Just saw Newt Gingrich on Hannity, and I have a bone to pick with him.
First, I'd like to say that I have been beating the drum for a Gingrich Presidential run since at least 2006, and to date, the man has disappointed. At some point, I don't know exactly when, I came to the conclusion that Speaker Gingrich must have been biding his time, perhaps playing rope-a-dope until the time was just right for him to throw his hat in the ring, all the while creating that 'Ground Game' thingy and going through the process of setting up the rationale (I believe they call it 'Creating a Message') for eventually running that all successful candidates must complete before the first vote is even taken.
Yesterday, I picked Gingrich as perhaps the best hope of unseating the Obamatard for the GOP in 2012. Although I have already admitted a favorable bias towards Gingrich, I'm pretty certain that I did my best to not let that cloud my opinion. I'm still convinced that Gingrich would stand as a stark contrast in terms of policy against Obama, and I'm bet-a-lung-on-it sure that Gingrich is the more intellectually deft, the more experienced and temperamentally-prepared of the two.
Then Newt showed up on Hannity tonight -- and pissed me right the fuck off.
If Newt Gingrich were my girlfriend, I'd dump him in the same way that I would dump a chick who let me pick up every check, demanded at least five dates before I got a peck on the cheek, expected gifts and doors held open for her, and then wouldn't put out.
If Newt Gingrich were my gardener, I'd have the most beautifully-tended flower beds in the neighborhood, but my front lawn would be choked by 5' tall grass, and probably have leopards hunting from within it's cover.
If Newt Gingrich were God, the first Chapter of Genesis would have taken seven months -- not days -- and he would probably have rested every weekend.
Watching Newt Gingrich's decision-making process is like watching old people fuck; there's a lot of very slow and deliberate movement, not much action, and it's questionable as to which comes first -- the broken hip or cardiac-arrest-upon-orgasm.
Glaciers move faster than Newt Gingrich. So to the Post Office, Union Workers, Galapagos Tortoises, Three-toed Sloths, and Sheila Jackson-Lee's thought process. My bowels move faster than Newt Gingrich.
You know, one of the very real criticisms of Barack Obama is his seeming inability to make a decision about anything. This should come as no surprise; in his abbreviated stay in the Senate, Obama never decided anything, preferring to vote 'Present' on the order of 200 times. On those rare occasions when Obama does make a decision, the process is almost guaranteed to be protracted and that stalling process is pretty much the result of Obama getting too much input, hearing too many opinions, weighing too many options, considering far too many variables.
For democrats, delay, procrastination, indecision, clutter, obfuscation, is all part of the illusion of The Great Man of History tragically 'wrestling' with the 'problems of the day', and the 'Burdens of the Oval Office', which when juxtaposed against black-and-white photos and tinny music is supposed to represent the idealized vision and drama of 'Leadership', but it's really a mental handicap.
People who behave this way usually have a serious problem with confidence. Not making decisions is the first indication. Going through a laborious and overwrought process in which all of your attention is focused the on details -- no matter how small -- is the second indication. People who can never have enough input, can never stop considering putting more and more variables into the decision-making process are not being decisive; they're simply collecting or creating more excuses to not make any decision whatsoever.
While we certainly do not want a Chief Executive who makes hasty, and poorly thought through decisions, neither do want one who dithers over the process, or who burdens himself with too many options. We want, we need, someone to lead. The process of leading requires that the Leader make decisions, surely with the best available information and facts at his command, but not burdened by the fear that the pettiest detail and remotest possibility will always be that one thing you forgot that finally bites you on the ass.
I can understand why President Obama is burdened with this particular handicap; he came into office, I think, never having expected to have won in the first place. His experiences in life never prepared him for the reality of having to make the sort of decisions a President in his predicament has to make (to be fair, I don't what sort of experience, short of the battlefield, can prepare you for that sort of thing). I don't think he ever put his name on a piece of legislation while in the Senate, never voiced an opinion until he was certain he knew how it would be received, and he never held a private-sector job in his life. I'd even go as far as to say that Barack Obama is probably the poster child for the mollycoddled-advanced-beyond-his-abilities-all-shortcomings-get-papered-over-socially-promoted-Affirmative-Action-Achiever.
The First Lady probably lays out his clothes for him in the morning.
Newt shouldn't have these problems. He's been in the political brawls, he knows how the system works, he's won elections before; he should know what he has to do.
Why he doesn't just get off his ass and do it is the question I would like to see answered. This hemming and hawing is beginning to make Obama (and even some of Gingrich's potential GOP competition) look like Pericles or Augustus, by comparison.
Leaders lead. They display, and then instill in their followers, a feeling of Confidence. They don't tinker with 'exploratory websites', they don't dance around questions that require direct answers. They certainly don't dither until the very last second, and then not pull the trigger...without at least being obligated to explain why they didn't act. They lead. They do.
Shit or get off the pot, Newt. You've got a deer-in-the-headlights opponent who's so far in over his head that he probably cries himself to sleep. He's a man who doesn't have the moral courage to call anyone a terrorist, or the balls to step up and support the enemies of totalitarianism around the world. His second-in-command would lose a game of 'Jeopardy' to most inanimate objects, let alone Watson. Someone has to take the bull by the horns here, and if we have to depend on a candidate selected (by mere process of elimination) by the retards over at FreeRepublic -- because the alternative is seen as indecisive and slow to act when it's called for (you can never be 'conservative' enough for that lot unless you frog-march the gays to the ovens, and kill the abortionists with a gilded Bible) -- we're going to get another 4 years of the Postracial Hammer-and-Sickle Treatment.
Don't make me look like a douchebag, Newt. That's a reason for a fistfight in these parts.
Friday, March 04, 2011
Old Dogs and New Tricks...
As many of you know, I get a good laugh out of the scam e-mail that finds it's way into my junk folder. Despite all the heart-wrenching claims by the people (i.e. criminal organizations) in these missives to be poor, orphaned waifs, living under the threat of imminent assassination, they somehow always manage to have $3,000,000 bucks squirreled away by their corrupt-former-government-official father (who has always either been assassinated, or killed in a plane crash, and they send you a hyperlink to a news story about someone's grisly death as 'proof') that they just can't get to without the help of an anonymous stranger.
Or maybe it's some young girl, who hints there may be the possibility of marriage if you hear her plaintive wails, who has won a "Sweepstakes" (I didn't know they had any in Bangladesh, but apparently, they do. I wonder: what do you win? A lifetime supply of flies and diarrhea?), but because of the machinations of wicked relatives, they must flee for their lives with this newly found bounty, and somehow, you -- Anonymous Douchebag reading something G-mail flagged as Spam, But Then Sent Anyway -- are the only person in the universe who can help...by supplying your bank account number.
These sorts of scams always make me laugh, if only because the whole millieux is so patently ridiculous, and because the scam always follows the same, predictable script. It's a scam that is designed to take advantage of those baser human frailties which are the most easily manipulated: greed, stupidity, loneliness, reflexive sympathy, inability to think critically. Most people have the braincells to avoid these obvious hoaxes, and so they don't get ripped off by them.
However, the scammers are always getting more sophisticated. The early series of scam mail I used to get was in poorly-constructed English, which often made it hilarious, and the circumstances under which the young girl -- it was always a young girl, who has just finished her morning prayers before she decided to e-mail 30 million anonymous strangers for financial and immigration help --become ever-more outlandish and ever-more pitiful. No sooner did I start reposting the stuff to make fun of it, and to warn the dumber elements of society not to fall for this stuff, then I began to receive more sophisticated scam mail; better spelling and grammar more soap-opera-type storylines and plot-twists, less tear-jerking pre-amble, and more get-to-the-point-ed-ness. The quality of my scam mail improved virtually overnight!
It's as if the scammers are reading their reviews. The message they got: if you're going to try and steal from me, at least don't insult my intelligence! If only the U.S. Government had the work ethic and free-market instincts of these Nigerian/Russian e-mail scam artists who are constantly striving to improve the quality of their product to meet the high expectations of the most discerning consumers of spam!
Anyway, the latest iteration of this old 'gimme access to your bank account' scam has a new twist: the scammers are apparently watching the news, making their pitch to the potential victim topical and all current-eventy-ish, and loaded with little factoids about the Middle Eastern Kleptocracy that you were just dying to know, but were afraid to ask. I've already gotten seven or eight of these things this week, all of them claiming to be from former officials of the gone/tottering/soon-to-fall regimes of Mubarak, Khadaffi, or the Saudi Royal Family, amongst others.
Here's this week's best offering. Please note the two new twists to the original template; now it's the scammer's wife and children who have been assassinated (maybe aimed specifically at potential female victims?), and just so you can't fact-check the claim (just in case you have just enough intelligence to at least make a cursory check of the complete stranger you're about to give access to your bank account to), the deaths of his family cannot be verified because they 'were never publicized'; not even a hyperlink to a news story that might/might not be true. The whole thing is a hush-hush affair --I can promise you, thirty million other people have gotten this e-mail, so the cat is out of the bag, so to speak. Have yourself a good laugh:
"Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who has not had a vice-president since he took office in 1981, appointed his intelligence chief and confidant Omar Suleiman. I AM MR. ADEL ALY MOHAMED, one of the senior adviser to the president.
I am Mr. Adel Aly Elwy Mohamed Ragheb Hassan. I have been working with the president as a Top Secret Adviser since 1990, a role in which I played prominent in diplomacy. Once a prosperous country which aided closely by USA government, my people has been awakened by the economic instability issues.
Desperate and alone. Egypt is now a country of chaos. It assassinated my wife and 1 child. Now I have nobody left. Pleading you to keep the above misfortune which has never been publicized and should be kept secret for Egyptians and the country. I have been kept wise and awakened by reality in Allah.
I have made up my mind to come to your country to start a new life. Allah will open your heart and wisdom for the TOP SECRET deal. I am in position with the total sum of US$ 3,000,000.00 (Three Million United State Dollars) kept in a box in a foreign Finance Security Company. I have had discussions with its Regional Manager regarding every movement of the box deposited in their security company to a foreign country. He has understood my condition and is ready to attend to my request immediately. The kind-hearted manager did not know the content of the box as it has been packed and box when it reached his office. He helped me with the pure heart and understanding that the political instability in Egypt has left me alone.
Please help to claim this box to be received in your country. You will use the money in the box for investment. If you are serious and capable to handle this deal, get back to me NOW at (e-mail address removed for safety reasons). There is no more time to waste. Egypt is in chaos. The biggest chaos that has made Allah to seek this route to success with YOU.
THIS IS AGAIN A SECRET DEAL which can be our gate of success and breakthrough!
\Adel Aly Elwy Mohamed."
Or maybe it's some young girl, who hints there may be the possibility of marriage if you hear her plaintive wails, who has won a "Sweepstakes" (I didn't know they had any in Bangladesh, but apparently, they do. I wonder: what do you win? A lifetime supply of flies and diarrhea?), but because of the machinations of wicked relatives, they must flee for their lives with this newly found bounty, and somehow, you -- Anonymous Douchebag reading something G-mail flagged as Spam, But Then Sent Anyway -- are the only person in the universe who can help...by supplying your bank account number.
These sorts of scams always make me laugh, if only because the whole millieux is so patently ridiculous, and because the scam always follows the same, predictable script. It's a scam that is designed to take advantage of those baser human frailties which are the most easily manipulated: greed, stupidity, loneliness, reflexive sympathy, inability to think critically. Most people have the braincells to avoid these obvious hoaxes, and so they don't get ripped off by them.
However, the scammers are always getting more sophisticated. The early series of scam mail I used to get was in poorly-constructed English, which often made it hilarious, and the circumstances under which the young girl -- it was always a young girl, who has just finished her morning prayers before she decided to e-mail 30 million anonymous strangers for financial and immigration help --become ever-more outlandish and ever-more pitiful. No sooner did I start reposting the stuff to make fun of it, and to warn the dumber elements of society not to fall for this stuff, then I began to receive more sophisticated scam mail; better spelling and grammar more soap-opera-type storylines and plot-twists, less tear-jerking pre-amble, and more get-to-the-point-ed-ness. The quality of my scam mail improved virtually overnight!
It's as if the scammers are reading their reviews. The message they got: if you're going to try and steal from me, at least don't insult my intelligence! If only the U.S. Government had the work ethic and free-market instincts of these Nigerian/Russian e-mail scam artists who are constantly striving to improve the quality of their product to meet the high expectations of the most discerning consumers of spam!
