Newt rises as others falter
Entries Tagged as 'politics & government'
A very metric Christmas
It was slow in coming but fast in going. If you blinked, you missed it: the Christmas Tree Tax. As government grasping goes, it was pretty thin sauce. The proposal was for a 15-cent levy on every cut Christmas tree sold, collected by the Dept of Agriculture and released to an as yet non-existent Christmas Tree Promotion Board or somesuch. Let’s not ponder overlong how it is that a government scarcely able to mention “Christmas” finds no issue of church/state separation in collecting the lunch money for the National Christmas Tree Association. Also we will ignore that the White House will never pay that fifteen cents since their trees are donated which is considered a high honor, if not a fine commercial, for the grower. And of course, as the resident gunslingers explain, this is not a tax and is being delayed with far more fanfare than which it was proposed. To next Christmas? They do not say. [Read more →]
Top ten new campaign slogans for Herman Cain
10. Yes We Cain!
9. Let’s Stop China Before They Get Nukes!
8. Our Guy’s Blacker Than Your Guy!
7. Obama May Be Able — And We All Know Who Slew Abel!
6. Favorite Politician Of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan!
5. Vote For Me And I’ll Make That Smokin’ Guy VP!
4. I Was Referring To Pizza When I Told Those Women To “Hold The Sausage”!
3. Herman Cain — Very Clintonesque!
2. I Just Love Raisin’ A Little Cain! (Wink Wink)
1. Hands On! And Pants Off!
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
Mao is Jesus, champagne, reefer, say wha? and… gratuitous blues
“Oh Huntsman. Take that metrosexual pink tie & good sense over to the Democratic party where you belong.” Ana Marie Cox
So,the inimitable Ms.Cox twittered last evening to the effect that she couldn’t understand why Jon Huntsman didn’t take his calm demeanor, arched eyebrow and good ideas where they belonged, the Democratic party. After glancing through the results of the Republican foreign policy debate, I tend to agree. These people are deranged. While Mitt Romney can probably be forgiven for feeling confident, it’s sort of like feeling confident about pitching a no-hitter against the Yankees after ecking out a win over St Swithin’s School for the Blind, Lame and Criminally Insane. Although frankly, they couldn’t make the team at St Swithin’s… [Read more →]
Time for a TEA Party revival
A year and a half ago I wrote a piece here with the title “Grandma vs. The SWAT Team“, wherein I outlined an idea I had for generating an “iconic image” for the TEA Party movement, that of a little, old, blue haired lady sharing some cookies with a member of the SWAT team Obama had sent in to surround a TEA Party rally. The idea was prompted by the pictures we were seeing in the news at the time, that of illegal immigrants having semi-violent clashes with the police, and the images featured in the story I was discussing in the post, images of little old ladies standing in front of the line of SWAT officers, smiling, laughing, joking around, and taking pictures, but doing absolutely nothing arrest worthy.
I’ve always thought it a great idea, and pondered over the state of TEA Party PR ever since. I think now is the time to have a serious revisit on the idea.
Pray the war lasts to August
It was an election day without candidates on Tuesday, at least around here. There were a couple issues on the ballot. One was to allow carry-out booze sales on Sundays. I favor. The other was for a limited time, special use, educational purposes only county sales tax of ONE PERCENT, morons, not one pennyas it is always said. This, I oppose. These aren’t especially serious matters but examining them might shed a little light on this thing we call Politics (shudder). The Sunday Sales law brings into combat some peculiar coalitions. At odds are two groups: evangelicals and similar religious folks allied with the bar/restaurant industry against a consortium of grocery/convenience and liquor store proprietors supported by forgetful but thrifty drunks. Commercial and personal interests are aswirl. One’s closest ally today is your sternest competitor tomorrow. The result was pretty one sided, though. It was a sweep for Sunday Beer, as it was so quaintly and expertly named. [Read more →]
A picture’s worth
You know the old saying that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words?’ There’s an interesting discussion of the adage and its origin, and I’m sure many of us can cite at least one occasion from our own, first-hand experience where it has been put to the test, and passed that test with ease.
There are occasions when a picture’s worth might be calculated by other units of measure. For example, might a picture’s worth be measured in terms of how many people are moved to change their hearts and their minds after viewing said picture? [Read more →]
I blame The Lion King
Recent demonstrations by the disaffecteds occupying Wall Street and calling themselves the 99%, coming as they have on the proverbial heels of another populist revolt, the TEA Party, suggest that one thing is clear: people on the left and the right have had it with the status quo in Washington D.C…
…or have they?
