August 1, 2012: The Thrill is Gone, Purging of Moderates,

“The thrill is gone

The thrill is gone away

The thrill is gone baby

The thrill is gone away

You know you done me wrong baby

Gonna be sorry someday”        ----B. B. King “The Thrill is Gone” (1)

Since the good people of this country have elected grid lock over progress the know-nothing, no-nothing Congress has managed to pass a mere 80 bills in the last session, the lowest on record.  Accordingly the Congress now has an approval rating now in single digits, lowest on record. Richard Nixon upon leaving office, Paris Hilton, used car salesman, all have higher ratings as this congress continues to ignore the problems facing the country as it votes now for the 31^st or 33 time (depending on the count) to repeal ObamaCare.  Today, as over half the counties in the entire United States are now declared disaster areas—mostly due to the drought—Congress went on recess to get back to the urgent business of getting their individual and collective backsides re-elected but not before tabling indefinitely the farm relief bill.

Such is the state of political life in these here United States.  The purging of “moderates” from the Rescumlican party continues unabated as the likes of Richard Lugar of Indiana are eliminated in primary challenges by the idiot wrong.  Today a clown named Cruz defeated Rick Perry’s lieutenant governor in the Texas Senate primary in a contest to succeed the retiring Senator Hutchinson.  Cruz won the race with heavy backing by the so-called “Club for Growth’ and other right-wing operatives and by openly accusing his opponent of the sin of moderation.  So far wrong has the base of the Rescumlican party drifted that they now have abandoned their attacks on liberals and are now vilifying moderates.  What is now emerging are a new class of would be freshman senators who openly ridicule and deride the very idea of compromise.  It’s now our way or the highway and the mischief th to the political and economic order are too frightening to contemplate.  If elected and if this wrong-ward drift continues to find validation at the poles, what will happen the next time the debt ceiling is reached?  Will we default on our obligations?  Already Moody’s has lowered the credit rating of the nation the last time the idiot wrong engaged in such economic brinksmanship.  What will happen to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, housing assistance, food stamps, education funding, highway bills, farm supports, etc.?  

The thrill is gone.  Gone are the day when Obama could campaign on hope and change, for, alas, the nation has seen hope and change dashed on the rocks of Rescumlican obstructionism.  Instead we are now facing a campaign based on fear.  Romney and his Rescumlicans will do what the Scums have always done: wage a campaign based on divide and rule, label the President the resident Alien, raise fears about the future, and intimidate and restrict access to the polls.  Obama and the Democrats are left with no alternatives now except to raise fear about the prospect of the king-hell Vulcher himself presiding from the oval office as we watch the operatives of Wall Street finish the job of picking our pockets clean.      

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(1) www.lyrics.com/thrill-is-gone-lyrics-b.b.king.html

December 20, 2011: Caribou Barbie, Not a Single Precinct Captain, Pipe Dreams of the Lotus-Eater.

Let me reiterate: the political process does not recognize unorganized opinion. It is almost ridiculous to have to utter these words, so apparently obvious stands the reality, but when dealing with Rescumlicans, particularly those on the idiot-wrong, the business of rendering obvious what is apparent and clear to the rest of humanity is a work of paramount, albeit futile urgency.


So today it was reported that Caribou Barbie, otherwise known in this column as the ‘guttersnipe’ from Alaska, has told Fixed News that she has surveyed the Rescumlican field and found them wanting. Again, a stopped clock is right twice a day, and so it is with the idiot half-governor late of Alaska. It was the last part of her statement that caught my eye. Bemoaning the lack of real Presidential timber currently in the field she went on to say that “it is not too late for someone else to enter the race”.

Forty years ago this may have been true, but with the number of primaries and the front-loading of nearly all of them--particularly the big states--it has long since become necessary to raise nearly 100 million dollars before the first citizens gather at caucus across the state of Iowa and cast the first ballots. Only a complete political neophyte could possibly have uttered such an absurdity, for the time has long passed when the money would have been raised to staff the field operations, set up the phone banks, purchased the voter lists, printed the mailers and brochures, set up the internet sites, bought the newspaper, radio and television advertising. With Iowa only now a matter of days away, New Hampshire quickly to follow, and with only 120 days or so left before the issue will be decided, it should be patently clear to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of such things that it is far too late to even think of throwing one’s bonnet into the ring. But not Sarah Palin who, despite having been on the last national ticket, appears to have learned nothing about Presidential politics.


If she is testing the political waters for a possible late bid, she will find that her supporters have long since been laboring on behalf of other candidacies, that she is woefully short of money, and that she is without a single precinct captain. None of this registers in the simple mind of the ‘guttersnipe’, who’s prevailing psychosis can be measured in the awful gap between her ambitions and her achievements; a chasm that can only be bridged by the pipe dreams of the lotus eater.

December 13, 2011: Another Man‘s Religion, ‘Baby Huey’ in the Lead, Spectator Sport.

