For the first few days since the scandal broke, I wasn't inclined to post about it for one simple reason. Herr Lardbaugh has pulled these kinds of stunts before, and after initial firestorms has consistently gotten away with them.
This time, it looks like he may not. Or might he? As of the latest count, five sponsors have withdrawn sponsorship, and two others have "suspended" ads on Herr Lardbaugh's radio show. The Christian Science Monitor identifies them:
Departing sponsors include LegalZoom, ProFlowers, Citrix, Sleep Number beds, and Carbonite. Others, including AOL and Tax Resolution Services, have “suspended” their advertising on the show. Sears, AutoZone and Allstate have all said they do not sponsor Mr. Limbaugh’s show and advertisements for the companies that appeared on the program were placed there by mistake.
The Monitor has a succinct passage about the controversy, just in case you the reader don't have the particulars:
Limbaugh got the controversy started last Wednesday when he impugned Georgetown University’s Sandra Fluke on the air, calling her a “slut” and a “prostitute” after she appeared before a congressional committee arguing that her school’s health coverage should include birth control. Limbaugh later in the week insisted that the public should have access to video of her sexual encounters in exchange for the alleged funding of her birth control.
The comments struck many as extraordinarily crass, even for Limbaugh, who frequently makes derisive ad hominem attacks against those he disagrees with. A boycott movement quickly took root, spreading across online communities on sites like Reddit and Facebook, and the strong reaction against Limbaugh inspired seven sponsors to pull ads.
Some in the business think that Clear Channel will quickly pick up new advertisers as long as Herr Lardbaugh remains a bankable media figure. But this time seems a bit more serious than past incidents. Herr Lardbaugh said at first that he was only trying to be funny, and he's apologized to Ms. Fluke twice. But his apologies don't seem to be having any effect, as the controversy rages on days later.
It's not that ad hominem attacks are so shocking and awful. I'm doing that to Herr Lardbaugh right now, by making fun of his name and his usual girth.
But what Herr Lardbaugh did this time was quite unfunny, and went well beyond the boundaries of reasonable attempts at politically partisan humor. I've gotten in trouble in the past doing things as crass as making fun of genocide victims, but even I wouldn't subject a person as loathsome as Herr Lardbaugh to these kinds of attacks.
This time, it looks like he may not get away with it. His show will probably continue, but it's looking a lot like the description in the speech that Walter Matthau's character gives to Andy Griffith's "Lonesome Rhodes" near the end of the 1957 movie A Face in the Crowd. It's never going to be quite the same.
It's happened to a few other media figures before. Dr. Laura Schlessinger was riding high for years, until she finally said a few things that were just too stupid. And, how much of a career has Don Imus had in recent years?
It's true that Herr Lardbaugh's listening audience far eclipses those of either the I-Man or Dr. Laura. But he's human, and he's been skating by through shit storms like this for many years. This time, he may finally be taken down.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
'The Artist:' Yet Another Reason The Oscars Can't Be Taken Seriously
By Manifesto Joe
Over the past year, I've actually seen five of the nine films that were nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. In the 1980s I was a devoted film buff and even aspired to be a critic, but in recent years I've lost interest, in large part because the Hollywood product has become such recycled pablum.
But again, over the past year, I've gotten out to the local cinemas a bit more. There are no "art houses" close to where I live, so for economic reasons I've mostly had to settle for the commercial Hollywood product with the discounts that area theaters provide.
I thought The Artist was a fun and entertaining novelty film, and Uggie the Dog's performance made me want to adopt a Jack Russell terrier.
But, Best Picture? Come off it. This is A Star Is Born with a happy ending tacked on. I regarded The Help and The Descendants as better films, and considered Midnight in Paris and Hugo to be at least as good, perhaps better.
What one tends to see on Oscar night is essentially a popularity contest held among the Academy's voters. Trendiness counts, and if a film such as The Artist offers something that people haven't seen in a while (black-and-white cinematography, a silent movie with titles), it has a leg up on its rivals.
Let's consider, briefly, a history of how much "Oscar" has meant over the years. Citizen Kane is at the top of many critics' all-time-great lists, and it didn't win Best Picture of 1941, though it was nominated.
What were some of the winning "Best Pictures?" Let's see -- we have Love Story (1970), which nobody wants to see anymore, and then the "immortal" tearjerker Terms of Endearment (1983). The latter's victory at the Oscars was when I really stopped taking the Academy Awards very seriously. What those two movies had in common was that audiences hadn't seen old-time tearjerkers in a long while, so those who hadn't grown up watching the old Douglas Sirk melodramas from the 1950s on little black-and-white TVs were often seeing something brand-new to them.
"Best actors?" I don't remember the last time I saw F. Murray Abraham, and Roberto Benigni's career certainly hasn't gone anywhere in recent years.
Somewhat in contrast, Val Kilmer doesn't look like he used to, but he's still getting parts. I thought one of the biggest ripoffs in Oscar history was that he wasn't even nominated for Best Actor for his work in The Doors (1991), in which he seemed to have disinterred the dude from that Paris grave for his performance as Jim Morrison. But Val has a rep for being difficult and isn't popular in Hollywood. (Director John Frankenheimer, before his death, was quoted as saying that one of the things he would never again do in his life was work with Val Kilmer. He had directed Kilmer and Marlon Brando in a very forgettable version of The Island of Dr. Moreau.)
Bottom line -- it's just a popularity contest among U.S. film industry insiders. I can't afford the gasoline and ticket prices to be a "movie snob" anymore, but Oscar night usually makes me wish I could be one again.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Over the past year, I've actually seen five of the nine films that were nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. In the 1980s I was a devoted film buff and even aspired to be a critic, but in recent years I've lost interest, in large part because the Hollywood product has become such recycled pablum.
