Thoughts on Sarah Palin and Hurricane Gustav
The selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be John McCain's running mate is terrifying. It would be good news if McCain were just out of his mind or desperate. Remember Dan Quayle? Quayle was also a lightweight. But in Quayle's case there was little to suggest what his influence in Indiana could do for the Bush I administration. In Palin's case what she can do for a McCain administration is all too obvious. She can help turn Alaska into one giant oil field quickly and without any concern for the environment. She can redefine the term"fast track". She knows the state and can wheel and deal in the places that will most quickly open up protected areas for drilling. Damn the torpedoes... That realization was instantaneous for me. Then came the second epiphany. McCain is acting as if the election is irrelevant and it just may be. The Republicans did steal the last two didn't they? Is this one already so far in the bag that McCain doesn't care what she does to his national ticket? I pray there is some other explanation.
I am finishing a new book called "A Presidential Energy Policy". No details yet but we'll announce it for sure when the time comes. As Ihave been researching it I have come to see that this nation is absolutely desperate for energy. Desperate to the point of utter recklessness.
And Hurricane Gustav homes in on the biggest concentration of oil and gas rigs in the Gulf. Like a sniper's round destined to impact NewOrleans with a head shot after tearing through the vital organs of our energy infrastructure we can only watch helplessly and pray for the well being of those in its path. We are all in its path.
-- MCR
One Giant Step Backwards For Womankind
Whether to cry or vomit, that is the question that so readily and so often pops into mind these days. Any woman, possibly disgruntled at the defeat of Hillary, who cheers the choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate for a Presidential candidate needs to stop and think ahead a step or two: Say McCain, who, whatever theoretical good qualities he may have, has rarely been accused of youth, becomes indisposed to the point of no longer being able to govern. We now have our first female President. Wow. Inexperienced and, in a party not short on machismo, anxious to prove herself one of the boys, Palin is a tad overzealous in an era that calls for depth of thought and understanding.
As the world is on the brink of disaster anyway, her mistakes are magnified and the results, calamitous.
The country, or whatever is left of it, says, "You see? We had a woman President and what happened?"
It will be the end of female power for aeons; again, if there are any.
If Obama wins, he too, will be biting off more than he can chew (since it's more than anybody can chew) and will be destined to fail. But he does not face the same fate as far as history goes. He will be blamed for what happens but only as an individual and not, I think, because of his race (except among racists who were against him anyway.)
In other words, racism is alive and well but it is not so pervasive as anti-feminism. It's not politically correct to be a racist and there has been a sea change in progress over the last fifty years.
Feminism has seen progress in tangible areas such as admission to medical school and token CEOs but less in intangibles such as attitudes, assumptions and beliefs. The supposed differences between men and women are still the stuff of arguments and sitcoms. Nobody would ever write a book saying that one race is from Mars and another, from Venus.
So if the moment the wrecking ball strikes, McCain steps out of the way (possibly via a heart attack) and Palin is poised to catch it, then like Eve, she will earn her honorary male status as the fall guy.
--JO
Best insights on web so far re Palin
I was wondering WHY McCain chose her as his VP (as likely many others are as well)...the energy angle never popped into my mind. Thanks Mike for your insights. At least this gives me a basis for my thoughts on this candidate. I feel there is virtually no difference anymore between the two parties, but none the less, we will have to deal with the mess they make or leave behind.
ReplyDeleteIt is good to hear from you again Mike and glad you are feeling well enough to work on a new project.
MCR's observation about the desperation for energy brings to mind what's behind it. People are stuck in the industrial mindset. As the fossil fuel energy supply decreases in availability, the only thing on people's minds is finding new sources of energy that can replace fossil fuels. "Power down" is at best a dirty word. And "new technologies" are going to save the day. It's the same here in Japan, of course. In fact, the idea that "new technologies" are going to save our lifestyle is a pervasive theme in the media, political discourse, and of course corporate advertising.
