Far East Cynic

Took the S.O. up to Nashville yesterday-we had planned to go someplace farther away, but having to travel on Thursday and the imminent arrival of Gustav meant that, just like the Republican convention, our plans had to be changed. I’m still trying to figure out if this is a blessing from the Almighty-in that we have a couple less days to watch the Republicans kow-tow to their insatiable “base”- a group that has hijacked my political party for at least the last 14 years. Or if perhaps,  God is just doing his bit to give John McCain a little extra boost-at Obama’s expense.

Either way, I’ve decided to avoid the Christmas rush and start hating Sarah Palin early. MILF or not, the whole effect gets ruined whenever she opens her mouth. She reminds me of that whiny, girl scout cookie selling mom, who while she was pushing shortbread cookies on you-doing what her daughter evidently could not, or would not do-extols the virtues of home schooling to you for some 20+ minutes. When all you want to do is get in the store, buy your beer and food, and get on your way.   I have visions of her driving a 4 wheeled drive BMW up there in the great white north.

That said-the Democrats better not underestimate her. They will do so at their own peril. If for no other reason than so many of conservative wackos love her like their wicked stepsister. Cross the line and say anything bad about her-whether its true or not- and the four horsemen of the Apocalypse will descend upon you.

But I digress-and I have plenty of time to make fun of her and her “ex wife” voice over the next few months or years.

Saturday was devoted to reliving Southern history. When hockey moms stayed home with their slaves servants, and did not run for public office.

So we visited Belle Meade plantation:

Notice the flag? It only has 31 stars on it. I found that particularly interesting as we went in for the tour. I had think hard when was the time the Union only had 31 states. ( Which was 1850 when California came in…). I found that interesting.

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My Canadian counterpart has done it again. He’s taken a complex issue and narrowed it down to it’s salient points.

Bottom Line up front-Just because you are gun loving, baby making, snowmobling MILF-does not mean you deserve to be on the ticket.

I’ve quoted his post for you below in its entirety. If you want to understand Gov Palin, The Canadian Skippy has done it for you:

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It is going to be REAL interesting this fall.

I have to admit I did not see the Palin thing coming-I thought for sure it was going to be Romney. Now if McCain would stand up and publicly repudiate Bush and pledge to get out of Iraq on Maliki’s timetable-there might actually be hope in the world. If McCain had picked Senator Quisling
Lieberman, it would have made it easy. Just like I’ll never vote for Hillary, I’ll never vote for old Joe.

I watched Obama’s speech in the hotel bar last night. Had to persuade the bartender to turn it up (the South Carolina game was still on). I thought it was a great speech and he had my attention. Full text here. There was a lot to like-especially as Spike points out, that John McCain and the Rethugs do not have a lock on patriotism.:

The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain.

The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and independents, but they have fought together, and bled together, and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a red America or a blue America; they have served the United States of America.

So I’ve got news for you, John McCain: We all put our country first.

Now as for Palin? Don’t know a lot about her. Lots of the usual suspects are salivating over her youth and looks. Big deal. There’s a back story there that needs to be brought out-still it was a bold move on McCain’s part.

And if he only serves one term or leaves office early-Hillary will shoot herself. I have the feeling she got really drunk tonight, contemplating the fact that now a woman other than her is closer to the Oval Office than she is. Could not happen to a nicer person.

In an airport waiting for a plane. Went online to check the Economist. I’d say they sized it up about right.

Enough of catering to “The Base”. Send them packing, they have no other place to go anyway. Its time to take their fixations on sex and other stuff and make them compromise, not the other way around.

I did get to watch Biden’s speech tonight. A solid 20 minutes worth of Bush bashing is always a good thing. Probably no secret to anyone here, that I absolutely loath the current occupant of the White House. Worst President since Jimmy Carter-bar none. Right up there with Warren G. Harding. And Biden is right, McCain is wrong on a lot of things. The McCain we see now is not the McCain of 2000. He’s a Bush clone from what I can see.

However, contrary to what that previous statement said, I am not sure who I will vote for in this election. I am, the undecided voter.

And I am not sure how I will make up my mind before election day. Why am I not true blue behind John McCain? Because I want him to prove to me, that he wants to take back the Republican party from the wackos who have led it astray. And I am not sure he is up to the challenge.

However, I’m not so sure about the Democrats either. To start with,their ticket is backwards to me-Biden is the guy who should be at the top of the ticket. Secondly, as a victim of some Democratic “do gooder” legislation, I worry about an expanded government agenda.

Now that said-I also do not believe that the “market” is the solution to everything. And I think there arethings the government should be involved in. And tax cuts are not the answer to everything. A balanced budget makes more sense than the Bush view of trickle down economics. ( Which makes rich people richer, but does not do a damn thing for me). I want a balanced budget and I want my tax dollars spent more efficiently. I’m not sure either party can do that-such is the hole the “decider” has created in the last eight years.

