Monday, February 23, 2004

Call it BushCo's lunatic fringe strategery (sic) and Nader worship. Yeah, it's hard to believe, but Nader announced he's running again. In the American system, it's hard to buy votes directly, but lunatic fringes are the easiest to buy or divert. In terms of election strategy, it works quite well for BushCo. Dubya is perfectly willing to accept the votes of various lunatic fringes, and BushCo has the money to persuade their pet troublemakers NOT to run separately and suck off any of their votes. Meanwhile, the votes you can siphon off from your REAL opponents are just as useful as the votes you capture with lies or bribes.

In the current example, BushCo can covertly encourage fringe candidates like Nader to run on the other (progressive/liberal) side, thereby sucking off the lunatic fringes that might help offset the lunatic fringe votes they've collected for BushCo. I'm not saying that all Nader supporters are lunatics, but that's becoming his strongest base of support. Without him as an escape hole to toss their votes into, some of those fanatics would be willing to accept reality. Don't forget that Dubya's entire claim to legitimacy for his tyrannical redirection of America, his entire "mandate for change", comes down to 500 votes in Florida in 2000, as justified 5-4 by SCOTUS. (Never forget: "Our considerations are limited to the present circumstances." That's where history will file Scalia et al.)

You might want to cite Buchanan as some sort of exception, but he had no significant negative effect on Dubya in 2000, but, in a less-than-amusing twist of fate, purely by accident managed to have a significant negative effect on Gore in the crucial Palm Beach situation. Not the only crucial situation in 2000--but almost all of them broke against Gore.

Principles are important, but when your principles prevent you from seeing reality, you are insane. Gore is NOT equal to Bush. But even if the fanatical Nader worshippers wanted to say both of them were evil, Gore was VERY clearly the lesser of the evils--and one of them was going to live in the White House. Nader is serving NO constructive purpose now. In the three years since seizing power BushCo has already done more harm than all of the good Nader ever accomplished in his entire lifetime. Only insanity can explain Nader's divisive new campaign. It can only have two possible outcomes: it will assist BushCo in clinging to power or it will discredit Nader's beliefs and causes as far as the new Democratic president is concerned. President Nader is NOT a possible outcome.

Saturday, February 07, 2004

I've been thinking about Dubya's famous gaffe on the old saying "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me." You may recall that Dubya stumbled all over this, and his version wound up something like "Fool me once.... Fool me... You can't get fooled again."

I'm increasingly convinced that this was a deeply Freudian slip and reflects a deep form of insanity. I think Dubya really can't conceive of the idea that he could be fooled or make any sort of mistake. When he tried to imagine it as a part of a speech, he just fell apart. If it was just a minor slip... Well, you'd think he'd have corrected himself by now and they'd be publicizing that version. However, as far as I know, BushCo wants to pretend it never happened, and Dubya doesn't want to stand up and admit that he was ever fooled--not even by 9/11. (Or maybe he expects to be "fooled" again by terrorists, and just couldn't stomach the "shame on me" part?)

None of us is perfect, and all of us make mistakes--but normal folks get held accountable for them. That's never happened to Dubya, though he's caused plenty of big foul-ups. In spite of his "personal responsibility" rhetoric, he's always slid away from his own mistakes, or hid them, or often enough just let "friends" take the rap (as in his current efforts to throw the blame for the Iraq fiasco onto his "friends" at the CIA).

Actually, BushCo is full of really strange people with strange mental processes. Maybe Dubya can't imagine making a mistake, so he can project that to assume the legal system never makes mistakes. That would explain how easy it was for him to set the record for executions when he was governor. No mistakes possible. And don't apologize, either, even if later evidence shows a couple of innocent guys got executed. How about Rumsfeld, who still wants to believe in those mythical WMD? Just too bad his delusions direct the spending of billions of YOUR tax dollars. And guys like Cheney who get pleasure out of killing just for the sake of inflicting pain and death. Sorry, but I just think good people should not enjoy that sort of thing. When actual good people use violence, it should be truly necessary, based on reality, and without the pleasure--and accepting the possibility of error.

Back to Dubya and his "Bushal Infallibility". Maybe it isn't insanity. Maybe it's just a sincere belief that Dubya has that he's so specially chosen and blessed by God that he can't go astray. As long as he says his prayers, God won't let him be fooled. Of course, that's exactly what Bin Ladin thinks. Does that mean 9/11 was a good thing? After all, using this line of "reasoning", someone's god must have approved.

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As a blogger from before there were blogs, I've concluded what I write is of little interest to the reading public. My current approach is to treat these blogs as notes, with the maturity indicated by the version number. If reader comments show interest, I will probably add some flesh to the skeletons...