Declaration of Energy Independence

The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that the currently proposed “Energy Revolution” is a modern day version of the original American Revolution. The similarities are striking. In both cases, Americans willingly sent money overseas to Kings/Tyrants/Dictators until the monetary amounts increased enough to push Americans past their breaking point. This doesn’t speak something about Americans as much as it does about general human nature.

Individuals and groups comprised of individuals (redundancy alert) will take a surprising amount of shit before they are motivated to take action. I’m convinced that the Alpha-ness of the individual (or group) is inversely proportional to the amount of shit they take before they kick their attackers in the balls. Unfortunately, the modern world doesn’t allow us to be the alpha dogs we should be where we go around kicking countries in the balls if they fuck with us. This is because we’re foolishly dependent on countries we should be kicking in the balls like a kid who gets his allowance from a stepfather who won’t pay him unless he calls him ‘dad’. This charade has gone on long enough.

It’s time we start laundering 10’s at McDonalds from that kid to prints them down the street so we can start kicking our stepfather in the balls when he says “don’t call me Bill, call me Dad”. Of course it’s not like we’re the only ones scheming here. You might have missed it because of it’s unforgivable under-coverage, but the Saudi’s left OPEC last week. That certainly helps things, but we have a little ways to go before we can tell Israel “good luck with the Middle East, hope it works out for you”. Honestly, our Beta support of Israel is the most embarrassing thing about America. There’s probably some reason they have us by the balls outside of their ability to strike Arab oil-states with nuclear weapons. Because otherwise, supporting them through thick and thin makes us look like their little bitch.

Ugh, I know a lot of readers who make it to this point will be pissed because they think this is boring. But politics and picking up women are so strikingly similar to each other. The lies, the great first impressions, the ability to tell people exactly what they want to hear… and now that HD is taking hold and we’re getting good-looking politicians involved, it’s getting more exciting than ever. Or maybe it’s just this whole DC-bubble thing.

In any case, I’m going on a backpacking trip for a few weeks to see what kind of a bubble I’m really in. I’ve gotten some verbal/e-mail agreements from some readers to provide some guest posts in my absence, but I welcome all submissions (helpmehero@gmail.com). There are no real guidelines, but I suggest you write something on a topic that people usually disagree on and argue your point of view while you point out the retardedness of people with the opposite view.

Premenopausal Woman + White House = Disaster

As a Republican turned Democrat for this election, I’ve been reading the Liberal blogosphere lately (ugh). They’ve missed so many good attacks on Sarah Palin; some even question if the VP matters at all. Foolish Democrats. How about the fact that she has 5 kids and doesn’t have the time to be a mother to them? She literally has an infant with Down Syndrome and is moving towards working more hours and getting what amounts to a huge promotion. What kind of self-respecting mother would do that, seriously? She’s putting her country before her children (I think she’s expected to do that). Is that a good thing? Would her daughter have gotten pregnant if she didn’t spend so much time being Governor? (that’s a ridiculous and politically charged question, don’t bother answering it)

Personally, I don’t buy it. If she’s any kind of mother, she won’t be putting her country before her family. She’s an attractive premenopausal woman who puts her family and children before anything else. I suppose the #1 thing on her mind is showing her daughters that women can “do it”. Pretty noble, yes.

What bothers me though is certain issues. My Governor in Virginia, Tim Kaine, says that he doesn’t personally support abortion with his religious beliefs, but he doesn’t think government has a place to ban it. There’s a certain separation that men and postmenopausal women can have from their personal beliefs and the laws that should be enacted by the government. This idea makes sense when you represent a diverse group of people with a wide variety of beliefs, like the citizens of the United States for example.

However, this logic doesn’t play with premenopausal women who are walking targets for the type of fear-mongering that strikes deep into the heart of the female emotional psyche. To them, nothing but their issues matter. I’m pretty sure if it doesn’t directly affect Sarah Palin, it doesn’t matter to Sarah Palin (or any other young mother for that matter). The marriage gap is a very, very related concept that illustrates this point perfectly. The party affiliation gap between married and single women is an astonishing 25-35% (depending on how the data is gathered), with married women on the Republican side of that gap. This is precisely because single women care about helping everyone and married women care about nobody outside of their own family.

