Charming Ruins

Your long wait is at an end.

2009-05-11T22:15:00.004-04:00

To my loyal and faithful followers, oh you multitude you! You whose tireless devotion recalls Argos, or the Spartans at Thermopylae, or.... Okay, before I exhaust my repertoire of classical references I have an announcement to make. Your wait is over. After being distracted for six months by life, work and various shiny objects I have decided to begin posting again. What was long given up for dead has risen like the great phoenix... Sorry, I'll stop now.

Anyway you can expect more of a multimedia blog, as I plan to incorporate videos of myself ranting and raving about various topics. If that's not enough to keep you coming back I'll be joined by guest commentators, all of them female, attractive and just as committed to Socialism in their thought as they are to minimalism in their dress. For the good of the cause you know. Stay tuned!

Find a New Line of Work, Moron.

2008-11-13T15:24:00.003-05:00

The Mormon director of the California Musical Theatre was forced to resign his post after it was discovered her had donated $1000 to Prop 8. As much as I hate to engage in stereotyping, I would venture to say.....Aw, what the hell was he thinking? You work in a profession that employs more homosexuals than the Catholic church and the Boy Scouts of America combined, and you do this?

Someone who is not just a bigot but an idiotic bigot deserves whatever happens to him. It would be like Eminem donating money to the Klan.

Marriage is an outmoded, antiquated and thoroughly useless institution of no use to anyone, nevertheless, if gays and lesbians want to be a part of it they have just as much right to as anyone else. The Osmond-loving magic underwear brigade should find a better use for their money.

The Deliverance Vote

2008-11-13T11:33:00.011-05:00

From an article in Slate Magazine:

Republican and Democratic counties were entirely different kinds of places. The average population of an Obama landslide county was 278,601. The average McCain landslide county had 37,475 people.

It looks like the coming 2012 GOP "resurgence" is dependent on rural counties with declining, aging and poorly educated populations.

Something tells me this is not a winning strategy, though I suppose this type of magical thinking should not surprise us. After all we're dealing with "folks" who think the earth is 6000 years old and cavemen galloped across the plains mounted on their trusty stegosaurus.

Winning Hearts and Minds in Kandahar

2008-11-12T08:44:00.001-05:00

The Bush Administration has been getting a bad rap lately. Sure, they can't defend America from hurricanes, economic meltdown or lethal Chinese cat food, but there's one thing there still darn good at: inflicting massive civilian casualties.

This seems to be happening more and more lately. A friend of mine who works for the UN in Kabul told me, only half-jokingly, that he'd been invited to an Afghan wedding and was more afraid of US predator drones than running into a Taliban militiaman.

Afghan weddings are dreary enough as it is. The men are segregated from the women, there's no dancing and you're about as likely to get a drink as you are to shag a bridesmaid in the confessional. The last thing these poor people need is more conflict and destruction courtesy of Uncle Sam.

Apart from the moral issues involved, killing the innocent a lousy way to defeat an insurgency, just ask the Soviets. Oh wait, you can't. Their country fell apart 3 years after withdrawing from Afghanistan. The British Empire didn't do so well either.

Unfortunately I doubt anyone back home noticed. On November 4th we were too busy congratulating ourselves on how far we've come since the 60's. That may very well be true for dark-skinned Americans, but for the dark-skinned foreigner unlucky enough to live in a country we've decided to Democratize, it's a short road from My Lai to Abu Ghraib and Kandahar. This is a war we will never win. Let's hope the Obama administration brings it to a speedy end.