I’ve delayed posting here for a few days because I was waiting for some momentous event that would propel me into a state of blogging ecstasy…something…anything…McCain’s head literally exploding on camera?….Chris Matthews french kissing Fred Thompson?….Huckabee appearing on the Today show to prepare popcorn-popper fried squirrel? Hillary having a “wardrobe malfunction”?
But alas. Nothing. Just stifled yawns and glassy eyes , and rote performances by a group of mediocrities that make Bill Clinton look like Thomas Jefferson. Maybe it’s that I’m secretly going to miss the little simian that’s currently occupying the White House. He’s provided me so much great material over the years. Or maybe it’s that I know the Bushies have dug this hole so deep I’ll be an old man when this country finally crawls back out.
God, please have this election tomorrow! Not to mix in too many metaphors, but this is reminding me more and more of American Idol. You know, how in the beginning of the season Idol is kind of amusing in a cruel way because the performances are laughable and acid-tongued Simon hasn’t yet grown bored with the whole charade? But after a few weeks, alas, when the culling phase is over, we’re left with just deadly earnest mediocrities singing bad Celine Dion songs, while a tone deaf America phones in their votes.
I look back fondly now to the M.L.K. jr. vs L.B.J. fiasco between Barack and Hillary. Little did I know that was going to be the highlight of the campaign and that for the next few month we’d be watching the cautious front runners from both parties lypsincing catch phrases. I’m not even sure what I’m expecting and maybe that’s just the problem. Over the last 2 election cycles I did have high expectations for something to happen: impeachment, the end of the Iraq occupation, war crime tribunals, the passage of some legislation that actually meant something to somebody, or, for that matter, just some colossal pratfall by this dunce administration, a real step-on-the-banana-peel-triple-back-flip-face-down-into-the-cow-pie moment that would at least draw a a good belly laugh. But instead we’re witnessing the slow petering out of the Bush era and an amateur hour primary campaign to replace him. I’ve said it before: this cretin is going to exit the ring after 4 years and nobody will have laid a glove on him. And his successor is doomed to failure just because of the monumental mess he’s gotten this country into.
Wake me when it’s over.
Bits and pieces of the political flotsam floating around out there:
The Economic stimulus package was hammered out yesterday. Apparently the economy is like a giant clitoris; just tweak it occasional and wonderful things happen. Suffice it to say that nobody with any credentials believes that this is anything other than a “hey, we had to do something!” move that simply will shift money from one part of the economy into another. Or did you think that the federal government simply has bags of money sitting around in a warehouse waiting to be dispersed? And since virtually nothing is actually made in America these days, who’s economy will really be the recipient of this income? Likely the Chinese and the other hellhole slave labor encampments that crank out the consumer goods we just can’t get enough of. Another interesting thing about this legislation is that, because it has the taint of Bush all over it, Wall Street is reacting to it like you would to the Holloween apple with the embedded razor blade.
Another measure intended to avert a recession are the massive prime interest cuts announced recently by the fed, rewarding those wise Americans who’ve rolled up massive credit card debt while punishing the idiots who thought that saving money in an interest bearing account was a prudent idea. Silly fools.
Meanwhile the “Who is the biggest corporate whore” battle is still raging between Hillary and Barack in a series of he said/she said ads that make the Alec Baldwin-Kim Bassinger divorce look like a day at Knott’s Berry Farm. Even a scant understanding of each candidate shows clearly that neither candidate is particularly pure when it comes to their obeisance to Wall Street perogatives, but clearly Hillary is the one in the miniskirt, fishnets, and go-go boots loitering at the intersection of Wall and Broad. Her approach to NAFTA is similar to her approach to the invasion of Iraq: they were both swell ideas that just haven’t turned out the way we expected. And since her husband’s and the DLC’s shift from trade unions to Wall Street for campaign contributions, is it any wonder that the once-great health care crusader is now recieving more $$$ from Big Pharm and the Insurance industry that the other candidates combined.
Oh yeah: and a big F-You to All the Democratic senators and presidential candidates (Hillary, Barack, Dodd, and Biden) who decided to sit out the Senate vote on the trade agreement with Peru. Wouldn’t want to go on record as short sheeting the American worker during an election year, would we? And besides, billions of U.S. dollars are already flowing into Peru annually in exchange for their # 1 export, cocaine. How come untaxed drug money is not added to our trade deficit?
