Varifrank: June 2008 Archives

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Just one quick note

Wesley Clark made a series of statements this weekend about John McCain.

I cant decide which of the two military advisors on Obama's staff I despise more, Wesley Clark or Merril McPeak. It's a tossup, day to day you can get a different answer from me on the subject, but at the moment, Clark is the most loathesome man since Michael Moore slithered out from behind the water closet and tipped his hat at us. I dont care if Charles Manson is running for office, if McPeek or Clark are on the other side of the political argument, Well then "I'm for Charlie"!.

I would like to enter into evidence that John McCain spent 6 years in captivity and two full years in solitary confinement at the hands of some pretty despicable people. 6 years is roughly twice the time that Obama has spent in the Senate of the United States. When you subtract the time that Obama has been running for President, Obamas time in the Senate is almost exactly equal to McCains in solitary.

Im sure that Obamas time has been tough in the Senate in the past 3 years, but...

I dont know how many hours are in John McCains' pilot log book, but I'm also willing to bet that it is probably greater than the total number of hours that Obama has served in the Senate.

Oh, and when Wesley Clark said "Ridin' in an fighter" this weekend? Ever single pilot I know - visibly winced when he said it. You dont "ride" in a fighter, its not a 25 cent 'bucking bronco' ride outside the grocery store. Its a jet, a single seat jet, built by a military contractor to the lowest possible bid and it was maintained by draftees. You dont sit in the pointy end of that sort of thing and catapult off the deck and call it a "ride".

John McCain "flew" the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk. He didnt "ride" it. A Pilot is not cargo. A pilot is part of the aircraft itself. Asshole ex-generals living past their prime, self respect and decency, sitting in the back of a private jet of the Obama campaign and sipping on martinis, are the people who are "riding". Please dont confuse the two, Meester Clark...

(I doubt if Wesley Clark or Barack Obama can drive even drive a stick shift car... )

It should also be noted that John McCain went on to do a great many other things after that horrible experiemce in Hanoi finally ended. John McCain commanded a squadron of Naval Aviators. John McCain is magna cum laude from the school of "Been There - Done That". Obama is still daydreaming about what he might do when he grows up someday. His thoughts have the same weight and temper of a high school senior talking about how cool it will be to finally get his own apartment one day. McCain talks like someone who has made more than one mortgage payment, each month, month after month.

It has been rumored that John McCain went on to become a Senator for 26 years before he became President in 2008. In fact McCain has been serving in the Senate longer than Obama has been out of school.

Posted @ June 30, 2008 09:23 PM | Aviation | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Is Nothing Sacred?

They are remaking The Prisoner.

(insert sarcastic smirk here) After what they did to Andromeda Strain, I can't wait to see what they do to The Prisoner.

Let the vomiting begin...

The "New" Andromeda Strain was so bad, I was rooting for the bug after the first 30 minutes. I loved the Robert Wise 1971 version, but this new version? Gack!

Posted @ June 30, 2008 12:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

No ice on the North Pole?

UK Independent Exclusive report: No Ice at North Pole.

snip.
"...It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year..."
end snip...

Really?

ummm,eerrr,uhh....well,ummm,thats certainly INCONVEINENT!
Varifrank Exclusive: I Live On A Planet Filled To The Brim With Submorons Who Believe Anything, Literally Anything, That The Press Tells Them So Long As It Fits The Anti-Human Agenda That Has No More Science In It Than Scientology Does.

The photo comes from a damn nice solid science filled explanation of "Why Ice is routinely missing at the North Pole". Heres a hint, that "Santa living at the North Pole with his elves and Mrs. Santa thing?, Its a lie your parents told you... Damn them! Damn them all!

I only remembered this site because I had a former friend who was absolutely livid with my position on global warming in 2000, who sent me another "Ice missing from North Pole for first time ever" piece back in 2000 to PROVE to me that I was a fool.

Its now 2008, I havent heard from him since. I still stand by me previous position. Global Warming happens all the time not just because your neighbor has a bigger car than you, and you Jeff (not that Jeff, but the other Jeff, you know who you are...) are an ass.