ReplyDeleteThis mindset has long been a concern of mine, but I hadn't come up with a good name for it. Then the other day a friend pointed me to this essay on what the author calls "technological fundamentalism."
http://www.counterpunch.org/jensen08252008.html
I think there's another reason why McCain chose Palin, because of the disappointed voters of Clinton.
ReplyDeleteThe coming 4 years are very important, I'm very curious what it will bring especially what the United States will do. Would they start another (energy)war? I just received the book The Shell Game of Steve Alten, because of the ratio dollar/euro are books very cheap in comparison with our country. I won't hope that that scenario is coming to be true!
This is Scary! i think this McCain is more pron to push the button also and start a nuke war.
ReplyDeleteI am a repulican but this ticket I may vote the lesser of two evils..That means ..I am not voting for McKook~!
Good insight on Alaska energy..no doubt they will go full speed ahead with drilling in ANWAR etc..
ruby,
ReplyDeletean unfortunately sizable chunk of hillary supporters have said they might just vote for mccain out of pique. it was partly in response to them that i wrote "one giant step backwards..." but your comment prompted a slight addition to the article.
also readers should check out the picture at the new link under "prove herself one of the boys."
Funny that the last two elections get brought up. Florida was so close in 2000 that even with all the voter purging and other shenanigans it still took the Supreme Court of the United States to get involved and save the election for Bush. A few dedicated and honorable people in Ohio have managed to get that states electronic voting scrapped and may yet bring down Diebold over what happened in 2004, even-though Ohio isn't the only state that was stolen. I just saw a wonderful movie about it called "Stealing America, vote by vote"
ReplyDeleteSo in stealing an election one actually has to keep the election within an acceptable margin or it would just be to obvious, following that line of reasoning along with a "rigged" theatrical production of an election ideal. I believe it's in the bag for McCain.
We have had an overt push in the media that there is a large fractured segment of women voters that feel disenfranchised by Hillary's failure to gain the nomination. There has always been a little bit of a stench coming out of that story. I have never believed that this was anything more then an overblown exception, these are activist partisans, and even if you are able to find the few who are not I'm sure if the media looked at it with any depth they would find many more on the right that are still supporting Ron Paul. Unfortunately that is no longer the medias job in this country. What I am getting at is this entire "PUMA" (Party Unity My Ass) story line has seemed like a bunch of noise and disingenuous staging from certain interests in the Media from the start. The nomination of Palin solidifies this for me. It kills two birds with one stone. It brings in the base that McCain has been trying to engage for the past month with the tried and true smear and fear tactics of the right wing ideologues. Engages Partisans who may have otherwise sat home on election day rather than holding their noses and voting for McCain. It also allows this plausible scenario that all of these women disappointed with Hillary's loss either didn't show up to vote, or voted for McCain because he had a women on the ticket. This all just fits so perfect. Even-though women didn't show up in mass to vote for ferrarro just because of her being a women, it fits perfectly into this substance-less ideal that's been sold on that side of politics, pageantry dressed up as fair and balanced news. It's a story line they know they can sell and have obviously been selling. looks like four more years of this insanity. God have mercy on us all
Perhaps the Repulicans are betting on a strategy of "as goes Alaska, so goes the nation" when it comes to the plan to drill, drill, drill. Alaskans also seem to have a tolerance for lawlessness that appeals to the more fascistic amongst the Republicans. Maybe McCain really does have it in the bag and Obama is just another Bull Moose.
ReplyDeletePS I just knew Mike couldn't stay away for long. Welcome back.
Additionally:
ReplyDelete"Insanity is repeating the same actions over and over again expecting different results."
If you look at what has happened during the McCain campaign it appears that he may have been receiving assistance from the powers that be from behind the scenes. In December of 2007 he had only 14% of Republicans wanting to vote for him for President. And he had run out of money to run his campaign also, having to secure a $3,000,000.00 personal loan to keep things going.
ReplyDeleteThen something very strange happened. Just two months later in February, he was the only Republican left standing in the race for the party's nomination.
