Can I get a candidate up in here?

2012 is almost upon us, and all signs point to a really interesting year, as in the old Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times”. The Mayan calendar is on record as foretelling some cataclysmic changes come Dec. 21, 2012. Tie that in with the presidential elections that officially get started with the Iowa caucuses to be held just three days into the New Year, and we could find that, as Thomas Paine once observed, these will indeed be times that try our souls.

The only thing that bothers me about the Mayan prediction is the date, Dec. 21. It’s one thing to see the world possibly come to an end; it’s quite another thing to have to go through the aggravation of presidential elections first.

Well, it’s not like the presidential election has been completely devoid of humor. Take some would-be candidates. Two who come to mind are the Apprentice, Donald Trump, and former half-term Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin. Both were very coquettish as they teased the voters. But after imagining the electorate was salivating at the very thought of them on the ticket, they both demurred, as many of us thought they would. They were, after all, only in it for… Come to think of it, it’d be really hard to say why they were in it, or more properly, pretending to be in it.

The reception these two got motivated at least one other candidate to throw his hat in the ring. Yes, the disappointed voters left in the lurch by the Donald and Palin were rarin’ to see another Texan get into the fray. And Rick Perry, Dub’ya’s successor, obliged them, by declaring for the GOP nomination. The trouble started when he actually began to talk. I’m sure people in Texas are now scratching their heads and asking themselves “We actually elected him, twice? What were we thinkin’”

Herman Cain was the next promising conservative. He came along with his Tax Plan 999 from Outer Space, and was on top until he too ran into some technical difficulties. The weird thing is, he saw them coming, but was still unprepared when they popped up. But thanks to them, he was saved from actually having to talk about anything a President might have to know in order to do the job before he bowed out.

In the end, there are really been only two choices for the GOP; Mitt Romney, and anybody but Romney. Romney, being favored by the party apparatchiks, will likely get the nomination, but there has been a real effort by party conservatives to get another candidate in the race.

Romney is simply too liberal for a party that has seen its center shift significantly to the right since Dub’ya and Dick ran the country. The more conservative from his party consider Romney to be a RINO (Republican in name only).

That’s why first one, then another candidate, each seemingly with more solid conservative credentials, overtook Romney in the polls. Gingrich is but the latest, and he is fading like the rest.

Of course, Romney accepts that, and that is why he’s been backpedaling from positions or statements he’s taken or made to build up support with these disaffected voters.

And while the GOP conservative base may forget, it’s a pretty good bet President Obama won’t.

T’was ever thus! (Sic Semper tyrannis)

It was the late comedian, Jackie “Moms” Mabley, one of the funniest people I ever knew of, (google Moms Mabley and see if I’m not right!) who came up with one of the greatest lines of all times. It came from a routine about an old man (91 years old and U-U-U-U-G-L-Y!) she said her father picked out for her to marry. (My father liked him. He should have married him.). Moms said she thought he’d never die. (Rat poison agreed with him.) At one point she said, “I shouldn’t talk about him like that. They say you mustn’t say anything about the dead unless it’s something good. He’s dead? ‘GOOD!’”

What brought that line to mind was the announcement of the untimely passing of one Kim Jung Il. Now I say it was untimely, because a more timely death would have been a miscarriage. Seriously, can’t nobody be sad about this old boy cashing in his chips, not even his heir apparent. Yes, this is a “communist” nation that seems to operate like a monarchy. The right to rule seems to be a heretical thing.

Kim Jong Il, the “beloved leader” got his “crown” from the “eternal leader”, Kim Sung Il. Two notes about Kim Sung Il: One, before his death, his name was spelled Kim Song Il; and two, he apparently took a cue from the Emperors of Rome, in that he seems to have been deified, judging by that last nickname.

History buffs will recall that the worse an emperor was, the sooner he would declare he was a god. That way, even after he died, he could still make everyone miserable.

I’m sure that both the Kim’s had the same idea. They forgot the joke about the man who refused to buy any life insurance, though. When his exasperated agent finally asked him to for one good reason NOT to buy life insurance, he said “When I die, I want it to be a sad day for EVERYONE!” That one exception would seem to be the Kim-to- be, this one named the “Great Successor”, Kim Jung Un (as in un moment, Monsieur).

There is a joke about this business of the leader of a socialist state passing along the rule in the country to a member of his family. Many years ago, after the Soviet Union was formed, there was a disagreement as to how the newly formed government should go about spreading the good news. One school of thought was it should be exported post haste to other countries, while the competing school of thought was to perfect it (if that is a viable thought) here first. This was known as “Socialism in one country.”

When the Kim’s were told of this, they came up with their own peculiar line of reasoning for passing along the leadership in North Korea to the next of kin to the Dearly Departed. This was known as “Socialism in one family”.

Oddly, the “beloved leader” and the “great successor” have one thing more in common with royalty: It was Marie Antoinette who was said to have responded to a demand by the poor for bread with “Let them eat cake!”

The sheltered and privileged existence these two members of the Upper Crust have had is as much of an insult to their people.

What Price Liberty?