Posted @ June 26, 2008 07:18 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

A new plane!

Liveblogging from the Phildelphia Airport...

I just flew in the Embraer E190 for the first time( its new to me)

Nice plane, good layout, seats are comfortable. As a regional Commercial jet, it looks like a winner to me...

Now, Ive always given Embraer a fair amount of crap in the past, like saying that Embraer is Portugese for "Embolism" which is what you will get if you ever fly in one of their spam cans, but I have to give them a 'hats off" this time because the E190 is a very nice aircraft for that essential "less than 2 hour" marketplace.

I remeber when we used to make commercial jet airplanes in this country. Boy, those were the days...

Posted @ June 25, 2008 12:06 PM | Aviation | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

And this time last year, Hillary was a sure thing

Liveblogging from Boston Logan Airport...

John Stewart reminds his audience that its "OK" to laugh at Barack Obama. I keep asking folks who support Barack Obama " Are you really going to elect someone to be President that you are afraid to criticize? If you cant blame the President for your ills, who will you blame? You know the President is the big cultural voodoo doll that we all stick pins in so we can feel better about ourselves. Its one of the roles that he does for us. So, what will we do when criticism of the President is interpreted to mean something, ahem, else? Will the press quickly adapt to the meme that any oppostion to President Obama is a reactionary knee jerk racist act? Will we see headlines daily that say "You dont have to be a racist to be against Barack Obama, But it helps!"

So, what happens when an entire population finds itself with a voodo doll that cant be stuck with pins, and worse, the voodoo doll sticks pins in you instead? Personally, I want a President who can take a punch without getting all upset and bothered about it. I want to be able to call the President "Hitler" if the mood strikes me and I dont want to find the FBI in front of my house the next day because I did. I dont want a weathervane for a President, I want a "check valve" on the legislature.

I dont have to agree with the President all the time to be happy. I just have to know that the person that is President is there to fulfill a duty to the country and not that hes not there to enhance his resume for bigger and better book deals later on in his life.

I think the Republic can withstand an Obama Presidency because I think that fundamentally, the Republic can withstand anything but apathy. I dont see any apathy right now, do you?

We are the "check valve" on the President and the President gets two years at a time to keep things in order his way, then we re-elect the entire House of Representatives and 1/3 of the Senate which can either work for him if we like what hes doing or against him if we dont. People gave Bush limited power until after the Katrina debacle , and then we took it back from him. All told, in the two years of the congressional session, there are only about 9 months of active legislative sessions that are going to take place. The likelyhood of the President making sweeping changes in that time is actually very small, which I'm all excited and happy about, but its probably going to be a problem for those who are expecting something else.

For the record, I still dont think hes going to be elected...

Addressing the "But Frank, everyone just loooooves Obama" meme that has everyone in a tizzy, I like to take people through this scenario. Where I live is a local Donut shop, its been in business for about 15 years. Its run by an older vietnamese couple. I dont think it makes a ton of money, its not a local fave or anything but its there and every week, week after week, doing what they do which is, making donuts.

About three years ago, Krispy Kreme came to town. It was a total sensation, our local store had people waiting in line 24 hours a day for weeks on end. It was completely amazing, Krispy Kreme was redefining the market and the popularity was beyond anything rational. It was a sensation. I thought at the time that the local donut shops were history, because even I just looooooved Krispy Kreme.

So what happened to the mom and pop Donut shop? Well, its still there, doing what it does and apparently making money because after all this time, it would be a very expensive hobby if it didnt. So where is the big time sensation, Krispy Kreme now? Well in our market, its gone. Totally gone. Three years ago, you couldnt go two feet without running into a Krispy Kreme product in stores, gas stations and at every function that you attended. Today, pffft...

How do you go from a "big time sensation", a great product and a fantastic brand to closing 145 stores and disappearing altogether? Easy, you just have to execute your business plan like a bunch of amatures and get way out beyond your own abilities. It happens all the time.