And speaking of government agendas-I remain astounded at those who defend the inroads that the current adminstration has made in all areas of private life. Obama voted for the FISA act-which was a mistake. And even now, Bush is seeking to ensure he leaves even greater government intrusion into peoples’ private lives as a legacy. But you do not hear an thing about it from Obama. Doesn’t he see?

Then there are the traditional Democratic “fringe issues”. Feminist things are not my cup of tea. I don’t believe in abortion, but I also don’t think it should be illegal and I don’t want to see Roe v Wade overturned. That said, a lot of issues that are near and dear to Democrats are not my issues.

I want a larger military. I’m not sure either party will do that. The fiscal pressures are going to be too great and a budgetary train wreck is coming no matter who wins the election.  The Republicans say they will-but then they have said a lot of things. Their track record on resourcing the armed forces, quite frankly, sucks. So too does their approach to veterans issues, which is near and dear to my heart, they say one thing-then screw you at the drive through. But Democrats don’t have such a good track record themselves.

I do wonder about Obama’s experience and I think he is a bit of an elitist-why can’t he just be called Barry? I worry about the debt he may owe to “African American (another term I don’t like-there is nothing African about the demographic Obama is) activists.” Then again I worry about the debt McCain may owe to evangelicals and others who seek to legislate how I live my life.

Oh, and please stop using the terms “values voters”. I have values and I vote too!

But John McCain is an elitist too. He’s too used to being around money. And yes he was a POW and he did a lot of brave things. However that was 30 years ago and he has stood for stupid things since then. Anybody remember the Keating Five?

Getting out of Iraq is very important to me. The war was a mistake, I hate the Iraqis because they cannot stand on their own, and I  know they are not a beacon of light to anyone. Given a chance they will become just another bunch of Arabs paying Filipinos and Indonesians and Bangla -deshis to do all of their really hard jobs. They also are paying Americans to that. Either way, it is their country to screw up-and every day there is a day wasted for the US.

I’m also not as enthusiastic as the Democrats seem to be about Afghanistan. There too, I think we are underestimating the ability of the indigenous people to screw up a good thing that has been given to them. Afghanistan is about more than just Al Quaeda.

Because they both are still tied to Islam-which is a cancer that drives them down. Islam is at the root of all the troubles in the middle east today. We cannot kill all the Muslims no matter how hard we try-so we have to make Islam irrelevant. The key to that is economics and weaning them off of oil revenues.

Which neither candidate understands well IMHO.

The economy is important and I think there are serious structural issues that are being overlooked by both parties. The pollyanna’s who say that things are great, don’t live in the world of real people.  Prices are higher for everything, and just because revenues are up now-ignores the twin dangers of inflation and the debt.

I do not know who can solve health care. But 47 million uninsured is an abomination. Giving companies a pass to walk away from their obligation to provide it for their employees is also an abomination too. Unlike some I do not fear a national health care system-becasue I think it can be a mix of private and public.

But I don’t think the Democrats can deliver on their promises.

So I’ll wait and I will decide in about a month or so. Personally, I think McCain will win by a narrow electoral margin. People forget it is all about the electoral college-which I still believe was a wise gift from the founding fathers. I also agree with those who say McCain will wear Obama down with the death of a 1000 cuts. He’s already begun to nick and scrape him this summer. Negative ads are bad-but the reason they never go away is because they work. Until America gets a better educated electorate that is. That is not going to happen any time soon. The question is-will McCain be his own man-or just another 4 years of the Shrub? Then again, can Obama avoid being cast as Jimmy Carter-the man who gave away the Panama Canal because he was so stupid?

Yes, I am an elitist myself.  I’m a pretty smart guy. Just ask me.

Ought to be a hell of ride though for the next two months.

Why moving back to the states was a  mistake.

I missed half the speeches tonight at the Democratic convention, because.…….

The S.O. did not want to miss a minute of “America’s got talent.”

I did get the bills paid though.

From the friendly residents of the People’s Republic of Tung Chung, who live where I wish I was living-a mere 20 minutes by train from one of my two favorite spots on the planet-and very near the world’s best airport.

“The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.”

And so here’s the list, complete with the following instructions:

• Look at the list and embolden those you have read.
• Italicise those you intend to read.
• Underline the books you LOVE.
• Reprint this list in your own blog.

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (I’ve read some-not all)
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34. Emma – Jane Austen
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41. Animal Farm – George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52. Dune – Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary – Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72. Dracula – Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses – James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal – Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession – AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94. Watership Down – Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

As Richard says,” it is obviously very subjective”-and it lacks some of the really great non-fiction books out there, “and strangely redundant in places (the Complete Works of Shakespeare and Hamlet? The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe? But no Screwtape Letters? Who compiled this list?!), but it’s an interesting metric nonetheless. If any of my readers reprint this in their own blogs, do post a link in the comments section here! ”

Like he said, do the list yourself and trackback here!

