very tough, and not yielding an inch to the long-winded bigotry he faced in Houston. Romney, on the other hand, pandered. As a member of the Christian Right myself, I appreciate his obeisance of course, but as a patriotic devotee of the Constitution, I find him seriously wanting. Of course Huckabee is even more disgusting with his TV ads declaring himself to be a “Christian leader”. What if he were running against Lieberman?

The real problem is that 40% of the minuscule segment of the Iowa population that attends the Republican caucuses, are fundamentalist Christians. Nowhere near that percentage of the overall Iowa population are fundamentalists. It makes no sense whatsoever for this tiny skewed group to have such a major impact on Presidential elections. Maybe they won’t anymore.

I attended my local Democratic caucus in Iowa in 1980, the year Carter won. I voted for Fred Harris. I didn’t even know what Jimmy Carter looked like, but the place was packed with Carter supporters.

Posted by Andy

Freedom requires religion. Irreligious people are clearly indifferent to freedom, if not downright hostile. If I were you, I would make haste to join a church, synagogue or tabernacle of choice, at least before January 2009. A mosque might qualify, but I would not recommend it. A temple of Gaia doesn’t count.

I heard Jeff Greenfield tell Imus that some mainstream Christians think Mormons believe “strange things,’ like the Garden of Eden having been in Missouri. As opposed to sensible people who merely believe quite rationally that some four thousand years after the divine creation of heaven and earth a Jewish virgin was impregnated by a randy ghost, leading to the birth of a man-god who expired upleasantly but rose from the dead after three days and is still hanging around, though not ordinarily visible to the naked eye except sometimes on a muffin or hot water heater.

We went to Chota last week, over in East Tennessee, near Maryville, where we got married, and I took this picture. Yeah, I tweaked the colors a little bit, but not that much. Besides, that’s really how it looked to my inner (completely sober/straight) eye. Of course I was wearing shades, but our eyes could just as easily report how things look wearing shades, as what they report now, which, for all we know, is how things look when shades are worn by the intelligent species residing on one of the planets traversing around Alpha Centauri.

Norman Mailer has been a hero of mine for most of my adult life. I’ve read most of his voluminous output over the years, and loved it, by and large, although it’s been awhile since I’ve read anything of his. Now, when we are all reflecting on his legacy, I find myself agreeing with this guy.

I took Mailer very seriously. I made attempts to live by his philosophical pronouncements, but he was so wrong about so much of it. For example:

1. Cancer is caused by some kind of psychic repression, the lineaments of which only Mailer himself understood.

2. Sex is all about manhood and courage and testing oneself against the great mystery of woman, and any sex that is not exactly and only that will give you cancer.

3. All technology is the work of the Devil; computers, synthetic fibers, modern architecture, Xerox machines, LSD, you name it, and partaking of it will give you cancer.

4. There is something purifying about violence, even of the most egregious, psychopathic sort.

Now, of course, there are bits of truths in all that, and God bless Norman for beating us over the head with them. I have to admit I have learned valuable stuff from him, but I’m not sure it makes up for the unfortunate karma accumulated by swallowing too literal an interpretation of his gospels.

Here’s my list, in order of my estimation, of his books that I have read:

The Executioner’s Song

Why Are We in Vietnam?

I could be wrong, but I don’t expect to ever read or re-read anything by him ever again.

Al Qaeda has been defeated. There is no civil war. Iraq is in process of becoming the most stable, the most democratic, the most unified between Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish, nation in the Middle East, except for Israel. Will there be any acknowledgement of this? No, of course not. Not that the war is over. Far from it. This is just an initial skirmish, albeit a remarkably successful one. George W. Bush will be remembered as one of our greatest Presidents. I was right about Apple stock, and I’m right about this.

Here is the view from the front porch swing of our house in Murfreesboro.

The “General Betray Us” ad in the New York Times reminds me of the new Osama Bin Laden video. They are both astonishingly revealing of the minds behind them, and their lack of connection to reality. The smug fantasies that have captured the minds of moveon.org and Al Qaeda have made them oblivious to the effect their propaganda has on its target audience. The George Soros funded moveon.org is a major contributor to the Democratic Party. I quote: “In the last year, grassroots contributors like us gave more than $300 million to the Kerry campaign and the DNC, and proved that the Party doesn’t need corporate cash to be competitive. Now it’s our Party: we bought it, we own it, and we’re going to take it back.” That is hyperbole of course, but not nearly as untrue as Moveon’s portrayal of General Petraeus as a liar and a traitor. I am becoming more and more optimistic about the GOP 2008 electoral chances.

If anything can swing the elections in the Republicans’s favor, it is attaching the image of wacko defeatism to the Democrats. That’s not the brand you want to have in an American election. My father, a life-long liberal, voted for a Republican for President only once in his life, and that was a vote for Richard Nixon over George McGovern. This, in spite of the fact that McGovern and my father were both WWII B-24 bomber pilots, and that George McGovern was a personal friend of my Dad’s brother-in-law, my uncle Fred.

The majority of Americans are not in the get-out-of-Iraq-now-at-any-cost camp, but the majority of Democratic primary voters are. This makes being a Democratic Presidential candidate a slippery, treacherous proposition. Hillary Clinton has navigated these rapids, so far, with almost super-human agility, but the upcoming white water of the general election will make the primaries look like ripples in a pond. As General George Patton said, “Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser.” In spite of the inroads made by decadence over the last 60 years, I believe that is still the case. When Clinton goes up against Giuliani or McCain or Thompson, we shall see whether it’s still true or not.

Posted by Andy

On the contrary, your influence is felt–and appreciated–at the highest levels. Your blog in its present form is indispensable in shaping policy. Stay the course.
–Dick

Heckuva job, Nicko. Your influence is felt–and appreciated–at the highest levels. Your blog in its present form is indispensable in shaping policy. Stay the course.
–W

An emphatic second to that. Here at Foggy Bottom we call it “comfort food.”
–LXXX, Condi

Unmatched in its articulate cleanliness.
–Joe

I never miss a post, but why no mention of Barack’s vision for America? Some kind of issue with persons of color?
–Sincerely, Oprah

Gaia is no substitute for Jesus.
–Ann

While several of our monitors have expressed concern about your communications with treasonous defeatist Islamofascist sympathizers, apparently relatives of yours, a rigorous investigation has turned up no evidence of personal disloyalty. In future, however, you might display a little more care in your associations.
–Mike

Fuck you and your fucking blog….
–Harry and Nancy

Pissed off, shmissed off. Let them stew.
–Bill & Fred & all the gang at the Standard

Nolo illegitimi carborundum–don’t let the bastards grind you down!
–Don

Right on!
–Alberto

Solidarity forever! Fond regards,
–Ehud

World War IV needs YOU! ON TO TEHRAN!
–Norm