I hate to perpetrate a silly internet meme but this is JUST TOO GOOD.
And she might have been president!
Showing posts with label palin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label palin. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
POLITICS- The Court Jester (not Danny Kaye)
The court jester, or court fool, was a unique character in the medieval royal administration. Perhaps this is best evidenced in Shakespeare’s plays where often the role of the fool was exemplified as the one person able to comment on the action, on the follies of the characters around him that were driving the drama with their own seriousness and failure. Only the character of the fool could say what everybody in the audience was thinking. Only he had liberty to speak the truth because no one had to take him seriously. After all, he was just a clown, meant only for amusement.
In a world where everyone is participating in the drama by saying whatever they think is to their advantage and all proclamations must be parsed for the actual aims of those making them, it’s easy to question whether you have been overwhelmed by cynicism (which is ABSOLUTELY NOT pessimism, as I often hear it mis-described). The professional cynics in a free society are supposed to be the news media. The “fourth estate” as Thomas Carlyle put it in his book On Heroes and Hero Worship. Since then it has come to mean almost a fourth branch of government. The one without civil power but with ultimate oversight on the other three. The final check and balance of power in a system where, ultimately, the people are expected to rule. But since our democracy has become a plutocracy the actually government has been bought and paid for by the rich and the fourth estate is outright owned by them, the only people left to tell the actual truth are the fools, the jesters.
Witness this last night.
Part one
Part two
Part three
Those three videos, in a form only slightly longer than the actual program as aired, are perhaps the most shocking news interview I’ve seen in the last decade if not longer. And that’s saying a lot when you consider how often the GOP vice-presidential candidate was allowed to show her true colors on network TV over the last several months. But it’s one thing to turn on the camera and have someone show themselves as an idiot in response to a few innocuous questions. Republicans chided the “media” for attacking Sarah Palin when in fact they hardly asked a question harder than “has your stupid ass even heard of any Supreme Court decisions other than Roe v. Wade?” Last night we saw what the press might be like if they took their adversarial role with the government seriously. And it wasn’t from some bloviating anacephalic bully’s self proclaimed “No-Spin Zone”, or from some pretentious Edward R. Murrow wannabe’s “Special Comments”. It wasn’t from a nightly network news broadcast or a (gag) serious newsmagazine. It was a simple case of a court jester asking an expert who claims to be a journalist why he didn’t say anything about a situation that anybody with half a brain saw coming. I’ve mentioned several times on this blog before that if you think people can own homes that cost half a million dollars with a mean family income of a tenth of that, you aren’t a financial expert, you are an idiot. And I’m sure as hell no expert. I just had basic math in school.
Thank you, Jon Stewart. You’re gonna get heat for this. The story of the Emperor’s New Clothes has a fake ending. If it had been truthful it would have ended with the loud-mouthed child beaten to death by the crowd for being unpatriotic. A few years ago you called out Tucker Carlson for being a lying, fatuous douchbag and if it hadn’t been for the internet no one would have known. So far I haven’t seen the reaction from the media but it’s going to be even more telling than your one man stand for speaking the obvious truth. (I don’t watch Joe Scarburough in the mornings because I have better ways to start my day that to have fat, rich, white guys wake me up by screaming at me about how fat rich white guys aren’t the problem. And I think that Mika Cadillac, daughter of Zibignew Cadillac, doesn’t even have the qualifications for being a woman who reads aloud on TV in the morning. If I wanted a horse-faced idiot to greet me every morning with a combination of superiority and stupidity I wouldn’t have thrown my ex-wife out of the house a couple of years ago.)
But thank you, Jon Stewart, you motley fool. Here is one insignificant Diogenese who appreciates that there is at least one honest man left.
In a world where everyone is participating in the drama by saying whatever they think is to their advantage and all proclamations must be parsed for the actual aims of those making them, it’s easy to question whether you have been overwhelmed by cynicism (which is ABSOLUTELY NOT pessimism, as I often hear it mis-described). The professional cynics in a free society are supposed to be the news media. The “fourth estate” as Thomas Carlyle put it in his book On Heroes and Hero Worship. Since then it has come to mean almost a fourth branch of government. The one without civil power but with ultimate oversight on the other three. The final check and balance of power in a system where, ultimately, the people are expected to rule. But since our democracy has become a plutocracy the actually government has been bought and paid for by the rich and the fourth estate is outright owned by them, the only people left to tell the actual truth are the fools, the jesters.