Remember Boston Market? AOL? The American airline industry? Remember that fads dont last but well exectued business plans do.

And please remember, its OK to laugh at Barack Obama.

( And no, I did not compare John McCain or Obama to a Donut...)

Posted @ June 25, 2008 07:13 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

George Carlin

George Carlin taught me that you could be funny and smart at the same time. It is accepted today that comedians can be smart and funny but back in the day, Comedians were of the Rowan and Martin, Lewis and Martin joke telling types. Before George Carlin, comedic insight rarely went beyond "when my wife sits around the house..." patois. I discovered him during the summer of 1976, in Dennis Lucas' garage and I've always been grateful to George Carlin for teaching me that little fact about comedy. Smart can be funny, infact if smart actually is done right, its almost always funny too.

I memorized, actually I devoured his comedy albums in the 1970's, and began to mimic his style and pacing of speech so much that I became obnoxious about it. "Hot water heater? Hot water doesnt need heating..." Im sure it was funny to everyone the first time they heard it, but after I said it daily for nearly a month, it lost its flavor.

My favorite Carlin quote: " I joined the Air Force to avoid military service".

My favorite Carlin memory - Back in my consulting days in the 1980's, after a wild night out in Manhattan, I fell asleep with the television still turned on. I woke up up in the middle of the night and "That Girl" was on, but Marlo Thomas was talking to some guy in a suit and tie with short hair. The only problem with that is the guy in the proper business suit and hair cut had George Carlins voice. My alcohol enhanced brain could not accept what my eyes were clearly seeing, George Carlin - in a suit and tie as straight as can be. I was convinced that I had passed into some alternate universe...

George Carlin has long been on my list of "People I would have loved to have spent 14 hours sitting next to on a flight to New Zealand".

Posted @ June 23, 2008 04:29 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

"Moveon.org" or "America First" - you decide

(in reference to this nytimes article)

ON THE SCREEN A young, mother speaks directly to the camera as she stands next to the family farm house, holding on her arms a baby boy.

THE SCRIPT The woman says, “Hi, Mr. Truman; this is Alex. He’s my first. So far, his talents include trying any new food and chasing after our dog — that, and making my heart pound every time I look at him. So, President Truman, when you said you would stay for 100 years to contain the Soviet Union, save the world from the threat of communism and stabilize the war torn continent of Europe, were you counting on Alex? Because, if you were, you can’t have him.”

Remember folks, The war in Iraq ended the sanctions that killed (according to the far left marxist front organization 'ANSWER') over 300,000 Iraqis in the 10 years that they were in place.

A generation ago, they had a name for the selfish, mindless, boobs of the isolationist mindset. Today we call those people "Buchanan-ites" but in every way that can be measured, there isnt an dimes worth of difference between Moveon.org and that same spoiled "me first" mentality.

And now on the Dumont Television Network, this word from Radio Free Europe...

And the General Clay referenced by Ronald Reagan? Thats General Lucius Clay, the father of the Berlin Airlift.

Posted @ June 19, 2008 11:23 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

What they dont show you tells you everything you need to know.

"With shovel in hand, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama visited a flood zone in Quincy, Illinois on Saturday. Obama helped locals fill sandbags to place on the banks of the Mississippi river.
Obama has vowed to push for state and federal aid to help victims of the floods."

Kinda brings a tear to your eye, doesnt it? Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, taking time away from his busy schedule to fill sandbags. Message: He cares, he really really cares...

Ok, Let's try looking it this way. We will just adjust the camera angle ever so slightly and look at what is revealed:

"...With shovel in hand, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama visited a flood zone in Quincy, Illinois on Saturday. Obama helped locals fill sandbags to place on the banks of the Mississippi river. Obama has vowed to push for state and federal aid to help victims of the floods."