How do you go from having 14% of your party's vote and no money to being the only one left in the race just two months later?
And bizarrely, during the first race for the Presidential nomination on January 3rd (the Iowa Caucus), he finished fourth in the race and the New York Times highlighted only his photo on the front page of their newspaper.
When is the person who finished fourth in the voting the #1 story?
All of this combined with McCain becoming closer to and more similar to Bush over the last eight years, and the fact that we may have increased international tensions between the U.S. and other countries between now and election day, make me wonder if he has in fact been groomed and chosen to be the anointed one.
DI wrote:
ReplyDeleteRegardless who is president, everyone here knows that SHTF is inevitable. Neither face only blow-up doll candidate speaks of true energy or fiscal reform, only scheming ways to keep the masses satiated. Neither candidate will make one goddamn bit of (positive) difference, period. Why the hell do we even discuss the presidential elections? Democracy is dead, we should have all learned that YEARS AGO. We lend credence to the system by our discourse, and it deserves none. Then again, I can't really say that I see a large enough conglomerate ready to MAKE change happen. I have utterly lost all faith in this country. We have waited too damn long, and we will continue to wait until we are penniless and starving, waiting in bread lines. How much more can happen? What does it really take for people to enact effective action? All I see is t-shirt activism, buying organic vegetables, and discussing new technologies that no one can afford. None of it amounts to anything. Maybe this isn't the place for my rant, but damn, that's just the kind of polite, 'don't rock the boat' BS that has allowed us to be beaten and subdued.
At this point, I don't really see any rational alternatives. Who does? We are all in this together, but we don't quite grasp that yet. We have no unity, no sense of community anymore. More importantly, we have no fight left in us. We are the dogs whipped by our masters into subordination.
And we are all guilty.
China has head start over West for Iraq oil
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/7759395
Didn't you hear? It turns out that Palin's baby is actually the baby of her 17-year old daughter!
ReplyDeleteRead about the suspicious circumstances of her delivery (when she started leaking amniotic fluid, she decided to fly 8 hours from Texas to her favourite local hospital in Alaska) and about the daughter's disease which made her miss 5 to 8 months of school: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/30/121350/137/486/580223
Hooray for teenage pregnancy!
In follow-up to the article that maarten mentioned, The Sydney Herald is now reporting that Palin acknowledges that her 17-year old daughter Bristol is pregnant right now outside of wedlock, and that she'll be marrying the father. Could this be a cover story for both the earlier pregnancy and birth? It's interesting that we've seen no reporting of this announcement here in the U.S., and that Palin's press secretary was caught completely unprepared for the announcement.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.smh.com.au/news/us-election/is-sarah-palins-baby-really-hers/2008/09/02/1220121166656.html
M wrote:
ReplyDeletemake sure to triple and quintuple check this sort of thing before you
"forward it far and wide"
Rove and the Republicans are masters at spreading false claims of
Republican scandals and then discrediting those spreading false claims.
Remember Dan Rather being baited with the doctored memos of Bush going
AWOL in the National Guard - the scandal was real but the memos were
not, so Rather became the issue, not W.
Personality issues aren't the real problems here, anyway.
The election is a battle between the Rockefeller Republicans and
Council on Foreign Relations (Obama, Biden, Brzezinski, et al) versus
the neo-con crazies / PNAC gang (McCain and his backers).
Now that the story about Palin's daughter being 5 months pregnant is being released through the U.S. media, I feel that this could still be the perfect cover story. The timing of when she is said to have gotten pregnant makes her having given birth to a child in April an impossibility, and a fabricated "miscarriage" just before election time could both eliminate the need for her to have a baby, and help win over some swing votes, too.