But again, over the past year, I've gotten out to the local cinemas a bit more. There are no "art houses" close to where I live, so for economic reasons I've mostly had to settle for the commercial Hollywood product with the discounts that area theaters provide.
I thought The Artist was a fun and entertaining novelty film, and Uggie the Dog's performance made me want to adopt a Jack Russell terrier.
But, Best Picture? Come off it. This is A Star Is Born with a happy ending tacked on. I regarded The Help and The Descendants as better films, and considered Midnight in Paris and Hugo to be at least as good, perhaps better.
What one tends to see on Oscar night is essentially a popularity contest held among the Academy's voters. Trendiness counts, and if a film such as The Artist offers something that people haven't seen in a while (black-and-white cinematography, a silent movie with titles), it has a leg up on its rivals.
Let's consider, briefly, a history of how much "Oscar" has meant over the years. Citizen Kane is at the top of many critics' all-time-great lists, and it didn't win Best Picture of 1941, though it was nominated.
What were some of the winning "Best Pictures?" Let's see -- we have Love Story (1970), which nobody wants to see anymore, and then the "immortal" tearjerker Terms of Endearment (1983). The latter's victory at the Oscars was when I really stopped taking the Academy Awards very seriously. What those two movies had in common was that audiences hadn't seen old-time tearjerkers in a long while, so those who hadn't grown up watching the old Douglas Sirk melodramas from the 1950s on little black-and-white TVs were often seeing something brand-new to them.
"Best actors?" I don't remember the last time I saw F. Murray Abraham, and Roberto Benigni's career certainly hasn't gone anywhere in recent years.
Somewhat in contrast, Val Kilmer doesn't look like he used to, but he's still getting parts. I thought one of the biggest ripoffs in Oscar history was that he wasn't even nominated for Best Actor for his work in The Doors (1991), in which he seemed to have disinterred the dude from that Paris grave for his performance as Jim Morrison. But Val has a rep for being difficult and isn't popular in Hollywood. (Director John Frankenheimer, before his death, was quoted as saying that one of the things he would never again do in his life was work with Val Kilmer. He had directed Kilmer and Marlon Brando in a very forgettable version of The Island of Dr. Moreau.)
Bottom line -- it's just a popularity contest among U.S. film industry insiders. I can't afford the gasoline and ticket prices to be a "movie snob" anymore, but Oscar night usually makes me wish I could be one again.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Cletis Stump's GOP Laws Of Power
Cletis Stump is a good buddy who's got a fine blog going (See Joe's Hot Links, The Book of Cletis). Here's a recent post:
The GOP Laws of Power
~ The 1st GOP Law of Power: "The reduction of government services will be met with an
equivalent increase of corporate control."
~ The 2nd Law GOP of Power: "Always praise Jesus as your lord and savior when cameras are
rolling, otherwise kneel before Mammon."
~ The 3d GOP Law of Power: "When beating the war drum, stress the desire to aid those
yearning to be free; never mention their oil."
~ The 4th GOP Law of Power: "Stress patriotism and at all times brand those who oppose our
wars of imperialism as socialist agitators"
~ The 5th GOP Law of Power: "Never credit President Obama; deflect the praise when it is
brought forth and quickly reference his Muslim father."
~ The 6th GOP Law of Power: "In an election year, back off of any aspect of our agenda the
electorate has questioned and change the subject."
~ The 7th GOP Law of Power: "When caught in a lie and all attempts to ignore the public outcry
have failed, speak only to Fox News."
~ The 8t GOP Law of Power: "As the economy improves, and unemployment declines, feign
outrage over social issues & re engage the culture wars."
~ The 9th GOP Law of Power: "When holding a minority of Senate seats, embrace the filibuster
and pass no legislation favorable to the President."
~ The 10th GOP Law of Power: "When President Obama shows grace and courage and refuses
to engage in Brinkmanship, double down."
The GOP Laws of Power
~ The 1st GOP Law of Power: "The reduction of government services will be met with an
equivalent increase of corporate control."
~ The 2nd Law GOP of Power: "Always praise Jesus as your lord and savior when cameras are
rolling, otherwise kneel before Mammon."
~ The 3d GOP Law of Power: "When beating the war drum, stress the desire to aid those
yearning to be free; never mention their oil."
~ The 4th GOP Law of Power: "Stress patriotism and at all times brand those who oppose our
wars of imperialism as socialist agitators"
~ The 5th GOP Law of Power: "Never credit President Obama; deflect the praise when it is
brought forth and quickly reference his Muslim father."
~ The 6th GOP Law of Power: "In an election year, back off of any aspect of our agenda the
electorate has questioned and change the subject."
~ The 7th GOP Law of Power: "When caught in a lie and all attempts to ignore the public outcry
have failed, speak only to Fox News."
~ The 8t GOP Law of Power: "As the economy improves, and unemployment declines, feign
outrage over social issues & re engage the culture wars."
~ The 9th GOP Law of Power: "When holding a minority of Senate seats, embrace the filibuster
and pass no legislation favorable to the President."
~ The 10th GOP Law of Power: "When President Obama shows grace and courage and refuses
to engage in Brinkmanship, double down."
Friday, February 24, 2012
I'm Sad To Say Obama Is Pandering On Corporate Tax Cut
By Manifesto Joe
The fundamental dishonesty of the Mainstream Media business press tends to come out at times like this, as President Obama is proposing a cut in the U.S. corporate tax rate, down from the stated "35%" down to 28%. Unfortunately, this is when the fundamental dishonesty of many politicians comes out as well.
