Global Warming Solved!

There seems to be no limit to human ingenuity.  And again man’s creativity in confronting monumental challenges has come to the rescue.

In a breathtaking article just published in the Huffington Post, it is reported that scientists have concluded that a modest nuclear war would most likely reverse the threat of global warming.  Now they don’t want a big nuclear exchange because that might go too far and actually throw us back into an Ice Age.  50 to 100 medium size bombs would do the trick.

Which happens to be about the number that Pakistan and India currently have in their nuclear arsenals.

What are we waiting for?  Go to it, guys!  Everyone knows there is tremendous untapped bad blood between these two countries.  With a little nudging from our State Department, we should be able to keep Florida from turning into a fish farm and New York City taxi drivers into gondoliers.

Granted there may be a few drawbacks to the nuclear option.  But I don’t think this is the time to be nitpicking, considering the magnitude of the crisis we see looming ahead, with prospects of having to watch on the nightly news, herds of Komodo dragons causing traffic jams in Minneapolis, offensive footage of drowning polar bears, and unnerving reports of people’s hair spontaneously combusting.

Sure, a few eggs might get broken.  But that’s how you make an omelet, right?

It’s India and Pakistan, after all.  So who cares?

Moreover, in the event that all of the radioactivity ends up making the surface of the Earth too inhospitable, we can always turn to Monsanto.  It seems to me that with their expertise in genetic modification, it would be no problem to insert ground mole genes into human embryos in vivo, guaranteeing that our future generations would be perfectly adapted to burrowing and living underground for a millenium or two.

Bingo.  Human ingenuity at work again!

[ This posting originated at the author's novelist website jdrachel.com ]

Is President Obama Under House Arrest?

What can account for the President’s frequent silence and muted response on so many demanding issues of today?  Or his contrary positions, policies that are 1) against the best interests of the country, 2) politically suicidal in terms of his re-election and/or his ability to lead the country at a time which demands forceful, creative leadership, and 3) contrary to the narrative of his own life, the story he offered to get elected in the first place that told of his rise from relatively humble beginnings to positions of political responsibility where he could make a difference in the lives of common people?

Is he under house arrest?  Is it as the most fanatic and fantastical conspirators have been alleging, that there is some conservative cabal of absolute power and real control which is really running the country and holds the president of the hostage, rendering him a mere puppet to their self-serving agenda?

What is going on now in Wisconsin is an inspiring display of good, patriotic Americans demanding that the vampirish bloodletting of the American economy by the corporate elite be stopped and the viability of the middle class be restored.  Why is the President so silent on this?  If there was a recent historical moment when the bully pulpit of the office of the president could be used to stand up for decent, hard-working citizens, it is right now.  Is President Obama under some self-imposed gag rule?

Or maybe he is gagged.

Maybe the gag is on us.

It’s not very funny.

[ This posting originated at the author's novelist website jdrachel.com ]

There Is No 'I' in 'USA'

First, let me qualify my bumper sticker by saying that there are a lot of ‘I’s which belong in the fabric of what we call the USA.  Integrity.  Intelligence.  Initiative.  Innovation.  And America has always venerated those persons who have exercised their Individualism in positive and constructive ways.

But the point of my naive blog title is simply that if it is all about ‘I’ and not about ‘us’, the USA goes away.  As it is doing right now before our eyes in a slow, painful disintegration and decline, a process which powerful people in this country currently cannot seem hasten enough to suit their personal ambitions.  Doing the bidding of this tiny, historically myopic and self-serving elite class are rampaging Republicans who either totally lack perspective or totally lack moral sensibilities (probably both), and are openly determined to destroy what meager, frail, barely adequate safety net has been meticulously woven over decades, by more caring and patriotic statesmen.  Wrapped in the red-white-and-blue, spewing empty slogans about economic priorities (deficit reduction, smaller government, reduced taxes) what is being proposed these days is nothing short of collective genocide . . . the elimination of any possibility of survival by the middle and working classes of the country.

It’s crazy and it’s evil.

If the rich elite were farmers, their approach apparently would be “If we can just get rid of all of this dirt, there will be more room for the crops.”

I lived in India for six months.   If things keep going the way they are in America and you want to see what your country will look like in 25 years, just go to India.  India has more super-rich individuals than any other country in the world.  And over a billion pathetically poor people to do their bidding.

Just watch where you step.  Or wear tall boots.  Very low taxes in India.  But no one to clean up the shit in the streets.

[ This posting originated at the author's novelist website jdrachel.com ]

A New Commandment

I propose a new commandment.  Not an 11th Commandment because ten is such a nice number (we have ten fingers, ten toes . . . well, most of us do).  I suggest we replace the 10th Commandment, which according to my Google search, now apparently reads . . .

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”

This obviously has to go.  Not only do we totally ignore this particular divine directive, but frankly our whole consumer ethic is built on coveting.  Without hungry insatiable lust for everything we see around us material and flesh, the shopping malls would be empty.

That taken care of, here is my suggestion for a new 10th Commandment:

“Not doing the wrong thing is no excuse for not doing the right thing right.”

Who said that?

I just did.  Probably someone else too.  Whatever.

I don’t know where we need to go to get this commandment thing changed, but I’m all over it.  So all of you apologists and compromisers out there, beware!  When I get this done, you are in big trouble for all of your waffling, excuses, halfhearted and half-baked remedies, your wholesale wimpiness, your cowering centrism.

You know who you are.

[ This posting originated at the author's novelist website jdrachel.com ]