Just think­ing aloud…

Yes, I know that health care is kinda defin­ing moment for our man Bar­rack in Wash­ing­ton right now..or at least that’s what we’re told a mere 8 months into his regime. Does that mean that it’s over if he messes up this..8/48s in and it’s all FUBAR???

No, of course not but clearly there is more rid­ing on this than, say, gays in the mil­i­tary (as much as many of us would like to see that one go through, just because, sim­ply, in this day and age, such a thing is a moral anom­aly in any edu­cated nation).

Myself, I’m rather more keen to see him resolve a few other those other issues that made the world dis­like, and then, increas­ingly, despise his nation’s for­eign poli­cies in the years since, ohhh, about 1963.

We had such high hopes and whilst many of those were sim­ply unre­al­is­tic, given his vot­ing record and ver­bal stance, the word “hope” was applied to the Obama can­di­dacy once or twice.

But, given such expec­ta­tions, real­is­tic or not, it’s look­ing an increas­ingly sad record beyond the rhetoric right now: Israel is furi­ously build­ing in the West Bank and Netanyahu is hap­pily thumb­ing his nose at Obama with the sort of impunity that an Israeli PM always enjoys, civil­ians are dying all over Afghanistan, which is cur­rently turn­ing into the sort of clus­ter­fuck it always threat­ened to be; Gitmo remains open, an looks likely to for god knows how long; Amer­i­can troops seem stuck in Iraq; they’re talk­ing to those lovely bleed­ing hearts in Colom­bia about build­ing mil­i­tary bases (ohhh, that’s gonna sta­b­lise the region…)

Not much of any sub­stance seems to have changed since Jan­u­ary 20th, which makes me won­der why those on the right feel the need to slash and abuse. He is, after all, mostly just fol­low­ing his predecessor’s poli­cies in the (it’s not called this any­more, so I’ll lose the caps..substantive change alert) war on terror.

On this anniver­sary, have they still (and by ‘they’ I include Obama) not worked out, 8 years after 9/11, why that tragedy happened?

I’ve still got my hope badge and I won’t put it away for a wee-while yet, but its fad­ing fast.

Update: Andrew Sul­li­van gets it (although I take issue with the notion that it was one of the most despi­ca­ble mass mur­ders in history…perhaps in Amer­i­can his­tory, but I can quickly think of dozens of episodes in the last cen­tury alone that were worse. They just weren’t as tele­vised, or close to home for the most media-heavy soci­ety on the planet. They’re all despicable).

I feel vaguely guilty. I tweeted some silly off the cuff remark about dumb Amer­i­cans, and the fuss from the loopy right about Obama’s school address.

Some­times you just sit there with your mouth open, won­der­ing if half the nation is sim­ply tak­ing the piss, just won­der­ing in dis­be­lief if these peo­ple are in any way to be taken seri­ously. But, yep, at that site linked, about half those who (admit­tedly unsci­en­tif­i­cally, but I like those sort too) took the poll think that the anti-Christ is about to pev­ert the minds of America’s youth. And then you read the com­ments and the wack­i­ness gets worse, with all it’s CAPS. The left can claim it’s fair share of nut­ters and very vocal ones at that, but they tend to be out at the periph­ery, whereas the right’s wackos tend to exist all the way from the far, far right to pretty much the cen­tre, allow­ing, of course that in the US the cen­tre (or cen­ter as they put it.…even though it wasn’t John Cleese, I think John Cleese’s let­ter to the USA revok­ing their inde­pen­dence still nails it on the lan­guage fail­ures of that great nation) is rather to the right of the mid point in most other democracies.

And of course our own NZ right has it’s moments of self-important wack­i­ness, wit­ness this odd site:

Nor­mally I smile politely to myself, but tonight I AM writ­ing New Zealand First off as a going concern.