The MSM business press, while widely reporting that the current U.S. corporate tax rate of 35% is among the highest in the developed world, fails to report that two-thirds of American corporations aren't even paying it -- or anything at all, effectively. They acknowledge that many corporations, because of loopholes, don't pay an effective rate that high. They fail to report how prevalent, and how widespread, that failure to pay is. It's so bad that two-thirds of them basically pay NOTHING.
Don't believe it? Here's a link.
I can provide many others. Suffice it to say that two-thirds of U.S. corporations, according to numerous studies, have been shown to dodge federal income taxes to such an extent that their effective rate is little or nothing.
What Obama proposes, as I understand it, is to cut the nominal rate from 35% to 28%, with the trade-off of closing a lot of the loopholes that have permitted corporate giants in America to get by year after year paying virtually nothing. Sounds like a reasonable trade-off. I'm a political realist. So, on the surface, it sounds quite pragmatic.
But Obama's plan, again, as I understand it, would introduce a new set of loopholes into the mix, after closing some of them. While additional loopholes, for "green technology" companies and such, may seem like a good idea, it's an idea best left for a time when our federal government can actually AFFORD such breaks.
Granted, one of the nastiest pieces of Republican demagoguery is blaming the current accumulation of national debt on Obama. During Reagan's presidency, the national debt TRIPLED, from about $1 trillion to about $3 trillion. During the absurd "presidency" of Il Doofus, the national debt doubled from about $5 trillion to about $10 trillion while this imbecile was busy doing something that was tantamount to -- well, if FDR had decided to invade Argentina after the Pearl Harbor attack. That's about what the Iraq invasion amounted to, in hindsight.
But now is not the time to introduce any new proposals for loopholes. After 20 or so Republican debates, some of us have a general idea of how batshit crazy most of their "hopefuls" are.
(At the most recent debate, Ron Paul was asked to describe himself in one word. His choice: "Consistent." Yeah. Consistently insane.)
Some of us are looking desperately to the president for leadership. I like the man, but I've been disappointed. I hope to see MORE of the best stuff from him.
Contrary to what Darth Cheney once said, deficits DO matter. America can't afford to run up too much more. As nice as breaks for "green" companies would be, we've come to a time in which all and everyone must ante up.
I understand that Obama is running for re-election, and that he must "dance with them what brung him," as the saying goes in Texas. But now is the time to see statesmanship from him, not pandering. Everyone must share the sacrifice. And that means everyone. Close the loopholes for all, and please, please, don't introduce any new ones.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
The fundamental dishonesty of the Mainstream Media business press tends to come out at times like this, as President Obama is proposing a cut in the U.S. corporate tax rate, down from the stated "35%" down to 28%. Unfortunately, this is when the fundamental dishonesty of many politicians comes out as well.
The MSM business press, while widely reporting that the current U.S. corporate tax rate of 35% is among the highest in the developed world, fails to report that two-thirds of American corporations aren't even paying it -- or anything at all, effectively. They acknowledge that many corporations, because of loopholes, don't pay an effective rate that high. They fail to report how prevalent, and how widespread, that failure to pay is. It's so bad that two-thirds of them basically pay NOTHING.
Don't believe it? Here's a link.
I can provide many others. Suffice it to say that two-thirds of U.S. corporations, according to numerous studies, have been shown to dodge federal income taxes to such an extent that their effective rate is little or nothing.
What Obama proposes, as I understand it, is to cut the nominal rate from 35% to 28%, with the trade-off of closing a lot of the loopholes that have permitted corporate giants in America to get by year after year paying virtually nothing. Sounds like a reasonable trade-off. I'm a political realist. So, on the surface, it sounds quite pragmatic.
But Obama's plan, again, as I understand it, would introduce a new set of loopholes into the mix, after closing some of them. While additional loopholes, for "green technology" companies and such, may seem like a good idea, it's an idea best left for a time when our federal government can actually AFFORD such breaks.
Granted, one of the nastiest pieces of Republican demagoguery is blaming the current accumulation of national debt on Obama. During Reagan's presidency, the national debt TRIPLED, from about $1 trillion to about $3 trillion. During the absurd "presidency" of Il Doofus, the national debt doubled from about $5 trillion to about $10 trillion while this imbecile was busy doing something that was tantamount to -- well, if FDR had decided to invade Argentina after the Pearl Harbor attack. That's about what the Iraq invasion amounted to, in hindsight.
But now is not the time to introduce any new proposals for loopholes. After 20 or so Republican debates, some of us have a general idea of how batshit crazy most of their "hopefuls" are.
(At the most recent debate, Ron Paul was asked to describe himself in one word. His choice: "Consistent." Yeah. Consistently insane.)
Some of us are looking desperately to the president for leadership. I like the man, but I've been disappointed. I hope to see MORE of the best stuff from him.
Contrary to what Darth Cheney once said, deficits DO matter. America can't afford to run up too much more. As nice as breaks for "green" companies would be, we've come to a time in which all and everyone must ante up.
I understand that Obama is running for re-election, and that he must "dance with them what brung him," as the saying goes in Texas. But now is the time to see statesmanship from him, not pandering. Everyone must share the sacrifice. And that means everyone. Close the loopholes for all, and please, please, don't introduce any new ones.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Jesse Fuller, One-Man Band
I hadn't put a music video up for a while, and this is one I'd been thinking about. Enjoy the great Jesse Fuller!
