What has been uncovered by Iraq
One of the most entertaining things about the Holy Roman Empire circus that the US primaries have become is how embarassed vapid journalistic pundits are. I think that just about everyone has been wrong just about all the time in the dissection of microtrends, the prediction of results and the assessment of the appeal of candidates, in the mainstream media at least. Blogland has been a little different, but everything I've said bar the sincerity of my early liking for Obama, Huckabee and Paul has been wrong as well.
However, what Tennyson called 'raving politics', the spinning realities of the world, go on. We have a capacity to learn and yet we insist on behaving like his troubled ants, 'in the gleam of a million million of suns'.
Let's learn. Let's look at what else is going on, as a bit of fun.
I specifically think of Tennyson because of the coincidence of his poems on vastness and Locksley Hall predictions of future war, and the fact that the US administration has been attempting to bind America into a security guarantee with Iraq until 2018.
The latest tactic, under cover of the primaries, is to 'abandon' any formal lasting security guarantee on, say NATO-style lines. At the same time, the Bush adminstration is pursuing privileged trade status with Iraq and the economic protection of American business interests there. It is standing US doctrine, across parties, that American interests will be protected by American adminstrations to the full extent of US power.
So, if non-security businesses were attacked in Iraq, without asking or telling the Senate under a presidential prerogative established by Jefferson, Bush and his successors could declare threats and move large numbers of troops periodically into Mesopotamia to 'protect' businesses.
Is it any longer possible to imagine an America that is not dominated by the 'war party' and their maneouvres? I have been looking at Pentagon spending and reflecting on what this does to a country. The US now spends half a trillion on 'defence'. The War on Terror is the second most expensive war in US history.
Assuming 350 billion (US) a year at 1992 dollars for the time between the onset of World War 2 and now, that means that the US to 2008 has spent the equivalent of some 23,450,000,000,000.
Such figures boggle the mind. So let's humanize them, as it were. If Christ were born in 1 AD in January (not December 25 O AD, to make it easier), and we date to now, that leaves 2007 full years plus 2 months and 4 days. That is 733,121 days. Divide 23,450,000,000,000 by 733121 and you get 31,986,534 and twenty eight cents . Per day.
31 Million per day on war for 2007 years.
Is it any wonder that Hillary and McCain, safe and trusted by the warriors and their expensive war, are somehow confident in the knowledge that they have made the compromises necessary to govern the American republic, itself in stupendous debt to potential enemies?
Systems have a way of throwing up those whom they view as acceptable and spitting out those who do not, and not in any conspiratorial way.
In fact, conspiritorialism is the least helpful model. It is rather that most of the people who want to get on in life at any one time, know which side their bread is buttered upon and know that to obtain it one must internalise the ideas of the upper strata of the surrounding society. I'm sure there were Romans who thought themselves radical because they recycled styli, or that there were smiles on the face of those in African kingdoms who thought that progress required the despatch of riddable elements to the slave colonies.
Just as I am sure today that there are those who just can't make sense of what America is becoming in its primaries, as debt, war, food and energy crises loom.
Which, reader, is all my way of saying that the victories of Hillary and McCain yesterday don't really matter and that Obama is still ahead on the delegates. That, however, is whistling in the graveyard to make myself feel better.
One of the most entertaining things about the Holy Roman Empire circus that the US primaries have become is how embarassed vapid journalistic pundits are. I think that just about everyone has been wrong just about all the time in the dissection of microtrends, the prediction of results and the assessment of the appeal of candidates, in the mainstream media at least. Blogland has been a little different, but everything I've said bar the sincerity of my early liking for Obama, Huckabee and Paul has been wrong as well.
However, what Tennyson called 'raving politics', the spinning realities of the world, go on. We have a capacity to learn and yet we insist on behaving like his troubled ants, 'in the gleam of a million million of suns'.
Let's learn. Let's look at what else is going on, as a bit of fun.
I specifically think of Tennyson because of the coincidence of his poems on vastness and Locksley Hall predictions of future war, and the fact that the US administration has been attempting to bind America into a security guarantee with Iraq until 2018.
The latest tactic, under cover of the primaries, is to 'abandon' any formal lasting security guarantee on, say NATO-style lines. At the same time, the Bush adminstration is pursuing privileged trade status with Iraq and the economic protection of American business interests there. It is standing US doctrine, across parties, that American interests will be protected by American adminstrations to the full extent of US power.
So, if non-security businesses were attacked in Iraq, without asking or telling the Senate under a presidential prerogative established by Jefferson, Bush and his successors could declare threats and move large numbers of troops periodically into Mesopotamia to 'protect' businesses.
Is it any longer possible to imagine an America that is not dominated by the 'war party' and their maneouvres? I have been looking at Pentagon spending and reflecting on what this does to a country. The US now spends half a trillion on 'defence'. The War on Terror is the second most expensive war in US history.
Assuming 350 billion (US) a year at 1992 dollars for the time between the onset of World War 2 and now, that means that the US to 2008 has spent the equivalent of some 23,450,000,000,000.
Such figures boggle the mind. So let's humanize them, as it were. If Christ were born in 1 AD in January (not December 25 O AD, to make it easier), and we date to now, that leaves 2007 full years plus 2 months and 4 days. That is 733,121 days. Divide 23,450,000,000,000 by 733121 and you get 31,986,534 and twenty eight cents . Per day.
31 Million per day on war for 2007 years.
Is it any wonder that Hillary and McCain, safe and trusted by the warriors and their expensive war, are somehow confident in the knowledge that they have made the compromises necessary to govern the American republic, itself in stupendous debt to potential enemies?
Systems have a way of throwing up those whom they view as acceptable and spitting out those who do not, and not in any conspiratorial way.
In fact, conspiritorialism is the least helpful model. It is rather that most of the people who want to get on in life at any one time, know which side their bread is buttered upon and know that to obtain it one must internalise the ideas of the upper strata of the surrounding society. I'm sure there were Romans who thought themselves radical because they recycled styli, or that there were smiles on the face of those in African kingdoms who thought that progress required the despatch of riddable elements to the slave colonies.
Just as I am sure today that there are those who just can't make sense of what America is becoming in its primaries, as debt, war, food and energy crises loom.
Which, reader, is all my way of saying that the victories of Hillary and McCain yesterday don't really matter and that Obama is still ahead on the delegates. That, however, is whistling in the graveyard to make myself feel better.
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