GOP Presidential Hopefuls Are Weak:

     Well, we are officially into the Republican primaries, so what kind of candidates do we have to choose from? Brace yourself, they are going to amaze you, shock you, and make you wish George W. Bush was running again. Just kidding, however, the current crop of GOP candidates has nothing new to offer, only the same old regurgitated Fox News talking points. Let's take a look at the final four.

     First we have Willard "Mitt" Romney. Former governor of Massachusetts and savvy business man. Mr. Romney can't brag about his gubernatorial experience because the Tea Bag folks will start screaming about Romney Care. Rather pathetic, considering Romney Care works fairly well. Unfortunately Mr. Romney has to sell his platform to the hard right of the Republican Party, and quality healthcare that is available to more people is just unacceptable. Then we have the religious undercurrent. Mr. Romney practices the Mormon faith. White, Evangelical, southerners are not going to vote for a Mormon, that is what it is. Asking this bloc of voters to change their views is like asking them to accept that President Obama is an American. Not going to happen! If Mr. Romney does win the nomination, I do not believe he will be able to beat President Obama in a general election. Too many independents and Democrats view his business model at Bain Capitol as predatory, not to mention the guy loved off-shoring money and workers. Mr. Romney will not be able to convince voters that he his more in touch with their needs than the current President. Let's be honest, Mr. Romney has a hard time convincing himself of who he is.
     Now we come to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. As a person who came of age in the 1990's I personally find Mr. Gingrich to be absolutely appalling. Newt Gingrich in short is an asshole. Remember, while he was trying to get President Clinton impeached he was having an affair of his own. This is a man who was forced to resign from the House because of ethics violations. Newt loves to split hairs about his involvement with Freddie Mac. The fact is he took approximately 1.6 million dollars from that organization. He loves to preach about morals and family values. He has been married three times, has had multiple affairs and ditched his fist wife while she was fighting cancer, then he sent his second wife packing when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. This is a guy who wants to represent the party of family values, humm.
      Early on in the primary process, Mr. Gingrich suggested that it would be a good idea to have kids perform janitorial work at school to help them understand the value of hard work. Don't get me wrong, I am all for teaching kids the value of a dollar and the hard work it takes to earn that dollar. I am not going to have my kids cleaning up other kids piss, puke, shit, and urinal cakes, nice try Newt. I am sure Newt would not have minded if his children had janitorial service in their curriculum.
     If Mr. Gingrich does become the GOP nominee, I believe the democrats will have a field day exposing his hypocrisy. Then again, at least I will not have to watch the dumb, half term governor from Alaska come up with some folksy, stupid, "Joe The Plumber" quip. Than God for small miracles!!!
     The last two candidates being Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul are completely unelectable. Rick Santorum is a wacky religious former Pennsylvania Senator. His campaign has been based on social conservative issues that most normal people don't care about. I don't think gay marriage, abortion, and determining whether or not the United States is a Christian nation is going to play into the world we are leaving for our children. Ron Paul does have some good ideas, however, they are completely outgunned by his more controversial ideas. Mr. Paul has advocated for doing away with the Federal Reserve, Medicare, Medicaid and  Social Security. I am sure Grandma will appreciate that.
     Basically that leaves the GOP with Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Romney. Regardless of who becomes the nominee the right wing noise machine is going to get all fired up and back that person. Happens every time. Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly, and Fox News will pound viewers with anti Obama pro GOP talking points all day and night. This election is less about electing a good President, than it is beating President Obama. Right wing media has already convinced most of it's constituency that President Obama is a socialist, Muslim, Kenyan born, communist married to an angry black woman. Unfortunately, as absurd as it sounds, they have convinced many that this absurdity is gospel. Good Luck America!!! 

     

Aussie Asshole!!!!

   

     F@&K YOU! 

     That's right Rupert Murdoch, fuck you. Finally your media empire is crumbling, and those of us who can't stand the B.S. you and your cronies peddle as,"fair and balanced news coverage," we will certainly be entertained by your crumbling ivory tower. News Corp. is finally going to reap what they have sown. 

     In case you're head was buried in the mounting piles of bills on your kitchen table, Murdoch is being investigated in Great Britain for a scandal that includes, wire tapping phones and hacking into both voice and e-mail accounts. Cops were bribed, families of dead people were led to believe their missing loved ones may still be alive somewhere, because their voice mail was being checked and erased, pretty disgusting stuff. I am not going to get into all the stuff News Corp. and its affiliates are being accused of. This is my opinion of the scandal and News Corp. as a whole. If you want all the facts and figures go to www.guardian.co.uk A very respectable British news service. 

