In a conversation at work today, I had to get into my “the US wants Israel there because they want to start a war, since they’re waiting/hoping for Armageddon” mode. Of course, one of my favorite subjects for loathing/complaints, for many reasons. I remember reading some quote from GHW Bush once that I thought implied that he believed such crap. Once again, yet another reason why religion is a plague that must be removed! Okay, maybe it’s a bit excessive to blame this stuff on all religion. But if you, like me, don’t at all comprehend religious tolerance or sects that are not orthodox, then we may as well just lump them all together. While I couldn’t find whatever quote is was that I was thinking of, I did find some interesting stuff… Looking around online, there are some interesting websites These are both quite uplifting…

A story on Alternet called Lobbying for Armageddon and from there I connected to a story about some evil/crazy/nut/lunatic/moron named John Hagee in the fittingly titled TV Evangelist John Hagee Wants War With Iran, and He Wants It Now!

Read them and weep, and know thine enemy. As Nomeansno say, “If every fourth animal in the world is a beetle, maybe every fourth person is a DUMB FUCK”.

Yes, another cop-out headline from our local daily, the always vapid “Oregonian”. This time it was “Al Qaeda trains kids to Kidnap, Kill”! Well, yes, all governments (and similar groups) train young people to kidnap and kill. That’s what foreign affairs and national security are all about. Threatening others with death. It is so prevalent throughout our history that I would assume that everyone knows that “everyone does it” and would stop thinking that you could judge the enemy for it. Yes, a lot of forces use people younger than we would, but using the young and ignorant as cannon fodder is wrong regardless of how young they are. But the three great plagues that feed off of us: Nationalism, religion, and business, don’t care about age. In fact, they all try to start indoctrinating us as young as possible. Religion has always enlisted the young and now that they are prey to business by way of advertisements and products aimed at them at young and younger ages, well, why not have them suffer and inflict the horrors of nationalism?

More to the point, the Oregonian seems almost thoughtless in its dull repetition of hollow news. Todays headline is one point, attempted fear-mongering with so little meat on its bones that I doubt anyone will bother to read whatever kind of one-sided hogwash they’ve thrown together (including, of course, me). But I am reminded of another recent “story”. Last year, somewhere in the midwest, a bridge collapsed. The next day, the Oregonian headline was something akin to “Are our bridges safe”. They don’t actually pay people to put such drivel on there, do they? As they use to say back when Bob Packwood was news, “if it matters to Oregonians, it’s in the Washington Post”. Plus, bar none, they have the worst newspaper website that I have ever seen. Terrible to navigate and virtually no connection to the content that is actually in the paper. But I suppose that is a minor issue.

Honestly, if one wants to read a newspaper with actual objective and relevant news, it seems that we are still stuck with naught but The Christian Science Monitor.

Even if the underdogs ran away with the handful of rings, I still don’t see this years Superbowl as all that important an event. But today though, well, this election season in general. Either Hillary or Obama are going to be the democratic presidential candidate which is rather shocking, either way. It’s a great thrill and relief to me that the people who are probably the two most likely to become our next president (barring anymore Diebold machines being used out there) include no white males. I figure after two hundred and thirty years of the White Male House, it is certainly time for a change. Though I am thrilled with both of their candidacies, as politicians, I’m not sure which I would vote for. There is something in me, after all these Bush years, who wants a clean sweep, a new spirit to get in and try to shake things up. But on the other hand, after things getting so messed up over the years, the voice of experience  also speaks to me. Since I’m not a democrat, I don’t have to choose between them, so it’s only so relevant, but I will be curious to see how it goes, being such a close race so far.

On the other side of the fence, I even consider McCain to be good news. Romney looks creepy, Gulianne is a selfish fascist and Huckabee, aside from not having a presidential name and not looking like a president,  is a crazy religious nut! Which is sort of a good thing, because he is very upfront about his “beliefs”… While some crazies down south will swoon over his creationist, pro-life, god-boy gibberish, I think that the majority of the country will be creeped out by it. As I translate the separation of church and state, only atheists should be in government. But certainly, no one who makes public statements supporting religion while in a political arena should even be able to be elected to anything but local church bingo coordinator. McCain? Sure he’s a conservative, war-pig republican, but he also seems to be a (comparatively)  honest conservative fellow, who doesn’t seem to be saddled with the fascist/baptist dogma that all those others spew about.

I feel confident that we’ll have a democrat up next, which is good. Sadly it won’t be Mike Gravel, but it’s better then the crap we’ve had for 20 of the last 28 years. What we really need to do is get rid of both those parties. A political system controlled by two parties who, with the blessing of the government,  conspire to prevent any other party from having any success is a disgrace to the notion of democracy, even such a weak one as ours.

Not that it is surprising, as people allow themselves to be robbed of experiences that reflect “real” reality, reports show that people are losing interest in being outdoors! Earthlink has a little news tidbit, Nature Giving Way to Virtual Reality from an AP release about some Nature Conservancy research that shows that outdoor recreation has been declining over the last quarter century. Now while this, of course, sounds like a good thing, as the outdoor recreation of humanity isn’t exactly good for the outdoors… I think we know that as people have less interest in going “out there” they will also have less interest in paying for “out there” to still be there.

“As people spend more time communing with their televisions and computers, the impact is not just on their health, researchers say.”

“The replacement of vigorous outdoor activities by sedentary, indoor videophilia has far-reaching consequences for physical and mental health, especially in children,” Pergams said in a statement. “Videophilia has been shown to be a cause of obesity, lack of socialization, attention disorders and poor academic performance.”

“By studying visits to national and state park and the issuance of hunting and fishing licenses the researchers documented declines of between 18 percent and 25 percent in various types of outdoor recreation.”

As always seems to happen, the one positive aspect that I imagine would be found in these news stories, never actually seems to be the case… Due to the fact that no TV show or video game can really match the visceral thrill of killing something and holding its bloody and limp corpse in your hand, the study also found that “While fishing declined, hunting held onto most of its market.”

Does anything say New England more than ad’s like this one?

Doesn’t this seem to explain a lot?

Reuters New Media
Friday May 10 6:51 PM EDT

Document: Nazis Plotted Post-WWII Return

NEW YORK (Reuter) – Realizing they were losing the war in
1944, Nazi leaders met top German industrialists to plan a secret
post-war international network to restore them to power,
according to a newly declassified U.S. intelligence document.

The document, which appears to confirm a meeting historians
have long argued about, says an SS general and a representative
of the German armaments ministry told such companies as Krupp and
Roehling that they must be prepared to finance the Nazi party
after the war when it went underground.

They were also told “existing financial reserves in foreign
countries must be placed at the disposal of the party so that a
strong German empire can be created after the defeat.”
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