ReplyDeleteI want to point out a logical inconsistency that I see repeatedly: and that is, the same people who say that the Dem. and Rep. candidates are all the same, and that it wouldn't make a bit of difference if Obama is elected or not, are often the same people who think that the election will be fixed. If it really doesn't matter who is elected, then why go to all the trouble of fixing an election? You can't have it both ways: it's one or the other. IMHO, the latter (fixing) may well be true, the former, not entirely so. Also, if this election is fixed, and made to seem close, but comes out for McCain, I somehow can't imagine the Obama campaign sitting quite so still for it as John Kerry or Al Gore's. And I certainly can't see the black community taking it quietly....this may be a different kettle of fish altogether--should be interesting.
ReplyDeleteA Growing Global Power Crisis Looks to be Greater Economic and Political Danger Than Oil
ReplyDeletehttp://energytechstocks.com/wp/?p=1647
Note carefully that blackouts are a primary element of Duncan's Olduvai Theory. Note also that many say the US electric grid is shaky. Therefore, especially in light of Olduvai Theory, endemic power shortages constitute a major harbinger of industrial civilization's collapse.
BTW, I would like to second that comment from FTW Admin about the Palin pregnancy scandal. And even if the rumors are true, it's still nothing but a red herring, irrelevant to the titanic stuggles for political power, energy, and resources.
The miscarriage scenario Businessman floated seems likely. Regardless the marriage line is great damage control because the media can now half-explain the allegations by the "Liberal blogs", muddying the waters for the casual observer.
ReplyDeleteMCR is right: "McCain is acting as if the election is irrelevant and it just may be" - that they let Palin get anywhere near the campaign with these pregnancy revelations in the closet absolutely confirms it.
Something big is probably about to happen, these revelations may be forgotten in the coming days, just like the Bush admin admitted trillions were missing from the Pentagon, just a few hours before 9/11.
A shooting war between Russia and the US in South-West Asia (whether over Georgia or Iran) could go nuclear. The McCain/Bush side wants an overt conflict to assist them retaining power. They are intent on proving themselves the bigger psychopaths, having already killed 2000 in South Ossetia.
ReplyDeleteThe Russian side does not need an overt conflict and while prepared for one would I think prefer a more rational solution, the use of "financial weapons of mass destruction" - leaving both buildings and people relatively intact.
The world (ie US) financial system is incredibly vulnerable as an authoritative Chinese expert admitted recently.
A pre-emptive economic strike - triggering a run on the US dollar and treasury and agency bonds - would not disarm the US in the immediate term and would not prevent the use of nuclear weapons. In the near term it would enrage the US and provide some retrospective justification for an aggressive response. However McBush seems intent on escalation anyhow, so it is better that Russia face the US on its terms, by first making an economic attack, and do so soon because it will take time to have an effect - the Pentagon will not run out of fuel overnight.
Russia and China may have hoped to defer an economic strike until after the election, but Putin, by breaching the convention of foreign non-interference in US campaigns, indicates he will take all-comers, and is therefore not averse to acting now, regardless of who it favours. Maybe he would even prefer McCain for his rash decision-making.
The Olympics deferred joint China-Russia economic action, so the Empire seized first mover advantage by attacking Georgia on the eve of the opening ceremony.
By acting now, the Empire has succeeded in polarising Europe, pulling European allies France and Germany closer (I read they are now in agreement on NATO membership for Georgia). So we are at a tipping point - Russia would do well to demonstrate to Europe the essential weakness of their great and powerful friend, so as to prevent further commitments.
But are China and Russia in agreement on taking economic action now, prior to the US election? And do they believe such action is guaranteed to succeed?
I think the people who really run things behind the scenes do what they can to have the candidate that they really want win the election. But this may not always be completely easy for them. And a perfect example of this is what happened between Gore and Bush in the U.S. Presidential election of 2000. If the people behind the scenes had been able to control everything, there probably wouldn't have been all the chaos in deciding who had really won the election at the end of it.
ReplyDeleteBut I also think that the emergence of electronic voting may make it easier for these people behind the scenes to control our future elections. With this in mind I think their most important work, from their own perspective, is to make sure that both the Democratic and Republican Presidential candidates are people they can live with, no matter which one gets elected.