Gee, that camera angle doesnt quite tell the same story as the text, now does it? If they want to use that picture, it would have to go with text like this:

...Like all posturing politicians who have always proven all too ready to exploit a scene of natural disaster and personal tragedy for the benefit of their politics, Senator Obama with over 100 members of the media his secret service staff as well as his own campaign staff, and visited a flood zone in Quincy, Illinois on Saturday. Senator Obama distracted the effort by pretending to help locals fill sandbags to place on the banks of the Mississippi river while the massive press and politcal staff stood by passing out campaign buttons and bumper stickers to those who had recently lost all of their belongings in the flood. Senator Obama has vowed to push for state and federal aid to help victims of the floods, which is almost entirely guaranteed and unopposed by all elements of both the state and federal government. Locals who were on the scene during the "campaign circus" were heard to ask the candidate if he would allow the Army Corps of Engineer to dredge the river or repair the levees, so that this sort of disaster wouldnt happen in the future. In response, the candidate and his staff was heard to laugh to themselves as he retreated into their SUV convoy and drove to the next fundraiser.

It should be noted that while Senator Obama has raised over 100 million dollars in campaign funding in the last few months and breaking all records for fundrasing in the process, he has yet to offer to donate any of these "windfall" funds to the towns in his home state who have been effected by this disaster.

Hero or Opportunist? It all depends on how you look at it I guess.

(Hat tip to The Great Hugh Hewitt)

Posted @ June 15, 2008 02:51 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Canada to US: I Drink your milkshake!

From CBC:

"Energy giant BP came out the big winner in the federal government's latest auction for oil and gas exploration leases in the Beaufort Sea, offering to spend nearly $1.2 billion to explore on the Arctic seabed"

You know things are bad when even a socialist government like Canada understands the need to drill for domestic oil, but Washington can't quite find the deep down gumption to go and do the same.

Oh by the way, wheres the Beaufort Sea? its just 100 miles to the east from the Alaska National Wildlife Preserve. You know ANWR, that extra special precious place we cant possibly begin to drill in because of some damn reason or another. Yes, our nothern neighbors are "drinking our milkshake"! At this rate by the time we start drilling in ANWR, there wont be any oil left in that area.

Posted @ June 12, 2008 02:55 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Heres a riddle - What does a Cuban have to do to get human rights?

Answer: Why its easy as 1-2-3!

1) Escape from Havana.
2) Join the Jihad in Afghanistan.
3) Surrender to the first American Military Patrol that appears and boom - you get shipped back home but to Guantanamo, where on American side of the wire you have more rights as a prisoner than you do as a citizen of Cuba on the other side of the wire.

Hey, Ive got an idea, why not skip the whole Jihad thing and just jump over the wire in Guantanmo? Well I would...

( My question to the human rights crowd is "After this decision, why would any American in combat ever take prisoners? Why would any Military Command take that sort of risk?, because you know it is risky to take the time and effort to capture people instead of simply killing them outright. You know, things happen out there in the field. Whos to say that the Jihadi was "surrendering"? So will the next "scandal" be on the steadily decreasing number of detainees captured in the field? Hell it probably aleady is. And my question to the rest of you is, If your military is no longer able to kill anyone, capture anyone or break anything in the process, then what is it? )

Posted @ June 12, 2008 10:42 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Esquire: What I Learned Looking for Steve Fossett

A very interesting article about the search for Steve Fossett. Its very timely to see this as I will be visiting the wreck of a B-17 later on in the week.

Posted @ June 08, 2008 02:45 PM | Aviation | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

The age of the Remote Worker has arrived

An Atari 800 Acoustic Coupler, circa 1984. I tried explaining what a modem was to my 14 year old son the other day, I wasnt entirely successful. The concept of an Acoustic Coupler was completely foreign to him as it is to most people of the current generation. He is 14 and has lived his entire life in the age of the "always on" internet. For roughly half of his life, his father has not commuted to work from the suburbs to the urban office but has worked from an office in the home.

A couple of years ago when I wrote a post about what its like to telecommute, I got some odd responses because to many people it seemed to be a bit too far out on the bleeding edge. Now that gas is on its way to 5 if not 6 dollars a gallon, it doesnt seem so odd or bleeding edge. Since the end of the year, I have had a large number of people tell me that they have now switched to "remote working" on at least a part time basis and many are on full time "remote work"

Heres the link to that post.