     I live in the United States, so my hatred of News Corp. stems from Fox News. Actually I really started to dislike Fox News around the time of the build up to the war in Iraq. Lies were spun and endlessly covered by Fox News. Why would we as Americans support a war in a country that did not attack us? Well the propagandists at Fox News spun every possible story about Iraq coming out of the government into an immanent attack scenario, remember wmd's and yellow cake. Lets do a little math here. The second largest share holder at News Corp. is a Saudi prince named Prince Alaweed bin Talal al Saud. We all know at this point that the Bush family has a very cushy relationship with the Saudis. So, if a Saudi prince is worried that he is going to be attacked by Iraq, what would be the easiest way of neutralizing that threat? Ah yes, propagandize the American people into thinking that there was some connection between Iraq and 9-11. That way we shoulder the burden of a Suadi problem. After the war was kicked off we were all treated to the wall to wall coverage dubbed,"shock and awe." I personally found this sickening, the fact that we had a media outlet glorifying the killing of not only Iraqis but our brave men and women in the armed forces. War is not something to glorify, war is the last resort humans come to when there is no more room for negotiations. War is definitely not something to glorify when you attack a nation that has not committed and act of war against you. Fox News has glorified the living shit out of the Iraq war for their own financial gains. Murdoch should be held partially responsible for the damn debacle in Iraq.

     Another reason I can't stand the propagandist outlet dubbed Fox News is the fact that they have made regular Americans dumber for having watched their programming. All day long Fox News is out there blaring conservative, Republican talking points, the government is to big,  President Obama is not one of us, liberals are trying to kill your grandma and so on. Now we have a whole segment of society that only parrots the Fox News talking points, and won't even entertain the notion that they are being duped for the profit motive of a large multinational corporation. Fox News has a programming lineup that is ultra conservative, anti gay, anti minority, overly Christian and completely void of fact. Take a look at the Tea Party, supported by Fox propaganda, it started as a small group of people wearing funny hats and pissed that they have to pay taxes. I may add that the majority of the Tea Party was really just pissed about the fact that the American people elected Barack Obama. Fox pumped up the Tea Party to the point that in 2010 many of the Republicans that were elected were proud Tea Party followers. Let me also add that nine months after the election many Americans have some serious buyers remorse. Does Fox News care that they are damaging the country? Fuck no,  damaged or not their ratings are still good. 

     Rupert Murdoch and the News Corp. empire are vile. They are responsible for war, the murder of Dr. Tiller, vehement dog whistle racism, millions of dollars paid out to shut people up, the destruction of straight up reporting without opinion interjected, and the dumbing down of the American people. They need to be held responsible. Hopefully our Justice Department will open an investigation into these issues. We have enough time to investigate whether or not Roger Clemens was using steroids to play a game better. News Corp. is literally damaging the foundation this fine nation was built upon. I would contend that is a little more important than a baseball player injecting steroids. 

     At the end of the day News Corp. is the modern day Joseph Goebbels. Nothing more than a pathetic little propagandist. Propagandists are never remembered for anything other than being an agenda driven entity that will create falsehoods to get an outcome which they find desirable. Maybe someday News Corp. will air some real shock and awe footage, like Murdoch being arrested and jailed by that stupid fucking touchdown robot on Fox Sports. Good Luck America!!!      

       

Imagination: (It's Good For You)

     Remember when you were a kid, you could sit back and stare at the clouds and see infinite ever changing images. Imagination is one of the truly human things we posses. It allows us to step away from the rigidity of the real world, it allows to have free flowing thought, unimpeded by the stress of getting by from day to day. Sometimes I wonder why imagination was so easy to access as a child, and why as an adult it seems so fleeting.
     Remember when you played baseball or football after school, couldn't wait to call your shot like Babe Ruth, couldn't wait to make that one handed grab, and score that game winning touchdown to win the Super Bowl. Remember playing war with your friends in the woods, setting up jails, booby traps, and eventually winning. Remember when your parents got a new refrigerator, and all you had to do was redecorate the box to create your spaceship to the stars and beyond. Being a kid was certainly fun, to bad we have to grow up!
     I think sometimes that as adults we press ourselves into such a rigid way of life, "The Rat Race," that we forget how to keep our imagination fluid. We worry about work, bills, our children, and so on, that sometimes we forget to go out and just have fun. The things we do as recreation even cause us stress sometimes. I can tell you with a straight face, I would much rather go play football in my old neighborhood than deal with parking, food, crowds, traffic and all the other headaches that go along with going to an NFL game. Yet somehow we are led to believe that going to the game is the ultimate experience for a football fan.
     I love to day-dream and let my mind wonder, you know that feeling you get when you just stare at something and let your mind go, yeah, that's where the good stuff comes from. Imagination has gotten us to the moon. Imagination has allowed scientists to develop new technologies that have allowed us to see so far in to space, that we are actually viewing events that happened millions and billions of years ago. So next time your stressed out, overworked, underpaid, and the world feels like it is going to swallow you whole, relax.
Maybe all you need to do is, go out to the back yard, get comfortable in your favorite chair, and just stare at the clouds. Who knows what you can come up with. It seems to have worked well for Einstein. I leave you with a quote from Einstein to ponder. "The Intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." Good Luck America!!