Anyway, the latest iteration of this old 'gimme access to your bank account' scam has a new twist: the scammers are apparently watching the news, making their pitch to the potential victim topical and all current-eventy-ish, and loaded with little factoids about the Middle Eastern Kleptocracy that you were just dying to know, but were afraid to ask. I've already gotten seven or eight of these things this week, all of them claiming to be from former officials of the gone/tottering/soon-to-fall regimes of Mubarak, Khadaffi, or the Saudi Royal Family, amongst others.
Here's this week's best offering. Please note the two new twists to the original template; now it's the scammer's wife and children who have been assassinated (maybe aimed specifically at potential female victims?), and just so you can't fact-check the claim (just in case you have just enough intelligence to at least make a cursory check of the complete stranger you're about to give access to your bank account to), the deaths of his family cannot be verified because they 'were never publicized'; not even a hyperlink to a news story that might/might not be true. The whole thing is a hush-hush affair --I can promise you, thirty million other people have gotten this e-mail, so the cat is out of the bag, so to speak. Have yourself a good laugh:
"Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who has not had a vice-president since he took office in 1981, appointed his intelligence chief and confidant Omar Suleiman. I AM MR. ADEL ALY MOHAMED, one of the senior adviser to the president.
I am Mr. Adel Aly Elwy Mohamed Ragheb Hassan. I have been working with the president as a Top Secret Adviser since 1990, a role in which I played prominent in diplomacy. Once a prosperous country which aided closely by USA government, my people has been awakened by the economic instability issues.
Desperate and alone. Egypt is now a country of chaos. It assassinated my wife and 1 child. Now I have nobody left. Pleading you to keep the above misfortune which has never been publicized and should be kept secret for Egyptians and the country. I have been kept wise and awakened by reality in Allah.
I have made up my mind to come to your country to start a new life. Allah will open your heart and wisdom for the TOP SECRET deal. I am in position with the total sum of US$ 3,000,000.00 (Three Million United State Dollars) kept in a box in a foreign Finance Security Company. I have had discussions with its Regional Manager regarding every movement of the box deposited in their security company to a foreign country. He has understood my condition and is ready to attend to my request immediately. The kind-hearted manager did not know the content of the box as it has been packed and box when it reached his office. He helped me with the pure heart and understanding that the political instability in Egypt has left me alone.
Please help to claim this box to be received in your country. You will use the money in the box for investment. If you are serious and capable to handle this deal, get back to me NOW at (e-mail address removed for safety reasons). There is no more time to waste. Egypt is in chaos. The biggest chaos that has made Allah to seek this route to success with YOU.
THIS IS AGAIN A SECRET DEAL which can be our gate of success and breakthrough!
\Adel Aly Elwy Mohamed."
Thursday, March 03, 2011
The Lunatic Handicaps the Field for 2012...
We got us some fireworks a'comin' in about a year. The fate of the Republic is at stake; will we continue down the primrose path of Barack Obama, the Great Half-White Dope, who's enlightened policies of Communism with a Pepsi Logo at home, and Assuming the Position Abroad, are bringing the American Experiment this-close to an end, or will we Americans finally wise up, admit we've made a mistake, and put the adults back in charge before we become Zimbabwe --only with baseball?
We can pretty much tell who will run for the office of the Presidency on the democratic side; Barack Obambi is the incumbent, and his biggest threat to a repeat for the nomination is a woman so vile that her picture is next to the words 'vomit', 'douche-chill' and 'queef' in the dictionary: Hillary Clinton. Which one of them gets to pretend that they have any core principles and simply recycle the same libtard boilerplate pablum they've been puking up for the last 60 years is, at the moment, irrelevant; one is bad, and the other is only (arguably) infinitesimally-marginally better.
The choice on the Left is between a man with a resume so thin that you wouldn't hire him as night shift manager at your local Taco Bell, but who was elected anyway because of the sheer panic of the American electorate, or a woman who has a horndog of a husband who would fuck a catcher's mitt -- if it held still long enough -- and who's relationship with honesty is as strained and distant as Charlie Sheen's is with reality. Both are self-promoting charlatans, so one is not so terribly different from the other.
The folks to watch, however, are the on the other side of the aisle. The Republican Party has an opportunity to put someone in the White House who has infinitely more qualifications and intelligence than what's there now. They have the ability to nominate someone who is at least marginally more competent.
As a public service -- because that's the sort of civic-minded douche I am -- I will break down the presumptive Republican candidates for President in 2012, and give you my opinions on who can win, who should win, and why they should/shouldn't.
First, a word about the Second-Tier candidates, and the 'Hell Must Have Frozen Over' longshots;
While I'm certain that Michelle Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Tim Pawlenty, Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, and Hayley Barbour are (mostly) fine people, none of them stands much of a chance to garner the nomination. The reasons for this are varied: Bachmann is smart and attractive, but has that thousand-yard stare we usually associate with someone on recreational pharmaceuticals. Santorum is sooooo 1990's GOP Establishment that you can practically smell the pork. Daniels reminds me of a buttoned-down dentist -- one who probably goes home to his leather-clad wife who greets him with a ball-gag, a jar of Vapo-Rub, and a cat-o-nine tails. Pence's only claim to fame is that Ann Coulter once said he was the bestest conservative, EVAH!, in a GOP-controlled Congress that spent money like drunken sailors on shore leave. I beat Paul Ryan up for his milk money, and gave him a Wedgie, a Swirlie and Double Wet Willie, just last week. Christie already has a tough job to do -- and we haven't seen if he can actually do it, yet -- and a vote for Hayley Barber is about as effective and useful as a vote for Boss Hogg was in stoppin' them Duke Boys.
Don't get me started on Ron Paul. The Pot-Smoking wing of the GOP (i.e. Libertarians) might be able to rig a CPAC straw poll, but there's not enough of them to win a national election. Pawlenty reminds me of a box of No-Frills Brand Corn Flakes; there ain't enough sugar and blueberries to hide the blandness.
There are some in many (small 'c' intentional) conservative circles who consider these folks to be prime Presidential timber, but no, they ain't. Primarily because none of them can win, or even get enough support to make a decent showing. In most cases, these folks represent a single issue, maybe two, that appeals to a particular subset of GOP voters who, no matter how stupid or irrelevant the point at hand may be, still want to feel as if their view was advanced and that at least someone heard them out.
However, elections are not won by who plays the 'I-Support-the-Flame-Throwers-and-Hand-Grenades-for-Everyone' game, or who makes the required pilgrimages to Bob Jones University, or who kisses the grave of Jerry Falwell with the most reverence, nor are they won by someone who stands upon the podium, fist shaking in the air, condemning the buttfuckers to the eternal torments of Hell. Neither are they won by the candidate who pledges the most support for Israel, because without Israel there can be no Rapture, as we all know. They are won by people who put forward the best vision for the future of the country, consistent with the American values of fair play, respect for the governed and their institutions, and our common, Constitutional beliefs. Someone who can appeal to our better natures; someone who can sell us a plan for our future that seems the most reasonable, and most achievable.
We don't need another lockstep ideologue -- we already have one, and note how well that's working out -- nor do we need a Super-Duper-Fire-and-Brimstone-Conservative; at this moment we only need someone who's conservative enough, and even at that, conservative enough where it really, really counts.
So, here are your probable choices, and some carefully-thought out opinions on each. Discuss and enjoy;
1. Mitt Romney:
Poor Mitt Romney. He's a pretty decent guy, I think, but he has two major handicaps. First, he presided over a disaterous version of socialized medicine (the Ur-Obamacare) as governor of Massachusetts. Considering that one of the biggest complaints of Americans these days, and the Tea Party in particular, is the unconstitutional and enormously-expensive monstrosity that is ObamaCare, this is a self-inflicted wound from which Romney will possibly never recover if he has national aspirations.
He could, it's true, simply step up to a microphone somewhere and say "Hey, I know I've fucked up, and it hasn't worked. In fact, it's failed spectacularly. It didn't lower costs, it didn't make insurance easier to get, it resulted in increased taxes, regulation, and limited the consumer's freedom of choice. But, and here's the important part; I know why it didn't work, and why it can never work, and so not only will I defeat Obama Care, I'll make certain our health care system is reformed by the free market, and not by Congress by an unconstitutional maneuver in the dead of night."
He could do that, but then guess what happens to him? The Perpetually Pantybunched Wing of the GOP (the so-called 'Real' Conservatives) would call him...wait for it...a flip-flopper, and if there's anything they hate more than a happily-married homosexual, it's a hypocrite. Especially when you've already flip-flopped, twice, on their other pet peeve, Abortion.
Even assuming that Romney could survive those hits, by getting enough moderates and independents to drown out the bring-back-the-Victorian-Age bunch, he has one other fatal flaw: He's a Mormon. In this day and age that shouldn't matter one bit, but in many places in the Andy-Griffith-Show south, being Mormon is the next best thing to being an admitted child molester, which is, incidentally, what a lot of folks in those parts happen to think Catholics are, too.
Spare me the defensive e-mails extolling Southern Open-mindedness and intellectual sophistication, Goober: I've lived in the South, I know. For every Southerner who can speak German, recite Shakespeare by heart, or who once read Flaubert, there's 20 others who don't piss without permission or guidance from Pastor Bob. Besides, everyone knows you can't win South Carolina without bowing at Bob Jones U, and they'd burn the joint down before they let a polygamist apostate defile the place by walking upon that Sacred Ground.
Conclusion: Mitt Romney can't shake the flip-flopper and Mormon tags, and he violated core Republican values by advocating for and then installing a socialized medicine scheme. These cannot be overborne by his obvious business acumen and male-model good looks. He can't carry enough primaries in the Southern states to get the nomination, and if you put him on the ticket as VP, he's a liability with the Guns-God-and-Gays Wing of the GOP who remember when he was Pro-Choice...two positions ago.
2. Sarah Palin:
Ah, Lovely Sarah...what I would do to that woman! Let me put it to you this way; I would gladly bump uglies with Sarah America, but I wouldn't vote for her if you paid me to. I base this opinion on the fact that I'm just sick-and-tired of Sarah Palin. She's not wrong on too many issues, mind you, it's just that I have seen...and heard...far too much of her. In this regard, Palin is on the same plane as Obama; I see..and unfortunately, hear...both every freakin' day, and the prospect of seeing/hearing them again every day for the next four years just doesn't appeal. I'd rather take up High Calonic as a hobby. Besides, after that initial Pitbull/lipstick joke which launched her to a weird form of superstardom, there's been precious little to recommend her for higher office.
Oh, sure, there's that Tea Party thing, but here's the catch; Sarah Palin isn't so much a leader of the Tea Party, as much as she's a parasite upon it.
If Palin threw her panties into the ring she'd spend all of her time defending herself (and her children) against all sorts of liberal libel (even worse than what she's unjustly endured to this point!). My impression of Sarah Palin, in recent days, is that she has lost much of what made her attractive as a candidate in 2008, which was her authenticity. The libtard media attacks, the Katie Couric fiasco, the repeated questioning of her fitness for office, her quitting half-way through her term as Governor in order to suck up cash from books and appearances have turned Sarah Palin into that which we are supposed to despise these days; the Polished, Professional Politician. She seems canned, nowadays, too well prepared, programmed and trained to blindly 'stay on message' and 'get the talking points out' which is a far cry from the Old Sarah that I used to know and love.
The knocks on Palin; media hates her (then again, they hate everybody who doesn't kiss their ass and play their game), she's seen in some quarters as a quitter, even Obama would have more experience as a head-of-state than she would come 2012, and she represents a right-wing social agenda that, thanks to a lackluster economy, is taking a back seat to economic issues even amongst rock-ribbed social issue republicans. Besides, the possibility of a Palin win brings with it dire consequences. These are:
a. Tiny Fey's fifteen minutes would be unreasonably and unbearably extended.
b. The horrifying prospect of 4 more years of Andrew Sullivan/Maureen Dowd ruminations upon her vagina.
I just don't think Palin is up to the task.
Conclusion: Sarah Palin, even with Tea Party help, can't overcome whichever dingbat the Left throws up for election. She would make some GOP moderate a very good VP -- she's a visible sign to old-line curmudgeons that the GOP hasn't totally abandoned social issues, and her Tea Party legions will back a hard-core fiscal conservative to the death -- but that's about it.
Oh, and she's welcome to call me at any time of day or night for a little heavy breathing.
