What I’m Thinking.

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I like Lost, the TV show, so i was looking for some spoilers because i have no patients for waiting till the next season and was looking around on http://lost-forum.com and there I found possibly the craziest people in the world.

Trashy Romance Novel Smut Lost Fan Fiction - A whole new type of crazy. 

Congress cares about thier civil liberities are fucked with by the government.  Yours however are negotiable.

I use google's services for a bunch of stuff; email, search, rss reader, basically 70% of what I do on the internet is at google.com.  Well I am kind of lost because my rss reader is undergoing servicing.  What the hell should i do…  hmmm i guess its time to use booble.com. 

    Integrity.  Lets get some.  As a raging post-structuralist I stay away from dissecting national politics because i disagree with the entire idea of a national government. But I digress.  So here we are amid congressional corruption on all sides and it seems that my fellow lefties have a little problem.  We are a bit partisan.

See, we have no problem telling you how W. not only stole two elections with the help of die-bold and how Santorum is secretly running a legalized bribery ring or the fact that Republicans have systematically raped the countries poor and disenfranchised.  Despite our ability to speak with out a filter we can't discipline our own.

    Yes we are fantastic at trying to get rid of Lieberman and pointing out how Rodham has somehow moved from socializing medicine to holding hands with Newt.  But you can't seem to tackle the little problem we have brewing in Louisiana.

It's time to get rid of Rep. Jefferson.  Sure that 90k found wrapped in tinfoil in a freezer at his house might not be a bribe, but frankly I don't care.  If we can mount primary challenges against Lieberman we can surely get a non corrupt member of congress elected in a district that needs a honest broker to protect it.

We need to act like human beings and help the people of his district get a honest advocate in Washington.  So where are the Act Blue pages? Where are the diaries of outrage that Jefferson would turn his back on his constituency, his party and his country?

/soapbox 

Time to call a spade a spade and so forth.  In case you've been living under a rock or are over 50 you may not know about the NEXT GENERATION CONSOLE WARS that are ripping our nation apart.  Ok let me tell you what it is.  Microsoft's XBox 360 is leading the way since well its the only one out there right now but see I am straying.  I was attempting to make my general disdain for the console market be known.

So let me put it bluntly.  Consoles are for kids.  Real men use computers to do their gaming.  The reason?  Well mainly because they are about a bajillion times better graphically and such.  But what kills me is how everyone makes a huge deal about what Consoles are offering.  And what are they offering?  Why everything you could do on a computer in 1998 but with graphics from 2002.

Online gaming services? With Consoles they are propritary and cost money.  On the PC they are free and plentiful.  You want to talk to players in the game?!  Computers have been doing that for the last 10 years.  Seriously I see no innovation in the Console market with the exception of Nintendo.

So for my birthday get me a Nintendo Wii.

Bad Ending. 

So what the hell is going on? We got saber rattling with Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Mexico, a war in Iraq and military comitments in Afghanistan.  So now according to Financial Times the Bush Administration is going after Russia.

"Dick Cheney, US vice-president, is said to be leading the Washington charge for a tougher line towards Russia – as seen in his broadside launched from Lithuania when he accused Mr Putin of backsliding on democracy and using oil and gas for blackmail and intimidation.

For Mr Cheney, according to administration insiders, the key issue is Iran. They say he is furious at Russia’s arms sales to Tehran and its resistance to United Nations sanctions over the Islamic republic’s nuclear programme. Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, backs a more nuanced approach." (FT.com)

For all the tough talk Bush does there is alot of crying going on in the west wing.  Grow up, not everyone is going to agree with you.  Most people learn that by 5.  But hey what could I possibly teach to a drunk coke head that he wouldn't already know. 

Some Beatle is getting a divorce…

The Da Vinci Code sucks…

 Analysis:  Britney and Cletus, thats the only celebrity divorce I will ever care about.  Secondly, the networks reporting on how the Da Vinci Code is a flop before it even hits what are sure to be sold out theaters this weekend havn't seen the frickin movie and are reporting on how the most pretentious film crowd ever recieved a movie translation of a shitty book.  *Yawn*

By the way the economy is in the shits and for once oil isn't the cause.

Monkeys are the latest international terrorist organization to begin a holy war with Americans.  Disapointed by what they term as "insufficient banannas supplies" for their domesticated brethren.  The United Monkey Front began a insurgent campaign against small children who love to play with thier monkeys… 

" Meanwhile, chimp attacks have increased, especially on children. Official reaction: "People are ultimately responsible for a situation in which the apes are being squeezed from their natural homes." (For Human Nature's previous update on a near-fatal chimp attack in California, click here; for the superiority of altruism in humans over chimps, click here.)"(Slate)

Already the Bush Administration has called for the imprisonment of all foreign born monkeys residing in the United States.  When pressed by reporters as to if President Bush will be personally spanking the monkeys, Spokesmen Tony Snow cited national security concerns over ongoing covert action.  Democrats have contended that this is a violation of primate rights.  I however blame this on the culture of "evil monkeyness" promoted but such trashy shows as Family Guy. 

In case Sunni Muslims didn't have enough reasons to hate us, I would like to take a moment out of my day to tell you a little about Somalia.  Sure we all have seen Black Hawk Down depicting brutal urban warfare between the United States and various clans but the serious problem with Somalia is that it has been with out a central government for the last 15 years.

Now normally I wouldn't view this as a problem but with the international community being all about democracy and rule of law they have been attempting to form various transitional governments that attempt to create various democratic institutions.  They have managed to fail miserably.  This has lead to two of the northern provinces Somaliland and Puntland to claim their independence and form their own administrative governments.

The problem with Somalia is a mixture of alternate power structures conflicting with our modern institutionalized world.  The United Nations push towards moving all countries to self autonomy via democracy after World War II was a noble enlightened goal but a rather ethnocentric notion.  The previously entrenched power structures in place from centuries of colonial exploitation coupled with arbitrary political borders created countries with unmanageable conflicts.

So here we are in 2006 and the Somali transitional government is meeting in Kenya, in fact most of the international aid organizations that are trying to relieve the rampant poverty and famine that grip the southern part of the country are in Kenya also.  The reason, safety.  It is too dangerous for international organizations to work in the country.  Important to point out that USAID only gives 25 million dollars a year in international aid to Somalia.  The largest capital inflow to the country is remittances from Somalis living abroad because of the great diaspora causes by the 1991 collapse of the government.

Yes so there you have it, the poorest country in the world.  GDP per capita: $200. Infant Mortality for Children Under 5: over 25%. Literacy: 17%.

Somalia is so poor the United Nations no longer collects data on them for its Development Reports.

Are there any solutions to this shit hole of a country?  Yes and No.  A post-developmentalist framed push towards region autonomy, already occurring, coupled with increased focus on grassroots projects.  enabling Somali's to build their own infrastructures through inclusive programs with collective need being met.  The key to Somalia is the removal of the struggle for power on a national scale.  Focus regionally where you can have a more local impact on basic needs and ensuring transparent leadership.