Witness this last night.
Part one
Part two
Part three
Those three videos, in a form only slightly longer than the actual program as aired, are perhaps the most shocking news interview I’ve seen in the last decade if not longer. And that’s saying a lot when you consider how often the GOP vice-presidential candidate was allowed to show her true colors on network TV over the last several months. But it’s one thing to turn on the camera and have someone show themselves as an idiot in response to a few innocuous questions. Republicans chided the “media” for attacking Sarah Palin when in fact they hardly asked a question harder than “has your stupid ass even heard of any Supreme Court decisions other than Roe v. Wade?” Last night we saw what the press might be like if they took their adversarial role with the government seriously. And it wasn’t from some bloviating anacephalic bully’s self proclaimed “No-Spin Zone”, or from some pretentious Edward R. Murrow wannabe’s “Special Comments”. It wasn’t from a nightly network news broadcast or a (gag) serious newsmagazine. It was a simple case of a court jester asking an expert who claims to be a journalist why he didn’t say anything about a situation that anybody with half a brain saw coming. I’ve mentioned several times on this blog before that if you think people can own homes that cost half a million dollars with a mean family income of a tenth of that, you aren’t a financial expert, you are an idiot. And I’m sure as hell no expert. I just had basic math in school.
Thank you, Jon Stewart. You’re gonna get heat for this. The story of the Emperor’s New Clothes has a fake ending. If it had been truthful it would have ended with the loud-mouthed child beaten to death by the crowd for being unpatriotic. A few years ago you called out Tucker Carlson for being a lying, fatuous douchbag and if it hadn’t been for the internet no one would have known. So far I haven’t seen the reaction from the media but it’s going to be even more telling than your one man stand for speaking the obvious truth. (I don’t watch Joe Scarburough in the mornings because I have better ways to start my day that to have fat, rich, white guys wake me up by screaming at me about how fat rich white guys aren’t the problem. And I think that Mika Cadillac, daughter of Zibignew Cadillac, doesn’t even have the qualifications for being a woman who reads aloud on TV in the morning. If I wanted a horse-faced idiot to greet me every morning with a combination of superiority and stupidity I wouldn’t have thrown my ex-wife out of the house a couple of years ago.)
But thank you, Jon Stewart, you motley fool. Here is one insignificant Diogenese who appreciates that there is at least one honest man left.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
POLITICS- Bristol's Precious Little Snowflake
And now, for something completely snarky…
Congratulations to Bristol Lampshade Burp Gompers Palin and Levi Cogswallow Twiddle Sparkplug Johnston on the birth of their little bastard Tripp Ouff Bang Quonsethut Palin-Johnston. The child is doing fine and looking forward to following in the footsteps of his mother and grandmother to be a high school dropout and Republican presidential candidate in 2048. Other career choices include going into the family business of his other grandmother and getting arrested for selling Meth. He also hopes to break with longstanding family tradition by waiting until after marriage to knock up some random trollop.
Attending the birth were uncle Track Boink Wazzle Dipshait Palin (also a proud high school dropout), aunt Willow Camshaft Doober Doohickey Palin (soon to drop out of school), aunt Piper Cub Dwizzle Particle Palin (looking forward to dropping out of school), and older brother Trig Gomer Fontanel Algebra Palin (referred to humorously in the family as “Uncle Trig” and who has no plans to ever attend school). During the birth Bristol’s siblings were overheard to exclaim “Wow!” “Shit!” “Look at the size of that thing!” and “Murmee, Murmee, Murmee.”
And these retarded rednecks want to tell me about family values? As the bumper stickers in Colorado say- Focus On Your Own Damn Family.
Congratulations to Bristol Lampshade Burp Gompers Palin and Levi Cogswallow Twiddle Sparkplug Johnston on the birth of their little bastard Tripp Ouff Bang Quonsethut Palin-Johnston. The child is doing fine and looking forward to following in the footsteps of his mother and grandmother to be a high school dropout and Republican presidential candidate in 2048. Other career choices include going into the family business of his other grandmother and getting arrested for selling Meth. He also hopes to break with longstanding family tradition by waiting until after marriage to knock up some random trollop.
