Obama's next move?

Oklahoma man gets five years
for videotaping woman having
sex with dogs. She goes free.

Apparently our major media, along with our congress, and I assume probably the majority of Americans, simply cannot understand what it means to mind your own business. For example, a news program opened yesterday with the question, “What will Obama’s next move be?” I found this fascinating as it was my understanding that Obama was doing what he could to not make any moves at all. Indeed, he was receiving unrelenting criticism from Republicans (and others) for not making any moves. Perhaps he was making moves behind the scenes that I don’t know about, but I have to believe he was honestly trying to mind his own business. Congress voted something like 405 to 1 to support the Iranian opposition, even though we had very little information about what was actually going on there. Ron Paul, the only dissenting vote, pointed this out but, of course, no one pays any attention to common sense or Ron Paul. Obama seems to realize the importance of at least pretending to butt out of an internal Iranian problem, and has said that it should be left to Iranians to decide on their leaders. Remember, our CIA removed a democratically elected leader in Iran and installed the Shah, a move that proved to be disastrous and still has serious repercussions for our relations with Iran. But I guess McCain and others never learn and keep insisting it is somehow up to us to decide what other governments should do. This is just another example of “American Exceptionalism,” “White Man’s Burden,” “The Lone Superpower,” “We have to spread democracy around the world,” and the belief that we should be the world’s police force. As long as we continue to believe this we are not likely to be very successful at Foreign Policy. This is really just a more recent version of imposing Christianity through force as all Western-European nations routinely did, or attempted to do, for so many years. I believe that Obama has handled this Iranian crisis in the best way possible, but it is apparently inconceivable to most others that he should have done so. This is America after all, the best and greatest country on earth (with the 37th best Health Care, after Morocco, a lousy educational system, a terrible economic system based upon naked greed and runaway capitalism, and etc.).

There is talk now in certain places about privatizing water. What will the loonies think of next, privatizing air? What will it take to make people realize that there are certain things that are far too important to be privatized. Water is certainly one of them. Those that promote this use the standard arguments that government is too inefficient, the private sector would do it better, competition would result in a cheaper product, and blah, blah, blah. Any people stupid enough to allow their water to be privatized probably deserve to die of thirst. Look what the privatization of energy and medical care have done for us (if you can stand it).

Speaking of Universal Health Care, it doesn’t look too promising at the moment. The people who make their obscene profits from it have enough money to buy and sell our Congresspersons, and do. And as we no longer have anyone serving in public office motivated by anything as corny as the “public good,” the attempt to fix health care will probably go the way of the Dodo (as it always has). I believe that Bill Maher said it best last night, we no longer have a Democratic Party, what used to be the Democratic Party is now the Republican Party, and what used to be the Republican Party is now the Party of the Insane. Our current Democrats are every bit as deep in the pockets of big business as Republicans ever were, and significant change is not even on the horizon.

LKBIQ:
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
H. L. Mencken

TILT:
Spitting Cobras do not actually spit their venom but propel it with gusts of blown air as it leaves their fangs.