Sunday, January 20, 2008

Sunday Roundup

Well, it's Sunday, traditionally a day of rest. So let's stop a moment for a breather and see what's been going on, shall we?

Looks like John McCain won in South Carolina, while Hillary got the booby prize in Nevada (by winning the caucus, but getting one fewer delegates than Obama), and Romney won the GOP side in Nevada. Fred Thompson came on the telly after posting a poor third in South Carolina and made a pointless 30-second speech about sacrifice. Oh, and a nobody named Duncan Hunter dropped out of the GOP race.

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The Dear Leader and both Houses of Congress agree that something has to be done to nip the recession in the bud, so Dear Leader proposed a $145 billion package that would give a lot of people checks. He did the same thing in 2001, and after 9/11 told us all to shop.

The problem is that the flaws in the economy apparently run deeper than just handing out money to us. For example, where's that money coming from, and how will the government pay for it? And does the Upper One Percent really give two shits about us proles?

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A man named Milton Wolff died last Monday in Berkeley, California at the age of 92. The name didn't mean anything to me until I read the rest of his obituary. Wolff was born in 1915 and, at age 21 and an active Communist, he went off to Spain.

By age 22 he was the ninth (and last) American commander of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a unit made of American expatriates who had gone off to fight for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. While there he met the novelist Ernest Hemingway, and Wolff later said that Hemingway served him his first Scotch.

About 40 members of the Lincoln Brigade are still alive. They were idealists, fighting for a cause they thought was right. Unfortunately, they lost when, after their withdrawal in late 1939, Madrid fell to General Franco and the Fascists.

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The war in Iraq drags on, with no end in sight. The insurgents are elusive and the weapons seem to be getting a bit more powerful. Meanwhile, more American troops die while our elected representatives - our employees - sit on their hands.

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Governor-Reverend Michael "Elect Me Ayatollah!" Huckabee continues to frighten the shit out of the GOP mainstream and, truth be told, out of a lot of clear-thinking people like myself. His stated positions are such that he really should be an Iranian mullah, and only reinforces my belief that no ordained minister, of whatever religion, should ever be allowed to run for public office.

Take a look at what Huckabee espouses: Quarantining gays in camps, outlawing gay marriage, outlawing abortion, amending the US Constitution to reflect "God's Law" (and nevermind that his interpretation of that might differ from others' views), and so on. He is in favor of allowing the old treasonous Confederate battle flag to stay prominently posted on state flags, and by his coded language on states' rights is making sure that Southern whites can still feel comfortable in Jim Crow racism.

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