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Rick Perry 'Rearmed, Reloaded' -- Let's Not Forget Retarded
By Manifesto Joe
Forgive me for not resisting the urge to get a few more boot kicks in on a fool who got up on the national stage and made Texans look like buffoons in the bargain. Not that we already didn't look like that to a great extent -- but El Pendejo made it a lot worse.
The reason for my compulsion is that he's back home, and now we have to put up with his moronic ass as governor for nearly three more years.
He's not even ruling out getting his ass kicked again on the national stage. Here's a link to that story. After Reagan and Bush 43, I hadn't thought it was possible for anyone to be too stupid to be the Republican presidential nominee. El Pendejo, and Michele Bachmann as well, seem to have found where the bottom was.
He's back in Austin, ready to do battle in state politics yet again. Isn't it enough of an embarrassment that this dorkus malorkus is now our state's longest-serving governor?
He's not exactly coming back to paradise. A lot of us back here did nothing short of marvel at his talk of the Texas Miracle, and such. Things may be miraculous where he lives, with rent at $9,900 a month. Most of us are trying to figure out how we're going to pay for our next car repair.
El Pendejo did a lot of talking about job creation in Texas, and depicted the state as a capitalist paradise. I suppose that if you're an affluent capitalist, you can carve a certain paradise out of this. You don't have to drive on the rubble that passes for streets, or hear gunshots in your neighborhood, or live next door to people who rely on food stamps to eat and can't afford medical insurance for their children.
Perry represents the class of people who have basically told corporations coast-to-coast that the Texas workforce is a great big whore with legs spread wide. As blogger Robert Ruiz of San Antonio put it in a column:
Essentially our politicians are pimping us out to the lowest bidder. In 2010 Texas tied Mississippi for having more workers earning minimum wage or less than any other state in the country. Some 9.5% of Texas workers earned minimum wage or less compared to a national average of 6%.
Here's a link to a post by Ruiz, who also has much to say about poverty nationally.
People like El Pendejo seem to do an awful lot of talking about "freedom." For the kinds of people he and his spouse have over to dinner, that means the "freedom" of the 1% to fuck over all the rest of us.
But, they have an appalling number of wage-earning slobs fooled. Once, when I was reluctantly in a Wal-Mart, waiting to be checked out, my wife and I were talking to someone, and our checker managed to hear that I work as an editor for an MSM outlet.
I heard him say, "Oh, you mean those biased liberals who suppress dissenting opinions ...?"
I decided that, under the circumstances, it wouldn't be a good idea for me to remark snidely about the general political acumen of Wal-Mart associates. I did mention to him, passing through, that I figured he was probably underpaid. "I can always go somewhere else," was his reply.
My first thought was, why the fuck don't you do just that? What I recall saying was something like, "Yeah, and be a wage slave for somebody else." Yep, he's free alright -- to be a slave who can "choose" masters.
That is a popular opinion in Texas, and seems to be why politicians like El Pendejo just keep getting elected. The people getting screwed seem to want it deeper. For the next three years, they're likely to get it.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Forgive me for not resisting the urge to get a few more boot kicks in on a fool who got up on the national stage and made Texans look like buffoons in the bargain. Not that we already didn't look like that to a great extent -- but El Pendejo made it a lot worse.
The reason for my compulsion is that he's back home, and now we have to put up with his moronic ass as governor for nearly three more years.
He's not even ruling out getting his ass kicked again on the national stage. Here's a link to that story. After Reagan and Bush 43, I hadn't thought it was possible for anyone to be too stupid to be the Republican presidential nominee. El Pendejo, and Michele Bachmann as well, seem to have found where the bottom was.
He's back in Austin, ready to do battle in state politics yet again. Isn't it enough of an embarrassment that this dorkus malorkus is now our state's longest-serving governor?
He's not exactly coming back to paradise. A lot of us back here did nothing short of marvel at his talk of the Texas Miracle, and such. Things may be miraculous where he lives, with rent at $9,900 a month. Most of us are trying to figure out how we're going to pay for our next car repair.
El Pendejo did a lot of talking about job creation in Texas, and depicted the state as a capitalist paradise. I suppose that if you're an affluent capitalist, you can carve a certain paradise out of this. You don't have to drive on the rubble that passes for streets, or hear gunshots in your neighborhood, or live next door to people who rely on food stamps to eat and can't afford medical insurance for their children.
Perry represents the class of people who have basically told corporations coast-to-coast that the Texas workforce is a great big whore with legs spread wide. As blogger Robert Ruiz of San Antonio put it in a column:
Essentially our politicians are pimping us out to the lowest bidder. In 2010 Texas tied Mississippi for having more workers earning minimum wage or less than any other state in the country. Some 9.5% of Texas workers earned minimum wage or less compared to a national average of 6%.
Here's a link to a post by Ruiz, who also has much to say about poverty nationally.
People like El Pendejo seem to do an awful lot of talking about "freedom." For the kinds of people he and his spouse have over to dinner, that means the "freedom" of the 1% to fuck over all the rest of us.
But, they have an appalling number of wage-earning slobs fooled. Once, when I was reluctantly in a Wal-Mart, waiting to be checked out, my wife and I were talking to someone, and our checker managed to hear that I work as an editor for an MSM outlet.
I heard him say, "Oh, you mean those biased liberals who suppress dissenting opinions ...?"
I decided that, under the circumstances, it wouldn't be a good idea for me to remark snidely about the general political acumen of Wal-Mart associates. I did mention to him, passing through, that I figured he was probably underpaid. "I can always go somewhere else," was his reply.