As I have said, I have telecommuted (I prefer the term "remote work") full time for the past 8 years. This is partly because my boss is a genius and knows how to keep his people happy, but its also a direct result of the forces at work in the world today. You see, once the IT industry (the industry that I work in) decided it had to work with people in India, then it became a daily if not hourly experience to work with people on other parts of the globe as part of your daily efforts. In 1998, it was unusual for me to work closely with people all over the globe. To be sure there were contacts with people overseas back then, but you didnt work in the same level back then that you do today. Today I work with people all around the globe every day, in fact the person closest to me that I work with is 800 miles away. My direct managers are three time zones from me and my nearest peer is 8 timezones away.

In 10 years, things have changed and they have changed dramatically. In 1998, this "remote work" concept was highly unusual, today I am in no way unusual. In 1998, I flew daily to Los Angeles and home at the end of the day. All I did was sit in meetings. Today, no client would suggest or support such an agregious waste of time and money. In 1998 I had a low speed DSL line. Today, A 20mb Fiber-To-The-Home connection. ( for nostalgial purposes, I still have a 1200baud US Robotics desktop modem. It came with my 1984 vintage Macintosh which I also still have. The 128k first generation Mac which I bought for 2400 dollars in Febuary 1984, still works. Yes, I once paid 2400 dollars for a computer that could only run 5 pieces of software. Today my cellphone has more software, more memory and storage and it only cost 200 dollars three years ago. )

Because of the global nature of our marketplace, because of the internet, because of the incredible rise in commodity prices, the working world is being transformed. The single most importatnt difference between todays Oil Surge and the 1970s is that today a great deal of work can be performed without leaving the home. In the 1970's you had to go to work because thats where the phone was, thats where the data was, thats where everyone you worked with was going to be. Today, thats simply no longer true.

One of the things that will fall out of that is the rise of the "Remote Worker". The "Remote Worker" will replace the factory mentality that our fathers and grandfathers were forced due to their circumstaces to live with. The central factory that came with industrialization transformed cities, changed our culture and modified the daily habits of the human race.

But because of my experience over the past eight years,and watching how it has transformed my life, I have no doubt that the "Remote Work" revolution will be as transforming to our society and culture as what occured in the early industrial age to the world of the past.

My advice to those of you who havent already, take advantage of the price of gas to transform your work. You will find that your biggest impediment to becoming a "remote worker" isnt technology, but a long series of ingrown organizational inefficiencies( sometimes called "middle managers") and cultural expectations. Trust me on this one, you can use this time to make a major positive transformation to your life by becoming a "Remote Worker".

Posted @ June 07, 2008 11:33 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

missing the obvious solution

Telegraph UK:Water crisis to be biggest world risk

It's too bad we cant just melt all the icebergs and ice caps to free all that freshwater so people can use it. Perhaps if there was some way to heat the earth on a global scale. Perhaps if we could just warm the atmosphere a couple of degrees it would result in much more water in the aquifers of the cities instead of wasted up in the mountans as glaciers.

Oh, I suppose its just too much of a stretch to think that mankind is powerful enough to change the climate, even if its beneficial for millions of people.

( ...and on a side note, arent we reaching a point in our popular discourse where we are at maximum "greatest threat to mankind" saturation? When everything thats fit to print is the "greatest threat to mankind", doesnt that really mean that nothing is actually the "greatest threat to mankind", since the evidence provided by our lengthening life span and growing population show that desipte throwing everything from bird flu, black plague the Pontiac Aztec and Hanna Montana knock-offs at us, the biosphere is apparently pretty much powerless to stop us? And arent all these complaints about "water supply" just attempts by men to ban the practice of suburban lawns, which they are forced to spend valuable free time maintaining for no good purpose? The average suburban man can say "Honey I dont want to grow a lawn" and the wife will show them the stinkface, but if he says "oh my God!, the earth is running out of water, we need to put in a rock garden to be truly green and ecologically correct!" and she will smile at you in return. Who cares what the excuse is, if it gets you out of 3 hours of mindless labor on Saturday afternoon, why not? Its a scam I tell ya, a scam...)