Attending the birth were uncle Track Boink Wazzle Dipshait Palin (also a proud high school dropout), aunt Willow Camshaft Doober Doohickey Palin (soon to drop out of school), aunt Piper Cub Dwizzle Particle Palin (looking forward to dropping out of school), and older brother Trig Gomer Fontanel Algebra Palin (referred to humorously in the family as “Uncle Trig” and who has no plans to ever attend school). During the birth Bristol’s siblings were overheard to exclaim “Wow!” “Shit!” “Look at the size of that thing!” and “Murmee, Murmee, Murmee.”
And these retarded rednecks want to tell me about family values? As the bumper stickers in Colorado say- Focus On Your Own Damn Family.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
POLITICS- The Vice- Presidential Debate
Best debate evar!
If I had some sort of guarantee that McCain would survive the term I think Sarah Palin would be the perfect vice-president. She could preside in the Senate like Vanna White, smiling and winking. Maybe people would like her so much that they’d start tuning in to CSPAN and having a clue about what is going on in government. She could vote a straight party line in tiebreakers and talk a lot about what a maverick free thinker she is. She wants the power of the VP expanded- let her a show on CSPAN AFTER DARK where she interviews Senate members about policy and, eh heh, other things.
Why has nobody been talking about the fact that Palin has a degree in communications and was a sportscaster on television? Of course she knows how to look into a monitor and recite. I thought at one point that she was reading from a teleprompter being lasered onto her glasses by the CIA, because her eyes never moved and she seemed to have on both glasses and contacts. But I realized that was just crazy talk. But she did give a wonderful speech. I’m just waiting for somebody to edit out all the interruptions of questions and that other guy talking so I can hear it the way it was written.
Joe Biden said Cheney’s views on the role of the VP were “Bizarre.” Thank you, Mr. Biden. The whole last eight years have been bizarre and I hope now that the rest of the country has learned an important lesson. No matter what your religious beliefs, electing a moron president is a bad idea. Even if he’s a well meaning Christian moron. Especially if he’s a spoiled amoral cynical “christian” moron.
I watched the debate on CNN and I don’t know how I ever got by without information overload. The most interesting thing was the real-time graph of acceptance by a group of undecided Ohio voters. It was fascinating to watch which things men responded to as opposed to what turned women on. I noticed that the lines were mostly parallel with women being more generous than men. I can’t remember a point at which the lines departed greatly although there were some interesting differences. I expected men to like Palin was was surprised at how consistantly women seemed to like Biden more. Palin started out really strong and sort of gradually petered out with both sexes. People respond to having smoke blown up their asses. ‘Oh, no, the middle class had no responsibility for the current banking problem’ got high marks.
The professional debate scorers were less interesting. Three gave Sarah Palin a point for walking onto the stage without falling down. From there on in I think each’s score was more an indication of their preferences than an attempt to actually technically score a debate.
As far as I understand it, John McCain plans to give everyone a $5000 tax cut for health care and tax employer provided health insurance benefits. I predict that if this happens employeers will drop health care coverage as a benefit like a hot potato and that you’ll be able to buy a policy starting at $4995. This is basically a plan to give Insurance companies $5000 of government money and making us the bagman for the payoff.
The next time somebody in a debate says “redistribution of wealth” in a debate it should be illegal not to answer by saying, “It’s been being redistributed for the last 10 years, it’s just all been going to the top 2%.” After Palin polished this old chestnut, the next morning McCain and Obama both voted to redistribute some more to the people at the top so they wouldn’t quit loaning us our own money back. To the tune of over $2000 per person in the country. A “confidence” game if I’ve ever seen one.
NEW-CLEE-ERR! It’s spelled nuclear, not nucular. There’s no second “U” sound. Stop it. It’s one thing to mis-pronounce a word. It’s quite another to be such an arrogant pinhead that you can’t admit that you are wrong and stop doing it. It even another to base a political party on the idea that all the stubborn pinheads are going to force every body else to do it their way. Pay attention, Intelligent Design supporters.
