Despair in Texas

No, it is not the on-coming hurricane Ike – whose cloud bands even now grow overhead, whilst the wind is starting to rise up here at our place – to which I refer.

Certainly Ike will leave misery, anguish, devastation, and death in its wake; but more frightening is that it is becoming clear that the brilliant Republican choice for VP is going to put the presidential election close enough so that it can, once again, be stolen. It is even possible that they could win it outright (not that they will take that chance).

In most of the polls matching Democratic candidates against various republican candidates Senator Obama repeatedly was found to have the least chance of winning. Senator Clinton had the next worst chance. My pick, Edwards, generally came out well ahead. As it turns out, he was not the best candidate. It was not his immorality and heartlessness that was so shocking (he is, after all, a politician) but his incredible stupidity and recklessness in not being able to keep his pants zipped up even when running for president.

The bitter Democratic primary fight ended in Senator Obama achieving a goal: He won, and he is the first black presidential major party candidate in American history. Sadly, he will also be the first major party black presidential candidate to loose an election.

It did not have to be that way.

A Clinton-Obama ticket, though not what I wanted, would have won by a large enough margin that it is unlikely that a theft could have been pulled off. However, faced with that ticket (which the candidates, oddly, rejected early on in the primaries either as C-O or O-C. Humm. Why was that?), I expect that one, or the other, of them would have been assassinated, or there would have been a ‘terrorist’ attack which would have resulted in the election being put off.

Something would have happened. The Republicans cannot let their bloody hands slip from the levers of power. Too many of them would end up in prison. But it is not really the Republicans.

As anyone who has read my comments before knows, I am an unapologetic tin-hatter. Not because of voices I hear in my head, but because of the decades that I have watched the unfolding of history during my lifetime.

I thus believe that the dichotomy between the two major US parties is a false one. Each is controlled by the same rich and powerful people who control the Western world. Each represents the interests of the powerful, against the rest of us. However, as I have said before, I prefer the illusion of democracy offered by the Democrats, to the crude theo-fascism of the modern Republican party.

The elections are, in my opinion, decided long before voting day. I do think that Bill Clinton’s presidency was a mistake – The Powers (what else can they be called?) did not realize how fed-up with Republican demagogy the nation was. He was supposed to run, but he was supposed to lose. 2000 was their last shot. Had not the Republicans found the courage and the will to openly execute a (mostly) bloodless coup using their creatures on the Supreme Court, they would have vanished for a generation.

But, that is what philosopher’s call a ‘counterfactual’, a look at what might have been. The harsh reality is that our government was seized by a coup d'état – there is no other word for the ‘extralegal’ transfer of power to Bush. Still, one could argue, as do such, that the presidency was simply taken by right by those best fitted to govern.

The Powers took no chances in the 2004 election. Both candidates were from the same powerful secret college society (I am not making this up – research it yourself – surely some is hype, and some is true) which has produced a remarkable number of leaders in our government. Even so, it was recognized that Bush’s War was not popular, that fellow Bonesman Kerry might win if he ran on a strong anti-war platform. Accordingly, early in the campaign, Kerry made it explicit that he would have done exactly the same as Bush in pursuing the mideast war(s). At the time I thought he had accidentally shot himself in the foot. Later, I concluded that the self-inflicted wound was deliberate.

Look too at our Speaker of the House. She insured Bush would stay in power by, again, early on, explicitly stating that Bush and Cheney were safe from impeachment – impeachment demanded by any realistic reading of the US Constitution and federal laws.

This time around, Senator Obama was a safe choice to head the Democratic ticket. Not only because of his weak showing in the pre-convention polls (against Republicans), but because the US is still a racist country, and they expect that he will run and lose. Of course, they thought that of Bill Clinton too, but Senator Obama does not have to lose, he only has to win by a small enough margin that slight corruption of the vote totals will allow them to ‘win’. They have learned from the Clinton miscalculation.

In any event, Texas (my state) never would have gone for Obama. To put it bluntly, Texans simply have not grown enough from the not-so-long ago days of Jim Crow that they will vote for a black for president. Expect this is true of the rest of the white South, and likely true of more of the rest of the country than anyone is going to admit.

So where am I going with this? I am not really sure.

I think that I am in despair because the choice of Palin is proving to be a brilliant one. The day she was announced, virtually all of my fellow workers – all of whom are right-wingers – were angered and felt that they had been insulted. Several even said that they would vote for Obama as a result of their party’s have chosen such an unqualified candidate.

Now, after a week or so in the spin-machine that is our national press, they are going on about how she really has a lot of administrative experience (much more than Obama’s “105 Days” – a number that must have been in the spin machine), that she had really turned her little town around (like leaving it 20 or 30 million in long term debit), had stood up to Big Oil, had opposed Pork Projects (The bridge to nowhere gets mention. En passant, having lived in SE, Ketchikan is not, quite, nowhere), has strong Family Values (favors forced delivery), is a Working Mom, etc, etc.

The upshot: They are all energized with their party again, and I am depressed.

Truly, it is more like Palin-McSame, than the converse. My little microcosm seems to be being repeated throughout the Red States, if not the Blue. As the world’s leading conservative-rag (The Times – sorry WSJ, you just don’t cut it) reports …

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_amer...

"She's one of us": Palin wins over Obama women
Sarah Palin’s hockey mom appeal is winning over white female voters from Barack Obama

Jessica Goral had pretty much made up her mind two weeks ago: she was going to vote for Barack Obama. Then John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate.

“She empowers a lot of women,” says Mrs Goral, a mother of two in Macomb County - a national bellwether in the battleground state of Michigan and an area rich in white, working class swing voters who will play a major role in deciding November’s election.
“I like that she’s a brand new mother, and that she has the courage to stand behind her pregnant daughter. She relates to working women. For all of us who have children at home but have to go to work every day – she has given us a sense that we can still do it and can still be an excellent mum.

“Sarah Palin is a role model …


Over-stated? Un-representative? Sure. But it is close enough to the truth that it will put them close enough to steal the presidency. Which, of course, is why they picked her.

The last semi-free US presidential election occurred in The Year of Our Lord 2000. In that time God looked down on an America beset with sin, sodomy, femi-nazis, and democracy and so caused George W. Bush to be raised up as the first Holy Protector of The Homeland of Jesus. Verily He appointed W-the-First to rule over His Nation, and to set us on His road to being the God-Fearing New Freedom™ Nation we are today.

It has happened.

Hurricane Ike’s devastation will be trivial compared to this.

I say this even though I know that Galveston has NOT, in spite of the news reports, been adequately evacuated, the number of lives that will be lost there, pale in comparison to the number of people who will die as a result of (the upcoming) Palin presidency.

When the hurricane hit Galveston in 1900 about two-thirds of a branch of my ancestors were killed. This time I am hoping that all survive (none are actually on Galveston, but all are in the Eastern Lone-Star).

Speaking of Ike. Need to go check the yard again.

Ciao.