Posted @ June 05, 2008 08:34 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

The Online Right

Why does the Right side of the blogoshere have less traffic, a smaller audience, than the Left side of the blogosphere?

Good question. My answer? Because we on the right have jobs, families, responsibilities and duties while the left has trusts funds and a cozy apartment in the basement of mom and dads house. The former leaves far less free time than the latter, but I wouldnt trade it for any amount of network traffic.

Posted @ June 04, 2008 02:14 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

George Lucas Wants you to know...

The man who has the imagination to bring you Ewoks, Admiral Akbar, Jar-Jar Binks, Darth Vader dating a girl twice his age (and she was only 16!), Captain EO and the misunderstood classic mid 80's comedy film "Howard the Duck", wants you to know that Barack Obama has "the force".

Oh good, now Barack Obama has to deal with the deadly curse of Star Wars fanboys. That should slow him down...

Posted @ June 04, 2008 07:27 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

10 second movie review: Cloverfield

Cloverfield: Rating - Skip. Rent the original Godzilla instead. Raymond Burr sitting on a block of ice with prestone running through his veins could emote more energy than any of the characters on the screen in this movie, including the "monster".

Phil Spector once described the record album as "2 hits and 8 peices of crap". Modern movies are much the same idea in that the moments captured on the trailer almost always make up all of the better scenes of the movie. 9 times out of 10, once you've seen the trailer, youve seen all thats worth seeing in the movie. Trailers thankfully end in 90 seconds where you are forced to sit for 90 minutes through the movie.

Exhibit A for this case is made by the movie "Cloverfield". If you've seen the trailer, thats it. Seriously, thats all there is. Cloverfield is yet another movie where youth culture makes its shiny faced debut and you just weep for the species. You know the plot to this movie before you sit down to watch it - a big spooky monster comes to New York, makes a hash of the place. You know it because its been done before, lots and lots of times before. The fact is, I cant think of a time when it was done worse than this movie, and that includes the laughible "Q". What you dont know is this is yet another modern movie where the the overdone technique of "hand held video" is used in the same way for film in the same way that garlic is overused in bad restaurants.

The film starts at a going away part for a young man going away to become his company Vice President in Japan. One look at the guy and you say to yourself, "Vice President! Wow, just imagine how far he will go when he finds a comb!"

The camera wanders around for 20 minutes as you "get to know" the people at the party. At this point I began to say to myself " Hey wouldnt it be great if a big slimy monster fell from the sky and ate all these people? Now I would pay to see that!"

And guess what, thats exactly what happened. So, in that respect, the movie works on a very satisfactory level. Unfortunately in the process of removing the main characters from the movie(which you feel surprisingly good about), the monster messes up some very nice places in New York, so you feel bad about that and you really feel bad that its the real estate getting smashed that gets your emotions going and not Johnny "brothers-brown-suit-who-was-just-made-vice-president-and-shipped-to-japan-for-the-mattel-company-who-youre-supposed-to-care-about-but-dont".

This is yet another modern movie where CGI is used to replace script, plot, direction, acting, lighting and story structure. Cloverfield is to film what the Dixie cup is to Wedgewood pottery. My rule is that if you take the CGI out of the movie, could you still make the movie? If the answer is no, then dont make the movie because no matter how good you think the CGI is for whatever scene you think you need it in, its not as good as your imagination would be in the same place. A good director knows when you put your imagination to work. A bad director just makes a tentacled creature appear on screen. Cheap and easy to use special effects has ruined filmmaking. When directors had no special effects they were forced to write better stories, use better actors, spend more time on scene composition. Now they just put any old damn thing on screen and clean it up later and by "Clean it up later", I mean insert a big improbable multi-tentacled slime creature.

You know, like that video game we used to play. Yeah, that would be cool...