3. Mike Huckabee:
Reverend Huckabee gave aging hunk of rapidly-decaying dogshit, John McCain, a run for his money there towards the end of the last GOP primaries, but that's nothing to brag about; after all, it was John McCain, and if a camel is a horse designed by committee, then John McCain was a candidate crafted by a bunch of drunken monkeys with Down's Syndrome. McCain only got the nod because there was no one else, and Ol' Huck managed to stick around solely because the Bible Thumpers had no place else to go. Some of them just wouldn't hold their nose and vote for McCain, even if that meant Barack Obama won.
The good thing about Huckabee is that he's a reasonable man, and if there's one thing American politics lacks these days it's reasonable people. If you doubt this, turn on your television and watch the Parade of Retards that show up on the nightly newscasts; Obama, Pelosi, Reid, McCain, Schumer, Weiner, Frank, McConnell, Jackson-Lee, Rangel, Kerry, et. al. We could use a level-headed guy, but unfortunately, level-headed guys don't get to be President in America. I would hazard to say that the last reasonable man we had in the White House was John Quincy Adams, or maybe even Jefferson. People want passion and personality in their leaders, whether it's the uncontrollable lusts and lovable roguishness of William J. Clintoon, the Precocious Irish-Setter-like-Dumbass-ness of Joe Biden, the Born-Again Assurance of George W. Bushtard, the Teleprompter-and-Hint-of-Black-Preacher Routine of Ba-Hack Obama.
Huckabee, as smart and reasonable as he is, is about as interesting as burnt toast. He's also a little too free and easy with the use of subliminal religious symbolism for my tastes. He could be my Confessor, but I wouldn't expect him to be the guy to eliminate the Welfare State. If there's anyone in the field who could be the poster child for GWB's Compassionate Conservatism, that would be Mike Huckabee.
Huckabee's greatest detriment, however, is that he has a Willie Horton situation hanging over his head. As Governor of Arkansas (which is sort of like being elected the Smartest Retard in the Class), Huck pardoned a very nasty criminal who later killed someone. While the Left squealed like stuck pigs when Mike Dukakis was handcuffed to the 'racist', 'unfair', 'dirty politics' vision of Willie Horton, they'd absolutely line up with unrestrained, pee-in-your-pants glee for a chance to to hammer Huck over the head with a similar bunch of charges.
Conclusion; Huck is someone's VP. He brings in the Mindless Godbot vote, and he softens the image of the GOP as a bunch of rich guys who want your grandmother to subsist on Alpo and rainwater so that Wall Street can better afford gold-plated-and-diamond-encrusted, remote-controlled toilet seats. If you can keep him from mentioning God every five minutes, and he gets the chance to explain his positions and viewpoints, he's a very likable man. He just can't win because he doesn't generate any buzz.
4. Newt Gingrich:
Now this is the guy the GOP should have tapped in 2008. The reason being that Newt Gingrich's style of forceful, crystal-clear logic was the perfect foil to Obama's inflated Hopenchangey bullshit. Unfortunately, in 2007, Newt Gingrich couldn't get elected Dog Catcher in East Buttfuck, Podunk, U.S.A. The reason why? The 'Weren't Hoopskirts and Chastity Belts the Best Things Ever?' wing of the GOP would rather drink Drano with a Battery Acid chaser than nominate a man who ran through more wives than Henry the Eighth, even if he was a fiscally-conservative, law-and-order, America-is-the-best-goddamn-country-on-Earth, kill-the-terrorists, No-Gay-Marriage, No-Abortion, No-Welfare, Free-markets-forever Warrior.
However, this time around social conservatism is taking a backseat to economic recovery, and the string of wives and mistresses is not as much of an issue as it would have been in the past. I think a large number of social conservatives are coming around to the idea that neither Jesus nor Reagan is coming back to save America, and that instead of concentrating on getting the most pristine representative of conservatism we can get, they'd be better served by settling for the best standard-bearer, instead. Nowadays -- after two years of Obama -- the main issue is effectiveness.
And Gingrich is quite possibly the most effective of the presumptive front-runners. He's a former Speaker of the House, which means he knows how Congress operates, and would have the advantage of being able to figure out how to best get his agenda through. Ginigrich is a historian, which means he has a depth of knowledge about democracy, it's traditions, and the ability to learn from the lessons of the past so as to not make (too many of) the same mistakes our more recent bad excuses for Presidents have made. If there's a knock on Gingrich from my point of view, it's this: all this will-he-or-won't-he-I'm-forming-a-committee-I'm-travelling-to-Iowa-but-I'm-not-certain-I'm-running bullshit is getting old. Shit or get off the pot, already, Newt. There's playing it close to the vest, and then there's being a fucking tease.
The best part about a Gingrich candidacy? Newt Gingrich is a lightbulb, while Barack the First and The Hildebeest are mere shadows. He would clean the streets with either in a debate, and for the first time in a very long time in American politics, the differences in ideals, agendas, and level of relative competence would be so stark as to leave the vast majority wondering just what the fuck it was they ever saw in Liberalism.
Conclusion: Newt Gingrich is the best GOP candidate out there. His former bad behavior is no longer relevant, considering the national emergency and mood, and compared to Bill Clinton -- who got two terms -- Newt is a fucking Boy Scout, so any mention of his past indiscretions can be mostly neutralized by the "you didn't say that about Clinton, and you all think he was the greatest thing ever" card. If he would just stop this contrived 'indecision' nonsense, and get in the game, he'd probably win in 2012 by a 20-point margin.
We can pretty much tell who will run for the office of the Presidency on the democratic side; Barack Obambi is the incumbent, and his biggest threat to a repeat for the nomination is a woman so vile that her picture is next to the words 'vomit', 'douche-chill' and 'queef' in the dictionary: Hillary Clinton. Which one of them gets to pretend that they have any core principles and simply recycle the same libtard boilerplate pablum they've been puking up for the last 60 years is, at the moment, irrelevant; one is bad, and the other is only (arguably) infinitesimally-marginally better.
The choice on the Left is between a man with a resume so thin that you wouldn't hire him as night shift manager at your local Taco Bell, but who was elected anyway because of the sheer panic of the American electorate, or a woman who has a horndog of a husband who would fuck a catcher's mitt -- if it held still long enough -- and who's relationship with honesty is as strained and distant as Charlie Sheen's is with reality. Both are self-promoting charlatans, so one is not so terribly different from the other.
The folks to watch, however, are the on the other side of the aisle. The Republican Party has an opportunity to put someone in the White House who has infinitely more qualifications and intelligence than what's there now. They have the ability to nominate someone who is at least marginally more competent.
As a public service -- because that's the sort of civic-minded douche I am -- I will break down the presumptive Republican candidates for President in 2012, and give you my opinions on who can win, who should win, and why they should/shouldn't.
First, a word about the Second-Tier candidates, and the 'Hell Must Have Frozen Over' longshots;
While I'm certain that Michelle Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Tim Pawlenty, Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, and Hayley Barbour are (mostly) fine people, none of them stands much of a chance to garner the nomination. The reasons for this are varied: Bachmann is smart and attractive, but has that thousand-yard stare we usually associate with someone on recreational pharmaceuticals. Santorum is sooooo 1990's GOP Establishment that you can practically smell the pork. Daniels reminds me of a buttoned-down dentist -- one who probably goes home to his leather-clad wife who greets him with a ball-gag, a jar of Vapo-Rub, and a cat-o-nine tails. Pence's only claim to fame is that Ann Coulter once said he was the bestest conservative, EVAH!, in a GOP-controlled Congress that spent money like drunken sailors on shore leave. I beat Paul Ryan up for his milk money, and gave him a Wedgie, a Swirlie and Double Wet Willie, just last week. Christie already has a tough job to do -- and we haven't seen if he can actually do it, yet -- and a vote for Hayley Barber is about as effective and useful as a vote for Boss Hogg was in stoppin' them Duke Boys.
Don't get me started on Ron Paul. The Pot-Smoking wing of the GOP (i.e. Libertarians) might be able to rig a CPAC straw poll, but there's not enough of them to win a national election. Pawlenty reminds me of a box of No-Frills Brand Corn Flakes; there ain't enough sugar and blueberries to hide the blandness.
There are some in many (small 'c' intentional) conservative circles who consider these folks to be prime Presidential timber, but no, they ain't. Primarily because none of them can win, or even get enough support to make a decent showing. In most cases, these folks represent a single issue, maybe two, that appeals to a particular subset of GOP voters who, no matter how stupid or irrelevant the point at hand may be, still want to feel as if their view was advanced and that at least someone heard them out.
However, elections are not won by who plays the 'I-Support-the-Flame-Throwers-and-Hand-Grenades-for-Everyone' game, or who makes the required pilgrimages to Bob Jones University, or who kisses the grave of Jerry Falwell with the most reverence, nor are they won by someone who stands upon the podium, fist shaking in the air, condemning the buttfuckers to the eternal torments of Hell. Neither are they won by the candidate who pledges the most support for Israel, because without Israel there can be no Rapture, as we all know. They are won by people who put forward the best vision for the future of the country, consistent with the American values of fair play, respect for the governed and their institutions, and our common, Constitutional beliefs. Someone who can appeal to our better natures; someone who can sell us a plan for our future that seems the most reasonable, and most achievable.
We don't need another lockstep ideologue -- we already have one, and note how well that's working out -- nor do we need a Super-Duper-Fire-and-Brimstone-Conservative; at this moment we only need someone who's conservative enough, and even at that, conservative enough where it really, really counts.
So, here are your probable choices, and some carefully-thought out opinions on each. Discuss and enjoy;
1. Mitt Romney:
Poor Mitt Romney. He's a pretty decent guy, I think, but he has two major handicaps. First, he presided over a disaterous version of socialized medicine (the Ur-Obamacare) as governor of Massachusetts. Considering that one of the biggest complaints of Americans these days, and the Tea Party in particular, is the unconstitutional and enormously-expensive monstrosity that is ObamaCare, this is a self-inflicted wound from which Romney will possibly never recover if he has national aspirations.
He could, it's true, simply step up to a microphone somewhere and say "Hey, I know I've fucked up, and it hasn't worked. In fact, it's failed spectacularly. It didn't lower costs, it didn't make insurance easier to get, it resulted in increased taxes, regulation, and limited the consumer's freedom of choice. But, and here's the important part; I know why it didn't work, and why it can never work, and so not only will I defeat Obama Care, I'll make certain our health care system is reformed by the free market, and not by Congress by an unconstitutional maneuver in the dead of night."
He could do that, but then guess what happens to him? The Perpetually Pantybunched Wing of the GOP (the so-called 'Real' Conservatives) would call him...wait for it...a flip-flopper, and if there's anything they hate more than a happily-married homosexual, it's a hypocrite. Especially when you've already flip-flopped, twice, on their other pet peeve, Abortion.
Even assuming that Romney could survive those hits, by getting enough moderates and independents to drown out the bring-back-the-Victorian-Age bunch, he has one other fatal flaw: He's a Mormon. In this day and age that shouldn't matter one bit, but in many places in the Andy-Griffith-Show south, being Mormon is the next best thing to being an admitted child molester, which is, incidentally, what a lot of folks in those parts happen to think Catholics are, too.
Spare me the defensive e-mails extolling Southern Open-mindedness and intellectual sophistication, Goober: I've lived in the South, I know. For every Southerner who can speak German, recite Shakespeare by heart, or who once read Flaubert, there's 20 others who don't piss without permission or guidance from Pastor Bob. Besides, everyone knows you can't win South Carolina without bowing at Bob Jones U, and they'd burn the joint down before they let a polygamist apostate defile the place by walking upon that Sacred Ground.
Conclusion: Mitt Romney can't shake the flip-flopper and Mormon tags, and he violated core Republican values by advocating for and then installing a socialized medicine scheme. These cannot be overborne by his obvious business acumen and male-model good looks. He can't carry enough primaries in the Southern states to get the nomination, and if you put him on the ticket as VP, he's a liability with the Guns-God-and-Gays Wing of the GOP who remember when he was Pro-Choice...two positions ago.
2. Sarah Palin:
Ah, Lovely Sarah...what I would do to that woman! Let me put it to you this way; I would gladly bump uglies with Sarah America, but I wouldn't vote for her if you paid me to. I base this opinion on the fact that I'm just sick-and-tired of Sarah Palin. She's not wrong on too many issues, mind you, it's just that I have seen...and heard...far too much of her. In this regard, Palin is on the same plane as Obama; I see..and unfortunately, hear...both every freakin' day, and the prospect of seeing/hearing them again every day for the next four years just doesn't appeal. I'd rather take up High Calonic as a hobby. Besides, after that initial Pitbull/lipstick joke which launched her to a weird form of superstardom, there's been precious little to recommend her for higher office.