Convention time again, where my middle finger starts to hurt from flipping the bird so many times at the TV. The S.O. had to scold me when Nancy Pelosi came on and I called her a worthless bitch and a whore about 5 times. Wait till Hillary comes on-I may need a finger splint.

Of course in the spirit of fairness, I’ll be flipping the bird at the Republican wackos too-especially if Romney gets the VP nod. “Hey Mitt-Joseph Smith blows!“

I miss the conventions of yesteryear-neither party has had a suspenseful convention since 1968. Both of these promise to be no different. Obama will hailed, adored, and oh by the way did you know he was black? Next week we will hear John McCain is a maverick, just a regular joe, who just happens to be obscenely rich, and oh by the way, did you know he was once a POW? Just wait five minutes he will tell you.

One the whole,  its going to be boring. I thought Michelle Obama’s speech last night was not particularly effective, and did nothing to help Obama with swing voters. The whole family thing at the end was just silly if you ask me.

Of course, next week will be just as bad, proclaiming how the welfare of Arabs is somehow more important than that of real Americans, Georgia is entitled to be in NATO without a concrete deterrent to Russia, and as for the economy? Its all the fault of middle class Americans for not being rich enough.

And now may we pause for a word of prayer while Rev. Hagee prays for God, to destroy all Democrats-in the spirit of Christian charity of course. ” The Lord’s our shepherd says the Psalm, but just in case; we better drop some bombs!”

Yea, yea, yea. Heard it all before.

However-over in the alternate universe-some very different conventions unfold.

Hillary, all the while talking a good game has secretly organized a revolt of the delegates. The super delegates persuaded by some generous cash donations and the very real fear that Obama may not be up to this, and unable to counter the Rove attack machine; decide to vote along with Hillary’s delegates. Instead in a total shock to Obama, he does not win enough delegates on the first ballot to secure the nomination.

Hillary-having talked long and loud about party unity, sounds a call to “Save the Democrats from themselves!”

7 ballots ensue-with a bitter floor fight over seating the rest of the delegations from Florida and Michigan. In the end, desperate, Bill Clinton “volunteers”. So does Al Gore. 5 more ballots ensue and Bill wins by just 100 votes-at 3:30am. John Dean was last seen putting a 357 magnum to his temples.

The following week, even God gets tired of hearing about the surge and how it worked. John McCain slumps over the podium during his acceptance speech. Taken to the hospital and revived, he remains in the hospital for over two weeks. His Vice Presidential nominee is discovered to be the father of Cindy McCain’s Cambodian love child and Budweiser stock tanks on rumors of its finally being made into a real beer, by its European owners-instead of a good water soiled.

The market drops 1000 points in a day. So too does the dollar. When McCain re-emerges to tell every one the market is just fine-and one of his advisers says its all our fault for not spending enough of our rebate checks-his ratings drop 15%. About that time the roof caves in Iraq when the Kurds declare independence, and Malaki allows the Iraqi Army to massacre Sunni officers in a 21′st version of the Katyn Forest. McCain continues to insist that “Iraq is a good friend of the US”.

The RNC, getting nervous, has an unheard of meeting and tries to replace McCain “for health reasons”. They fail to get a majority. However, George Bush offers to sponsor an amendment to the Constitution allowing him to run for a third term.

On November 4th neither side wins a majority of the electoral college. The election will be decided in the House of Representatives. Except the Supreme Court-in response to a lawsuit from George Bush votes to keep the election from going to the House.

However on the plus side, Brad and Jennifer get back together.

Now that would be an entertaining election. We now return you the boredom of this universe. My middle finger is starting to really hurt.

It is fitting to close our Olympic coverage here at Far East Cynic headquarters by showing you the gold medal winner in the most beautiful Chinese woman doing Olympic-related work in Beijing competition. (Also known as the “Tunathon!”)

There is a Japanese TV show that looked for the most beautiful girl in Italy, Colombia, France, and Taiwan. As in the previous cases, the idea is to find a pretty girl and have her introduce the host to a friend she considers better-looking than herself, repeating the process until a set number is reached and that country’s most beautiful woman is found. In this case, instead of using the entire population of China to calculate how many women they needed to to find, the number of Chinese participating in Olympic-related work was used.

Here is the result:

The first girl is a college student worked as a volunteer information person at the soccer competition. The second and third girl were college students, the fourth is a professional dancer,the fifth is a new talent (model), the girl in the business suit is an Office Lady, and the next girl is a dancer, who also turns out to be the winner. They all volunteered to work at the Bejing Games.

Kudos to Japan Probe!

Man it sure sucks to be John McCain.

