Obama as the GOOD Manchurian Candidate

Obama is not really American, he’s too cosmopolitan.    He has seen the world.   He has a background like no other US president.    He is the paradigm of US presidents, a man devoted to the meaning of the Constitution, not a man devoted to a particular land,  people, or ideology.

Obama’s War Speech

Brilliant!

Obama cant just pack up and leave Afghanistan.    The dollar depends on the perception that the US can kick ass when it needs to, that the US is the World Police of Last Resort.    So Obama is going to spend $30b over 18 months in Afghanistan to secure the US dollar during shaky financial times.

Sounds like a bargain.

In his speech Obama also repositions the issue of supporting-our-troops.    Our troops are not there to win a war.  Our troops are there as part of a police action by the World Police.     They are not giving their lives for a cause, they are giving their lives because it is part of their job.     Troops are just like the Blackwater mercenaries or the LAPD.

Troops-as-cops preempts Support-Our-Troops arguments.

Religion

Religion is a social network for trust that uses ideology as the glue for that trust. What needs to be explained is how ideologies glue adherents and why.

HOw:

Ideologies are social networks that cohere by using the us-vs-them paradigm. Ideological doctrine has to contain something patently absurd to act as a shibboleth to gauge member allegiance and ferret out enemies.

Why:

But how do splits over ideology arise?

If substantiation and consubstantiation are only shibboleths, why were they picked when there could be so many others? What were the material gains for those who proposed one theory of divine descent rather than another?  That’s not as obvious as why Calvin picked predetermined salvation?

America’s Judeo-Christian problem

If Obama could get Universal Healthcare and get us out of Wars, he would be one credible fellow.     If he then could solve America’s Judeo-Christian problem, I think he could get away with abolishing the IRS and replacing income taxes with consumption taxes and solve America’s Global Warming problem.

What about America’s Judeo-Christian problem, Israel?     Forget the 30m deluded evangelical Israel boosters in  the US, it are our 6m anxious Jews who need to be convinced.    After universal healthcare and no more wars, I dont know why Obama couldnt just lay down the law on that one.

If justice ever cried out for fuzzy logic, draconian sentences for murderous children might be a reason.

Even if age is an exact proxy for maturity, maturity itself is a fuzzy concept. Roberts hypothesized today that perhaps age should only be considered a factor in the culpability calculation. Why doesnt he take the next step and propose fuzzy logic be used to assign responsibility in all legal processes.

Abortion is the example Bart Kosko mentions in in his fuzzy-logic book of the 1980s.

If medicinal users of marijuana want guaranteed access to their medicine, they are going to have to do something counterintuitive.    They will have to support a BIG tax on their medicine.

Medicinal marijuana was always a Trojan Horse to legalize marijuana.     But now the citizenry wont let the Trojan Horse into the city without insurance.    They want a Trojan Horse tax.

Makes sense.    Let them have it.

Income tax affront to autonomy

Somehow income taxes seem more threatening to our autonomy than sales taxes.

There was a time when to be a baby-boomer was to be a cosmpolitan du jour. I identified greatly with its program: anti-establishment, populist and elitist both, and libertine.

Actually I was not really a boomer. I was born in 1942. Im a proto-boomer.    But we proto-boomers often identify greatly with baby-boomers.    We all experienced the 60’s and still count those years as seminal in our developments.

how to pay for healthcare

As long as there are income taxes, people will complain. There’s plenty other things can be taxed to pay for social goods like healthcare.

Mandatory insurance is total anathema, even worse than income tax. It is like a payroll tax even when youre not employed.

Basic healthcare should not depend on having a job or having enough money, I thought that was Obama’s promise.    An unhealthy-consumption tax of say 1% on junk food etc might raise the $100b/year required to provide true mandateless socialized healthcare.

Gilda Radner

What’s this I hear about Global Warning?  Why are there all these global warnings and nobody pays any attention?     Oh? Global Warming?  Well, never mind.