The Eve of Destruction

A few random thoughts and observations on the eve of “regime change” (right, sure) in America:

Headline in today's paper: “Pelosi differs with Obama on 2 issues.” Wow – a major fault line in the Democratic Party. Only 2? Out of how many? Hundreds? Sounds like we've got smooth sailing ahead – for totalitarianism, that is.

Regarding the plane that made a perfect, three-point landing in the Hudson River: “Officials have refused to say where in New Jersey the plane would be taken...” My guess it'll be taken to the same place where they took all the World Trade Center debris – and that's top secret, for reasons that have never been explained.

“Cosmetic face fixes boom before swearing-in.” Apparently there's rush on cosmetic, skin care, and plastic surgery vendors in anticipation of the inauguration. All I can say is – wow, they really _are_ putting lipstick on pigs!

Obama wants “a commitment to reform” from the U.N. Sounds good, right? But wait a minute -- “reform” by whose standards? Surely not those of all the third-world crapholes that have representatives taking up valuable seating, and breathing valuable air, in the General Assembly. By their standards, the U.N. is just fine, thank you. Fine, that is, at extorting money, and apologies, from the U.S. and distributing them among themselves and their cronies. And who is to say that our standards are the ones to which the U.N. should aspire? Isn't that some form of... “nationism” or something? (Surely it has to be some kind of “ism”!) After all, we're part of a very small minority in the U.N. -- one of the few actually functioning democracies (more or less)... one of the few with a Bill of Rights... one of the few where family and tribal ties aren't the only bases for who gets to be boss... and, as far as foreign policy is concerned, we're in a minority that consists, basically, of us and Israel. So what business do we have calling for “reform”? It would make more sense if the U.N. were “reformed” in the _opposite_ direction – to be as corrupt as, say, Bangladesh or Zimbabwe, for instance... or as dogmatic as Saudi Arabia... or as militant as Iran. Then it would be much more representative. As it is, it's nothing more than a free soup kitchen operated by the U.S. where the beggars are allowed to dictate what music gets played on the sound system.

It had to happen. One of Bernie Madoff's many Palm Beach victims has described Madoff's Ponzi scam as a “financial holocaust”. Yeah! Right on, brother! Use the “H” word, the one that makes the whole world tremble, to describe the predations of one Jew on other Jews. But after all, we're only talking about money here – not “night and fog”, boxcars, gas chambers, and ovens. And since the H word is usually aimed at getting an apology, a retraction, or reparations, what precisely is it aimed at getting this time? It looks like the whole idea is collapsing into a black hole of absurdity.

I'll say it again – this last-ditch defense of Bush & Co., that “at least we've had no more terrorist attacks on American soil since 9-11”, just doesn't wash. We forget that, unlike our own government, outfits like Al Qaeda usually go for low-hanging fruit. They attack where the walls are weakest, not (as we typically do) where they're strongest. 9-11 represented, among many other things, an attack on our Achilles heel, i.e. air transportation security. We responded by making it just a bit more difficult to pull the same trick, or any similar tricks, again. So – being the agile outfits that they are, Al Qaeda & its buddies started attacking other types of venues in other places. They really don't care about Uncle Herman's barn, honest! That's only a tall tale the administration tells to get Uncle Herman to send Cousin Bud off to war in Iraq. And then, think about what Al Qaeda really wants. Do they want to conquer America? Hell no – too much tsouris (Yiddish for “grief”). What they want is for America to be disgraced, bankrupted, and neutralized – and its little dog too (i.e. Israel). And what better place to accomplish this than right at home in the Near East? The 9-11 attacks were designed to send a message, yes – but they were also fine-tuned to provoke a typically-American response, along the lines of, someone's gotta pay, and it might as well be those rag-heads in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the hell with where most of the terrorists actually came from. So with Israel cheering us on (and not doing squat to help out), we invaded both places, and then the fun began (for militant Islam, that is). They're accomplishing all they set out to accomplish – more, in fact – and they have us right where they want us, i.e. bogged down in a strange and hostile land where they hold all the cards. Why try and fight us on our own turf? That's been shown to be a losing strategy ever since war began – and they clearly have a better grasp of history than we do. We think that, because we're “special”, we can ignore all those age-old parameters; but unfortunately, it isn't so. Plus, by not attacking our homeland they make it all the easier for Americans to get demoralized about the war and alienated from our government. They know how people unite in the face of a common threat – and there is no threat more common than some strangely-dressed, heavily-armed men speaking in some heathen tongue landing on the beaches of New Jersey in rubber rafts. No, that ain't gonna happen. It's much better to draw us halfway around the world, so people back home can start saying things like “What business is it of ours?”, and “I don't give a damn what happens to Iraq, or to the Iraqis”, and “Who would live in a place like that anyway?”, and “They smell funny”. Now don't tell me you haven't heard all of these things hundreds of times, especially in bars. But if they were pontooning across the Hudson River all you'd hear would be patriotic tunes. So, bottom-line, yes, we haven't had any more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9-11. But would we have, without the Patriot Act and all the other paranoid security measures that have been taken? Without turning the Bill of Rights into the Bill of Wrongs? Highly unlikely. Ron Paul said, regarding 9-11, that they're over here because we're over there (i.e., in the Near East). But now it's gone to the next step, which is that we're over there because they came over here. So why would they want to come over here again? Iraq is a better killing ground than Lower Manhattan ever was.

