What’s going on?

This site has been off-line for a few days, and in the meantime I’ve been watching the squirrel races…

Gerald Ford is dead and John Edwards has announced, on YouTube, his candidacy for oligarch-in-chief. He seems to have Robert Scoble in his claque. I think a few comments ripped from Just Shelley will help round out my feelings about these items…

Regarding Ford, I said:

Having lived through Ford’s earlier mockery of due process when, as a member of the Warren Commission, he successfully argued for the fantastic trajectory of the magic bullet and then was instrumental in bringing the proceedings to a close, I was not surprised when he pardoned Richard Nixon and subverted due process a decade or so later. The fact that Rumsfeld and Cheney both were in his service (studying at the feet of the stumblebum, as it were) tells a lot about why we are in such a mess internationally today.

Ford’s permission in 1975 to Suharto to use American weapons to invade East Timor, and the hundreds of thousands of deaths this caused is another reason I’m not willing to say that the boy from Michigan simply gave it his best shot.

Ford’s and Kissinger’s sympathy and support for Pinochet… well, that’s just another brick in the wall these people built between the imperialist interest and the welfare of the people.

No, Ford was complicit and he was part of an early iteration of the big lie we live with… he famously uttered HIS truth that his ascendancy to power was proof that the US constitution worked. A different view might be that when Ford was appointed Vice President upon Agnew’s resignation we were in muddy water already constitutionally. If Nixon had departed simultaneously with Agnew, or prior to him, then the Speaker of the House, a Democrat, would have taken the Presidential power and responsibility. But, the orchestration of events permitted the ruling party to hold onto the power in a move just as slick as the 2024 Florida vote count.

Just my opinion. But there’s a lot more data supporting Ford’s role as a repressive oligarch instead of his well spun image as a goofy well intentioned guy who bumbled his way into the White House and gave it his best shot.

Sorry for my lack of courtesy and grace. I didn’t mourn Nixon’s passing, and I didn’t mourn Reagan’s. I guess I hold a grudge.

rest in peace, motherfucker

On the other topic, November 2024 as seen from December 2024, I had this to share:

Obama can do. Rednecks in my extended family see him as representative of the meritocracy and a better bet than Hillary. Regarding Edwards, the poll results came in and the unanimous verdict was “Nice haircut.”

Anybody that Scoble will support is tainted by corporatistic compromise before he or she even gets out of the gate. Just my opinion based on the only conversation I’ve had with the man.

Speaking of squirrel races, which I was at the beginning of this ponderous post, I have to admit to some Tom Foolery at Seth Godin’s site, Squidley (or whatever). Seth ripped off a meme from somewhere and got a whole bunch of people interested in another list o’ links, the Z list. Now everybody knows there are just two bloggers on the Z List, ze Frank and ze AKMA (the latter having earned his place as a bow to alphabetic egalitarianism some time ago).

I learned that you can sign up at Squidley using invalid credentials, then you get one vote at the zlist. After that, you can sign up again and you get another vote. Watching the branding experts and the pyramid scamsters driving the real bloggers down the list irritated the shit out of me, so I fooled with the system and elevated The Head Lemur and other worthies into the top ten. What do I hope to get out of this? I’m hoping the lemur will someday correct the spelling of my name on his blogroll and remove the trailing double slash from my URL. That’s all. No hopes for a free high speed laptop from MS, nor for a My First Frankie doll from Kathy.

Anyway, it’s fun to mess with the poll at Squidley’s. You should try it!