I'm really loving how I'm feeling about American politics right now, which is a sharp contrast to how I was feeling as recently as just past Midnight this AM.
I'm looking these three over and I realize that I CANNOT LOSE.
I very much like Clinton on UIGEA and South America. Clinton has not been a gambling scold at all. She supports Frank-Porter and with Frank Fahrenkopf, the former RNC chair doing the lobbying, the USA can get rid of UIGEA and re-grow a great domestic industry. Given Bill Clinton's "hands-off" policy and cordial relationships with Chavez and Correa, plus Hillary's own friendships with the PRD in Panama, she's all good by me on that score. The 60-day Iraq withdrawal plan is great if it goes because I am morally opposed to the war. If it's all bullshit, I'm good because I've done well long-crude and short USD.
Obama's against Frank-Porter on choir-boy grounds. He'd like to leave UIGEA in place and enforce it more than even Gonzales or Mukasey have under Bush. That's all good in a kind of a way. I don't like fundamentalist Christianity in the slightest but I don't HAVE to come back and this Fundamentalist Christian vibe of his is beyond good for me in a way. I've begun to hear rumblings on progressive talk radio about "unscrupulous Wall Street specuators" and "greedy hedge-fund managers" and that's making me nervous in that I kind of AM that. If Obama can continue to sell himself to the progressive White left and the African-American community, yet maintain the close ties he has to the major investment banks. I think I'm better than good there. He'll have all of the threats on that score in check: the Huckabee populists, the White left and the African-American vote, as well as some of the "easier...eye of a needle" religious moderates, too. I make him a small favorite not to repeal Bush's tax cuts and perhaps cut capital gains a little more. I take back everything I said about Obama. I love the guy. Talk about opiate of the masses. He's a continuous flow of clean China White and a fresh set of works. Nobody's going to be busting my balls about investments or trading or surtaxes or anything like that. It will just be nice supply-side Reagan buzz. About two years in the poor won't like it but there's no revolution afoot be sure. And even if there is, I'll have my family out of there lcikety-split, crude goes through the roof and the dollar's a fond memory.
The revolution will not look anything like Cornel West riding a tank singing La Marseillaise. It will be death and destruction and pain and misery, and if Dr. West would care to crash at my place in Panama, he's more than welcome. One rule: NO GOSPEL MUSIC. I'll take him around to the cardrooms and the clubs if he likes. He can come fishing with me. Fuck it, Obama's invited, too. I like his wife and he has kids about my son's age. It would be perfect and I'd help them find a nice place nearby here. But, again: NO GOSPEL MUSIC GETS PLAYED IN KELSO'S HOME. Sorry. My home. My rules.
I doubt he's leaving Iraq any time soon. Good for oil and good for dollar fade. He's made threatening noises about Pakistan. Good for oil and good for dollar fade. Locally, "Toro" Perez-Balladares who's likely to be an important minister in the next government should Herrera win and might well win it himself shares the services of a very important attorney, Gregory Craig, so I don't see Obama messing anything up. It is possible that Lieberman could lay the JUDEO-Christian-anti-terrorist thing on a little thick and that could lead to some anti-Chavez sabre-rattling, but I think Obama's too smart to do something really goofy like invade. All good on the Southern Front I think with Obama.
McCain's a big problem down here as I wrote over the Hellions' gaff, given how much he loves war and having been born in the Canal Zone, will certainly take a second look at Bill Clinton's final affirmation of Carter-Torrijos, especially if the left-wing woman, Herrera, wins the presidency. Shit, he might even decide to go for it in the early winter of '09 before the local elections and have the CIA assassinate President Martin Torrijos just like they did his dad Omar to put Noriega in. I imagine I'll have wind of something like that long before and will be long, long gone to wherever.
McCain's got Bush's economic and foreign policies which help me all around. Crude, my dollar position, oh and this goes for Obama, too...I going to start to take a serious look at the publicly available securities of the prison industrial complex and those mercenary thingies like Blackwater. When I can buy any combination of equity, debt or derivatives on them at a price at which I'm getting paid to hold them, I'm going for it. I believe, however, that Obama will create the better prison play because there will be a selloff with his election, the boneheads in the market thinking that Obama's "soft on crime" or something. No, Obama's a Deuteronomy man and I should have a nice window to get it in good before everybody figures that out.