“There is nothing more ridiculous than another man’s religion”

                                             ----from the “Quotations of Chairman Joe”

On an NBC panel tonight, featuring Chris Todd and other election analysts, recent polling has confirmed the surge of ‘Baby Huey’ to the head of the pack as the former House Speaker gains the lead. Gingrich is only the latest following Sarah Palin, Ron Paul, Texas Governor Perry and most recently Hermann Cain to challenge Mitt Romney for the lead in various straw polls and public opinion polls, as the ’fundamentalist’ base of the Rescumllican Party searches desperately for some alternative to the Mormon from Utah. Whether ‘Baby Huey’ is allotted more than his fifteen minutes of fame remains to be seen.

The assembled analysts were quick to point out the Achilles heel of the emerging Rescumlican field. Romney, running nearly even with Obama is the most electable but will have a hard time getting his party’s nomination, presumably because of his so-called ’health plan’ in Massachusetts and his earlier positions on taxation and social issues. Gingrich while facing an easier road to the nomination is reviled by Democrats and Independents alike and faces a daunting task winning the general election. So ended the analysis for further penetration into the political realities will reveal the darker side of American politics, places nightly commentators and news anchors fear to tread.

Simply put, to any honest political observer it is readily apparent that the fundamentalist base of the modern Rescumlican Party will not nominate a Mormon to carry its standard into the general election. Focusing on Romney’s so called “moderate” political record and pointing out--correctly--that the Massachusetts health care law is anathema to the political base of his party, the political pundits cover only part of the story and present only half the analysis.


Deviations from bedrock orthodoxy have not cost national political figures their party’s nomination. Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Bush the Greater, Bob Dole, John McCain and even Ronald Reagan deviated from orthodoxy when the recognized both unpopular and god-awful public policy when they saw it. Nixon instituted wage-price controls, gave us the Environmental Protection Agency, even called for a guaranteed annual income, Ford was Mr. Pragmatist incarnate, Bush raised Taxes, Dole worked with Democrats at least some of the time, even Reagan raised taxes and increased federal spending. However much is made of Romney the moderate, Romney the Compromiser, Romney the Reasonable, this is not what the fundamentalist base of his party finds troubling. It is Romney the Mormon.

To Southern Baptism, the place to which the modern Rescumlican party went in search of succor as it embraced southern politics after the flogging it took at the hands of Lyndon Johnson, Mormonism is seen as a nothing more than a cult. Through the eyes of Southern Baptism Mormonism not only appears ridiculous but, like Catholicism, is seen as a “cult”. Anyone embracing such a cult must, by definition, lack the moral fortitude and perhaps the intelligence necessary to see ’the light’. Such a man is disqualified from high office. It is the reverend Wright issue all over again unalloyed with issues of race.


The press, of course, not eager to offend the southern audience or the religious fundamentalists, fixes instead on the horse race betting as it always does that the public will be content with form rather than substance. Meanwhile in churches all across America, as in 1960, a campaign will be waged against the “Mormon’ discounting his beliefs as ludicrous and, by extension, his political standing. The analysts are right of course. Romney will find it hard to get the party nomination for he will fight to a near draw in Iowa, win New Hampshire and then head South where he will hit a brick wall. The question for the political base of the party is whether it can coalesce around a viable alternative, someone suitably protestant, in time. Enter Baby Huey. Oh yes he’s changed his religion. The once suitably Baptist, then Episcopalian is now Catholic.

June 3, 2011: For Whom the Bells Toll, Dumb is Forever, Teaching the Unwashed

“He who warned the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms by ringing those bells and, um, making sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that, uh, we were going to be secure and we were going to be free” (1)
Erstwhile Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin speaking in Boston

Speaking this week at Boston’s Old North Church, Alaska’s resident idiot and former half-governor revealed once again the deep and dark intellectual void at the core of the conservative movement. One would think, given the trillions that Corporate America is currently sitting on, that the collective brains of the ‘trusts’ could come up with better shills to politically represent them. Instead we are faced with the horrifying prospect that the Rescumlican Party will, in convention, bestow legitimacy and political stature on this witless woman, or some reasonable facsimile. One wag, writing in the comments beneath the Yahoo page in which this story was posted wrote: “Beauty fades, dumb is forever.”

Palin, it seems, was in New England using the region as a backdrop for a tour to “educate” America about our founding fathers and our struggle for freedom. Perhaps, some have suggested, this is merely a prelude to launching her campaign for the White House. I’ve always held that the purpose of a political campaign, properly conducted, is to educate and enlighten both the candidate and the people. While the prospects of such an extended ordeal educating the candidate would, in this case, seem remote, a Palin candidacy does offer at least a back-hand approach to a national history and civics lesson. If it is true, as Ambrose Bierce once said, that “war is God’s way of teaching geography to Americans” then it would appear that the political equivalent of a Palin presidential campaign would surely be God’s way of teaching the great unwashed their own history. That is, jf they can keep up with the deluge of corrections and learn, as she does not, by her mistakes.


Footnotes:

1. http://beta.news.yahoo.com/blogs/upshot/palin-flubs-explanation-paul-revere-ride-215549982.html