Presidential Campaign 2012 – Bachmann Swingrich Overdrive
[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 26, 2011 by admin in Politics
Saturday, March 26th, 2011With a field that so far includes Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin and her understudy Michele Bachmann, the 2012 campaign trail promises to be more fun than a bucket full of clown noses.
 Gingrich eats his words so he can spit them out with a new preposition this fall. |
I’ve always felt that politicians embody the most vile manifestation of celebrity, with newscasters hot on their tails. We like “real” celebrities – movie stars and music artists – because they’re pretty, or funny, or put a song in our heart. Newscasting has always seemed to draw people who want to be admired in this way, but fall a little short of silver screen level “star quality” or “It Factor”. But politicians? Dear God. They’re often not very attractive, they talk about things you don’t understand, care about, and exactly 50% of the time don’t agree with, and then they want you to LIKE them so much you actually have to trudge out and SAY SO in a voting booth. Since they’re generally so unattractive and disagreeable, that means that in order to secure this love and admiration they so desperately need, they have to lie and cheat almost constantly. Which is why I was so excited about the idea of the Newt Swingrich 2012 campaign. As such a despicable spouse cheat and hypocrite, he’s well on the way to winning our 2011 Best Politician award. Let’s not forget that Newt was not only cheating on his wife while engineering the Clinton/Lewisnky impeachment circus, he also was one of the key architects of the Contract with America. An interestingly titled document, since the only Americans that actually signed it were all GOP politicians. A document that was also interesting in that it is often credited with giving the GOP a congressional majority for the first time in decades, when this was in fact already well on the way to happening. It was sort of like Reagan shouting “tear down that wall” at a time when this was almost certain to happen anyway. Good timing and good politics, but not really “good leadership” in the conventional sense. In any case, I have much more to be excited about this week than last week regarding the 2012 presidential race. If historians record this era in America with any accuracy, it will be remembered as the era that turned politics into the DC version of “American Idol”, and Frank Luntz – GOP pollster, strategist, and author of the brilliant Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear
Newt Gingrich 2012 – The “Swingrich” Campaign
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on March 16, 2011 by admin in Politics
Wednesday, March 16th, 2011Newt Gingrich’s people told him he could capture the swing vote. He thought they said “swinger” vote. A campaign was born.
I can’t even begin to express how excited I am about the possibility of Newt Gingrich running for president in 2012. This is an even more exciting possibility than the Palyn/Quail ticket we’ve been petitioning for. See? I’m so excited I’m using prepositional endings! Unless you’ve been living under a rock like some kind of (ahem) newt or something, you’ve probably heard about Mr. Gingrich’s exploratory website* for the 2012 election. You know, the one that used the stock photo from an old Ted Kennedy site, instantly spawning a new internet meme based on putting the “awkward prom couple” photo in front of stock photos. If you’re wondering why Newt and Callista – the brittle porcelain princess by his side – look so awkward, it’s probably in part due to the fact that they’re worried about falling off the box they’re standing on. But let’s not be so superficial here. It’s more likely that they’re worried about falling from the massive pile of hypocrisy that their relationship is built upon. You may remember that Newt was leading the morality brigade that tried to destroy the Clinton presidency with a multimillion dollar impeachment travesty that was based on accusing Clinton of two things that are fundamental to political life: cheating on your wife, and lying about it. What never got much press was the fact that Gingrich himself was cheating on his wife while leading the charge. In fact, of the three wives he’s had, the only one he hasn’t been caught cheating on is the current one, who is herself the fling that ended his last marriage. In a compelling display of the Jungian Shadow at work, Newt explains in this interview on the Christian Broadcasting Newtwork that “there’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.” Note that unlike Richard Nixon or Bob Dole, who would at least use their own names to put themselves in the second person, Gingrich absolves himself of all responsibility for his actions with the phrase “things happened in my life“. Which is generally how he discusses the topic. Add to this hypocrisy and exemption of self from moral repercussion the fact that the guy is a compulsive liar who fabricates fiction faster than Steven King, and you have what should be considered a consummate politician, i.e.: a two timing, hypocritical liar. If Gingrich and Palin are even remote contenders in the 2012 primaries, stock up on the popcorn. This should be more entertaining than watching Fox News. Oh. Wait. It practically will be Fox News.
Sarah Palin’s Political Hyperbole In The Crosshairs
[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 8, 2011 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Saturday, January 8th, 2011We don’t know yet if Sarah Palin’s political hit list inspired Jared Lee Loughner to shoot Gabrielle Giffords, but we do know that the only thing more full of logical fallacy than a Sarah Palin speech is the deranged ramblings of Loughner’s YouTube posts.