My first thought was, why the fuck don't you do just that? What I recall saying was something like, "Yeah, and be a wage slave for somebody else." Yep, he's free alright -- to be a slave who can "choose" masters.
That is a popular opinion in Texas, and seems to be why politicians like El Pendejo just keep getting elected. The people getting screwed seem to want it deeper. For the next three years, they're likely to get it.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Just When It Looked Like Slick Willard Had It Sewn Up ...
By Manifesto Joe
... Sanitarium makes it a race again!
If I had $10,000 handy to bet, the way Slick Willard apparently has, I would still bet on him. I would do so because I think he's where the most of the really big money of the Republican Party is, and will stay.
Boss Hogg still has his pockets of support -- including the very deep pockets of one of the richest players in Vegas, or anywhere in the world, multibillionaire Sheldon Adelson. That will keep him in the campaign for at least a while.
Ron Paul? Fageddaboudit. As one pundit once put it, he reminds too many people of that mentally ill uncle that every family has. He will keep the support of his loyal ideologues, but they won't exceed 10-15% in that many states.
Sanitarium seems to have emerged as a surprisingly strong second-place contender, which shows two things -- how full of surprises the Republicans are this time, and how astonishingly weak their field is. If anybody had told me six months ago that Sanitarium would still even be in this thing now, I'd have thought they were ready to be committed to one (a sanitarium).
My $10,000 wager, as of now, would be on a Slick Willard/Sanitarium ticket. Wall Street is still the Republican Party's 800-pound gorilla, and I think the "smart money" believes that Slick Willard has the best chance to win in November. Sanitarium would be a good No. 2 to reassure and co-opt Tea Party types, fundamentalists, Catholic Falangists and other far-right creatures.
Boss Hogg might have had a good shot at the No. 2 spot earlier, but he's pissed off too many people. Word is among Washington insiders, even "conservatives," that anyone who knows Gingrich very well generally detests him. That's not the type who makes a good, loyal veep.
But, we've seen plenty of twists and turns in this Rethuglican contest, so stay tuned. There may be a few more coming.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
... Sanitarium makes it a race again!
If I had $10,000 handy to bet, the way Slick Willard apparently has, I would still bet on him. I would do so because I think he's where the most of the really big money of the Republican Party is, and will stay.
Boss Hogg still has his pockets of support -- including the very deep pockets of one of the richest players in Vegas, or anywhere in the world, multibillionaire Sheldon Adelson. That will keep him in the campaign for at least a while.
Ron Paul? Fageddaboudit. As one pundit once put it, he reminds too many people of that mentally ill uncle that every family has. He will keep the support of his loyal ideologues, but they won't exceed 10-15% in that many states.
Sanitarium seems to have emerged as a surprisingly strong second-place contender, which shows two things -- how full of surprises the Republicans are this time, and how astonishingly weak their field is. If anybody had told me six months ago that Sanitarium would still even be in this thing now, I'd have thought they were ready to be committed to one (a sanitarium).
My $10,000 wager, as of now, would be on a Slick Willard/Sanitarium ticket. Wall Street is still the Republican Party's 800-pound gorilla, and I think the "smart money" believes that Slick Willard has the best chance to win in November. Sanitarium would be a good No. 2 to reassure and co-opt Tea Party types, fundamentalists, Catholic Falangists and other far-right creatures.
Boss Hogg might have had a good shot at the No. 2 spot earlier, but he's pissed off too many people. Word is among Washington insiders, even "conservatives," that anyone who knows Gingrich very well generally detests him. That's not the type who makes a good, loyal veep.
But, we've seen plenty of twists and turns in this Rethuglican contest, so stay tuned. There may be a few more coming.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
A Connection Between Conservatism And Stupidity?
By Manifesto Joe
I put a question mark on that title because I think it's a proposition that may go a bit too far. There are definitely brainy conservatives, and I have had the misfortune of knowing a number of very vapid, ungrounded and ironically intolerant liberals.
But a new study does seem to establish a certain connection among factors of low IQ, social conservatism and prejudice. This story made the rounds on the Internet, but in case you didn't see it, here's a link.
Even before this study, this was not entirely new as a general observation. The English political philosopher John Stuart Mill routinely referred to British Conservatives, the Tories of the 19th century, as "the stupid party." A famous quote from Mill was something to the effect that while not all conservatives are stupid, most stupid people are conservatives.
But after 55, going on 56 years on the planet, I've also seen that advancing age does make many people more "conservative." That's not connected with stupidity, despite the inevitable loss of brain cells with age. One does become more cautious and circumspect. Some 35 years ago, I was a hard-core social libertarian, believing that any human activity in which a direct and arbitrary victim cannot be identified should be quite legal and tolerated.
I can't say I'm there anymore. I've never been to Vegas, but I've been to a few casino spots closer to here. Looking around, it was pretty easy to see the very grave social costs of legal gambling.
As for hookers, I have absolutely no personal experience with them. But I've heard of areas of the city in which I live where families have said their teenage son was approached and propositioned, in the front yard of their home, by a local prostitute. Not cool.
While there's still the argument that people are going to pursue gambling and sex-for-money anyway -- they always have -- I've come to see that it's not a bad idea to give communities the option of at least zoning such activities, so that they are legally restricted to specified areas. Over decades, I suppose I've become what could be described as a social moderate.
So I would hesitate to say that there's an entirely direct link between social conservatism and stupid people. It's characteristic of more liberal types to be cognizant of ambiguity, so I'll be "liberal" here, in that way. It's not nearly that simple, and never has been.
