Ongoing #3

Mitt Romney wins Iowa caucuses by eight votes

Republican voters display the well-polled but now proven lack of cohesion and incredible apathy at their candidate choices by giving Mitt Romney the narrowest of what is offensive to call 'wins'. He's clearly the best chance for those who want to oust Obama but when not even his own party wants him, how good a position can that be?

He's the "wrong religion", lacks sincerity and is too rich for the common man to fathom; belief that he is convincing regular people he's one of them qualifies as crazed behaviour at this point. But the main problem that has been exposed through the media's use of recording devices, is that nobody knows what Romney really believes about anything. Like John McCain before him, he's contradicting his past self without acknowledging the existence of cameras. I don't want to mock this too cruelly, it could be a special offshoot of Mormonism.

I would normally be wary of the prospect of an unknown US president but really - what's the worst he could do? Re-invade Iraq? Put baskets of guns outside every school and church in a pledge to the gun lobby? Purposefully kill thousands of Americans by removing the healthcare bill allowing them to get care that they were previously denied, just to pander to a bloodthirsty "grass roots" base and distance himself from what is essentially his own healthcare plan that he now has to pretend to hate because Obama also likes it? Oh shit, maybe that one.

Boy 'tortured and drowned' over witchcraft claims, court told

One might expect this to have its basis in deepest Africa or with a newly-discovered island tribe who had been deprived the luxury of societal development, but shockingly this horrific act took place in a flat in London. While you are going to get 'all kinds' in such a cultural stew, people who literally believe in witchcraft should not be one of the ingredients. I don't have an answer to how we would oust the bad parts, although I'm pretty sure checking for prior form would be a decent start.

How such ignorance could fester unchecked and unchanged by our modern world is baffling. People whose foundational truths include the existence of sorcery must not only have been educationally stunted at conception, but surely in constant terror at the boxed magic around them. Having survived in the big city long enough to be residents with such appallingly idiotic belief systems, how did they participate in our society without thinking that every teenager, road sign and bus stop was a witch / haunted / other utter fucking nonsense?

This one-by-one system of letting people do something bad is a terribly inefficient way to excise human matter from the melting pot, resulting as it does in at least one sickening act occurring per sickening person. I wouldn't propose a Minority Report future but precognition is not required to identify some people as dangerous. It might require 'paperwork' and 'keeping decent records' though. I know - who thought preventing the horrendous deaths of helpless innocents could be so boring?