Well, Israel has liquidated the Warsaw Ghetto... I mean, um, the Gaza Strip... while we looked on helplessly, as usual. But don't worry, it was all done with the most advanced precision weaponry available anywhere – weaponry so precise that you can blow up a car and only kill the guy in the back seat. That's why the Israelis were able to keep the number of Palestinian children killed down to, oh, only a few hundred. Of course, it was a bit awkward when some of those precision munitions hit the U.N. compound and a Reuters news bureau. Maybe they were trying to deliver a message, I don't know. Well, I've been hearing about the Gaza Strip since I was in grade school, and in my opinion it's got to go. I don't care what happens to it, but it's got to go. It's just a gigantic pain in the butt. I guess we could ship it all over here and re-establish it on, say, the Texas coast. Or if they don't mind being land-locked we could set it up in the Great Basin. Really, anywhere but where it is now. That neighborhood's just gotten way too rough.

More liberal heads are exploding about the situation in Australia. An island seabird sanctuary was being overrun by predatory feral cats. So – in a blatant display of “species-ism” it was decided to get rid of the cats. Result – the island is now overrun by rabbits upon whom the cats used to prey. The rabbits, in turn, are eating up all the vegetation in which the seabirds used to build their nests. Ya just can't win, where nature is concerned. Doesn't Al Gore know that?

And speaking of specious species, “In India, misbehaving elephants have been banned from the nation's Republic Day parade for the first time...” because they “had the tendency of going slightly berserk during recent parades.” My guess is they just found out that they were the symbol of the Republican Party.

And speaking of politics – all the over-the-top enthusiasm of African-Americans about Obama's inauguration doesn't seem to have been dampened by the early-on skepticism of “black leaders” that Obama wasn't black enough, or wasn't black in the same way that regular blacks are black, or... well, you get the idea. A guy who really _is_ half African is considered second-rate compared to “genuine” African-Americans. Wow... when it comes to the politics of race in America, every day is April Fools' Day.

My only regret about the inauguration is that I won't have George W. Bush to kick around any more – or Dick Cheney, or Condi Rice, or any of the rest of that claque. Well, unless they ever show their faces in public again, or ever say anything for public consumption, in which case they're fair game. And so much of what could be said about the Klinton Kabal, i.e. the vast bulk of Obama's team, has already been said, e.g. by the American Spectator. But I'm sure they'll come up with some new and even zanier tricks. Let's see – they could fire the entire Department of Justice and replace it with a bunch of Chicago aldermen; that would be interesting. Or they could mount a Waco-style raid on John Hagee's Cornerstone Church. Whoo-ee! Or Bill Clinton could line up a group of “comfort women” to keep him company any time he accompanies Hillary on an overseas mission. Yeah... there are lots of possibilities. It's not going to be as dull and boring as I'd feared.