I would go so far as to say that, among people I am now aware of who do things like call the president "Barack Osama" and doggedly allege that he was born in Kenya, they are indeed pretty fucking stupid. I think the study is quite on the mark that there is a connection between prejudice and stupidity. And incidentally, virtually all such people are "social conservatives."
I grew up in a libertarian-style, Goldwater-Republican conservative family, so the grounding I had was much more related to neoliberal capitalist economics and a sort of 19th-century rugged individualist way of thinking about the world.
It has been asserted that people's politics and religion are generally fixed by the time they are, say, 10 years old. That was never true of me at all. To me, public philosophy is a quest that one pursues for a lifetime, and the behavior of forever thinking only what Dad and Mom taught you to think -- well, that is the true hallmark of stupidity. Whether it's a "red diaper baby" rebelling against Marxist ideas as an adult, or a Southern reactionary becoming a liberal after going to college -- that shows that at least the person is actively thinking about the issues, rather than smugly hanging onto family platitudes.
In my case, I noticed that my friends were usually more tolerant, liberal types, and that I didn't get along as well with the small-minded philistines I usually found among conservatives. Later I spent much time dwelling on economic questions -- well into my 30s, when I spent three years editing college economics textbooks. After reading all sides of such questions, I came to view laissez-faire as one undesirable extreme, and Marxism-Leninism as the other. The neo-Keynesian, mixed-economy model was the one that made the most sense to me, both historically and theoretically. It seems to be the one that truly delivers the goods to the many, not just the few.
Since libertarian-type conservatives are usually what could be described as civil libertarians, once my economic view had changed it was a very short walk toward liberalism. But I remain reluctant to wear that label. Liberals believe certain things that I do not, and am unlikely to ever embrace.
But as the American political scene has become so stupifyingly reactionary since around 1980, that simplifies things quite a bit. The bottom line has become that anybody who can't watch Fox News for 15 minutes without telling himself/herself that this is bullshit propaganda -- you become a liberal by default.
I personally prefer the term "progressive." That's a label that differentiates one from the capitalist neoliberalism that has become despised the world over, but also from the more knee-jerk sort of leftism that one sees so often among "conditioned" liberals.
In his 1953 book The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk put forth six "canons" of conservatism that can be summarized as follows:
1. A belief in a transcendent order, which Kirk described variously as based in tradition, divine revelation, or natural law;
2. An affection for the "variety and mystery" of human existence;
3. A conviction that society requires orders and classes that emphasize "natural" distinctions;
4. A belief that property and freedom are closely linked;
5. A faith in custom, convention, and prescription, and
6. A recognition that innovation must be tied to existing traditions and customs, which entails a respect for the political value of prudence.
Kirk had no use for libertarian thinking, which he associated with 19th-century classic liberalism. His most enduring book touched very little on economics at all, so what he was describing was the phenomenon of "social conservatism," which has become a powerful force in contemporary U.S. politics.
Let's take these "canons" one at a time. Some of them seem to make good sense, so why would an intelligent person take exception?
1. Muslims also believe in a transcendent order, as do Hindus. There's quite a bit of diversity on this point among Christians, and there appears to be that among other major world religions as well. Who's got the right formula? I have no idea. And I suspect that anyone who claims to have the right one is either delusional or a liar. That's one thing experience has most decidedly taught me.
2. Hard to argue with that one. In fact, it appeals to the liberal habit of seeing the world as an ambiguous and complex place, rather than a simple, structured and absolute one.
3. Ever suffered a stupid and/or foolish boss? With the world being the kind of capricious and dicey place that it is, it's not uncommon to see the most silly kinds of people sitting in exalted positions, lording it over people who are vastly superior to them on many levels. Conservative canon No. 3 has no relationship to merit, that seems certain.
4. What conservatives -- and libertarians -- routinely forget is that property is a purely human construct. It's a legal artifact that exists on paper, and routinely protects weak from strong. That's great, and I'm all for it on that level -- but then don't hypocritically turn around and argue that it exists because of any kind of natural law. It exists in spite of natural law. NATURAL LAW is survival of the fittest. If I can get the drop on you and yours, murder all of you, bury all of you in the back yard, and take all the property -- according to natural law, it's now MINE. Property rights, as enforced by society's laws, are the very rights that prevent me from doing that.
In other words, property rights are not, and have never been, absolute. They are conditional.
5. There are plenty of "customs" and "traditions" in the Roman Catholic Church. Need I say more?
6. This is another one that's hard to argue with at first. But today's conservatives seem totally out of touch with that. They want to take U.S. society back to a time (the first Gilded Age) in which 1 out of 3 Americans lived in poverty -- and that was 1 out of 2 among the elderly, since there was no pension system. In contrast, they seem to demonize the era from 1935 to 1980, in which poverty was greatly reduced and the U.S. saw its global power multiplied with the creation of our great middle class. Exactly what is "conservative" about their current position?
I suppose I've covered enough ground here for one post. Suffice it to say that I see much wisdom in the J.S. Mill quote mentioned earlier. I've known a few brilliant conservatives in my time. But I've known many more imbecilic right-wingers.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
I put a question mark on that title because I think it's a proposition that may go a bit too far. There are definitely brainy conservatives, and I have had the misfortune of knowing a number of very vapid, ungrounded and ironically intolerant liberals.
But a new study does seem to establish a certain connection among factors of low IQ, social conservatism and prejudice. This story made the rounds on the Internet, but in case you didn't see it, here's a link.
