Rhys Jones

OK, so we've got some more hype over a killing. Now it is a very sad death and no one can possibly argue otherwise but the hype is incredible.

I have to say though that in many ways I go along with it because it serves a purpose. It serves to show the whole city united in horror and disgust at the murder and to possibly shame some key youths into squealing. It appears to be working and I expect it to die down now.

The whole problem with youth violence and other lower level crime is that the media have to report significant incidents but it is not reflective of the situation. What I mean is that it can't be denied that plenty of crime is committed by youths but it simply isn't anarchy UK either. Crime is falling but crime is still "bad" and should be combated and this tension beign mishandled by the media makes for a distortion of the wider truth.

Nasty crimes and accidents always come about in the school holidays but the obvious signs that adolescents can get their hands on guns is a worrying development. I'm sure the police are working on getting to grips with this supply but in a more intelligence driven method, not so much in the public glare. Too much hype will make getting guns trendy, the next must have after some make of trainer or other. They should try to calm fears and suggest only scumbags use guns. Make it unglamorous.

Gonzales has buggered off at last. But, as with Rove, the timing seems a little too convenient and will only serve to reduce the damage further Senate probing can cause. The impeachment of Bush is long overdue and he has been protected solely because the US is in two wars it can't get out of. If this were a peace-time president and all the non-Iraq scandals had happened, he'd have been out on his ear within 4 years. But Iraq did happen and that is the biggest of all reasons for an impeachment, ironically. If Iraq had been over by now, again impeachment would be more than just a dream.

I saw Barack Obama on the Daily show recently and the difference between him and Bush is like the difference between Cartman and Stephen Fry. America needs someone like him to bring some semblance of sanity and real humanity to the White House. I think Americans are sick to the back teeth with dogma and rhetoric and want someone who will shake sense into the Beltway and the Executive.

He seems to be essentially a more bearable Clinton with all the charisma of a Kennedy but less of the ultra-elite-wanting-to-run-the-show about him. All other candidates in the far-too-long campaign are either far too hot, blunt and thuggish or so cold and/or calculated they make Thatcher seem homely. We appear to have a wily but ultimately passable prime minister in office here and if we can just get Obama in power over there we would have a fairly decent pairing on our hands. I just think that having Obama as president would be too good to be true and therefore, something will stop it. It will either be more GOP corruption messing with the election or something else.

The GOP candidates range from the annoying - Guiliani - to the most cynical politician on this side of the universe - Romney. Not one of them have learnt from Bush's utterly miserable presidency. Not one. In fact, several of the front-runners seem to think that acting like Bush on steroids is the way to go! What are they on??!

Rove

Ah, can you feel the sun on your face even when indoors? Can you hear the sound of children laughing whilst on a subway train? Well that's probably because Karl Rove has finally quit.

 

Rove sets just about everyone's teeth on edge not because he is a Spin Doctor, not because he looks a bit like a Hitler toady, not even because he has been perceived to be the brains and, some say, ventriloquist for Bush but because he has done virtually nothing else his entire life but run (dirty) campaigns for Republicans. What I mean is he has, since he just left short pants, been playing Machiavelli behind the scenes of local and national politics. He has never been a politician but he has backed up and, indeed, crushed them consistently for his entire working life. What sort of person does that? And that's why he gets such an instinctively negative reaction from virtually everyone.

 

We think of him as a sort of bullied nerd getting is own back in a nerdy way. As a nerd who uses the swaggering jocks, like Bush, who probably used to goose him and trip him up in corridors to "beat up" other jocks that use words the middle classes automatically grimace at such as "social justice" and "pro-choice". He seems like a self-satisfied proxy-bully, if you will.

 

His conduct in political battles has been bruising and gloves-off his whole career and yet the god damn American public (or, at least enough of them) bought it all and voted for his man. The sheer breath-taking success of his strategies to shape debates and even vocabulary to his aims using the, let's face it, not-exactly-resistant media truly is a modern wonder.

 

A couple of examples:

 

"Tax relief": - Rove got Bush talking about "Relieving the tax burden" and coining the term "tax relief". Why? Because that meant journalists could ask Democrats, "Are you against tax relief?" Now who would say "no" to that and want to win elections? By painting taxes as fundamentally evil without caveat and then describing tax cuts for the rich as tax relief, it makes it sound like the solution to a problem. Everyone got suckered into it. Very clever.

 

"The surge":- This little piece of spin has worked internationally even if journalists choose to precede the word surge with "so-called" as if to excuse them for peddling it. The increase, basically escalation, of troop numbers is open-ended and the extension of the presence of these troops is being continually pushed by the White House so how is this a "surge"? The use of the word "surge" suggests a temporary increase, a short-term spike. This is simply not the case with this tactic. Troop numbers are simply being increased to nearly invasion levels and doing their best to strangle the insurgent-fostered civil war. They're just send more men in. It's not a surge as there's simply no date set for these numbers to lower. Would another increase in numbers be termed another "surge"?

 

So he's been effective and for that he gets objective kudos but then, so might the architects of the holocaust for so efficiently building such a monstrously efficient genocidal infrastructure. The purpose and motives of their "inspiration" is far too wrong for us to contemplate really praising the git. Merely getting Bush elected (speech marks should be added to that word for the 2000 election, of course) should be enough for him to be damned to Hades.