Today’s a better day, neckwise. The strain pain is gone so now I’ll try to make up for yesterdays lack of scintillating repartee.

Found an article this morning about an Irish bar owner who declared March a “No Danny Boy” month, being sick and tired of drunk patrons singing this dirge-like lament, which reminded me of some of my own past mischief. A friend and I frequented a German-style bar where the band would play faster and faster as the night wore on, thereby inducing their customers to drink faster and faster. So this one evening we carefully chose a small table in the back, in the shadows and behind a pillar, and after things were rolling rapidly along, they began taking requests, which they always did after the crowd was half-looped.

So I sidled up and requested “Danny Boy” and quickly slipped back to our hidden table. Since the poor fool had uttered the name into his microphone, he was stuck with it. He tried to find the dirty rat who’d requested it, and coerce said rat into having to sing it, but I was well hidden. So the band played it and sang it, the drinking in the place virtually halted as everyone stared deeply into their beer mugs and it took them a good half-hour to get things going again even close to what it was before.

Years later I’m still laughing.

Florida and Michigan are in the deep fat now over the silencing of 5,163,271 American votes in their primaries, because their Dem. parties violated the rules by holding their caucuses too early. The real question here is can the National Dem. Committee deny voting rights to over 5 million U.S. citizens? Politics aside, this action seems basically unconstitutional and the governors of both states jointly stated “It is intolerable that the national political parties have denied the citizens of Michigan and Florida their votes and voices at their respective national conventions”.

If my vote had been rendered worthless by some over-penalizing party bureaucrats, I’d want them to pay for my time and the gasoline it took. Multiply that by 5 million. By nullifying all those votes, they went too far in their idea of enforcing party rules. They forgot about all those who voted.

Since the McCain issue is settled, now it’s all about Clinton vs. Obama and the latter is showing his whiny side, crying over her “kitchen-sink strategy” in winning three of the four states primaries that were just held. Ummm, I think it’s called “politics”. Obama is a great speaker, full of lofty rhetoric that pours out of him apparently without effort, but every time he’s asked a hard question he equivocates. His experience really is lacking, he’s a junior senator who has done almost nothing during his short time in Congress, and there’s still the matter of that Blacks-only church of his.

Here’s some info about him and his church: Obama said “We were always playing on the white man’s court — by the white man’s rules. If the principal, or the coach, or a teacher wanted to spit in your face, he could, because he had the power and you didn’t. The only thing you could choose was withdrawal into a smaller and smaller coil of rage.”
Obama’s once described the white race as “that ghostly figure that haunted black dreams.”
“That hate hadn’t gone away,” he wrote, blaming “white people — some cruel, some ignorant, sometimes a single face, sometimes just a faceless image of a system claiming power over our lives.”

In 1983, during college, Obama disapproved of what he called other “half-breeds” who gravitated toward whites instead of blacks. And yet after college, he once fell in love with a white woman, only to push her away when he concluded he would have to assimilate into her world, not the other way around. He later married a black woman.

According to this site, Mr. Obama is 50% Caucasian from his mother’s side. He is 43.75% Arabic, and 6.25% African Negro from his father’s side. Why does his father have an Arabic name? Why does every ancestor on his father’s side have an Arabic name?” The answer is obvious: They have Arabic names because his father’s side of the family tree is Arabic. Hussein Obama isn’t black, he’s half Arab, which explains why all the Arab and all the Islamic organizations including Louis Farrakhan support him. Yet he claims to be black. He’s not.

He’s coming across more and more as a very thin-skinned guy, while with Clinton I sense a certain amount of desparation. Both of them are under tremendous pressure, and one of them may end up doing a Dean Scream yet that will decide which one gets their parties nomination. It’s fascinating to watch, anyway, while they pant and suffer.

Something I’ve never understood is why anyone would want that job so passionately. Bush, with Big Oil behind him, now that makes sense. But just because they want to be King of the Mountain? Mitt Romney spent a chunk of his personal fortune, millions, on a losing campaign and Clinton has tossed in $5 million of hers.

Usually, by the time your term ends, everyone hates you anyway. I just don’t get it.

Democracy is for those who are willing to take it, and this has been proven once again, this time by the Russians. Dmitry Medvedev is the overwhelming favorite to succeed Vladimir Putin in the election in which opposition parties and independent vote monitors have complained of widespread electoral violations.

Well, of course he is. The state-owned media has focused entirely on him, promoted him endlessly and he’s spent nothing on campaigning. He won’t enter into debates either, saying that there’s no point of debating with people “who have no chance of winning power.” He should know. The elections are rigged in his favor from one end of Russia to the other.

Putin, the supposedly outgoing Russian president, will be Russias prime minister and share power with Medvedev. This arrangement will be a first in Russian government. Voting in Russia is now only for show, just as it was during Stalins reign, and Russia has once again evolved into a new form of government. From the Czars, after the Roman ceasars, through revolution and communism, the collapse of communism, a feint at democracy and now back to dictatorship.

Even though the Union has fallen apart, and former slave nations have again asserted their independence, the regime in Russia refuses to recognize it and is trying to force them to rejoin Russia as slave states again.

In Putins favor, he’s put Russia back on its economic feet again, though he’s done this at the expense of everyone doing business with Russia. It doesn’t pay to be dependent on Russia for anything these days as those nations can expect more extortion for fuel and energy needs just as in the past, along with repeated military threats and aggression. Russia the Bear will always be a bear, looking to eat up the unwary, and it’s people will always be the property of “the state”, which means whoever is in power at the time.

The people accept this as the norm. Times in Russia have always been tough and the leadership has seldom made much difference in the well-being of its people. Putin has actually made things better for them and they’re loathe to see that change. Who could blame them? It’s different in Western democracies where we’ve come to expect a high standard of living.

Russia’s regime is harshly nationalist, which is exactly why they’re so successful lately. All the “Multiculturalist” and “open border” nations, such as the United States and most of the European nations, are decaying and falling behind. The world isn’t ready yet for a one-world government and may never be. There are simply too many ethnic, cultural, religious and language barriers and differences between us all that cause huge frictions between different populations when we become too mixed in with each other.

The United States would do well to follow the Russians example in terms of nationalism. We need to take a similar hard line with China, the Saudis and OPEC, and other Mid-East nations such as Iran. America First has become America Last, and if we don’t reverse this, we won’t last.