Even before this study, this was not entirely new as a general observation. The English political philosopher John Stuart Mill routinely referred to British Conservatives, the Tories of the 19th century, as "the stupid party." A famous quote from Mill was something to the effect that while not all conservatives are stupid, most stupid people are conservatives.
But after 55, going on 56 years on the planet, I've also seen that advancing age does make many people more "conservative." That's not connected with stupidity, despite the inevitable loss of brain cells with age. One does become more cautious and circumspect. Some 35 years ago, I was a hard-core social libertarian, believing that any human activity in which a direct and arbitrary victim cannot be identified should be quite legal and tolerated.
I can't say I'm there anymore. I've never been to Vegas, but I've been to a few casino spots closer to here. Looking around, it was pretty easy to see the very grave social costs of legal gambling.
As for hookers, I have absolutely no personal experience with them. But I've heard of areas of the city in which I live where families have said their teenage son was approached and propositioned, in the front yard of their home, by a local prostitute. Not cool.
While there's still the argument that people are going to pursue gambling and sex-for-money anyway -- they always have -- I've come to see that it's not a bad idea to give communities the option of at least zoning such activities, so that they are legally restricted to specified areas. Over decades, I suppose I've become what could be described as a social moderate.
So I would hesitate to say that there's an entirely direct link between social conservatism and stupid people. It's characteristic of more liberal types to be cognizant of ambiguity, so I'll be "liberal" here, in that way. It's not nearly that simple, and never has been.
I would go so far as to say that, among people I am now aware of who do things like call the president "Barack Osama" and doggedly allege that he was born in Kenya, they are indeed pretty fucking stupid. I think the study is quite on the mark that there is a connection between prejudice and stupidity. And incidentally, virtually all such people are "social conservatives."
I grew up in a libertarian-style, Goldwater-Republican conservative family, so the grounding I had was much more related to neoliberal capitalist economics and a sort of 19th-century rugged individualist way of thinking about the world.
It has been asserted that people's politics and religion are generally fixed by the time they are, say, 10 years old. That was never true of me at all. To me, public philosophy is a quest that one pursues for a lifetime, and the behavior of forever thinking only what Dad and Mom taught you to think -- well, that is the true hallmark of stupidity. Whether it's a "red diaper baby" rebelling against Marxist ideas as an adult, or a Southern reactionary becoming a liberal after going to college -- that shows that at least the person is actively thinking about the issues, rather than smugly hanging onto family platitudes.
In my case, I noticed that my friends were usually more tolerant, liberal types, and that I didn't get along as well with the small-minded philistines I usually found among conservatives. Later I spent much time dwelling on economic questions -- well into my 30s, when I spent three years editing college economics textbooks. After reading all sides of such questions, I came to view laissez-faire as one undesirable extreme, and Marxism-Leninism as the other. The neo-Keynesian, mixed-economy model was the one that made the most sense to me, both historically and theoretically. It seems to be the one that truly delivers the goods to the many, not just the few.
Since libertarian-type conservatives are usually what could be described as civil libertarians, once my economic view had changed it was a very short walk toward liberalism. But I remain reluctant to wear that label. Liberals believe certain things that I do not, and am unlikely to ever embrace.
But as the American political scene has become so stupifyingly reactionary since around 1980, that simplifies things quite a bit. The bottom line has become that anybody who can't watch Fox News for 15 minutes without telling himself/herself that this is bullshit propaganda -- you become a liberal by default.
I personally prefer the term "progressive." That's a label that differentiates one from the capitalist neoliberalism that has become despised the world over, but also from the more knee-jerk sort of leftism that one sees so often among "conditioned" liberals.
In his 1953 book The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk put forth six "canons" of conservatism that can be summarized as follows:
1. A belief in a transcendent order, which Kirk described variously as based in tradition, divine revelation, or natural law;
2. An affection for the "variety and mystery" of human existence;
3. A conviction that society requires orders and classes that emphasize "natural" distinctions;
4. A belief that property and freedom are closely linked;
5. A faith in custom, convention, and prescription, and
6. A recognition that innovation must be tied to existing traditions and customs, which entails a respect for the political value of prudence.
Kirk had no use for libertarian thinking, which he associated with 19th-century classic liberalism. His most enduring book touched very little on economics at all, so what he was describing was the phenomenon of "social conservatism," which has become a powerful force in contemporary U.S. politics.
Let's take these "canons" one at a time. Some of them seem to make good sense, so why would an intelligent person take exception?
1. Muslims also believe in a transcendent order, as do Hindus. There's quite a bit of diversity on this point among Christians, and there appears to be that among other major world religions as well. Who's got the right formula? I have no idea. And I suspect that anyone who claims to have the right one is either delusional or a liar. That's one thing experience has most decidedly taught me.
2. Hard to argue with that one. In fact, it appeals to the liberal habit of seeing the world as an ambiguous and complex place, rather than a simple, structured and absolute one.
3. Ever suffered a stupid and/or foolish boss? With the world being the kind of capricious and dicey place that it is, it's not uncommon to see the most silly kinds of people sitting in exalted positions, lording it over people who are vastly superior to them on many levels. Conservative canon No. 3 has no relationship to merit, that seems certain.
4. What conservatives -- and libertarians -- routinely forget is that property is a purely human construct. It's a legal artifact that exists on paper, and routinely protects weak from strong. That's great, and I'm all for it on that level -- but then don't hypocritically turn around and argue that it exists because of any kind of natural law. It exists in spite of natural law. NATURAL LAW is survival of the fittest. If I can get the drop on you and yours, murder all of you, bury all of you in the back yard, and take all the property -- according to natural law, it's now MINE. Property rights, as enforced by society's laws, are the very rights that prevent me from doing that.