“The marriage gap is one of the most important cleavages in electoral politics. The marriage gap is a defining dynamic in today’s politics, eclipsing the gender gap, with marital status a significant predictor of the vote, independent of the effects of age, race, income, education or gender.” – Stan Greenberg

How John McCain Will Win

If you told me 3 months ago that John McCain could beat Barack Obama, I would have laughed at you. But what about picking a woman, a hot-for-44 woman, as VP: Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin? I mean, wouldn’t all the Hillary backers jump ship and vote for McCain unless Obama picked Hillary for VP? Wouldn’t there be at least 3 ‘CATFIGHT’ headlines on the front of the New York Post every time the two took passive aggressive shots at each other? Wouldn’t it make things more interesting and take the focus off of McCain himself, which helps him out big time? The Republicans are a lot of things, but they aren’t stupid. I’m thinking the day after the Dem Convention, she’s announced as VP. That would work.

Word of the Day – Democrating

To Democrat (verb): To argue for no reason, often over trivial points, to appease a strong inner desire to be right.

There’s a big Rules meeting today about how the delegates of Michigan and Florida should be split.

Both campaigns agree on the Florida delegates.

Clinton wants the Michigan delegates split 73-55 Clinton, Obama wants them split 64-64, and the compromisers want it split 69-59. In case you’re counting at home, they’re arguing about 18 delegates. Holy shit, why does anybody give a fuck about 18 delegates? Obama is 201 delegates ahead.

If this happened in the Republican party, the doors would close, there’d be a lot of screaming, somebody would take the blame for this mess and resign, and a few hours later the delegates would be split 69-59. They wouldn’t have a huge public hearing where everybody gets to speak, a huge committee decides what is most fair for everyone, and everybody claps and cheers when somebody says something they agree with. What kind of people do that anyway? What a fucking joke.

Politics is about leadership, not about doing what’s fair and equitable for everyone.  You do the best you can and don’t waste time doing it. If Obama was White, he’d be a Republican. You heard it here first.

Why Do Southerners Vote Republican?

Last week I swore that if I heard this question again, I’d write about it on my blog to be able to point anyone else who had this question to when the question reared it’s head again. I’m a believer in giving the short answer before giving the long answer, so here we go:

• In two words: Civil Rights
• In one word: Racism

This probably isn’t shocking to a lot of you older people, but I bet it is to the younger people out there. Growing up, I always wondered why relatively poor Southerners would vote for a party that encouraged the growth and prominence of big business. It didn’t make sense. Also, I wondered why relatively wealthy Northerners would vote for a party that transferred their wealth to the poor. It was counter to what I understood about human nature. I couldn’t get a direct answer from my history book, my history teacher, or political commentary shows. It just seemed like everyone accepted that this was how it was. How strange.

But then I pieced it together. Northerners used to vote Republican and Southerners used to vote Democratic. This was the way it was from when the Republican party was formed out of other parties (including the Whigs) to support higher education, banking, railroads, industry and cities. This modernization went hand in hand with ending slavery, which they felt was in disharmony with their vision of the future. Ok, so at some point in history it made sense, people were actually voting for their interests.

It stayed this way all the way up to 1948, which was when Harry S Truman ran on a Civil Rights platform as a Democrat. He was supporting views FDR had, but FDR had some big shit go down during his presidency (Great Depression, WWII, you might have heard of it) and he didn’t have time. Then, Strom Thurmond ran as a Dixiecrat (which means a Southern Democrat who is also racist) and won a bunch of Southern votes (4 States).

These Dixiecrats were obviously too numerous to stay a 3rd party for long, so the Republicans, in a particularly shrewd move, absorbed the racists and called it a ‘Southern Strategy‘. In another shrewd move, the Republicans then absorbed the Conservative Christians into the party to combine those who were anxious about racial issues with those to were anxious about religious issues to capture the votes of rural America. They sold ‘less government’ as ‘more freedom’ to them instead of how they sold it in the past: ‘less government’ as ‘better for business’. Absolutely… Brilliant.

And that, my friends, is how a small group of the super wealthy can push their free-market agenda onto the ballots of people who shouldn’t be voting for it: by using racism and religious fanaticism to get votes. As to why the Democrats manage to get so many votes from wealthy White people? I have no idea. I bet when the Republicans came up with this idea, they figured they’d get those votes as well.

Topic of the Day: Super Tuesday

If you don’t care about the primaries, so be it. I like politics because it’s a big game, and waxing is more important than substance. See my previous post on waxing.

This guy‘s moniker is the Blogging Caesar, and I’ve found him to be the most accurate predictor of elections over the last 4 years. He’s very thorough, and he won me a lot of money in the 2004 presidential election when he made it clear how difficult it would be for GW to lose.

To sum up his predictions: John McCain will effectively clinch the GOP nomination today, while Hillary and Obama will not make any big moves since it will be difficult for either one to get more than 55% of the total delegates at stake today.

Personally, I’m rooting for a situation where no democrat gets a majority of the delegates and there’s a huge fight over who gets the Dem nomination at their convention. I love drama.