Not likely…and I blame The Lion King. [Read more →]
Journal publishes obvious truth; repudiation by Journal editorial page due Tuesday
Reading the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page for insight into the economy, business or economics in general — or just about anything else except the arcane study of the Right Wing elite and where Murdoch’s head is at today — is a very strange exercise. It’s kind of like looking at a symposium on race relations and gender equitality chaired by an intern from World Net Daily where the participants are Louis Ferdinand Celine, Ian Paisley, John Hagee, Michelle Bachmann, the Grand Mufti of Teheran, Dennis Duke and Clarence Thomas. They may have a lot to say, but it will be either ignorant or just plain batshit crazy, with a tinge of duplicity and lies. Which they all believe. [Read more →]
A fortuitous burst of x-rays
Often, inside a fat guy abides a small man. This is the reality exposed to the nation last week by the antics of New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie. What else is there to make of that display? While the media and candidates are chewing their cuticles down to the nub, Christie prances in a gunslinger approved performance where he rattles the tools around in the back shed while telling the expectant world that he is not up to anything. And then, he really isn’t. Well, he’s not up to running but he IS up to a perverse faux obeisance at the Reagan Shrine, including some ritual canoodling with the widow Reagan, a pro forma popping of Christie ’12 balloons and then an immediate, fawning, truly disgusting appearance with Mitt Romney where they each break their own necks patting each other and themselves on the back. Noted expert on all things, Christie declares that no comparison of any kind can be legitimately made between Romneycare and Obamacare. Not suprisingly, he offers no foundation for his absolutism, simply a promise to write such nonsense out of sane discourse. Here, in a Mormon approved ceremony, Romney and Christie exchange lachrymose compliments and pledge until Death do They Part. Chris shows that he is down for the struggle with reason and perception and willing to endorse whatever inanity necessary to grease the skids for Mitt to the nomination and then the coronation. Christie might as well have simply announced while extending a signet ring: L’establishment de Republique? C’est moi! They say that Christie is conservative for New Jersey. Yes, and as a New Jersey native I can also inform you, he is quite fit. [Read more →]
Bourgeois kiddies of the world unite!
When I first saw the mob of pasty-faced bourgeois Bohemian children camped out on Wall Street I thought: not again. Ever since the late 1980s, when all that hippy nonsense turned two decades old, a segment of Western youth has suffered from 60s envy. Thus we periodically witness attempts to rekindle the romantic flame of protest which – we are constantly reminded – burned so brightly in those halcyon days.
Me, I’ve never suffered from 60s envy. Woodstock is to blame: I was 16 when I watched the concert film and was shocked to learn how much of the music was not Jimi Hendrix but rather, puerile and twee garbage like Country Joe and the Fish or John Sebastian. [Read more →]
There are some who call me… Tim
Do you know who I occasionally catch myself feeling like when arguing with the Occupy Wall Street supporters? Tim the Enchanter, from Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail.
Creation
There was a very sadly missed opportunity not long ago. It was a brief flash of insight from Administration PR man Jay Carney. Don’t worry, it didn’t last and has not been repeated but somewhere deep in the mind of this poor confused fellow he discovered a simple fact and, intentionally or not, exposed it to a gaping press. “Well, the White House doesn’t create jobs. The government together — White House, Congress — creates policies that allow for greater job creation.” What possessed Mr. Carney to publicly rubbish the fundamental Creation Myth on which sits the whole contraption of Obamaism? There must have been a demonic home-invasion in his little skull, invisible to video or audio but perhaps if we slow it way down and turn it way up we will see the ghost of Milton Friedman dashing in his one eye, speaking his piece and then fleeing through the other. Either that or Jay stumbled on a bit of good sense accidentally, which happens, but then quickly throttled it in its infancy, which also happens. [Read more →]
Clown college reunion — ad infinitum
Homey the Clown. Krusty the Clown. Bozo the Clown. Herman the Clown.Michelle the Clown. Will someone save us from these meddlesome clowns? Dear god…and, I am an anti-theist. [Read more →]
A plausible candidate
Although there is feverish energy and tumult, there is also consternation. While everyone agrees it is time for heroics, we’re still holding on for a hero. So far, no go. The crowd searches each others’ eyes and scans the vids. It seems almost anyone would do, given the givens, but somehow every nomination inspires a plurality of objection so the top candidates rattle along on the shoulders and heads of the second tier-types while the also rans, run up behind. And the clock is ticking, no one can ignore that. Whom, oh whom will we ever find to send to the Head Office? Head Office, of course, is a fine American can-do euphemism for the latest French engenue taking Hollywood by storm. Not Anouk Aimee, the guillotine. [Read more →]
The Declarations of Dependents
On Soapbox, October, 10th 2011 The anonymous Declarations of the thirteen percent united States of Amerika
When in the Course of current events it becomes necessary for one class to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of Mother Earth, the separate and superior station to which the Laws of the People and of the People’s President entitle them, a competent manipulation of the opinions of the Media requires that they should obscure the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all wealth is created from inequality, that it is endowed by it’s Creators with certain unalienable Wrongs, that among these are Strife, Perfidy and the pursuit of Profits. — That to redress these wrongs, Governments are inflicted upon Drones, deriving their just powers from the virtues of the governers, — That whenever any Brand of Government becomes abortive of these ends, it is the Duty of the Masses to cripple and to demolish it, and to institute More Government, laying its foundation on such demands and organizing its powers in such force, as to them shall seem most likely to increase their Stipends and Net Access. Public Relations, indeed, will dictate that Governments long entrenched should not be challenged in plain and transparent language; and accordingly all rumors hath confirmed that man, and Whoa, man! kind are more disposed to pilfer, while victuals are pilferable than to feed themselves by pursuing the work for which they are equipped. But when a short bus of abusers and usurations, pursuing inarguably the same Subjects, convinces the malign to reduce themselves under urban Primitivism, it is the White, and the Moody, who throw offal at such Government, to extract new Revenue for their Social Security. — Such have been the impatient Demonstrations, of these Occupiers; and such is now the necessity which compels them to expand the inadequate Reach of Government. The history of the present President of Amerika is a history of insulting sell-outs and recriminations, all pursuing the equivocal project to establish an invisible Satrapy over these Ingrates. To prove this, let Factoids be submitted to a dated press. [Read more →]