In terms of some of the people making noise after the election about its results, if their anger doesn't get aired on the national news repeatedly, then the story will just fade away. There were a lot of angry people after the last two Presidential elections, and video clips and DVDs made about voter fraud in those elections. But the same people who work from behind the scenes to make sure that the two Presidential candidates are the ones they want are the same people who control what gets reported as national news, how much of an issue is made out of a particular subject, and when it's time for the subject to fade out of the national news altogether. And as a result voter fraud in these past two elections was either not mentioned at all in the national news in many situations, or it was mentioned only briefly, leaving most of the public feeling that the allegations must have been completely unsubstantiated.
Greg Palast has been reporting that the Republicans have been purging the voter rolls. It's as high as 20% in Colorado.
ReplyDeleteSteal Back Your Vote!
Palast: One out of five Colorado voters purged from voter registration
Outcome of 2008 election likely to be skewed by unethical tactics:
http://www.gregpalast.com/section/articles/
Oil slides as Gustav misses rigs:
ReplyDeleteStocks surge on crude's plunge after Hurricane Gustav avoids hitting major oil and gasoline platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.
Oil's sliding down to $100 a barrel. Looks like the investors aren't concerned too much.
Gold plunges $33 dollars falling below $800.
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Dispatch/090208markets.aspx
Anybody who thinks both parties are the same isn't paying attention. You really think if Gore had gained power in 2000 the world map would look as it does? Really? Things would still look bad no doubt, but to equate Bush with Gore, McCain with Obama looks bizarre.I read these rants and I despair when people who claim to pay attention seem to take delight in offering no hope at all as the consolation prize for lack of planning for Peak Oil.Somebody out there has kids (not I) and must want a future for them. Or is the only alternative to mainstream platitudes to give ourselves cheap thrills by imagining a survivalist nightmare?
ReplyDeleteElections are irrelevant. "If Gore had won things might be different" is purely an academic exercise because he didn't win, and was never meant to. Even though elections were clearly stolen from both Gore and Kerry, neither made an issue of it. They know that you don't argue with the people who really run the country.
ReplyDeleteNow we have all these concerns expressed about McCain's quick temper, his age, what if he kicks off and Palin takes the helm, etc. But they wouldn't run the country, anyway. In the same way that America's Village Idiot Dubya is just a political sock puppet (with Cheney and his cohorts actually running the show), someone else will be pulling McCain's (or Palin's) strings from behind the scenes. So we need to focus on the big picture, not on petty scandals or who happens to be warming the desk in the Oval Office.
Cantarell in irreversible decline
ReplyDeletehttp://www.redorbit.com/news/business/1541676/cantarell_is_not_mexicos_only_oil_production_problem/
Huge ice sheet breaks loose in Canadian arctic
ReplyDelete'Shocking event' another sign of warming in polar frontier, say scientists:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26529937
In follow-up to the following quote regarding Sarah Palin from Mike Ruppert's article, "She can help turn Alaska into one giant oil field quickly and without any concern for the environment," here's an article from CBS News on what she's already been doing in Alaska:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/04/tech/main4415772.shtml
Defiant Cheney vows Georgia will join Nato
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/05/georgia.nato
The desperation is palpable. Cheney's direct involvement in trying to hold onto Georgia shows how badly they need to keep this energy corridor open. And all the talk about "territorial integrity" and "sovereignty" from the likes of Dick Cheney is laughable. All the money being dumped into Georgia now makes it the fourth-largest recipient of US aid.
Everything I have been saying about road maintenance is turning out to be true even faster than I had imagined.
ReplyDeleteU.S. highway fund crushed by cutback in driving
http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/05/news/economy/highway_trust_fund/index.htm?postversion=2008090515
Russia says U.S. military help to Georgia is a "Declaration of War":
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23545668-details/article.do?ito=newsnow&
James Howard Kunstler has expressed support for drilling ANWR if only to make the Republicans shut up about it and to demonstrate once and for all it won't make a damn bit of difference.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to FTW commentary on the huge gov't buyout of Fannie Mae/Freddy Mac....