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
This Election Will Be Bought To You By 74 Rich People
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on October 27, 2010 by admin in Politics
Wednesday, October 27th, 2010If you’re so smart, why do you vote?
 
If you really DO prefer astroturf to grass roots, |
If you’re an American who’s angry about joblessness, the cost of living, government spending, and your mortgage payment, I want to ask you to do me a favor. Put down that teacup and that Obama sign with the Hitler moustache drawn on it for a second, and think. When you go to the polls this fall, don’t think about elephants and donkeys, think about power, money, greed, and media. Now that a corporation has the same rights as a person, and a handful of wealthy people who aren’t you control corporations, before you give that person that vote, ask yourself: am I just voting against something again? Because if you are, there’s a pretty good chance you’re being sucker-punched. When less than a hundred people in America make over fifty million dollars, and money wins elections, who do you really think you’re voting for? Ignore for a moment the fact that NPR is a frightening haven for aging hippy liberal academics, and take a look at this interactive graphic that they’ve created that shows the cash flow between allegedly “grass roots” political action groups and GOP or Democrat sources. If you read or listen to the whole article, you’ll find it’s not anti-conservative, it’s anti-public deception. In fact, it compliments conservatives for refining the dirty methods of Democrats. Don’t think partisan when you vote this time, think about whether or not you want a guy that George Bush referred to as Turd Blossom shaping how you think. Because there’s a good chance he is. Read the rest of this entry »
The Donner Party – When You’re Hungry For Change But All Hope Is Lost
[ 4 Comments ]Posted on October 19, 2010 by admin in Politics
Tuesday, October 19th, 2010In the vast and brutal wasteland of contemporary American politics, sometimes there’s only one way to survive.
The massive expanse left between the extreme poles of America’s rabidly partisan politics these days leaves the voter in a vast unexplored frontier, where strange and frightening things can happen. Democrats have finally elected a genius IQ black president, and in their infinite and over-intellectualized whininess are still unhappy. Republicans had eight years of exactly what they wanted, the rootenest, tootenest, pro-war, pro-business, pro-rich cowboy the world could dream of, and they’re unhappy, fleeing in droves to the imagined solace of the nebulous and disparate solutions proposed by that bizarre collage of projected voter frustration called the “Tea Party”. Personally, I’m not falling for it; that’s why I’ve proposed innovative solutions like the Punk Party, the Facebook-based I Only Like You So I Can Hate You approach , and the Palin/Quayle 2012 campaign. But in today’s ruthless, winner take all political environment, there’s really only one thing left. Cannibalism. Although the Hannibal Lecters of the GOP will deny it flat out, the Grand Ole Party has a long-standing tradition of eating their young, and in their brilliantly honed campaign savvy, they’ve realized that when the American voter is this hungry for change, they’ll eat anything. That’s why they’re willing to throw them a questionable piece of meat like Christine O’Donnell. Anything to keep the party alive, right? Which is what inspired our latest idea for an alternative political party, The Donner Party. We’re still working up some graphics, but stay tuned for an expanded store, right now we only have an overpriced Palyn/Quail bumper sticker on CafePress. Read the rest of this entry »
Sick & Tired Of The Government? Become One Yourself!
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 14, 2010 by admin in Politics
Friday, May 14th, 2010But you’ll still get arrested by the one you’re rejecting when you present the passport you printed on the crappy inkjet printer in your “embassy” office.
 This seal accompanies the bizarre terms of use mentioned in the article. |
Remember when you were in grade school and you would insult somebody, and say “no takebacks“, and they’d say “I’m in a no ‘no takebacks’ zone, so your ‘no takeback’ doesn’t count!” and it would perpetually escalate into an absurdly recursive game of making a rule about a rule that didn’t exist? Well, apparently some people have trouble outgrowing this behaviour. Back in March I saw this piece about a flurry of arrests in Indiana involving Sovereign Citizens, who – among other things – claimed they weren’t US citizens, but rather diplomats living in embassies, and would produce documents they’d made themselves to back it all up. I kind of wrote them off as typical rural Midwestern loonies; there are areas in just about every one of the United States where you might wanna turn down the Cat Stevens as you drive through if you don’t wanna get shot. But it turns out these people are for real, and as ginormously high-larious as their proclamations are, their deranged and misinformed logic has already caused one of the greatest tragedies on American soil, the Oklahoma City bombing. Yes, Terry Nichols, friend and accomplice of Oklahoma City Federal Building bomber Timothy McVeigh was one of them. More recently, you may have read about how the group Guardians of the Free Republics sent letters to 30 state governors demanding their resignations. Well, as my grandpa would say, “their elevators don’t seem to go to the top floor” either. Their site has a deadline of March 31 of this year for the bizarre actions they ramble about on this page. And all the pages of the site have a weird seal at the bottom that says “Private web site under non-corporate venue. This seal conveys immunity from public scrutiny, discretion, regulation or trespass. Trespassers beware. Co-claimant fee applies to impairment.” I’m sure if you stop by their embassy they’ll be glad to explain what that means. If you can find the bomb shelter it’s located in.
Where Do Your Tax Dollars Go?
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on April 15, 2010 by admin in Politics
Thursday, April 15th, 2010Great. You paid your taxes again. So what is Uncle Sam doing with your money?
 This is the simplest and most accurate chart, in our opinion. |
If you’re old enough, you’ll remember a time in America when if someone said they were having a tea party, they were probably under ten years old, and pretending. I guess things haven’t changed that much; these days if someone’s talking about having a tea party, they probably have the intelligence of someone under ten years old, and I suppose being delusional is kind of like pretending. It’s pretty amazing that we get so riled up about taxes at all, we pay significantly lower taxes than most of the world. It’s arguably because of our revolutionary roots, but I think we’ve lost sight of an important detail: American revolutionaries weren’t just protesting taxes, they were protesting taxation without representation. If a contemporary tea partier had a better grasp of that fact, they would have been just as angry at the last (or last several) administrations as they are at the current one. The thing is, the vast majority of these angry people are really just that – angry people. Today’s New York Times Polling the Tea Party survey highlights that fact in an odd way; the majority of tea party supporters are Republican, white, male, married and older than 45. Sounds like a recipe for being angry to me, especially when a black man with an apparent sense of humanity is in office. Respondents also openly expressed that they believe the president is a Muslim socialist. Apparently they’ve never met Rahm Emmanuel or other rabidly capitalist key White House staffers. And in my opinion, the fact that the poll also suggests that many tea partiers are college-educated highlights nothing more than a failure of the educational system. Heh. Had to get that one in. So in honor of you having paid your taxes once again this year, we thought we’d help you figure out where your money went. There are lots of clever graphs and charts out there like Death and Taxes (2.4MB jpg!), which is a little too pictographic for my tastes, but is probably cool to have on the wall to ponder over time. There are also annoyingly distorted charts like this one from Turbotax that not only makes it look like your company’s CEO pays all the taxes, but uses the color pink for the defense budget. Personally, I found this info from the National Priorities Project to be the most straightforward, and they also clarify who’s paying the taxes, not just where your income tax dollars go. Read the rest of this entry »