Oh, sure, there's that Tea Party thing, but here's the catch; Sarah Palin isn't so much a leader of the Tea Party, as much as she's a parasite upon it.
If Palin threw her panties into the ring she'd spend all of her time defending herself (and her children) against all sorts of liberal libel (even worse than what she's unjustly endured to this point!). My impression of Sarah Palin, in recent days, is that she has lost much of what made her attractive as a candidate in 2008, which was her authenticity. The libtard media attacks, the Katie Couric fiasco, the repeated questioning of her fitness for office, her quitting half-way through her term as Governor in order to suck up cash from books and appearances have turned Sarah Palin into that which we are supposed to despise these days; the Polished, Professional Politician. She seems canned, nowadays, too well prepared, programmed and trained to blindly 'stay on message' and 'get the talking points out' which is a far cry from the Old Sarah that I used to know and love.
The knocks on Palin; media hates her (then again, they hate everybody who doesn't kiss their ass and play their game), she's seen in some quarters as a quitter, even Obama would have more experience as a head-of-state than she would come 2012, and she represents a right-wing social agenda that, thanks to a lackluster economy, is taking a back seat to economic issues even amongst rock-ribbed social issue republicans. Besides, the possibility of a Palin win brings with it dire consequences. These are:
a. Tiny Fey's fifteen minutes would be unreasonably and unbearably extended.
b. The horrifying prospect of 4 more years of Andrew Sullivan/Maureen Dowd ruminations upon her vagina.
I just don't think Palin is up to the task.
Conclusion: Sarah Palin, even with Tea Party help, can't overcome whichever dingbat the Left throws up for election. She would make some GOP moderate a very good VP -- she's a visible sign to old-line curmudgeons that the GOP hasn't totally abandoned social issues, and her Tea Party legions will back a hard-core fiscal conservative to the death -- but that's about it.
Oh, and she's welcome to call me at any time of day or night for a little heavy breathing.
3. Mike Huckabee:
Reverend Huckabee gave aging hunk of rapidly-decaying dogshit, John McCain, a run for his money there towards the end of the last GOP primaries, but that's nothing to brag about; after all, it was John McCain, and if a camel is a horse designed by committee, then John McCain was a candidate crafted by a bunch of drunken monkeys with Down's Syndrome. McCain only got the nod because there was no one else, and Ol' Huck managed to stick around solely because the Bible Thumpers had no place else to go. Some of them just wouldn't hold their nose and vote for McCain, even if that meant Barack Obama won.
The good thing about Huckabee is that he's a reasonable man, and if there's one thing American politics lacks these days it's reasonable people. If you doubt this, turn on your television and watch the Parade of Retards that show up on the nightly newscasts; Obama, Pelosi, Reid, McCain, Schumer, Weiner, Frank, McConnell, Jackson-Lee, Rangel, Kerry, et. al. We could use a level-headed guy, but unfortunately, level-headed guys don't get to be President in America. I would hazard to say that the last reasonable man we had in the White House was John Quincy Adams, or maybe even Jefferson. People want passion and personality in their leaders, whether it's the uncontrollable lusts and lovable roguishness of William J. Clintoon, the Precocious Irish-Setter-like-Dumbass-ness of Joe Biden, the Born-Again Assurance of George W. Bushtard, the Teleprompter-and-Hint-of-Black-Preacher Routine of Ba-Hack Obama.
Huckabee, as smart and reasonable as he is, is about as interesting as burnt toast. He's also a little too free and easy with the use of subliminal religious symbolism for my tastes. He could be my Confessor, but I wouldn't expect him to be the guy to eliminate the Welfare State. If there's anyone in the field who could be the poster child for GWB's Compassionate Conservatism, that would be Mike Huckabee.
Huckabee's greatest detriment, however, is that he has a Willie Horton situation hanging over his head. As Governor of Arkansas (which is sort of like being elected the Smartest Retard in the Class), Huck pardoned a very nasty criminal who later killed someone. While the Left squealed like stuck pigs when Mike Dukakis was handcuffed to the 'racist', 'unfair', 'dirty politics' vision of Willie Horton, they'd absolutely line up with unrestrained, pee-in-your-pants glee for a chance to to hammer Huck over the head with a similar bunch of charges.
Conclusion; Huck is someone's VP. He brings in the Mindless Godbot vote, and he softens the image of the GOP as a bunch of rich guys who want your grandmother to subsist on Alpo and rainwater so that Wall Street can better afford gold-plated-and-diamond-encrusted, remote-controlled toilet seats. If you can keep him from mentioning God every five minutes, and he gets the chance to explain his positions and viewpoints, he's a very likable man. He just can't win because he doesn't generate any buzz.
4. Newt Gingrich:
Now this is the guy the GOP should have tapped in 2008. The reason being that Newt Gingrich's style of forceful, crystal-clear logic was the perfect foil to Obama's inflated Hopenchangey bullshit. Unfortunately, in 2007, Newt Gingrich couldn't get elected Dog Catcher in East Buttfuck, Podunk, U.S.A. The reason why? The 'Weren't Hoopskirts and Chastity Belts the Best Things Ever?' wing of the GOP would rather drink Drano with a Battery Acid chaser than nominate a man who ran through more wives than Henry the Eighth, even if he was a fiscally-conservative, law-and-order, America-is-the-best-goddamn-country-on-Earth, kill-the-terrorists, No-Gay-Marriage, No-Abortion, No-Welfare, Free-markets-forever Warrior.
However, this time around social conservatism is taking a backseat to economic recovery, and the string of wives and mistresses is not as much of an issue as it would have been in the past. I think a large number of social conservatives are coming around to the idea that neither Jesus nor Reagan is coming back to save America, and that instead of concentrating on getting the most pristine representative of conservatism we can get, they'd be better served by settling for the best standard-bearer, instead. Nowadays -- after two years of Obama -- the main issue is effectiveness.
And Gingrich is quite possibly the most effective of the presumptive front-runners. He's a former Speaker of the House, which means he knows how Congress operates, and would have the advantage of being able to figure out how to best get his agenda through. Ginigrich is a historian, which means he has a depth of knowledge about democracy, it's traditions, and the ability to learn from the lessons of the past so as to not make (too many of) the same mistakes our more recent bad excuses for Presidents have made. If there's a knock on Gingrich from my point of view, it's this: all this will-he-or-won't-he-I'm-forming-a-committee-I'm-travelling-to-Iowa-but-I'm-not-certain-I'm-running bullshit is getting old. Shit or get off the pot, already, Newt. There's playing it close to the vest, and then there's being a fucking tease.
The best part about a Gingrich candidacy? Newt Gingrich is a lightbulb, while Barack the First and The Hildebeest are mere shadows. He would clean the streets with either in a debate, and for the first time in a very long time in American politics, the differences in ideals, agendas, and level of relative competence would be so stark as to leave the vast majority wondering just what the fuck it was they ever saw in Liberalism.
Conclusion: Newt Gingrich is the best GOP candidate out there. His former bad behavior is no longer relevant, considering the national emergency and mood, and compared to Bill Clinton -- who got two terms -- Newt is a fucking Boy Scout, so any mention of his past indiscretions can be mostly neutralized by the "you didn't say that about Clinton, and you all think he was the greatest thing ever" card. If he would just stop this contrived 'indecision' nonsense, and get in the game, he'd probably win in 2012 by a 20-point margin.
Iowahawk Gets All Serious an' Stuff...
And it initially frightened me. I got that feeling of impending doom that I used to get when Bill Bixby was about to turn into that Lou Ferigno guy, only with a really bad skin condition and better vocabulary.
But I gotta say this: the man knows him some math, and considering that the target of his ire was one Paul Krugman, the New York Times Village Idiot, I still got me a chuckle out of it.
Krugman, in disguise as a serious opinion journalist, tried to pass on a piece of democratic party/teacher's union douchebaggery that was supposed to pass as a reason why unionized schools in Wisconsin were better than in most places, and the implication is that the knuckle-dragging doofuses simmering on near-riot in Madison are justified in the defense of their inflated, taxpayer-supplied paychecks and benefit plans.
But Good Ol' Iowahawk takes that tired old meme apart at the seams. You have to read it. It's a must read for anyone who is a fan of facts. Something Krugman seems almost allergic to.
While I'm at it, I will repeat something I've said about Paul Krugman for years;
If you put Paul Krugman's brain in a bird, it would fly backwards, and eventually, up it's own ass.
It is my opinion that Paul Krugman is little more than a paid, professional liar. I have come to this conclusion after spending many a year trying to decide if it's really possible for someone to be this dumb, this willfully blind, so consistently wrong on just about every subject upon which he feels compelled to put pen to paper, disdainful of facts or logic, without there being an underlying medical or genetic defect. So far as anyone knows, there has never been a Paul Krugman Telethon, so I must conclude that Krugman doesn't actually believe anything he writes. Therefore, the only reason to write it is either that he's just an awfully evil man, or there's just really good money in lying.
But I gotta say this: the man knows him some math, and considering that the target of his ire was one Paul Krugman, the New York Times Village Idiot, I still got me a chuckle out of it.
Krugman, in disguise as a serious opinion journalist, tried to pass on a piece of democratic party/teacher's union douchebaggery that was supposed to pass as a reason why unionized schools in Wisconsin were better than in most places, and the implication is that the knuckle-dragging doofuses simmering on near-riot in Madison are justified in the defense of their inflated, taxpayer-supplied paychecks and benefit plans.
But Good Ol' Iowahawk takes that tired old meme apart at the seams. You have to read it. It's a must read for anyone who is a fan of facts. Something Krugman seems almost allergic to.
While I'm at it, I will repeat something I've said about Paul Krugman for years;
If you put Paul Krugman's brain in a bird, it would fly backwards, and eventually, up it's own ass.
It is my opinion that Paul Krugman is little more than a paid, professional liar. I have come to this conclusion after spending many a year trying to decide if it's really possible for someone to be this dumb, this willfully blind, so consistently wrong on just about every subject upon which he feels compelled to put pen to paper, disdainful of facts or logic, without there being an underlying medical or genetic defect. So far as anyone knows, there has never been a Paul Krugman Telethon, so I must conclude that Krugman doesn't actually believe anything he writes. Therefore, the only reason to write it is either that he's just an awfully evil man, or there's just really good money in lying.
Why The Wisconsin Union Battle is Important...
Just read this Micheal Goodwin column in yesterday's New York Post, and try to hold your breakfast down.
The City of New York spends $730 million a year on 7,300 so-called teachers that it doesn't even want? You know what? I can believe it...easily. I don't know which is worse; that staggering sum, or the fact that I have accepted this as most likely as close to the truth as we're ever going to get about what an expensive cesspool unionized public education has become without even thinking twice about it.
$730 million for 7,300 teachers, most incompetent, some criminal, who just can't be fired because the unions have negotiated a Byzantine 'review' process that keeps even the child molesters on the payroll, and collecting benefits, for years. Even if they're sitting in jail.
I was shocked to discover, if Godwin's figures are correct, that the average New York City teacher has received a 43% (cumulative) pay raise since Mayor Pantybunch... sorry, that's Bloomberg... has been in office. And this douchebag is supposed to be a financial genius? That is unconscionable when you stop to consider that in return, he didn't even get the ability to chuck the worst teachers in the system onto the unemployment line.
But I'm certain he's monitoring their salt intake very carefully.
Start with the teacher I met on the subway yesterday -- on her way to some sort of rally to 'support' her educator comrades in Wisconsin -- who was carrying a hand-written sign upon which she had spelled the state's name W-I-N-S-C-O-N-S-I-N. Get that idiot out of the classroom, immediately. How much do you want to bet that she was probably rated in the top 50% of teachers in NYC, too? When I made her aware of her grievous spelling error and asked how she could justify her continued presence in a classroom with baleful spelling skills like that, she told me to "go mind your own fucking business...", and took great pride in telling me she has a Master's Degree -- that's why she deserves everything in Creation, you see -- and what the fuck do I know about anything?
Nice. Just the sort of role model you want for your kids, I'm sure.
