This isn’t shaping up to be a quiet year. But then, nobody really thought it was going to be a quiet year. But in just the past 24 hours, we’ve seen THREE new candidates announce in a Presidential race with a crowded field that won’t even see its first primary for a full year. A big offensive in Iraq is already returning new and greater levels of meaningless carnage. And the Chinese, thanks to corrupt American contractors, can now blow American satellites out of the sky, robbing America of its greatest tactical advantage. I didn’t even look to see what the WEATHER was doing. Something awful, no doubt. These days it usually is. First, the trivial pursuit. Hilary Clinton, Bill Richardson and Sam Brownback all announced they were running for president. They join the following who are already running: Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut; Former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina; Former Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska; Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio; Former Governor Tom Vilsack of Iowa; John H. Cox of Illinois; and Michael Charles Smith of Oregon. Mind you, that’s just people from the two major political parties. If you don’t know who any of them are or what party they are with, relax. It probably doesn’t matter. Every once in a while a “who dat?” candidate breaks from the ranks and gives the front runners a challenge, like happened with George McGovern, Bill Clinton and Howard Dean, but for each one who breaks through there’s usually five or six others who just sort of fade, often gone before the New Hampshire primary. Here’s a list of candidates who have expressed interest in running, or who the media think might run: Senator Joe Biden of Delaware; Senator Barack Obama of Illinois; Retired General Wesley Clark of Arkansas; Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts; Reverend Al Sharpton of New York; John H. Cox of Illinois; Michael Charles Smith of Oregon; Former Governor Jim Gilmore of Virginia; Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York; Representative Duncan Hunter of California; Senator John McCain of Arizona; Representative Ron Paul of Texas; Former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts; Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado; Former Governor Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin; Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia; Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska; Former Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas; aaaand Former Governor George Pataki of New York. (Thanks to Wikipedia for that exhaustive – and exhausting – list of candidates, wanna-bes and never-will-bes.). Some bigger names there, you may have noticed. Many you’ve heard of, some you know well enough to flat-out hate. Maybe the “who dat?” candidates could bear a closer look-see at that. And of course, nobody knows what Al Gore has in mind at this point. Most likely to provide comic relief: Sam Brownback, who represents the religious whack wing of the GOP. Every election has its Alan Keyes, and this year it’s good old Sam, part of the “Jesus and Corporation” philosophy of the Falangists. Candidate most likely to provoke sly grins among members of the opposing party: Newt Gingrich, who will remind everyone of why they don’t like Republicans. Big name most likely to flame out before the first primary (tie): John Kerry, who nobody wants, and Barack Obama, who may be a great presidential candidate in 2012 or 2016, but who might end up as VP candidate this year. In the meantime, he’s getting the slimy little operatives at Faux News to show just how bad they really are; along with “accidently” calling him “Osama” and slyly emphasizing his middle name, “Hussein”, they tried claiming he was in a terror training camp as a child, and when that blew up in their faces, tried claiming they got the story from the Hillary Clinton campaign. This all came on a day when 21 Americans died in Iraq. Much of it came as a result of a campaign to flush out insurgents in Diyala. The trouble is, the insurgents left rapidly as soon as the Americans noisily made their presence known (their idea of a sneak attack is to fly in on choppers with “Ride of the Valkyries” only playing at 120db), and that left the Americans nothing to bomb but women and children. The fact that the insurgents vanished infuriated the Americans, who upped the attacks. By then, insurgents had placed themselves along the transit lines between the base and the beseiged area, and someone with a SAM got lucky. Like the Prussian redcoats of the 18th century, American fighters just haven’t figured out that fighting in noisy straight lines isn’t the way to go in a guerrilla war. One of the Weasels today observed that America’s biggest vulnerability is their reliance on helicopters, and if the Iraqis have figured out how to shoot them down, “we may all be coming home sooner than we thought.” Putsch is believed to still be contemplating a widespread attack against Iran, and Dick Cheney and all the other corporate paid liars are hitting the airwaves explaining why Iran deserves to be attacked. They have yellow-cake Ba’athists or something. Putin promptly sent a bunch of AA missiles to Iran for use against American or Israeli fighter aircraft. Just to keep it sporting, no doubt. Meanwhile, China shocked the world by launching a satellite killer, a missile that took out one of their old weather satellites. While China has evolved into a scientific and technological powerhouse over the past twenty years, at least some of the credit for this has to go to Lorel, Lockheed-Martin, and Boeing, all of whom improperly gave or sold China rocket technology in the 90s. In 2004, each company was fined between $15 and $30 million, a slap on the wrist from a Republican administration unwilling to acknowledge that an American corporation could serve anything other than the national interest. It means that China has the capability to override America’s biggest strategic and tactical advantage – control of low earth orbit. Now America is definitely no longer the world’s only superpower. Given how America has behaved over the past six years, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, not for the world and not for America, either, whose power has put her on such a self-destructive course.