Because thats what film today has become. It used to be moving literature but now its the recorded replay of some video game that is on its way to become a rollercoaster somewhere. Yeah, that would be cool...Clovefield! The rollercoaster!

I've had a real dry spell with movies lately, I mildly liked "The Coward Robert Ford" and I really hated and was geniunely disappointed in "No Country For Old Men" so I may need to go watch Ikiru as a "palette cleanser".

If todays directors spent half as much time on plot and script as they do making sure the movie music playlist in Itunes is programmed for the latest hip tunes and the product placement is optimum, we would have some good stuff out there.

What we have instead isnt movies but really,really long trailers.

Posted @ June 03, 2008 09:17 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (0)

Ode To Hillary - From Jim Morrison

Face it, it just works on so many levels! The jungles of florida. A line of Napalm thrown down to little effect. The newscopters circling overhead. A losing battle against an entrenched enemy who is being openly supported by the press. A situation where you win every battle but lose the war.

Sounds familiar doesnt it?

If you replace the word "Saigon" in the closing speech from Martin Sheen with "New York", it hits all the right notes.

At last, at long last, the Democratic party brings an end to the karma starved campaign of Hillary Clinton and "House Clinton" is forver more reduced to mere asterisk status. In the end, they were undone not by the "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy", but by the comrades on the left who in their need for purity, found her to be not quite pure enough.

Replacing the politically unstoppable juggernaut of "House Clinton" we now see that "House Obama" will take the stage as champion for the Democrats. "House Obama", who is weaker, with less foundation support, with no experience whatsoever in the party is as blissfully unaware of the battlefield ahead as a young waif-like member of the Childrens Crusade was of how to prosecute warfare in palestine against the Moors.

Obamas campaign is based on the idea that he's going to bring everyone together, that the existence of his campaign alone is enough to heal the wound in the American collective psyche.

To demonstrate to us all his certified abilities as a peacemaker, he and his campaign has torn his party in two. Where once was a party in unity has now been replaced by chaos, disorder, anger and contempt.

Barack Obama. A Master Strategist who single handedly accomplishing what Karl Rove only dreamed of doing, defeated the Clintons and the Democratic Party in one fell swoop.

Genius! If he cant get his own party behind him, how can he get the country behind him( or dare I say, the world)? Is that his goal? or does he simply believe that there are more of "them" than there are of "us" and as such we are not a factor because the press tells us every day in every way how much they all love Barack Obama so it must be true, right?

I think that what towers above all the other factors that caused Hillary to lose was the effect of the "karma factor". Hillary spent the eight years of her husbands Presidency kicking the shins of those in her party who would not follow her whim and direction. Tom Wolfe described this sort of thing as the "favor bank" of life. Your actions with others result in either a deposit or a withdrawl from the "favor bank". Hillary started this campaign NSF at the "favor bank" and as a result "Payback" was sure to come one day for that sort of thing. When she announced her campaign, debts from the favor bank would be called in and Hillary would be found wanting. This is why you saw so many people in the high echelon of the Democrat party literally walk away from Hillary. Worse than simply remain silent, they were vocal in their preference of Barack Obama over Hillary. That doesnt just happen, you have to make that happen and Hillary made that happen every day of her husbands administration between 1992 and the year 2000. Everytime she threatened a congressman in 1992 over Hillary-care, it probably cost her 10,000 votes in 2008.

What is it that they say about "Payback"? Its true enough and it need not be said out loud because you are all thinking it anyway so we can just skip that part. Another way to think of it is to simply be careful how you treat people on the way up, because you get to meet them again on the way down.

This is going to be a great election and it will be one made up of great contrasts. McCain is on one side, Obama on the other. The socialist left experiment and its coastal cultural base on one side of the argument, McCain and the "Great American Middle" shop at wal-mart and drive pickup trucks on the other.

I stand by my previous prediction of a 49 state sweep by McCain.

(This is the end...Of our elaborate plans, the end...)

Posted @ June 02, 2008 12:02 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)