For all of those mouth-breathing idiots idling at near-riot in Madison, who just don't seem to get it, here's why my state is broke -- and this is why we taxpayers are pissed. Your governor is just trying to avoid the same disaster. Unfortunately for you doofuses -- and to the great benefit of Wisconsin taxpayers, and then the country as a whole once Walker's victory infuses some backbone into governors nationally-- he's going to succeed.
The City of New York spends $730 million a year on 7,300 so-called teachers that it doesn't even want? You know what? I can believe it...easily. I don't know which is worse; that staggering sum, or the fact that I have accepted this as most likely as close to the truth as we're ever going to get about what an expensive cesspool unionized public education has become without even thinking twice about it.
$730 million for 7,300 teachers, most incompetent, some criminal, who just can't be fired because the unions have negotiated a Byzantine 'review' process that keeps even the child molesters on the payroll, and collecting benefits, for years. Even if they're sitting in jail.
I was shocked to discover, if Godwin's figures are correct, that the average New York City teacher has received a 43% (cumulative) pay raise since Mayor Pantybunch... sorry, that's Bloomberg... has been in office. And this douchebag is supposed to be a financial genius? That is unconscionable when you stop to consider that in return, he didn't even get the ability to chuck the worst teachers in the system onto the unemployment line.
But I'm certain he's monitoring their salt intake very carefully.
Start with the teacher I met on the subway yesterday -- on her way to some sort of rally to 'support' her educator comrades in Wisconsin -- who was carrying a hand-written sign upon which she had spelled the state's name W-I-N-S-C-O-N-S-I-N. Get that idiot out of the classroom, immediately. How much do you want to bet that she was probably rated in the top 50% of teachers in NYC, too? When I made her aware of her grievous spelling error and asked how she could justify her continued presence in a classroom with baleful spelling skills like that, she told me to "go mind your own fucking business...", and took great pride in telling me she has a Master's Degree -- that's why she deserves everything in Creation, you see -- and what the fuck do I know about anything?
Nice. Just the sort of role model you want for your kids, I'm sure.
For all of those mouth-breathing idiots idling at near-riot in Madison, who just don't seem to get it, here's why my state is broke -- and this is why we taxpayers are pissed. Your governor is just trying to avoid the same disaster. Unfortunately for you doofuses -- and to the great benefit of Wisconsin taxpayers, and then the country as a whole once Walker's victory infuses some backbone into governors nationally-- he's going to succeed.
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
About Charlie Sheen...
Sometimes, when you take a certain position on a subject you have to expect that there will occasionally arise circumstances which either blow your stance to smithereens, or which thrusts you into the curious conundrum of having to split rhetorical hairs in order to justify your viewpoint. For example, I have, on this page, tried to make distinctions between, say, Mohammed Atta and Jared Lee Loughner (one the 9/11 'leader; and the other the Arizona lunatic who shot Rep. Giffords this past January). Both have committed murder, and the immediatly-obvious differences between the two are the scale of their heinous crimes and the motivations behind them.
Atta was a religious fanatic, pumped up on the Islamic propaganda that blames Western Culture for the plight of hapless Arabs (instead of, say, the totalitarian mindset, seventy generations of inbreeding, the sheep-shagging, and a bad mixture of politics and religion), and Loughner was a known nutjob who could find no help in a country with the best healthcare system ever known to mortal men.
I make no excuses for the actions of either. There are no excuses for either, however, I can (and often do) make the following, important distinction; Atta was a trained killer -- a volunteer -- who went into his kamikaze mission convinced of the righteousness of his cause, and the correctness of his method, while Loughner is probably a schizophrenic; before Loughner went off and killed six people and wounded a dozen more, he was simply a very sick man that the "System" (the mental health services, the courts, the Police) -- not to mention his own family -- utterly failed. Had Jared Loughner gotten the same attention as Charlie Sheen at some point in his miserable life, six people might still be alive, and Gabby Giffords would have one less hole in her head.
If Mohammed Atta had found at least one blond with no self-esteem, taste, or gag reflex, there would probably still be two buildings sitting over the 19-acre hole in Lower Manhattan.
People who read this blog regularly ask me how it is that I can make excuses or distinctions for murderers, to which I reply: I most certainly don't, in the sense that I don't try to explain away the actual crimes that they commit. What I have done is simply to state the following truths about people like Jared Loughner, the Discovery Channel gunman, the guy who flew his Cessna into the IRS building in Texas, et. al.
These people have serious medical problems. Their issues are often well-known to the people around them, who never seem to actually do anything to help these guys before they go off, but then in the aftermath will tell any douchebag with a microphone that they knew he was a danger to others, and they were frightened by the prospect of his going ballistic, but never seem to have cared enough to actually take any meaningful actions which would have saved someone's life. But when you state opinions your detractors are always looking to turn whatever you say or write upside down in order to advance their agendas...or, maybe they're really just very poor readers who just don't (want to) understand what I've written...and so the next time someone goes off they want to know what you have to say about THAT, Mr. Defender of the Mentally Unstable?
And so we come to the curious case of Charlie Sheen.
I was hoping to avoid this topic for the simple fact that while Sheen obviously has issues (you have to be a democrat or an Irish Setter to miss them), there is a fine distinction to be made between him and the Jared Lee's and "Crazy Pat" Sherrill's (the Original Post Office Shooter) of this world; Sheen's problems are, probably, mostly self-inflicted wounds. The schizos and the psychotics are born that way and they can't help themselves. People who do enormous amounts of cocaine, bang porn actresses (and really, who in their right mind would? They've only been liberally painted, inside and out, by the jizz of a thousand men. The thought is so disgusting that I'd rather bang Hillary -- twice, with my eyes open, too -- than take a swing at any of those whores), and spend three-day weekends on a drug-and booze-fueled bender that either ends in an exploded ticker, or AIDS, or a combination of both.
Do not equate the Caligula-like excesses of Charlie Sheen with the plight of the seriously mentally ill. While there may be some indications of (minor) mental illness present in Sheen (and his Comrade in Porn-Star Excess, Tiger Woods), the real issues for him appear to revolve around poor impulse control and extreme narcissism. That is NOT the same as some dude born with a poorly-wired brain or a genetic defect that will eventually see him talking to his neighbor's Wiemeraner and coming to the conclusion that the best way to bag Jodie Foster is to shoot at the President of the United States.
Charlie Sheen isn't so much mentally ill as he is someone who's probably never been told "NO". He's living proof that certain personality traits -- which of themselves usually offer no direct threat to anyone -- combined with the ability to actually FINANCE the worst excesses you might imagine, can combine to create a monster. Charlie Sheen would probably be 'cured' if someone just took his fucking credit cards away, denied him access to his bank account for a while, and placed him in an environment where he could not exercise his piss-poor judgement. Given time, the thrills of cocaine and threesomes with extremely-well-used concubines would probably disappear. With the benefit of hindsight and sobriety, Sheen would eventually come around to the idea -- on his own -- that he's been nothing short of a complete ass.
I've seen the interviews: That man is still high, fucking wired, and I don't care how many 'drug tests' he says he's passed in recent weeks. People who are clean and sober don't talk at supersonic speed, don't express ideas that would strike the average person as incredibly bizarre, and aren't convinced that they're Superman and ready to do it all over again -- if only you'll leave him alone. The clean-and-sober also don't cry about being wanting to be left alone while simultaneously begging every swinging dick with a video camera to come and interview them. Charlie Sheen is simply a drug addict with a rather high opinion of himself and more money than most small nations available to boundlessly finance his stupidity; he's not on the same plane as someone who finally gives in to The Voices and shoots up their HomeEc class.
Now, I can't claim to have special knowledge of Charlie, personally. I just recognize the symptoms of his particular collection of issues. The first of these is that he probably has no self-esteem whatsoever, and the string of high-priced-courtesans-with-even-less-self-esteem are merely the first clue. He spends the majority of his time in these recent interviews beating his own chest, posturing, extolling his supposed virtues, bragging. He's proud of what he's 'accomplished' , i.e. ingesting enough cocaine to kill a woolly mammoth and surviving, and making a public spectacle of himself. He truly isn't, though; it's all bravado. Somewhere in his head is the thought "I'm worthless" and the coke-drenched soirees are both escape and deathwish being played out simultaneously. I know this because I've had the same relationship with Rye Whiskey, Tequila and a certain recreational plant in my own life. I look at Charlie and shake my head; been there, done that. The only difference is that I never had the sort of bank account one normally equates with an Oil Sheik, or I might have died a long time ago.
He really wants to destroy himself, on some level, I think, but just doesn't have the courage to put a gun to his head, step out in front of a moving freight train, or jump off a bridge. He's either hoping the booze, drugs and chicks will erase the feeling of helplessness and worthlessness, or, if he's really lucky, take him out without him having to take any action whatsoever. Mostly, it's a front designed to get attention and sympathy. More than likely, he's hoping to 'kill' this version of Charlie Sheen, thinking there's another Charlie beneath it all, misunderstood, unheeded, just itching to bust loose...if only we'll take the time, and give him enough attention, to drag it out. It's a game; Charlie wants us to peel back all his complex layers, all the while putting up a show of resistance. This behavior is probably subconsciously designed to lead him to some tragic event which serves as the "time to grow the fuck up moment" which releases the 'real' Charlie.
Sheen's underlying mental (so-called) 'illnesses' are treatable, but never really 'curable'. Most of these problems are solved with simple behavior modification. Feeling sorry for one's self, narcissism, poor impulse control, craving attention (even negative attention) stupidity and an unerring ability to consistently make the wrong decisions are simple character flaws -- not illnesses. The Psychiatric Establishment has a vested interest in classifying such things as diseases because otherwise it would go bankrupt, and have no reason to exist. It's one thing to 'cure' you of your fingernail biting, addiction to smoking, or poor social graces -- those are the easy ones that don't even involve any actual medicine be practiced at all -- it's an altogether different thing to 'cure' someone who hallucinates without drugs, or who is convinced the Pope is sending him coded messages through his fillings that Piers Morgan is the Anti-Christ. There is no (permanent) medical regime for that, no matter how much the Pshrinks would like you to believe the contrary.
Modern Mental Medicine understands the underlying factors inherent in bad behavior and how to change them; it knows comparatively jack-shit about the inner-workings of a healthy human brain -- let alone one that is laboring under the weight of schizophrenia or psychosis.
But then again, Sigmund Freud was a cocaine addict, too. And he's their God. But, I digress...
You can get over your anxiety disorder or drunkenness by modifying your behavior or recognizing when you're about to do something stupid and taking positive action, but those are not options when you're truly sick. When you're really ill, the only options psychiatric medicine can offer you is either some 'wonder pill' that even the experts will admit to you that they can't explain how, or why, it works, brain surgery, or long-term commitment to a facility, and even all of those options are largely a hit-or-miss affair. Sheen doesn't have a mental illness; he's just a a great, big, full-of-himself douchebag.
So, for all of you jerkoffs filling my mailbox with "Why don't you defend Charlie Sheen, the Obvious Mental Patient, with the same fervor and feeling with which you defended the man who tried to assassinate Gabby Giffords" screeds, I can only reiterate:
The two cases are not comparable. Jared Loughner was/is a deranged man, suffering from a severe mental defect that cannot be cured by medical science, and who was made a pariah by a society that is quite happy to go through life expecting that 'someone' will 'do something' about him, and so spare them the necessity -- and personal inconvenience -- of having to take some responsibility for a sick son, brother, or friend, only to stand around shaking their heads in mock disbelief that the man they all knew was a ticking time-bomb would go berserk and start shooting up a supermarket parking lot.
Charlie Sheen, on the other hand, is just a douchebag with a large bank account, no self-discipline, and a huge ego that combined to become a perfect storm of stupid excess. The reason he gets attention before he does something that gets someone killed is because he's a celebrity, and somehow, in the Great Cosmic Code of Justice that I just don't understand, that makes him someone worth saving, and someone worthy of more sympathy than a would-be political assassin, right?
Fuck no! If all things were truly equal, Jared Loughner would have gotten the same attention Sheen has gotten -- before he killed and maimed -- without having to have been rich and famous. Celebrity Doctors would be rushing to treat Loughner's particular brand of crazy with the same breathless exuberance with which they try to explain away Sheen's on the Boob Tube. Loughner would have gotten the expensive course of 'treatment' (read; internment) that Sheen will no doubt retreat to when he finally tires of playing that 'leave-me-alone-no-come-bask-in-my-badass-self-routine' he's playing at now. Sheen, like Mohammed Atta, knows exactly what he's doing -- he's voluntered, in a sense, too.