There is a bill called the National Defense Authorization Act that has passed both the House of Representatives and the Senate that contains a very worrisome provision that would allow the U. S. Military to detain any individuals suspected of terrorism, and even in the case of U. S. citizens, the Military would be authorized to hold them indefinitely without filing any charges against them.

So what you ask? What does that mean to me? Nothing, if you’re not one of the unlucky ones who loses the writ of habeas corpus, but if someone is rotting away in a prison cell, they would naturally be a bit more concerned.

It also would mean a lot more if you are one of us who don’t trust the government to take such liberties, too. We trust the Fourth Amendment more, and, in this part of the Bill of Rights, this sort of thing is strictly unconstitutional.

Unlike most bills in Congress, that are favored by either one party or the other, this one has as its supporters, for example, both Senator Carl Levin, D. MI and Senator John McCain R. AZ, two men who are normally on opposite sides of such issues.

But just as strangely, two Senators who spoke out against it are also relative strangers in opposing the same piece of legislation. They are Sen. Al Franken, D, MN, and Kentucky’s own Sen. Rand Paul. Both are vehemently against the idea of allowing any American citizen to be locked up without charges for as long as the military might deem appropriate.

There are other prominent conservatives who are just as opposed as Sen. Paul. One of the more prominent voices against this provision is retired Admiral John Huston, one-time Judge Advocate General of the U. S. Navy and a self-proclaimed conservative Republican whose first vote ever for a Democrat was the one he cast for President Obama.

To Admiral Huston, legislative actions of this sort that chip away at our freedoms are a victory for the terrorists. Huston is quoted by AOL’s Huffington Post as saying “In this war, the enemy doesn't have to win. They can cause us to do things we wouldn't otherwise do, such as indefinite detentions, in the name of fighting a war." This, Huston goes on to say, is something the country would not have put up with before the 9/11 attacks.

The Daily Show’s John Stewart has his own view of this provision. In a show following the Senate’s approval of this bill which includes the provision in question, Stewart asks just who might be suspected of being a terrorist.

Using language included in the bill, Stewart describes how someone innocent might be identified as a terrorist because they might have attended functions that included known terrorists, or at one time sat with radical clerics, or associates with a man who is missing part of his fingers. (That’s one of the identifying marks of a terrorist, according to the bill.)

In the meantime, people who match those descriptions, all from President Obama’s past, are shown: There’s Jeremiah Wright, the radical cleric; Bill Ayer, the former terrorist; and Rahm Emanuel, his former Chief of Staff, the man who’s ID’ed missing some fingers.

Yes, the President of the U. S. could fit the bill. Maybe that’s why he’s threatened to veto it.

Shootout at the XL pipeline

Mitch McConnell rarely makes any major announcements, but when he does, you know his heart is in it. Arguably his most ambitious proclamation was the one he made in 2009 when he said "The single most important thing we (The Grand Old Tea Party) want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

Fast forward to 2011 and we discover the Mitch has decided to endorse a bill from the Grand Old Tea Party (GOTP) that would force a quick decision on the Keystone XL pipeline. What is the Keystone XL pipeline, you ask, innocently? That, my friend, is a proposed monstrosity that a Canadian company, called, oddly enough, TransCanada, wants to build all the way from the Canadian border to the Texas Coast that would, if approved, carry the dirtiest oil from the dirtiest source of oil on Earth to a Texas refinery.

And what does the U. S. stand to gain from allowing TransCanada to build a pipeline over and through major rivers and aquifers? And I mean other than assurances that the pipeline won’t leak, because that’s about all TransCanada can offer when they build a pipeline.

Don’t believe me? Google TransCanada and leaky pipelines, and you’ll find a veritable treasure trove of stories about their little mishaps with the pipelines they’ve already built. Of course, that’d be cold comfort if the pipeline holds course and is built through the Oglala aquifer, then spills into and contaminates it. Google Oglala aquifer for more info on this major source of water.

No, the U. S doesn’t get much from this pipeline. Yes, Senator McConnell mentions the chance to limit oil imports from the Middle East, but this oil will become diesel in that Texas refinery, then exported to South America and Europe because most of their cars run on that.

This proposal, by the way, has generated a firestorm of opposition in the U. S., from the Oglala Lakota, whose territory the pipeline would cross, to any number of conservation groups that oppose everything about the pipeline, from the tar sands the oil would come from to the very idea that it would cross the U. S. at all.

First to the source of the oil, it comes from tar sands that require strip mining the Canadian boreal forests to get to its bitumen. These forests just happen to be the nesting grounds of over half the bird species in America. To fully understand the implications of losing large areas of these forests, google Canadian boreal forests and bird populations.

Next comes the work of liberating the oil from the tar sands. This is far more complex than can be described in a few sentences, but it is a very dirty process and releases far more greenhouse gases than extracting and refining oil from conventional sources. For more information, google extracting oil from tarsands.

Barring any intervention from Congress, the President will have to okay the pipeline. The President has already nixed the proposed route of the pipeline, and that means the whole process has to start over.

And that is what has the GOTP irked. They’re not concerned with mundane stuff like clean water, just worried a corporation will have to respect the rights of others, and we can’t set precedents like that, now, can we?