The downside of McCain, though, is that whole nuclear war thing, but it's kind of good that McCain in viewing Northern South America with bad intent so when the bombs come I'll never have time to worry, get radiation sickness, or even know I'm gone. I had been worried for a while that Bush would force a nuclear showdown with Europe and Russia and I'd have the slow, torurtous 3 months of sickness with no medical care food or water supplies. This way, I'll just rapture up on out of here and when John Hagee says "Hey Jewboy, time to convert." I'm saying "Yessir, where do I sign?"
The funny thing is I was going to being this post with the idea of making fun of how they now say "Judeo-Christian" to insult Muslims when "Judeo" is the last thing they mean. But if the rapture deal's for real and I get the offer, I'm taking it. Hey, if the deal's available, it's Judeo-Christian all the way for me, plus AIPAC, Hagee's CUFI, Reverend Wright, Pat Robertson...plus they're all super-bien with the price of crude, the privatization of social security, the bad dollar, the prison industrial thing I'm starting to get interested in. Venga la plata!
La plata, however, is still kind of a problem because I'm pretty-net long Clinton in Irish and Curcovian political futures markets. I kind of need her to win PA, WVA and KY good so I can just close it all out with a small profit and a free roll with Gore and Edwards as possible compromise candidates. Then, I guess I'll trade and scalp small the general until election day, and test drive some of my new tools: reading the buzz, trying to guess what "young people are thinking," etc.
Not exactly how I thought I'd end up viewing this thing. I did like that Dennis Kucinich and I thought Ron Paul had some interesting ideas, and it's hard to dislike Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney, but as my good friend Gary's Boner says in these situations, quoting Gene Rayburn on the old Hollywood Squares show: "Well, I would have gone to Morey Amsterdam for the block, but this might work out."
Kelso's Nuts love you
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5 comments:
Peter Marshall was the host o Hollywood Squares. Gene Rayburn was the Match Game, living on in perpetual mediocrity 24/7 on Game Show Network.
I agree, McCain has fascist tendancies LOL
G'sB: How could I have fucked that up? I'm embarrassed. It would be like my forgetting how to impersonate Bob Murphy or Marv Albert.
T: I'd take it a step further than that. By the definition of "Fascism," as conceived by Mussollini EVERY Republican and many, many Democrats (perhaps, even the two contenders for the nomination) is a fascist except for the pure libertarians like Ron Paul and Jeff Flake.
What McCain has are NAZI tendencies.
One more thing, whoever is the next president is going to inherit a worse situation than Hoover. If HRC loses she can come back in 2012 when the one-termer leaves. That is if we still have a functioning political system at all.
PS I sent you a guest post to Veteran catcher
G'sB: That's the key point, I think. It's hard to believe that someone could come in facing a worse situation that Hoover following Harding and Coolidge or Ford following Nixon, Carter following Ford or Reagan following Carter, but here you are. And the sick thing is how much BETTER presidents Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan were than Bush. It's NOT even a close comparison with any of them.
No, that's not true in a certain way. If you look at it perverely, which I love to do, George W. Bush is the "greatest" president in the history of the USA. It is extremely rare in a democratic republic for a leader and his core followers to get every single thing they want without fail -- and fuck it up worse. OK, considering that Hitler and Mussollini came to power via parliamentary procedure, they were "greater" than Bush. But that's it. Eva Peron was strong in that regard, too, but not in Bush's class. You can't count any USSR premiers because it wasn't a republican system. None of the Apartheid South African presidents had a rocking chair ride as comfy as Bush and nor did as much damage. I can't put Mugabe in Bush's class. I can't put Atlee or Chamberlain in his class. Buchanan was less of a fuck-up and faced consistent opposition. Berlusconi was real bad twice but never had the rocking-chair ride. Bush has had a certain "knack." You've got to give the son of a bitch credit.
It seems to me that on the local levels all the way through how U.S. senators are chosen the system works OK. I think the American National system was ruined with the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Since then, there have been two stolen presidential elections and 7 years of George W. Bush. I'd say it's pretty broken.
Still, history will tell whether this era was worse or better in those terms than some arbitrary period preceding and following the civil war. Horrible before and during. A huge mess after with Johnson and the Tilden/Hayes robbery.
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