Cool, at least we have the defin­i­tive word, from, uhhh, someone…

The thread on Pub­lic Address con­cern­ing some of the odd goings on at that site is highly amus­ing, and worth a squizz, if only for a smile. Cur­rently it’s run­ning about 5–0 to Keith Ng, who clearly is hav­ing some fun, and the level of com­ments on that thread vis-a-vis those on the other side’s blog speak absolute vol­umes. I best like the one that goes:

Nggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg is an irri­tat­ing word

Sharp, indeed.

But this thread in the NZ Her­ald, that cen­ter / cen­tre of artistry and progress in my home­town, is my favourite right now, and pro­vides hours of fun.

The ques­tion posed was:

Who are the most over­rated bands and singers?

Which is a fuck­ing stu­pid ques­tion at the best of times..really. Amongst the replies (and, like the Amer­i­can thread, are these peo­ple seri­ous? I hope so):

Michael Jack­son, Dave Dob­byn, Split Enz, Neil Finn et al, The Bea­t­les, Haley West­enra, Bon Jovi, ACDC. I could go on, but I haven’t the time. (from PPP of Ran­giora, please more…gagging to know who et al is…)

Locally: Dave Dob­byn can’t sing for tof­fee. If I hear “Loyal” one more time I think I’ll vomit.
Inter­na­tion­ally: With the pos­si­ble excep­tion of “Angie” The Rolling Stones make noth­ing but a huge, scream­ing noise. (from Doc­tor of Whangarei, poor Dave gets a right slag­ging in this thread, they hate him out there in Mt. Roskill and Ran­giora. Who knew?)

Bob Dylan — who can hon­estly count 3 songs of his they know. (from some­body called Ace, in Auck­land. I think it’s the killer comment..I can’t think of 3, can you?)

As indi­vid­u­als go Amy Wine­house is the most over­rated singer to ever exist. She known more for her weird­ness than any­thing she sings. Actu­ally what does she sing? (DDB from Danemora (I’m not sure where that is) doesn’t know any of her songs but says she can’t sing)

Rolling Stones — .…..The duet with David Bowie was excru­ci­at­ing (from Povi in Huapai..uhhh, Povi the Rolling Stones didn’t do a duet with DB..it was Mick, and by def­i­n­i­tion The RS can’t do a duet with anyone)

The same guy says:
Elvis — good image but the songs were not exactly mas­ter­pieces. 3 chords and a few hip shakes.(I’m off to sell my Sun Ses­sions today)

And then we have Oth­ers from Tau­ranga:
Smash­proof — That song was lame and uno­rig­i­nal rnb/hiphop or what­ever genre it is and so was the rest of the album plain and sim­ple (so you bought the album, after hear­ing that lame and uno­rig­i­nal song over and over again? Just to check it out? Or did you, uhh, bor­row a copy online just for ‘pre­view’ pur­poses, y’know? The record indus­try urgently needs more dimwits like you, peo­ple who hate the sin­gle but buy the album anyway)

Mar­cus from NSW reck­ons:
Easy. The Beatles.

Octo­puses Gar­den, Yel­low Sub­maire, Penny Lane, When I’m 64, Maxwell’s Sil­ver Ham­mer. so much awful music in such a short space of time. (yep, I reckon the lyrics in Penny Lane suck too, and these were, after all the sum total of their out­put, there was noth­ing else of worth on Revolver or Sgt Pep­per from whence two of these songs came)

there are dozens more, but my favourite comes from kwikkan, a fel­low Auck­lan­der (cher bro!), who’s con­tri­bu­tion includes:
The Bea­t­les are ter­ri­ble. Some good jin­gles for sure, but lis­ten to songs when they try to har­mo­nize! It really is pure rub­bish.

Sorry Amer­ica…

I’m quite enjoy­ing this wacko Birther non­sense. Now it seems they’ve mocked up a fake Kenyan Birth Cer­tifi­cate chock full of mis­takes that your aver­age poo­dle would pick up:

Dr C reports that Orly has filed a motion claim­ing that she has dis­cov­ered another Birth Cer­tifi­cate for Pres­i­dent Obama, this one from the Repub­lic of Kenya

[From Third Obama birth cer­tifi­cate appears in court « Native and Nat­ural Born Cit­i­zen­ship Explored]