There is no excuse for their actions -- whether it's murder or making a public spectacle of yourself -- but Loughner has this mitigating factor in his favor; he's truly sick in a way that medical science cannot comprehend, or effectively treat for very long. His course of 'rehab' now consists of an orange jumpsuit and ends with a lethal injection . Charlie Sheen is just plain sickening, and most --if not all --of his' illnesses' are probably just the result of his own stupidity, and his life will probably be saved.
Atta was a religious fanatic, pumped up on the Islamic propaganda that blames Western Culture for the plight of hapless Arabs (instead of, say, the totalitarian mindset, seventy generations of inbreeding, the sheep-shagging, and a bad mixture of politics and religion), and Loughner was a known nutjob who could find no help in a country with the best healthcare system ever known to mortal men.
I make no excuses for the actions of either. There are no excuses for either, however, I can (and often do) make the following, important distinction; Atta was a trained killer -- a volunteer -- who went into his kamikaze mission convinced of the righteousness of his cause, and the correctness of his method, while Loughner is probably a schizophrenic; before Loughner went off and killed six people and wounded a dozen more, he was simply a very sick man that the "System" (the mental health services, the courts, the Police) -- not to mention his own family -- utterly failed. Had Jared Loughner gotten the same attention as Charlie Sheen at some point in his miserable life, six people might still be alive, and Gabby Giffords would have one less hole in her head.
If Mohammed Atta had found at least one blond with no self-esteem, taste, or gag reflex, there would probably still be two buildings sitting over the 19-acre hole in Lower Manhattan.
People who read this blog regularly ask me how it is that I can make excuses or distinctions for murderers, to which I reply: I most certainly don't, in the sense that I don't try to explain away the actual crimes that they commit. What I have done is simply to state the following truths about people like Jared Loughner, the Discovery Channel gunman, the guy who flew his Cessna into the IRS building in Texas, et. al.
These people have serious medical problems. Their issues are often well-known to the people around them, who never seem to actually do anything to help these guys before they go off, but then in the aftermath will tell any douchebag with a microphone that they knew he was a danger to others, and they were frightened by the prospect of his going ballistic, but never seem to have cared enough to actually take any meaningful actions which would have saved someone's life. But when you state opinions your detractors are always looking to turn whatever you say or write upside down in order to advance their agendas...or, maybe they're really just very poor readers who just don't (want to) understand what I've written...and so the next time someone goes off they want to know what you have to say about THAT, Mr. Defender of the Mentally Unstable?
And so we come to the curious case of Charlie Sheen.
I was hoping to avoid this topic for the simple fact that while Sheen obviously has issues (you have to be a democrat or an Irish Setter to miss them), there is a fine distinction to be made between him and the Jared Lee's and "Crazy Pat" Sherrill's (the Original Post Office Shooter) of this world; Sheen's problems are, probably, mostly self-inflicted wounds. The schizos and the psychotics are born that way and they can't help themselves. People who do enormous amounts of cocaine, bang porn actresses (and really, who in their right mind would? They've only been liberally painted, inside and out, by the jizz of a thousand men. The thought is so disgusting that I'd rather bang Hillary -- twice, with my eyes open, too -- than take a swing at any of those whores), and spend three-day weekends on a drug-and booze-fueled bender that either ends in an exploded ticker, or AIDS, or a combination of both.
Do not equate the Caligula-like excesses of Charlie Sheen with the plight of the seriously mentally ill. While there may be some indications of (minor) mental illness present in Sheen (and his Comrade in Porn-Star Excess, Tiger Woods), the real issues for him appear to revolve around poor impulse control and extreme narcissism. That is NOT the same as some dude born with a poorly-wired brain or a genetic defect that will eventually see him talking to his neighbor's Wiemeraner and coming to the conclusion that the best way to bag Jodie Foster is to shoot at the President of the United States.
Charlie Sheen isn't so much mentally ill as he is someone who's probably never been told "NO". He's living proof that certain personality traits -- which of themselves usually offer no direct threat to anyone -- combined with the ability to actually FINANCE the worst excesses you might imagine, can combine to create a monster. Charlie Sheen would probably be 'cured' if someone just took his fucking credit cards away, denied him access to his bank account for a while, and placed him in an environment where he could not exercise his piss-poor judgement. Given time, the thrills of cocaine and threesomes with extremely-well-used concubines would probably disappear. With the benefit of hindsight and sobriety, Sheen would eventually come around to the idea -- on his own -- that he's been nothing short of a complete ass.
I've seen the interviews: That man is still high, fucking wired, and I don't care how many 'drug tests' he says he's passed in recent weeks. People who are clean and sober don't talk at supersonic speed, don't express ideas that would strike the average person as incredibly bizarre, and aren't convinced that they're Superman and ready to do it all over again -- if only you'll leave him alone. The clean-and-sober also don't cry about being wanting to be left alone while simultaneously begging every swinging dick with a video camera to come and interview them. Charlie Sheen is simply a drug addict with a rather high opinion of himself and more money than most small nations available to boundlessly finance his stupidity; he's not on the same plane as someone who finally gives in to The Voices and shoots up their HomeEc class.
Now, I can't claim to have special knowledge of Charlie, personally. I just recognize the symptoms of his particular collection of issues. The first of these is that he probably has no self-esteem whatsoever, and the string of high-priced-courtesans-with-even-less-self-esteem are merely the first clue. He spends the majority of his time in these recent interviews beating his own chest, posturing, extolling his supposed virtues, bragging. He's proud of what he's 'accomplished' , i.e. ingesting enough cocaine to kill a woolly mammoth and surviving, and making a public spectacle of himself. He truly isn't, though; it's all bravado. Somewhere in his head is the thought "I'm worthless" and the coke-drenched soirees are both escape and deathwish being played out simultaneously. I know this because I've had the same relationship with Rye Whiskey, Tequila and a certain recreational plant in my own life. I look at Charlie and shake my head; been there, done that. The only difference is that I never had the sort of bank account one normally equates with an Oil Sheik, or I might have died a long time ago.
He really wants to destroy himself, on some level, I think, but just doesn't have the courage to put a gun to his head, step out in front of a moving freight train, or jump off a bridge. He's either hoping the booze, drugs and chicks will erase the feeling of helplessness and worthlessness, or, if he's really lucky, take him out without him having to take any action whatsoever. Mostly, it's a front designed to get attention and sympathy. More than likely, he's hoping to 'kill' this version of Charlie Sheen, thinking there's another Charlie beneath it all, misunderstood, unheeded, just itching to bust loose...if only we'll take the time, and give him enough attention, to drag it out. It's a game; Charlie wants us to peel back all his complex layers, all the while putting up a show of resistance. This behavior is probably subconsciously designed to lead him to some tragic event which serves as the "time to grow the fuck up moment" which releases the 'real' Charlie.
Sheen's underlying mental (so-called) 'illnesses' are treatable, but never really 'curable'. Most of these problems are solved with simple behavior modification. Feeling sorry for one's self, narcissism, poor impulse control, craving attention (even negative attention) stupidity and an unerring ability to consistently make the wrong decisions are simple character flaws -- not illnesses. The Psychiatric Establishment has a vested interest in classifying such things as diseases because otherwise it would go bankrupt, and have no reason to exist. It's one thing to 'cure' you of your fingernail biting, addiction to smoking, or poor social graces -- those are the easy ones that don't even involve any actual medicine be practiced at all -- it's an altogether different thing to 'cure' someone who hallucinates without drugs, or who is convinced the Pope is sending him coded messages through his fillings that Piers Morgan is the Anti-Christ. There is no (permanent) medical regime for that, no matter how much the Pshrinks would like you to believe the contrary.
Modern Mental Medicine understands the underlying factors inherent in bad behavior and how to change them; it knows comparatively jack-shit about the inner-workings of a healthy human brain -- let alone one that is laboring under the weight of schizophrenia or psychosis.
But then again, Sigmund Freud was a cocaine addict, too. And he's their God. But, I digress...
You can get over your anxiety disorder or drunkenness by modifying your behavior or recognizing when you're about to do something stupid and taking positive action, but those are not options when you're truly sick. When you're really ill, the only options psychiatric medicine can offer you is either some 'wonder pill' that even the experts will admit to you that they can't explain how, or why, it works, brain surgery, or long-term commitment to a facility, and even all of those options are largely a hit-or-miss affair. Sheen doesn't have a mental illness; he's just a a great, big, full-of-himself douchebag.
So, for all of you jerkoffs filling my mailbox with "Why don't you defend Charlie Sheen, the Obvious Mental Patient, with the same fervor and feeling with which you defended the man who tried to assassinate Gabby Giffords" screeds, I can only reiterate:
The two cases are not comparable. Jared Loughner was/is a deranged man, suffering from a severe mental defect that cannot be cured by medical science, and who was made a pariah by a society that is quite happy to go through life expecting that 'someone' will 'do something' about him, and so spare them the necessity -- and personal inconvenience -- of having to take some responsibility for a sick son, brother, or friend, only to stand around shaking their heads in mock disbelief that the man they all knew was a ticking time-bomb would go berserk and start shooting up a supermarket parking lot.
Charlie Sheen, on the other hand, is just a douchebag with a large bank account, no self-discipline, and a huge ego that combined to become a perfect storm of stupid excess. The reason he gets attention before he does something that gets someone killed is because he's a celebrity, and somehow, in the Great Cosmic Code of Justice that I just don't understand, that makes him someone worth saving, and someone worthy of more sympathy than a would-be political assassin, right?
Fuck no! If all things were truly equal, Jared Loughner would have gotten the same attention Sheen has gotten -- before he killed and maimed -- without having to have been rich and famous. Celebrity Doctors would be rushing to treat Loughner's particular brand of crazy with the same breathless exuberance with which they try to explain away Sheen's on the Boob Tube. Loughner would have gotten the expensive course of 'treatment' (read; internment) that Sheen will no doubt retreat to when he finally tires of playing that 'leave-me-alone-no-come-bask-in-my-badass-self-routine' he's playing at now. Sheen, like Mohammed Atta, knows exactly what he's doing -- he's voluntered, in a sense, too.
There is no excuse for their actions -- whether it's murder or making a public spectacle of yourself -- but Loughner has this mitigating factor in his favor; he's truly sick in a way that medical science cannot comprehend, or effectively treat for very long. His course of 'rehab' now consists of an orange jumpsuit and ends with a lethal injection . Charlie Sheen is just plain sickening, and most --if not all --of his' illnesses' are probably just the result of his own stupidity, and his life will probably be saved.
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Things Have Been Chaotic...
Yeah, I haven't been blogging much lately, but for good reason. I've got a few projects that I'm working on (imagine this: a series of children's books, written by a complete Psychopath! Coming soon!), and I'm out looking for work -- again. I did have a small job almost-lined up, but for some reason (probably related to taxes) that 'client' wants to work on a barter system instead of cash-on-the-barrel.
Sorry, but this Lunatic likes Marlboros, Absolut, and Cheetos, and getting those requires moolah.
What was offered was, potentially, very lucrative...in about 30 years. This customer wanted a little IT work in his little shop and was offering a small collection of relatively-valuable silver coins in return. This would be nice, except:
a) I know little to nothing about numismatics, how to value coins, and how one goes about selling them in such a fashion as to get the best price for them. I can't be bothered with E-bay. I guess I could take them to the Pawn Star guys in Vegas, but that seems like a lot of trouble.
b) The job will require a couple of weeks; I'd like to be paid regularly during that time, if at all possible. That seems to work out best for all involved.
So, I think I'm going to tell this 'client' not only NO, but FUCK NO. It's the 21st Century; we work in Dead Presidents, not how-many-chickens-for-that-sack-of-grain. Otherwise, one might get the idea that the business was, perhaps, cash-poor, or that you might be a dishonest man, and frankly, I don't particularly like either idea.
I've also gotten the (expected) litany of rejection e-mails from the wide range of Big Box Stores in my area. Apparently, if you once programmed computers and ran a multi-billion dollar data center, you're extremely overqualified to put Econo-size, 55-gallon drums of Scope Mouthwash, or Hellman's Mayonnaise upon a Costco shelf, and probably cannot ever be expected to be able to learn how to operate that combination forklift/palette transporter at Home Depot.
