For now, it’s all up to Pennsylvania in April, until it’s all up to Indiana and North Carolina in May. (This Saturday is the Wyoming caucus, but it’s not all up to Wyoming.) Finally on June 7, it will all be up to Puerto Rico, until it’s over and we discover that we’re right back where we are now.
Gail Collins - New York Times
David Seaton's News Links
The American elections are draining all the life blood from the news cycle. The entire world, with its tragedies and emergencies is being put on hold while this absurd ritual continues.
We are talking about a country of 300,000,000 people with the world's highest percentage of University graduates and it can't do any better than this? Should it be so hard to sort out the mediocrities that have pushed their way to front of this disaster. The idea that at bottom America is not a serious country is percolating in the world's consciousness, as mankind awakes to smell the coffee. This is like discovering that the paterfamilias is a drunk or has gambled all the family's savings away at bingo. A trauma. DS
We are talking about a country of 300,000,000 people with the world's highest percentage of University graduates and it can't do any better than this? Should it be so hard to sort out the mediocrities that have pushed their way to front of this disaster. The idea that at bottom America is not a serious country is percolating in the world's consciousness, as mankind awakes to smell the coffee. This is like discovering that the paterfamilias is a drunk or has gambled all the family's savings away at bingo. A trauma. DS
5 comments:
Quite a few of us began to doubt the serious quotient of the US back in the early days of the Reagan era but perhaps we were then in the minority.
Certainly the multiple year races {vs. several months in the "serious" countries} and the bizarre primary and caucus and superdelegate and electoral college Carrollian collection of sleights and feints that characterize our oddball little races, some of which are finally decided by politicized, yet Supreme, courts, would tend to indicate some profound and intractible shamanic curse upon US voting and decision making.
But that concept of under development in and of itself supports the unseriousness of the place the US now occupies.
From afar, I am constantly amazed that no native movement erupts to bring some sanity to the situation.
For decades now I have observed the slowly boiling frog of the US psyche fail to leap from the political cauldron and now it certainly seems far too late for that.
"profound and intractable shamanic curse upon US voting and decision making.
That's wonderful! Gee, I wish I had said that... I probably will.
On the stupidity of the American voter:
Out here in California Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer both won their last elections by large majorities. They are moderate democrats. Deukmajian (former governor) and Schwarzenneger (current governor), both republicans, also won by solid majorities. So a lot of people voted for both of them even though they are ideologically far apart.
A lot of voters tend to vote for the person with the highest name recognition, who appears best on TV, with very little understanding of any positions. Which is why Obama will win.
PS: McCain is doomed. He is for privatizing social security. He has also just proudly accepted the endorsement of a crackpot who calls the catholic church "great whore of babylon."
Forensic econ
Said the Vampire to Americae;
"Oh fetid, living corpse. Ever-balooning, swollen, hollow. I am your thief in the night, my love. My body politic.Flavors of oil, ignorance, lies, and...is it?...yes...extra sauce and extra cheese/hold the lettuce. Red blood on greenbacks near midnight.
I tell myself that the spiritual world is at best a maybe, but having witnessed Haitian friends {in my past life in NYC circa 1974} successfully cast spells read from bound tracts and effect revenge upon our employer in real time resulting in his hospitalization with no hands on activity or sabatoge involved, I am willing to accept the possibility of Voudunic forces. Cheney looks pretty damn Faustian anyway, if you ask me.
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