In Pursuit of Mysteries

Spider and Voting

Apparantly, Spider Jerusalem’s guide to voting is online now. Let Spider help you with this difficult process.

http://edge.cow-dog.net/archives/2004/10/12/on-voting-and-elections-in-general/

What if?

From http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2004/10/what_if.php:

Contemplating the dubious prospect of Muqtada al-Sadr as a Democratic presidential candidate, I got to wondering.

Suppose there had been no Iraqi insurgency, no al-Sadr popping out from behind the curtain or Saddam loyalists prepped for guerrilla war, no car bombings or beheadings or roadside explosives.

Or an insurgency so feeble and scattered it was swiftly squashed and swept up.

Just imagine how different things would have been over the last year, how different they would be now.

Bush would have been completely vindicated for invading Iraq, despite the non-discovery of WMDs. His pre-war critics would have been completely discredited, the neocon warhawks howling with victorious glee at seeing all those liberals and pundits shown up for the lily-livered worrywarts they were.

France, Germany, the other nations that opposed the war–they would have been rhetorically shunted forever into the dustbin of Old Europe.

Tony Blair would have been elevated to co-leader of the Free World and enjoyed a second youthful bloom (instead of looking as haggard and embattled as he does now–a badly abused dollhead).

Over a 1000 Americans would still be alive, as would countless thousands of Iraqis. Thousands more would have escaped grievous wounds.

Saddam Hussein probably would have been convicted in a televised trial sometime before the US election, and executed.

The US economy wouldn’t be bleeding billions of dollars now and into the indefinite future. The economy would have lifted itself aerodynamically out of recession by now and restored much of the job loss of the previous years.

Oil would be in the $30-35 range as Iraqi oil flowed through the pipelines and infrastructure was repaired.

The United States would have been able to be poised to launch strikes against Syria or Iran from secure bases of action in Iraq, as the stage was set for act two of the war against the Axis of Evil.

President Bush would probably boast an approval rating in the 60s or 70s, and coasting to a landslide reelection against a Democratic candidate served up for sacrifice until Hillary could run in ‘08.

The savage Iraq insurgency, a tragedy for the Iraqi people and the Americans and other foreigners who have been victims there, has unwound the future in ways we still can’t understand. But this much is evident:The Enemy isn’t afraid of us anymore, if it ever was. It sees the world’s greatest superpower led by a president swaggering with braggadocio bogged down in a guerrilla war for which its technological superiority advantages it naught. It knows that the overstretched American military is tearing at the seams, that it doesn’t have enough manpower for a proper, successful occupation. It sees us repeating the Soviet debacle in Afghanistan, and is increasing the tempo of violence. As I understand 4th Generation warfare, the side that controls the tempo, wins.

It doesn’t have to happen. But it could happen. And a year ago, that would have seemed unthinkable.

Honeymoon Pictures at Last!

I’ve spent umpteen hours (like five or so) in the last day cleaning up raw pictures, discarding a bunch, tweaking exposure, and then making web versions at lower dpi of the pictures that I took on the honeymoon.

I’ve decided that Adobe and Photoshop can suck my dick, by the way. Their fuckups and craziness caused me to have to redo a bunch of work and do a bunch more from scratch (did you know if your picture is too large on certain dimensions, when you open it is Photoshop, it won’t just scale the view but it will turn your picture 90 degrees clockwise?!? WTF!!!).

I also managed to crash Digital Image Suite 10 from my employers within ten minutes of beginning heavy duty editing with about 250 MB of images loaded. I had friends who worked on this one that I’ll be having words with tomorrow since you’d think someone would have load tested it but I digress…

The gallery is up at http://www.zhangzhung.net/italy/. If you see any issues, let me know. If you want to critisize my non-existant skills as a photographer, you may risk my wrath. It took me about a week to even figure out how to get certain functions to work right.