Meanwhile Mitt, Huck, McCain, and Guilani on a daily basis demonstrate how bereft they are of any ideas that can’t fit on a bumper sticker. More about them the next time.
Sorry I haven’t been posting much as cynicism has set in of late as I peek inside the sausage factory known as electoral politics in the good ol’ U.S. of A. From Huckabee’s preposterous outreach to South Carolinians that he used to fry up a mess-o-squirrel on a popcorn popper to the ever more ridiculous dung flinging face-off between Barack and Hillary, the view from here is that it’s extremely difficult to crank out any observations that are particularly original when the satire is already pre-packaged.
What really is there to say about the squirrel thing…or the moronic L.B.J. vs M.L.K debate? And what can you add to the preposterous discussion that Fred Thompson is the next Ronald Reagan…or that Guliani is the great warrior in the War on Terror…or that Duncan Hunter at one time thought he had a legitimate chance at the presidency?
I’ve made this point before: isn’t it interesting that three comics (John Stewart, Bill Maher, and Steven Colbert) and a journalist-turned sports reporter-turned comic (Kieth Obermann) have become the foremost political observers of our day? These guys know good material when the see it and with the writers still on strike, the candidates are writing the monologues for them.
Aside from that, I’m still a little depressed that my boy Edwards has descended to the role of the bright pupil in the back of the classroom endlessly raising his hand to answer the question when the teacher invariably calls on his 2 star pupils Hillary and Barack. And that Kucinich has been barred from the classroom altogether. And that the fossilized McCain can gain traction by threatening yet another war in the Middle East. And that a Wall Street whore named Mitt Romney has as good a chance of becoming the Leader of the Free World as anyone currently in the race.
And let’s face it folks, these aren’t even the big story lines. The big story line is whether Ladanian Tomlinson was tanking it in last week’s game against the Pats. I’m sure at the next debate that will be put in the form of a question and tossed at one of the candidates. And we have 8 more months of this?
Ok. I was wondering how the Democratic party was going to screw things up but my imagination wasn’t fertile enough to conjure up this Obama/Hillary Martin Luther King deal. Holy Sh*t.
In case you missed it, and it’s too late and I’m too lazy to insert hyperlinks, Clinton over the weekend said that King was an inspirational figure who helped open America’s eyes to the civil rights struggle but that it was an elected politician, specifically Lyndon Johnson, who signed into law the sweeping Civil Rights Act of 1964. Her point, not made very subtly, was that big talk is one thing but that implementing big talk into laws and reform was the work of an experience pol like her, and not like the fledgling Obama. Barak couldn’t resist the temptation to fire back, effectively accusing Hillary of diminishing the reputation of the martyred Dr. King. Bill then chimed in, Edwards got involved (naturally taking Obama’s side) and things went sideways in a hurry. A prominent black Clinton supporter even made a veiled reference to Obama’s youthful drug experimentation.
So when the dust settled, the 2 most prominent Democratic candidates were fighting a surrogate battle between two long dead figures of the 60’s. Why is this particular pissing match a big deal? Because it’s occurring at a time when independents and even Republicans were starting to warm up to the idea of voting Dem in this particular election cycle, voting for change, a unifying message, hell, voting for ANYBODY who didn’t have the stink of Bush all over him or her. And now this. Confirming the long standing suspicion that the Democratic Party is a party that’s solely about gender, race, and sexual identity, the albatross that has held back Democratic dominance since the 60’s. If the Dems once again seize defeat from the jaws of victory in ‘08, you can trace their collective loss to this sorry ass and meaningless exercise in “identity politics”.
In what doubtless will perpetuate the notion that Democrats are nothing more than conspiracy-minded crybabies, Dennis Kucinich is demanding a recount of the votes in the New Hampshire primary (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/). Dennis, who only received 3% of the vote, is nevertheless concerned that the pollster’s prediction of a landslide Obama victory give cause to a recount effort.
Never before have the pollsters been such major players in the political game. Their mission seems to be the self-fulfilling prophesy because everyone loves a winner, especially if everyone knows in advance who the winner’s going to be. The pollster’s failure to predict Hillary’s win in New Hampshire (http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/01/09/countdown-new-hampshire-poll-nightmare-was-it-the-polling-or-the-reporting/) rocked the pundit world to such a degree that pundits spent several days analyzing other pundits as to how they all could get it so wrong. Even something called the “Bradley Effect” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effect) was trotted out in an attempt to explain Obama’s sudden and climactic failure to be elected president after only 2 primaries. Fact of the matter is, the pollsters pretty much did get it right about Obama’s support in the take-it-for-granted state. They were saying he’d get about 36% of the vote and he ended up with just over 35%.