A Message To Science Haters:

     Ohh yeah, flat earthers, climate science deniers, Jesus was walking with his pet dinosaur crowd, this message is for you. If you think Noah sailed the entire earth collecting all the living things on this planet, this message is for you. Do yourself a favor and go to your local university, tell the scientist working on breakthrough vaccinations to stop wasting his or her time, you will do them a favor and just pray away the ills of the world.

     Lets start with the climate science deniers. Whether you like it or not, scientists all over the world have spent years and decades studying the climate. They have meticulously studied atmospheric makeup and content, ocean currents, global temperatures, ice core samples, deforestation, industrialization, and damn near everything that could possibly affect our climate. This brand of science is so large and encompassing it has taken decades to gather the needed data to even propose a hypothesis. After all the hard work put in by thousands of scientists, we get one freakishly large snowstorm on the east coast, and here come the haters. "Where is your global warming now guy." Climate and weather are two different things altogether. Weather is the state of the atmosphere at a place and time. Climate is the prevailing weather conditions in an area over a long period of time. Humans have clearly had an affect on our overall climate. We have put trillions of tons of waste gasses into the atmosphere, tons of pollutants into our oceans, massive amounts of toxic waste into the ground and precious watersheds. If you have a really nice fish tank, do me a favor, every day for a year, put a handful of your garbage in it. While your at it, add a drop of mercury, benzene, and just for shits an giggles some bio hazardous medical waste. Tell me in a year that your beautiful fish tank is thriving. There is only so much that this planet is going to put up with before it starts killing the problem. Climate change is real, and we had better start accepting the fact that we need to respect the planet that allows us to thrive.

     Lets move on to the six thousand year old earth crowd. First of all, astronomers and astrophysicists have spent a really really long time trying to understand the origins of the universe. The Big Bang Theory is the best hypothesis that centuries of observation has produced so far. The different models that have been used to gauge the age of the universe are incredibly complex, and quite confusing for the average guy swinging a hammer at a construction site. Biblical history on the other hand, is easy to wrap your head around. God makes man, God makes woman, they screw up, get sent out of Eden, and here we are a couple thousand years later. Don't question the fact that science has dated rocks, minerals, and organic matter to be millions and billions of years old. That's just a big game of dupe the Christian. I want my kids to be taught science in school, provable observations, the scientific method, chemistry, physics, general relativity and so on. Keep your creationism at home with your kids. I am not going to dumb down the next generation because of my inability to comprehend complex scientific material.

     Lastly, we are all quite familiar with the story of Noah's Ark. I personally can't believe that one guy, a couple thousand years ago, sailed the entire world collecting all of the living animals. How big was this boat that collected one male and one female species of everything? How did he get all the way to South America, and the Arctic? Currently there are over 1.4 million described species. That means Noah put 2.8 million animals on a boat. A U.S. Navy aircraft carrier sails with a crew of about six thousand, ask them to logistically accommodate 2.8 million creatures. I am sure they will laugh. Maybe this is a story about a local phenomenon that encompassed the entire world as Noah knew it. In his time people in South America didn't even know that his part of the world existed, and vice versa. Yeah, I can totally believe that there may have been a localized catastrophe that Noah reacted to. No, I can't believe this guy sailed the entire world collecting two of everything, because God wanted to destroy the world. 

     In conclusion, I am tired of hearing a bunch of crap aimed at promoting a creationist agenda and denying the hard, laborious work that has been done by thousands of scientists. There is no big agenda to deny religion its place in the world, however, there is a religious agenda to deny the hard work of science because it doesn't fit in with the narrow agenda of biblical theology. Science is constantly evolving and changing. New discoveries happen every day, discoveries that change the way we think, or view the world around us. Biblical theology is unchanging. Trying to vindicate the biblical version of creation is not scientific observation, it is trying to push an agenda. Besides, if God did snap his fingers and create this beautiful planet which we inhabit, shouldn't we stop shitting on it. Shouldn't we stop the largest multi-national corporations from buying our politicians, just so they can turn around and pollute the world to increase their bottom line. Think about that for awhile. Good Luck America!!   

President Obama Set To Announce Troop Drawdown In Afghanistan:

     Tonight President Obama is giving a speech to announce that we are going to start drawing down our military forces in Afghanistan. It has been speculated that we are set to bring home ten thousand soldiers by years end, and possibly twenty thousand by the summer of 2012. Whether you agree with the President or not, this is not an easy decision for him to make. What will the future Afghanistan look like? The possibilities are limitless.