Joe Biden did a masterful job at avoiding the minefield of ways he might have offended women by saying something or doing something wrong while debating Sarah Palin. Not that women are easily offended or would ever play a passive-aggressive game with a man to get what they want. No sir. Not that that would ever happen.
A great debate. Everybody won. Palin won because she was able to hide the fact that she really doesn’t have a clue what she’s talking about. At least well enough that other people who don’t know what they are talking about can believe her. And Joe Biden won because he won.
If I had some sort of guarantee that McCain would survive the term I think Sarah Palin would be the perfect vice-president. She could preside in the Senate like Vanna White, smiling and winking. Maybe people would like her so much that they’d start tuning in to CSPAN and having a clue about what is going on in government. She could vote a straight party line in tiebreakers and talk a lot about what a maverick free thinker she is. She wants the power of the VP expanded- let her a show on CSPAN AFTER DARK where she interviews Senate members about policy and, eh heh, other things.
Why has nobody been talking about the fact that Palin has a degree in communications and was a sportscaster on television? Of course she knows how to look into a monitor and recite. I thought at one point that she was reading from a teleprompter being lasered onto her glasses by the CIA, because her eyes never moved and she seemed to have on both glasses and contacts. But I realized that was just crazy talk. But she did give a wonderful speech. I’m just waiting for somebody to edit out all the interruptions of questions and that other guy talking so I can hear it the way it was written.
Joe Biden said Cheney’s views on the role of the VP were “Bizarre.” Thank you, Mr. Biden. The whole last eight years have been bizarre and I hope now that the rest of the country has learned an important lesson. No matter what your religious beliefs, electing a moron president is a bad idea. Even if he’s a well meaning Christian moron. Especially if he’s a spoiled amoral cynical “christian” moron.
I watched the debate on CNN and I don’t know how I ever got by without information overload. The most interesting thing was the real-time graph of acceptance by a group of undecided Ohio voters. It was fascinating to watch which things men responded to as opposed to what turned women on. I noticed that the lines were mostly parallel with women being more generous than men. I can’t remember a point at which the lines departed greatly although there were some interesting differences. I expected men to like Palin was was surprised at how consistantly women seemed to like Biden more. Palin started out really strong and sort of gradually petered out with both sexes. People respond to having smoke blown up their asses. ‘Oh, no, the middle class had no responsibility for the current banking problem’ got high marks.
The professional debate scorers were less interesting. Three gave Sarah Palin a point for walking onto the stage without falling down. From there on in I think each’s score was more an indication of their preferences than an attempt to actually technically score a debate.
As far as I understand it, John McCain plans to give everyone a $5000 tax cut for health care and tax employer provided health insurance benefits. I predict that if this happens employeers will drop health care coverage as a benefit like a hot potato and that you’ll be able to buy a policy starting at $4995. This is basically a plan to give Insurance companies $5000 of government money and making us the bagman for the payoff.
The next time somebody in a debate says “redistribution of wealth” in a debate it should be illegal not to answer by saying, “It’s been being redistributed for the last 10 years, it’s just all been going to the top 2%.” After Palin polished this old chestnut, the next morning McCain and Obama both voted to redistribute some more to the people at the top so they wouldn’t quit loaning us our own money back. To the tune of over $2000 per person in the country. A “confidence” game if I’ve ever seen one.
NEW-CLEE-ERR! It’s spelled nuclear, not nucular. There’s no second “U” sound. Stop it. It’s one thing to mis-pronounce a word. It’s quite another to be such an arrogant pinhead that you can’t admit that you are wrong and stop doing it. It even another to base a political party on the idea that all the stubborn pinheads are going to force every body else to do it their way. Pay attention, Intelligent Design supporters.
Joe Biden did a masterful job at avoiding the minefield of ways he might have offended women by saying something or doing something wrong while debating Sarah Palin. Not that women are easily offended or would ever play a passive-aggressive game with a man to get what they want. No sir. Not that that would ever happen.
A great debate. Everybody won. Palin won because she was able to hide the fact that she really doesn’t have a clue what she’s talking about. At least well enough that other people who don’t know what they are talking about can believe her. And Joe Biden won because he won.
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