Amsterdan

2008 Reality Game Show: PICK!…YOUR!…DICTATOR!

Christmas Eve, 2006, Wise Men & Women Seeking Peace
After decades of a working relationship with a successful Iraqi dictator – one moment America supplying arms, the next America enforcing a “no-fly zone”, but always enjoying stability among the factions – suddenly in the throes of neo-con theory, we Americans destroyed the stable US-Iraq relationship willfully and foolishly, then stood by weakly as we starved off any sense of order and watched almost helplessly as the anarchy turned against us.

We should have known. “A relationship is an organism,” Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld wrote in 1991’s “The Ex-Girlfriend”. “You created this thing and then you starved it so it turned against you. Same thing happened to The Blob.”

The Iraqi Blob began to devour all the neo-cons’ dreams. In response, Cheney-Bush-Rumsfeld began to “tweak” the miserably-executed strategy.

But as Peter Mehlman scripted for Kramer and Elaine in 1997 in “The Money” episode:
“KRAMER: Well, you know, I really like this girl and I, you know, I think if
I could just work out this one thing...”


“ELAINE: (interrupting) Yeah. I gotta be honest with you Kramer. You might be
more than just a coupla tweaks away from a healthy relationship.”

We thought Iraq was our bitch. Oh, Iraqis, we bought you democracy. How could you have done us so wrong?

Today in the New York Times, Carmi Turchick of
Buffalo, NY, observes that we need a magic plan. “Come to think of it, invading Iraq was supposed to be the magic plan. The reality that we cannot possibly stay there as long as Iraq’s neighbors and other locals like Al Qaeda is precisely why the invasion was ultimately doomed to fail. Staying longer changes only how much money we waste and how many brave Americans die. The Iraqi units we are training will melt away or divide up into factions after we leave as quickly as Saddam Hussein’s forces did when we went in. Waiting for some future when they will be ready to take over without us is a fool’s errand. Iran thanks us for coming, and suggests we avoid the door on our way out.”

Bottom line: Iraq needs a new dictator. Rather than replace a very effective, but overly-brutal dictator like Saddam with a proposed Arab-style democracy (“my sect will outvote your sect and then kill you”), we should have replaced Saddam with a nicer dictator. It takes a good dictator to rule an Arab mob. But, hey, nature abhors a vacuum. There is still time.

I have a magic plan.

As the 2008 Presidential election approaches, I propose an election-year summer-season, July through September, TV Reality Game Show “Pick!...Your!...Dictator!” in which contestants – Hillary, McCain, Obama, Guiliani, heck, thousands can apply – propose a handful of their own picks for future Iraqi Dictator to be inaugurated January 20, 2009 (same day as the new American President). Week by week, the candidates for American President and Iraqi Dictator – assisted by clever blends of past and present Iraq video footage and computer-generated graphics – will run the bevy of candidates through assorted virtual, very-visual future-Iraq scenarios.

The show will be simulcast on Fox and Al Jazeera with week-by-week voting ala American Idol, both in the U.S. and Iraq. Gradually we will narrow down the best “Dic-pick”, the beneficent tyrant most desirable both to Iraqi’s and Americans. This is true democracy, by the way, and might begin uniting both sides of the world’s divide.

Concluding six weeks before the American election, there will be a final Dic-off with the two finalists for Dictator along with their sponsors, American Presidential candidates, going head-to-head, toe-to-toe with platforms, strategies and body counts (re-establishing order among warring factions will not come cheaply).

Once chosen, the winning Presidential and Dictatorial candidates will be well-positioned to work together in a new beginning in 2009. The American and Iraqi people will have spoken (and maybe even bonded) and the real Presidential election in November will serve to ratify or reject the wisdom of the Game Show.

Ok, scoff. But do you have a better, more entertaining, more promising idea for a truly new beginning in 2009?

posted by DanZ @ 12:51 PM 1 comments

Is the moon made of green cheese?

San Diego, California
As reported in the New York Times December 4, 2006: Scott Horowitz, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration, said crews of four astronauts would make weeklong missions to the Moon starting around 2020 (I will be 73). As more equipment was set up, human stays would eventually grow to 180 days, permanent staffing by 2024 (I will be 77). By 2027, officials said, a pressurized roving vehicle on the surface would take people on expeditions far from the base.

I can’t wait to see that! I was walking the beat as a Wells Fargo rent-a-cop in July 1969 when Neil Armstrong took one small step on the moon. Some of us thought humans would stay permanently shortly thereafter. Who knew it would take 51 more years!

So by 2030, say, when I’m 83 there will probably be Lunar vacations for maybe $100,000. But I won’t feel like pulling all those G’s and getting that too-frequent motion sickness that often comes with weighlessness, so it looks like I will neither walk nor ride on the moon. Not in this body.

But you go ahead. You’re young. If you kick in a hundred bucks every month from now till 2030, you’ll have invested a little over twenty-five thousand, but at 10% interest it would be worth over $100,000 by 2030 and that should get you there and back in style.

And in answer to the title question, check out this little observation:
http://www.planetfusion.co.uk/~pignut/cheese.html

posted by DanZ @ 6:03 PM 0 comments