     I have been tempted to think we should gather up our troops and equipment and get out of that hell hole as fast as possible. However, when push comes to shove, I think the President his making a good choice by drawing down our forces slowly. The last thing we need is to let that region of the world fall into complete chaos once again. Afghanistan is a hot bed for fanaticism, it is going to take time for the people to establish a government for themselves. 

     One reason we can't just up and leave are the logistics that go into transporting 120,000 troops and their equipment. Massive amounts of military hardware have been brought into Afghanistan and they have to be taken out carefully. We can't risk leaving behind weapons and hardware that could be used on Afghan civilians by a future force similar to the Taliban. We also don't want anything left behind that could be sold to our enemies and used on our soldiers. The Soviets made this mistake in the late eighties and early nineties when they were withdrawing from Afghanistan. They continued to supply the Mujaheddin, which in turn later turned those weapons against Afghan civilians, and even later, American troops. Lets be careful what we leave behind, someone can always find a market for military hardware.

     Afghanistan also has a long history of not supporting a centralized government, it is a tribal region consisting of many governing bodies. When we took down the Taliban we installed a centralized government in Kabul that has not produced a very good track record so far. Every day we hear of corruption and malfeasance on the part of the Karzai government. The Karzai government is nowhere near competent enough to keep the Taliban from reasserting their presence, and let's be honest nobody wants to see the Taliban reassert themselves. Whether it is the Karzai government or a newly formed Afghan council, government, regime, whatever the people want to call it, they are going to need time to train security forces. We can't just leave and let civilians get slaughtered.
     I am glad to here that we are finally starting the process of leaving Afghanistan. This was a war that came out of necessity, unfortunately it has become an endless conflict with no clearly defined mission. I hope we learn a valuable lesson from Afghanistan. Nation building is impossible, unless the people of that nation participate in the building process. The Taliban has been weakened, Al Qaeda has been significantly broken, Osama Bin Laden is dead, we will be leaving the Afghan people in a better place than before we came. Afghanistan is a very complicated region I don't think anyone knows what is going to come of that country. Hopefully the Afghan people can eventually figure out what it is they want for their country. Unfortunately, an entire generation of Afghans has known nothing other than perpetual war. Hopefully peace will be a welcomed new way of life. Good Luck America!!  
           

Happy Fathers Day:

     Happy Fathers Day. Today is a good day to thank your dad for all those rides to practice and games, for all those school plays he sat patiently through, for putting up with bad grades, and most important of all for raising you into the person you have become. So give your dad a call or tell him in person, thank you. Thanks Dad!!

Trouble At Ft. Calhoun Nuclear Power Station:

                  THIS IS NOT GOOD!                                                                     

     This is a picture of the Ft. Calhoun nuclear power generating station, with some obvious flooding concerns. Ft. Calhoun is located along the Missouri River about twenty miles from Omaha, Nebraska. Recently, due to the historic flooding of the Missouri River, Omaha Public Power District officials have taken measures to ensure the safety of the facility. "I want (people) to understand the plant is safe (and) will continue to be safe," said Dave Bannister, an OPPD nuclear plant officer. Officials said on Friday that the plant is on the lowest emergency status, but they are prepared if the river were to rise another ten feet. This is according to reporting by KETV ABC 7, Omaha's local ABC affiliate. Where is the national media on this one. Still covering Representative Weiner and his transgressions?
     Well, nothing to see here folks, move along. After the destruction the world has witnessed at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, I think we should all be concerned about images like this one. God forbid something were to go wrong at this facility. The Missouri River could potentially be contaminated by leaking nuclear materials. The Missouri drains to the Mississippi, which in turn drains to the Gulf of Mexico. Everything downstream of the facility would potentially be in the path of this oncoming radiation. People, crops, animals, everything could potentially be affected. That would be a disaster on a scale that is just unimaginable. 

     We really need to start looking at how we generate our electricity. Nuclear power is not safe, mainly because even the smallest leaks can have devastating consequences. Germany has committed to doing away with their nuclear facilities by 2022, and I think we should follow their lead. We need to start coming up with a comprehensive solution for replacing our nuclear energy with clean sources of power generation. 

     A nuclear accident is not the only concern for nuclear power generation. After the fuel rods have exhausted their life span in the reactor, they are stored in cooling pools to keep them from contaminating the biosphere. Spent nuclear fuel remains hazardous for many, many years. We have no permanent solution to this problem yet, however, different options are being looked at. No matter the solution, we will still have radioactive waste somewhere, buried, burned, who knows. 

     I'm not going to go all crazy environmentalist on this post, but, we have got to look at the potential damage we could produce by our insatiable energy consumption. We had better start investing more into clean energy initiatives before we have a catastrophic incident that puts not only our lives in jeopardy, but also the lives of future generations. I am confident the planet will heal itself of any man-made cataclysm, however, it would be nice if the human species is not responsible for nearly destroying the earth. Good Luck America!!