Of course, if you have that kind of experience, but are over the age of 40, the software and technology companies don't want you, either; they'd rather pay Sanjay in Bombay 12-cents-an-hour on an outsourcing contract, and then dangle the possibility of an H1-B with a $20,000-year payout in front of his face, knowing he'll jump at the opportunity in much the same way as Bill Clinton would leap bodily at a rack of babybacks, or a trailer-park bimbo with no gag reflex.
Still, I am nothing if not persistent. I'm also coming to the conclusion that depending upon the marketplace to provide me with a living in the current economic environment is probably comparable to simply planting myself on the side of the road somewhere, and simply waiting to die. It's becoming apparent that in this day-and-age that the Old American concept of Making Your Own Fortune is back in vogue, and that given the sheer numbers of my fellow citizens possessed of the most bulletproof stupidity imaginable, that a healthy application of braincells and a little elbow grease should suffice to drop a billion-dollar idea into my lap any day now.
After all, someone is getting rich on Facebook, you know. Never overestimate the taste or intelligence of the American consumer (especialy the 18-35 year-olds) ; if you do, you'll most certainly go broke.
Anyways, I will be back later this afternoon, with some new rantings from the inside of my diseased skull.
Sorry, but this Lunatic likes Marlboros, Absolut, and Cheetos, and getting those requires moolah.
What was offered was, potentially, very lucrative...in about 30 years. This customer wanted a little IT work in his little shop and was offering a small collection of relatively-valuable silver coins in return. This would be nice, except:
a) I know little to nothing about numismatics, how to value coins, and how one goes about selling them in such a fashion as to get the best price for them. I can't be bothered with E-bay. I guess I could take them to the Pawn Star guys in Vegas, but that seems like a lot of trouble.
b) The job will require a couple of weeks; I'd like to be paid regularly during that time, if at all possible. That seems to work out best for all involved.
So, I think I'm going to tell this 'client' not only NO, but FUCK NO. It's the 21st Century; we work in Dead Presidents, not how-many-chickens-for-that-sack-of-grain. Otherwise, one might get the idea that the business was, perhaps, cash-poor, or that you might be a dishonest man, and frankly, I don't particularly like either idea.
I've also gotten the (expected) litany of rejection e-mails from the wide range of Big Box Stores in my area. Apparently, if you once programmed computers and ran a multi-billion dollar data center, you're extremely overqualified to put Econo-size, 55-gallon drums of Scope Mouthwash, or Hellman's Mayonnaise upon a Costco shelf, and probably cannot ever be expected to be able to learn how to operate that combination forklift/palette transporter at Home Depot.
Of course, if you have that kind of experience, but are over the age of 40, the software and technology companies don't want you, either; they'd rather pay Sanjay in Bombay 12-cents-an-hour on an outsourcing contract, and then dangle the possibility of an H1-B with a $20,000-year payout in front of his face, knowing he'll jump at the opportunity in much the same way as Bill Clinton would leap bodily at a rack of babybacks, or a trailer-park bimbo with no gag reflex.
Still, I am nothing if not persistent. I'm also coming to the conclusion that depending upon the marketplace to provide me with a living in the current economic environment is probably comparable to simply planting myself on the side of the road somewhere, and simply waiting to die. It's becoming apparent that in this day-and-age that the Old American concept of Making Your Own Fortune is back in vogue, and that given the sheer numbers of my fellow citizens possessed of the most bulletproof stupidity imaginable, that a healthy application of braincells and a little elbow grease should suffice to drop a billion-dollar idea into my lap any day now.
After all, someone is getting rich on Facebook, you know. Never overestimate the taste or intelligence of the American consumer (especialy the 18-35 year-olds) ; if you do, you'll most certainly go broke.
Anyways, I will be back later this afternoon, with some new rantings from the inside of my diseased skull.
On The Great Issues of the Day...
Some stuff I've been thinking about. Sometimes, I get this swirl of ideas -- I liken the process to watching something being flushed down a toilet -- and they don't go away until I write them down:
1. On the Looming Federal Budget Battles:
A great Kabuki Theatre of the Absurd. We all know that Obama won't cut a thing and any appearance of a cut is simply for show and spun as a disaster for the country, and that despite the GOP's protests they'll also be very selective about what they cut (i.e. anything that costs them campaign contributions or elections will be spared). This battle is one of propaganda between two competing philosophies; one which has been historically proven to be a complete and unsustainable failure, and the other an attempt by a once-proud-and-principled brand name to recover it's market share and good name.
If the Great Budget Battles to come were a marketing campaign, Obama's ad would basically say "Try New-and-Improved Crap, now with 10% More Less!", and the Republicans can be said to be in the same position that Tylenol was in after the great cyanide scare of the 1980's; They have a product which still works, but now they have to regain the public trust.
Both parties are afraid to tell the truth about these coming battles in this regard: neither will step up to the plate and say "we've fucked up, and the process of un-fucking it up will be long and perhaps bloody". If they did, you'd want to know what they fucked up and how they did it, and then you'd want them tarred and feathered, and perhaps ass-raped, as well. Unfortunately, the job of reigning in the federal budget, and limiting the reach(around) of government into our lives, is not going to be pain-free, and overflowing with rainbows and gumdrops. Sorry Welfare Queens, but you might have to start working for a living.
The only real interest I have in this looming budget fight is this: if, at the end of the day, we still have a welfare state (and that goes for Ethanol Subsidies and keeping GM on life support, too), we still have some hints or vestiges of ObamaCare, if the Department of Education (that's a $1-trillion wasted right there!) still exists, if Fannie and Freddie are still underwriting mortgages and there is no plan to liquidate their assets, if every department of the Federal Government still has a 'Civil Rights' division (we already have a Justice Dept., thanks!), if Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups are still being federally-funded, and if we do not get a better, fairer, less-complicated tax code out of the bargain, then we're fucking doomed.
The problem we face is that approximately 50% of the members of Congress depend upon either expanded Federal spending or being able to grab pieces of that huge-and-overflowing "Discretionary spending" budget in order to keep their positions -- they must bring home the bacon, in any way they can -- there being no other discernible reason for them to be there, otherwise. That 50% number represents the Retards, Apparatchiks, Fixers, Poverty Pimps, '60's Retreads, and Race Hustlers lodged within the U.S. Congress. If you doubt this, take a good look at the New York State Congressional Delegation, and see if you can then find grounds for disagreement. There never was, I should think, a greater advertisement for Birth Control.
(As an aside: it's a toss-up as to who has the worst Galaxy of Retards representing them in Congress -- New York, Illinois, Michigan or California. I think if you take the number of welfare recipients in a state, multiply it by the number of burned out ghettos and abandoned factories, and then divide that number by the percentage of the population which are high school dropouts, you can arrive at a pretty representative Douchebag Factor for each state. The state with the highest Douchebag Factor is almost guaranteed to be the one with the worst Congressional Delegation).
Those members of Congress depend upon their ability to game the system in order to justify their existence, which is why prying any money away from their pet 'projects' is going to be like pulling teeth...from an alligator. Good luck with that, Republicans.
2. On 'Democracy in the Middle East':
The only things a 'democratic' Middle East will ever bring is more of the same. Don't think so?
Palestinians voted for Hamas. Iraqis voted for Al'Sadr. Lebonese voted for Hezbollah. Syrians voted for Ba'athists (like Saddam Hussein). Seeing a pattern here? If given the chance to vote 'democratically', Muslims vote for terrorists, religious douchebags, and dictatorial regimes. It's in their blood, it's in their nature, it is at the very foundation of Islamic Culture.
It's so ingrained now that oppression is the natural state of life, and one brand of repression is as good as the next -- but the best kind wraps itself in the Koran -- that it's probably a genetic feature, perhaps even a biological imperative in most Arabs by now. The need and ability to consistently make the wrong choice -- war over peace, religion over reason, terrorism over negotiation, brutal dictatorship over freedom -- is probably firmly-ensconced within their DNA.
When one of these nascent Arab 'democracies' finally gets around to purging itself of it's worst elements, establishes a clear divergence of faith and state, lets it's women loose to work outside the home, or even better, to wear comfortable clothes that don't express their second-class status with an unmutilated clitoris, when an Arab finally makes something useful that doesn't explode and is actually salable on an open market, when the AK-47 and RPG are replaced by the two-car garage, and the whole Islamic Culture finally emerges from the filthy mental sandstorm of constipated 7th-century doctrinal oppression, THEN I'll believe there's hope for 'democracy' in the Arab lands. Not one second before.
A clear example of what 'democracy' means in the Middle East is something I remember being said by the Jordanian Foreign Minster on FoxNews a few weeks back. When asked if the Jordanian government was worried that an Egyptian-style popular uprising could occur in Jordan, the Minister said (paraphrasing) that such was impossible. That if Jordanian democracy ever 'got out of hand' the King would be there to whip back into shape. In other words, a Monarch with the power to dictate to Parliaments and to reshape the political landscape with a decree, is somehow the guarantor of democratic government.
The 'Uprisings' in Egypt, Libya, Qatar, Algeria, et. al., are simply the visible symptoms of a disease which infects all the Islamic World. It was the same disease which once infected the Eastern Bloc nations, and the Soviet Union. There are legions of unwashed, hungry, pig-ignorant people in the streets of Middle Eastern capitols today who are simply doing what frustrated people always do; they're turning on the people they blame for their misery. The difference is this:
The Soviet Union, when it fell, at least degenerated into a series of semi-democratic, Western-style states and governments. We can argue about whether there is true democracy in the former Soviet lands, but one cannot argue as to whether or not at least some of those countries are on their way to something recognizable as Western Democracy. In the Middle East, there's a critical difference between how we view democracy and how the typical Arab Douchebag in the Street views democracy. To us, democracy is a system of checks and balances, of rights and corresponding responsibilities, of social contract and law. In the Middle East, democracy means
installing Sharia under whichever brutal strongman manages to exert enough control over the security services and make himself President for Life.
Islam cannot tolerate democracy, much like Communism couldn't tolerate it, and even if those people in the street have the best of intentions, because they are so stupid, so desperate, so lacking in basic material from which the thread of a democratic tradition can be spun, they will fail.
The people who rioted in the streets and shouted "Goodbye Mubarak" are the same people who formerly rioted in the streets screaming"Death to America!". Once their short attention spans turn from the heady wine of revolution and begin to turn to the problems of actually forming a democratic system, they'll be back to shouting "Death to America!" again, in short order. Why? Because they'll fail, a distinct possibility because they don't have the mental and social tools to succeed, and it'll be OUR (America's) fault. Why? Because it always is with these idiots, and besides, the Imams will make certain that Mohammed Q. Public actually believes that.
Expect more airliners-cum-WMD's from all those new 'democratic' nations very soon...
3. On China;
If I were the President of the United States, I could bring China to heel in about 30 seconds; I'd make an apparently off-hand, and off-guard, remark about China that would set the financial markets all a-flutter. Naturally, the comment wouldn't be off-hand and off-guard, but that's the point. The President of the United States could bring all of China to a screeching halt with a press release.
Yes, there would be some resulting economic damage done in this country if that were to happen, but here's the really neat trick; this country has the capacity to recover from it, China does not. China depends upon an inflow of Western cash, and access to Western Markets, in order to build it's Potemkin Villages with Bird's Nest Stadiums in the Smog.
To those who would complain that China will simply stop funding American debt if played that game, I say. So what? There's an old expression on Wall Street that goes like this:
"If your banker lends you $10,000, he owns you; if he lends you $1,000,000, then you own him."
Now, just how badly do you think we own the Chinese when we owe them several trillion bucks?
It's funny that Lenin was quoted (paraphrased) as saying that 'Capitalism will sell us (the Communists) the rope with which we will eventually hang them', and here it has come to pass in exactly the opposite fashion.
Fuck China. In another 20 years it will disintegrate into violent revolution, again, once the new middle classes begin to demand political rights in order to safeguard their newly-won personal fortunes. The first enemy all people strive to defend their nest eggs from is usually their own government.
4. On Iran:
This one is too easy. The next time Iranians take to the streets to protest against the theocracy and the sycophantic lunatic fringe which serves as it's visible face, I'd move an aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf. I'd airdrop 1,000,000 cell and sat phones, Wi-Fi cards, and spare batteries into Tehran. I'd make certain that Facebook, Twitter and Internet access were available by means other than those controlled by the Iranian Government. I'd also distribute copies of the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence --in Farsi --all over the country.