Okay liberals. Put on your indoor voices and your thinking caps. Sarah Palin did not issue orders for Jared Lee Loughner to shoot Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona today by putting Gifford’s name in the cross-hairs on her political hit list. If you take that stance, you’re resorting to the same deranged logical fallacies that both Loughner and Palin rely on; in Loughner’s case to presumably later justify his violent actions, in Palin’s case, to further her self-obsessed and delusional pursuit of political credibility. And don’t go getting all excited about how this is the end of Palin’s career; my only hope in the midst of this tragic event was that it might put a damper on the retarded and infantile rhetoric that infects American politics, and those hopes are quickly being dashed. If you look at both conservative and liberal blogs and their commenters today, you see the same old debates, only escalated to new levels. We don’t yet – and may never – know what Loughner’s motivation was, but it seems safe to say that in the current environment of irrationally polarized debate fueled by prominent figures like Palin calling for executions without trial , using rifle crosshairs to identify political opponents, and constantly posing with guns while fomenting rebellion, you’re going to see more events like the one that occurred today in Arizona. Unfortunately, that’s not what anyone’s talking about so far. Liberals are pointing fingers and creating direct causal connections where there are none, and tea party conservatives are rising in passionate defense of Palin. The weirdest of these two lots can be found on Palin’s Facebook page, where literally thousands of comments were posted today, with an alarming number of her supporters referring to her as “my Sarah”. No joke. If you haven’t taken the time to learn a little about Jared Lee Loughner, take a look at his YouTube account . Which links to another account which is probably also his. There are three videos with text and background music. They all utilize peculiar logical fallacies to talk about “controlling your currency”, the government “controlling grammar”, and weird rambling definitions of terrorism and brainwashing. He often refers to himself in the second person and the past tense, and makes very little useful sense. We’ve included the videos below, with a transcript from the first one, and his reading list, which is fairly predictable for a brainwashed, “Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory
Sick Of Hearing About Julian Assange & WikiLeaks?
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on December 14, 2010 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Tuesday, December 14th, 2010So let’s move on then, and talk about OpenLeaks, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Bradley Manning, and the future of truth, journalism, and democracy.
Kudos to Time magazine for featuring Julian Assange on their cover with an American flag gagging him. And kudos to their readers for voting Assange person of the year. Not because I think he’s some kind of hero. Hell, I don’t know; under various countries’ laws he’s probably a criminal of some kind or another. In fact, early on, I jokingly suggested that WikiLeaks was a disinformation machine set up by the US government. But if Assange gets thrown under the bus by the British and Swedish legal systems and ends up being “extraordinarily rendered” by US intelligence, the greatest tragedy would not be Assange’s personal demise, it would be if we all forgot about the principle behind what he was doing and returned to pointlessly quibbling about the latest partisan political folly of the week. So I hope conservatives everywhere smolder about Michael Moore’s self-satisfied support of Assange. And I hope liberals have hernias about Sarah Palin suggesting he should be hunted down like Osama Bin Laden. And I hope Vladimir Putin keeps making jabs at our sham democracy with barbs like “So, you know, as they say in the countryside, some people’s cows can moo, but yours should keep quiet“. And I hope women like Sady Doyle keep convicting him without a trial. And I hope pseudonymous misogynist bloggers like “Ferdinand Bardamu” keep dialing up the outrage on the other side by revealing the identities and addresses of the accusers. And I hope the former WikiLeakers who are organizing OpenLeaks keep dissing Assange to get press for their new venture. And I hope bloggers like Gene Lalor keep fretting that Bradley Manning is a homosexual traitor. And I hope that bleeding heart liberal intellectuals in Berkeley erect a statue in his honor. And I hope Daniel Ellsberg keeps pointing out that his experience with the Pentagon Papers was identical to the WikiLeaks debacle. Because in the end, there’s some nebulous hope that by keeping the dialog about the broader issue alive, more people will realize that the real issue is truth, and possessing the integrity to speak it. It may have taken some personally flawed personalities to do it, but the big filthy satchel of lies has been dumped on the ground. Let’s look at the contents before we decide whom to lynch.
Read the rest of this entry »
WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange: Suicide By Spook?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 30, 2010 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Tuesday, November 30th, 2010Although some aspects of what WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange is doing are admirable, given his arrogant and self-aggrandizing approach, one can only wonder how long he will remain free or even alive. No matter how things turn out, I nominate Julian Sands to play him in the movie.
 Rumor has it that there’s a movie in the works, with another Julian starring as Assange |
Earlier today I joked with a friend that if Julian Assange wants to live, he should get in touch with Osama Bin Laden’s people; they seem to do a pretty good job of keeping the US government off their tails. So it was with a certain glee that I read that Sarah Palin went all fuzzy in the head again, demanding we hunt Assange down like Bin Laden. I guess meaning “in a fashion that never leads to his capture”. Assange is often referred to as being in an “undisclosed location”, a place made famous by another narcissistic freak, Dick Cheney. Although in Dick’s case, he had the benefit of a global superpower’s intelligence agencies to undisclose him. Assange’s undisclosed location is England, which I personally wouldn’t refer to as particularly undisclosed. The fact that Interpol is gunning for him doesn’t bode well for his future either. Although some would argue that Assange and the Swedish legal system deserve each other, the fact that the case was brought forth once, dropped, and then brought forth again to coincide with the release of more documents smacks of the kind of spy-novel intrigue one would expect in a situation like this. In an era when White House staff members out our own spies for domestic political revenge, it would be naive to assume for certain that the rape allegations are legit. Unfortunately, in spite of the many possible virtues of what Assange is doing, many – including a co-founder that has run a “purer” version of what WikiLeaks is doing at Cryptome.org – agree that he’s going about it all wrong, letting money and his own celebrity damage the integrity of the information. Even his key tech people left en masse just a couple of months ago. I personally believe that the essence of what Assange is doing is crucial at this point in history; the age of nation states with their legacy of smiling mutual deceit and spy vs. spy charades is approaching its obsolescence. A new world order probably is in the works, and I don’t think we want it defined by the likes of any of the people being exposed in the recent diplomatic cables. I honestly just wonder how long Assange will remain free, or even alive. I hope long enough to take down a few banks. I also think it’s about time someone got to work on the movie; given Julian Assange’s foppish dislikeableness, it could easily be a career-reviving role for Julian Sands.