What the polls underestimated was the turn-out for Hillary. I truly believe the little emotional moment she shared with the world Monday tipped the scales in her favor. Gone was the robotic functionary, replaced by an Actual Woman. Too bad women are still caught in that calculating bitch/emotional basket-case dilemma, but this time it worked in Clinton’s favor. Look for all the candidates now to get a little weepy and whiny from here on out just to snag a few soccer mom votes, but so far only Kucinich has taken the bait.
Well, Iowa is in the books and the juggernaut known as Obama appears set to role through New Hampshire and South Carolina as well. The South Carolina polling advantage for Barack is a little surprising, I’ll admit, given the Bob Jones phenomenon and the sheer number of Confederate flags adorning the back windows of pick-up trucks down in the Palmetto State. But unlike what Rove and Co. did to John McCain in 2000, I suppose it’s hard to smear Obama with the accusation that he’s fathered a black child when, in fact, he actually is black.
Speaking of which, a lot has been made in rightie circles of the fact that Obama is only “half black”, so why do we refer to him as black (as if that’s some kind of advantage when running for national office). Well, quite simply, it wasn’t too long ago when virtually every state in the Union had a law on the books stating that an individual with only a drop of black blood in his system was to be considered a negro. Didn’t want that race mixing to get out of hand. Can’t have it both ways, crackers: if it was good enough in 1935 to keep a brother in his place, it’s good enough in 2008 to give a brother a (dubious) advantage in the race for president.
On the Republican side, gold standard Christian Mike Huckabee is defying the party establishment by running away from the soul-less Mitt Romney in Iowa, not a surprise considering that 60% of the Iowa Republican caucus voters identify themselves as born-agains. Amazing, isn’t it, that the Christian litmus test for Republican candidates has become so accepted that it barely raises an eyebrow these days?
The New Yorker ( http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/01/07/080107taco_talk_hertzberg) did a good little write-up on Huck and Mitt’s respective use of religion to try to seize the party’s brass ring, and Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone pretty much nailed the Huckabee phenom last month (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/17324246/matt_taibbi_on_mike_huckabee_our_favorite_rightwing_nut_job), both pieces well worth your time.
Join us (me, specifically) on 1700 this afternoon where we’ll kick around the New Hampshire results and wonder out loud if Hillary’s campaign is dead in the water, and maybe even get into the oddly fascinating Roger Clemens story.
Keep on Rockin’ !
Ok. Got the two “shakedown cruises” out of the way. AM 1700 is technically a work in progress and they are literally piecing together the studio (a converted office) as I’m doing the show. So far so good. With luck, my old compadre Jorge Espinoza will be join the team next week, so there will be somewhat of a comfort zone factor.
Lot of questions about Scooter and his future and whereabouts. I’ve strenulously tried to get Scot to be part of this team but it now appears, by mutual decision between him and B.C.A. that it would not be worth his time financially, at least at the moment. You might not know it, but Scooter has a little at-home business ( a sailing website) that provided him with a pretty decent income without having to change out of his pajamas.
What’s interesting so far about the on-air interaction at AM 1700 so far is the virtual absense of righty whack-jobs calling in to give me a hard time. You would think, given the tilt of the on-air line-up, there’d be a bunch Republican talking point cyphers waiting to pounce. Are they afraid? Have they come to their senses? Will they merely wait for me in the parking lot at 7:05? I know for a fact that there are still any number of kool aid drinking zomboids out there who will say “fight ‘em there so we don’t have to fight ‘em here” the moment you push their button, but maybe the asylum doesn’t allow them outside phone calls.
Anyway, any ideas about topics, guests, etc. email me at stacytayloris@cox.net or simply post them here.
The hippies were right!!
Thanks folks for helping to make the debut at 1700 a success. I’m still employed! Even after trashing everything my employers believe in. Just pass the word and let’s build this show brick-by-brick!
DAVID ROLLAND OF CITY BEAT DID A TERRIC PROFILE OF ME IN THIS WEEK’S EDITION. IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, HERE IT IS: http://www.sdcitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/walkie_talkie/6511/