Then I'd bomb the fuck out of every nuclear weapons site I could find or identify, and leave the Iranian people to the grisly business of killing each other over which faction, religious or political, gets to hold the dubious honor of running a ruined country. It is, after all, what they're really, really good at.That ought to keep them busy for the next 500 years, and continued inbreeding from all that cousin marriage will do the rest. Then I'd be building nuclear power plants and drilling for every last drop of fucking oil we know we have, and encourage American Enterprise to make the oil-producing states the industrial version of the dinosaurs.
5. On North Korea:
I'd transmit pictures by any means available to the North Korean people of Americans sitting down to a sumptuous Thanksgiving feast. I'd make the obvious comparisons; Americans have food. Americans have so much food that they can afford to sit down and engage in gluttony. I'd also transmit pictures of Americans throwing food away. See? We have so much food, we can afford to waste it! I'd show them Americans feeding their dogs table scraps-- we have so much food, even our dogs enjoy steak!
Wall-to-wall beer advertisements with busty babes. Pictures of hotdogs grilling. Lovely Scratch-and-Sniff, menu-quality photos of a Wendy's Taco salads, a nice Big Mac, a juicy T-bone, lobster in drawn butter, fresh vegetables and fruit, a nice, fresh loaf of Italian Bread, all airdropped by Stealth bombers all over the peninsula. If it were possible, I'd contrive to have the aroma of a lovely roast chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy, biscuits, and a lovely side of baby peas and carrots wafted over North Korea's largest cities. I'd gather all them Travel Size toiletries and liberally bomb the entire country with them; tiny tubes of toothpaste, bottles of shampoo, the little soaps you get in the hotel, and quite a few of those airliner bottles of Jack Daniel's, Absolut, Beefeater's, Johnny Walker Black.
What do you have, North Korea? Are you eating well? Do you have beer, or even clean water to drink? Do you have booze? Do you even have soap and toothpaste? No, you don't? Then why don't you march on Pyongyang and remove that demented little paper-hanger you call 'Dear Leader' and get with the program? Workers of North Korea: You have nothing to lose except your malnutrition and head lice!
1. On the Looming Federal Budget Battles:
A great Kabuki Theatre of the Absurd. We all know that Obama won't cut a thing and any appearance of a cut is simply for show and spun as a disaster for the country, and that despite the GOP's protests they'll also be very selective about what they cut (i.e. anything that costs them campaign contributions or elections will be spared). This battle is one of propaganda between two competing philosophies; one which has been historically proven to be a complete and unsustainable failure, and the other an attempt by a once-proud-and-principled brand name to recover it's market share and good name.
If the Great Budget Battles to come were a marketing campaign, Obama's ad would basically say "Try New-and-Improved Crap, now with 10% More Less!", and the Republicans can be said to be in the same position that Tylenol was in after the great cyanide scare of the 1980's; They have a product which still works, but now they have to regain the public trust.
Both parties are afraid to tell the truth about these coming battles in this regard: neither will step up to the plate and say "we've fucked up, and the process of un-fucking it up will be long and perhaps bloody". If they did, you'd want to know what they fucked up and how they did it, and then you'd want them tarred and feathered, and perhaps ass-raped, as well. Unfortunately, the job of reigning in the federal budget, and limiting the reach(around) of government into our lives, is not going to be pain-free, and overflowing with rainbows and gumdrops. Sorry Welfare Queens, but you might have to start working for a living.
The only real interest I have in this looming budget fight is this: if, at the end of the day, we still have a welfare state (and that goes for Ethanol Subsidies and keeping GM on life support, too), we still have some hints or vestiges of ObamaCare, if the Department of Education (that's a $1-trillion wasted right there!) still exists, if Fannie and Freddie are still underwriting mortgages and there is no plan to liquidate their assets, if every department of the Federal Government still has a 'Civil Rights' division (we already have a Justice Dept., thanks!), if Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups are still being federally-funded, and if we do not get a better, fairer, less-complicated tax code out of the bargain, then we're fucking doomed.
The problem we face is that approximately 50% of the members of Congress depend upon either expanded Federal spending or being able to grab pieces of that huge-and-overflowing "Discretionary spending" budget in order to keep their positions -- they must bring home the bacon, in any way they can -- there being no other discernible reason for them to be there, otherwise. That 50% number represents the Retards, Apparatchiks, Fixers, Poverty Pimps, '60's Retreads, and Race Hustlers lodged within the U.S. Congress. If you doubt this, take a good look at the New York State Congressional Delegation, and see if you can then find grounds for disagreement. There never was, I should think, a greater advertisement for Birth Control.
(As an aside: it's a toss-up as to who has the worst Galaxy of Retards representing them in Congress -- New York, Illinois, Michigan or California. I think if you take the number of welfare recipients in a state, multiply it by the number of burned out ghettos and abandoned factories, and then divide that number by the percentage of the population which are high school dropouts, you can arrive at a pretty representative Douchebag Factor for each state. The state with the highest Douchebag Factor is almost guaranteed to be the one with the worst Congressional Delegation).
Those members of Congress depend upon their ability to game the system in order to justify their existence, which is why prying any money away from their pet 'projects' is going to be like pulling teeth...from an alligator. Good luck with that, Republicans.
2. On 'Democracy in the Middle East':
The only things a 'democratic' Middle East will ever bring is more of the same. Don't think so?
Palestinians voted for Hamas. Iraqis voted for Al'Sadr. Lebonese voted for Hezbollah. Syrians voted for Ba'athists (like Saddam Hussein). Seeing a pattern here? If given the chance to vote 'democratically', Muslims vote for terrorists, religious douchebags, and dictatorial regimes. It's in their blood, it's in their nature, it is at the very foundation of Islamic Culture.
It's so ingrained now that oppression is the natural state of life, and one brand of repression is as good as the next -- but the best kind wraps itself in the Koran -- that it's probably a genetic feature, perhaps even a biological imperative in most Arabs by now. The need and ability to consistently make the wrong choice -- war over peace, religion over reason, terrorism over negotiation, brutal dictatorship over freedom -- is probably firmly-ensconced within their DNA.
When one of these nascent Arab 'democracies' finally gets around to purging itself of it's worst elements, establishes a clear divergence of faith and state, lets it's women loose to work outside the home, or even better, to wear comfortable clothes that don't express their second-class status with an unmutilated clitoris, when an Arab finally makes something useful that doesn't explode and is actually salable on an open market, when the AK-47 and RPG are replaced by the two-car garage, and the whole Islamic Culture finally emerges from the filthy mental sandstorm of constipated 7th-century doctrinal oppression, THEN I'll believe there's hope for 'democracy' in the Arab lands. Not one second before.
A clear example of what 'democracy' means in the Middle East is something I remember being said by the Jordanian Foreign Minster on FoxNews a few weeks back. When asked if the Jordanian government was worried that an Egyptian-style popular uprising could occur in Jordan, the Minister said (paraphrasing) that such was impossible. That if Jordanian democracy ever 'got out of hand' the King would be there to whip back into shape. In other words, a Monarch with the power to dictate to Parliaments and to reshape the political landscape with a decree, is somehow the guarantor of democratic government.
The 'Uprisings' in Egypt, Libya, Qatar, Algeria, et. al., are simply the visible symptoms of a disease which infects all the Islamic World. It was the same disease which once infected the Eastern Bloc nations, and the Soviet Union. There are legions of unwashed, hungry, pig-ignorant people in the streets of Middle Eastern capitols today who are simply doing what frustrated people always do; they're turning on the people they blame for their misery. The difference is this:
The Soviet Union, when it fell, at least degenerated into a series of semi-democratic, Western-style states and governments. We can argue about whether there is true democracy in the former Soviet lands, but one cannot argue as to whether or not at least some of those countries are on their way to something recognizable as Western Democracy. In the Middle East, there's a critical difference between how we view democracy and how the typical Arab Douchebag in the Street views democracy. To us, democracy is a system of checks and balances, of rights and corresponding responsibilities, of social contract and law. In the Middle East, democracy means
installing Sharia under whichever brutal strongman manages to exert enough control over the security services and make himself President for Life.
Islam cannot tolerate democracy, much like Communism couldn't tolerate it, and even if those people in the street have the best of intentions, because they are so stupid, so desperate, so lacking in basic material from which the thread of a democratic tradition can be spun, they will fail.
The people who rioted in the streets and shouted "Goodbye Mubarak" are the same people who formerly rioted in the streets screaming"Death to America!". Once their short attention spans turn from the heady wine of revolution and begin to turn to the problems of actually forming a democratic system, they'll be back to shouting "Death to America!" again, in short order. Why? Because they'll fail, a distinct possibility because they don't have the mental and social tools to succeed, and it'll be OUR (America's) fault. Why? Because it always is with these idiots, and besides, the Imams will make certain that Mohammed Q. Public actually believes that.
Expect more airliners-cum-WMD's from all those new 'democratic' nations very soon...
3. On China;
If I were the President of the United States, I could bring China to heel in about 30 seconds; I'd make an apparently off-hand, and off-guard, remark about China that would set the financial markets all a-flutter. Naturally, the comment wouldn't be off-hand and off-guard, but that's the point. The President of the United States could bring all of China to a screeching halt with a press release.
Yes, there would be some resulting economic damage done in this country if that were to happen, but here's the really neat trick; this country has the capacity to recover from it, China does not. China depends upon an inflow of Western cash, and access to Western Markets, in order to build it's Potemkin Villages with Bird's Nest Stadiums in the Smog.
To those who would complain that China will simply stop funding American debt if played that game, I say. So what? There's an old expression on Wall Street that goes like this:
"If your banker lends you $10,000, he owns you; if he lends you $1,000,000, then you own him."
Now, just how badly do you think we own the Chinese when we owe them several trillion bucks?
It's funny that Lenin was quoted (paraphrased) as saying that 'Capitalism will sell us (the Communists) the rope with which we will eventually hang them', and here it has come to pass in exactly the opposite fashion.
Fuck China. In another 20 years it will disintegrate into violent revolution, again, once the new middle classes begin to demand political rights in order to safeguard their newly-won personal fortunes. The first enemy all people strive to defend their nest eggs from is usually their own government.
4. On Iran:
This one is too easy. The next time Iranians take to the streets to protest against the theocracy and the sycophantic lunatic fringe which serves as it's visible face, I'd move an aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf. I'd airdrop 1,000,000 cell and sat phones, Wi-Fi cards, and spare batteries into Tehran. I'd make certain that Facebook, Twitter and Internet access were available by means other than those controlled by the Iranian Government. I'd also distribute copies of the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence --in Farsi --all over the country.
Then I'd bomb the fuck out of every nuclear weapons site I could find or identify, and leave the Iranian people to the grisly business of killing each other over which faction, religious or political, gets to hold the dubious honor of running a ruined country. It is, after all, what they're really, really good at.That ought to keep them busy for the next 500 years, and continued inbreeding from all that cousin marriage will do the rest. Then I'd be building nuclear power plants and drilling for every last drop of fucking oil we know we have, and encourage American Enterprise to make the oil-producing states the industrial version of the dinosaurs.
5. On North Korea:
I'd transmit pictures by any means available to the North Korean people of Americans sitting down to a sumptuous Thanksgiving feast. I'd make the obvious comparisons; Americans have food. Americans have so much food that they can afford to sit down and engage in gluttony. I'd also transmit pictures of Americans throwing food away. See? We have so much food, we can afford to waste it! I'd show them Americans feeding their dogs table scraps-- we have so much food, even our dogs enjoy steak!
Wall-to-wall beer advertisements with busty babes. Pictures of hotdogs grilling. Lovely Scratch-and-Sniff, menu-quality photos of a Wendy's Taco salads, a nice Big Mac, a juicy T-bone, lobster in drawn butter, fresh vegetables and fruit, a nice, fresh loaf of Italian Bread, all airdropped by Stealth bombers all over the peninsula. If it were possible, I'd contrive to have the aroma of a lovely roast chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy, biscuits, and a lovely side of baby peas and carrots wafted over North Korea's largest cities. I'd gather all them Travel Size toiletries and liberally bomb the entire country with them; tiny tubes of toothpaste, bottles of shampoo, the little soaps you get in the hotel, and quite a few of those airliner bottles of Jack Daniel's, Absolut, Beefeater's, Johnny Walker Black.
What do you have, North Korea? Are you eating well? Do you have beer, or even clean water to drink? Do you have booze? Do you even have soap and toothpaste? No, you don't? Then why don't you march on Pyongyang and remove that demented little paper-hanger you call 'Dear Leader' and get with the program? Workers of North Korea: You have nothing to lose except your malnutrition and head lice!
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