Wish I had these problems:

Must be nice to have that kind of money. Condo in Crystal City, home in Sedona, Condo in Phoenix, one in San Diego, and then investments besides?

Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, “Trading Up”.

I guess the thing that bothers me is that he makes it sound like its a normal way to live. Yet, whenever he’s been given an opportunity to put money in Veterans pockets- some of whom are like me and are barely able to put together the wherewithal to buy one house(much less even think about owning 7!), thanks to America’s f**ked up divorce laws- he’s consistently voted against that. And although he is a divorced Navy retiree himself, he will not take a stand in favor of the over 150,000 veterans who unlike himself have to fork over hard earned money to someone else who did nothing to earn it.

But hey, the surge is working! So who cares about anything else?

The S.O. and I were both shaking out heads at the Olympic TV coverage this past week. Besides their unbelievable fawning at all things Chinese and the failure of NBC to provide an even picture of the Chinese dictatorship country, they also ignored a lot of great sports activity that made America proud.

Like the men’s and women’s eight’s in Rowing.

The eight’s are a symbol of what can be great in the Olympics. Its a sport about teamwork, not indivduals, it has grace and beauty, and it requires strength and training.

Yet NBC overlooked it. To cover what again?

Diving.

Like the S.O. kept saying she was sick of seeing diving over and over again. Me too.

So most of you who watched NBC last night, myself included,  missed this great moment:

USA WOMEN WON THE GOLD IN THE EIGHTS! They beat Romania and Netherlands by a boat length.

Video can be found here. Watch it!

The clouds are circling and what is left of Fay is going to drop some needed rain here on Shopping Mall USA. Accordingly, the S.O. finally found that she could no longer stop me from going to the NASA museum here-so off we go there today.

We both were slow getting up today. I wonder if it has something to do with the weather. I was up at 7 and rolled over “for just a few minutes”-its after 9:30 now.

While watching the women’s basketball game last night-seeing the US win, as they should, I came across this missive while stumbling from one porn web site to another.  I thought it made for some interesting reading:

Apocalypse Later

A Futurologist Looks Back at 2008
By John Feffer

Being a futurologist means never having to say you’re sorry. Our predictions always come true eventually — or, if they don’t, well, how quickly people forget. Look at Newsweek’s George Will. He predicted that the Berlin Wall would endure, and in an article published on the very day in 1989 that the Germans were tearing it down. That should have been enough to revoke his futurology license and demote him to sports writing. But no, almost three decades later he’s still peering into his crystal ball.

Never apologize, never look back: that’s our motto.

But this time — think of it as the exception that proves the rule — I really screwed up. We all did.

If you look back at the predictions we made in 2008 about the United States and the world, you’ll see just how wrong we were. Today, in 2016, it’s time for a mea culpa on behalf of the profession. Both camps, you see, were wrong. The Chicken Littles who predicted dramatic catastrophe were just as far from the mark as the Panglossian utopians who predicted dramatic change for the better.

Of course we have our excuses. Our minds were clouded by eight years of the Bush administration’s foreign policy — if you can even call it that — which obscured our vision like a stinging sandstorm. In those days, it was natural to believe one of two things. Either the world was going to end with a bang (and soon), or a new administration would come into office in 2009, open up all Washington’s doors and windows, and give the place a good airing out.

No one anticipated what would really happen over the two terms of the Obama administration, even though that’s the job of us futurologists — and I was one of the best paid in the profession.

Where did we go wrong? How could I have been so blind? That’s what I’m going to try my best to explain.

Read more after the fold-Bottom Line Up Front: Even if Obama wins, Washington won’t change much. Even if you don’t like Obama-its worth your time, McCain will be working under the same constraints-probably even more because he will have a Democratic Congress and he does not really understand the multi-polar world we are sailing into. I do not agree with all of his conclusions and I would like to see more detail of exactly how one could trim military spending-I don’t think it can be done, but for different reasons-but I do think there are some problems we are just ignoring that are going to come up and bite us.

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Is an interesting way to thumb your nose at people overseas.

H/T to Japundit who found this picture of a snazzy van in Australia:

Can’t read Katakana? It says “Riku mai kannto”. When you sound it out in Japanese it sounds just like “Lick my C-Word.”

Personally I kind of like Biden’s candor and the fact that he talks long is not such a bad thing. But in an election like this one, where the electorate is stupid challenged to understand the issues-it does not buy Obama a thing. In fact it undercuts the whole change thing because he went with the Convetional Wisdom.

Should have taken Hillary and keep you enemies close to your chest.  Since that was not going to happen, probably should have taken the governor of Virgina.

Although John Cole may have a point:

I rate [Biden] as the person most likely of all the VP possibles to call Mitt Romney an asshole. Others are hoping for a casual “m____ f_____.” Either way, I call that a win.

I stand by what Clara said:

Is seeing the girls who hand out the medals!

Just don’t think we will get this good a show in London!