In other words, property rights are not, and have never been, absolute. They are conditional.
5. There are plenty of "customs" and "traditions" in the Roman Catholic Church. Need I say more?
6. This is another one that's hard to argue with at first. But today's conservatives seem totally out of touch with that. They want to take U.S. society back to a time (the first Gilded Age) in which 1 out of 3 Americans lived in poverty -- and that was 1 out of 2 among the elderly, since there was no pension system. In contrast, they seem to demonize the era from 1935 to 1980, in which poverty was greatly reduced and the U.S. saw its global power multiplied with the creation of our great middle class. Exactly what is "conservative" about their current position?
I suppose I've covered enough ground here for one post. Suffice it to say that I see much wisdom in the J.S. Mill quote mentioned earlier. I've known a few brilliant conservatives in my time. But I've known many more imbecilic right-wingers.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Boss Hogg Wins Big In South Carolina!
By Manifesto Joe
Well, shut my mouth! He's popular in the South!!
Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who bears a resemblance to actor Sorrell Booke (Boss Hogg in The Dukes of Hazzard), didn't merely win the South Carolina Republican primary Saturday. He administered a serious ass-kicking to former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, with about 40 percent of the vote to Romney's distant second at about 28 percent.
It's not that Gingrich winning in South Carolina was surprising. It was the margin of victory that was stunning. With news from Iowa that former Penn. U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum was the actual winner of the Iowa caucuses, it's now definitely still a three-person race. (U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas will carry a loyal libertarian following all the way to the convention, but he has no real chance at the nomination.)
The GOP dilemma
All of this seems to leave the Republican Party in a quandary -- some conservatives are calling on their peers to unite behind one candidate, namely Romney, if they are to have a good chance of voting President Barack Obama out of office. But the stalwarts on the far right aren't buying that.
They keep bolting to Gingrich and Santorum. There's a sentiment among them of anybody-but-Romney, as Romney is widely perceived as much too "moderate" for them to stomach.
Also, the questions about the money Romney has squirreled away in the Cayman Islands are likely to come back to haunt him for the duration. As one all-too-representative of the 1 percent of the superrich who've been getting ever richer at the expense of the rest of us, he has little appeal to the working-class redneck element in which the GOP has made such powerful inroads since 1980.
Santorum doesn't seem terribly sullied, but that sweetheart real estate deal will come back to haunt him, too. And then there's all the quid he's made as a lobbyist since leaving the Senate. It's not exactly the resume of a Washington outsider.
Gingrich isn't exactly a Washington outsider, either, but his reign as House bad boy began 17 years ago, and he's been out of elective office for over 13 years. His sins may be the most forgivable of the GOP contenders.
The worst of it, for evangelical types, is that he's a serial adulterer. Yes, many Americans forgave Bill Clinton for that, over and over. But there are a few differences. Clinton, for all his indiscretions, has had only one wife for decades. Boss Hogg goes through them like cars, trading in the old one for a new model after 100,000 miles and repair bills.
First he married one of his high school teachers, a woman 7 years his senior, after he graduated and became eligible. There's nothing very unusual about that age difference anymore, but one can expect a woman with a 7-year head start to show some age eventually. Boss Hogg's first wife, I've read, was hospitalized with breast cancer when he served her with divorce papers.
Then he married his second wife, erstwhile his mistress during the first divorce. Years later, he became involved with an aide who is now the current Mrs. Gingrich. Wife No. 2 now alleges publicly that Boss Hogg asked her for an "open marriage" so that he could have both her and the mistress. Eventually he asked her for a divorce -- by telephone.
It turned out that Wife No. 2 came down with some nasty illness like multiple sclerosis, which she says was exacerbated by the stress of the divorce. Seems like Boss Hogg dumps 'em just as soon as there's a problem like that.
It's the big head that's the problem, not the little one
As cold-blooded as Boss Hogg's behavior has been, that's not what personally bothers me most about him. Having a philanderer for a president doesn't disturb me much -- a few presidents regarded as "good" or "great," namely JFK and FDR, are now almost as well-known for their extramarital affairs as for their performance in office.
It's the schmuck stuff that comes out of Boss Hogg's mouth, like wanting to replace union school janitors with part-time underage kids, that I find far more disturbing. As president, I suspect that he would try to get batshit insanity like that written into law.
There's also the hypocrisy problem. Boss Hogg was going around the country giving speeches on traditional morality and family values at the time he was alleged to be pursuing an open marriage and/or divorce from Wife No. 2. And, after leading the charge to chase House Speaker Jim Wright out of office on an ethics rap over some petty book deal, Boss Hogg later gets hit with a monumental ethics judgment over -- guess what, a much bigger book deal!
In any case, Boss Hogg seems to be largely forgiven and very much back in the fray. But it's looking like anybody that the Republicans are looking over now will have a tough time taking out Obama. They've all got baggage that the president simply doesn't have.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas
Well, shut my mouth! He's popular in the South!!
Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who bears a resemblance to actor Sorrell Booke (Boss Hogg in The Dukes of Hazzard), didn't merely win the South Carolina Republican primary Saturday. He administered a serious ass-kicking to former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, with about 40 percent of the vote to Romney's distant second at about 28 percent.
It's not that Gingrich winning in South Carolina was surprising. It was the margin of victory that was stunning. With news from Iowa that former Penn. U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum was the actual winner of the Iowa caucuses, it's now definitely still a three-person race. (U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas will carry a loyal libertarian following all the way to the convention, but he has no real chance at the nomination.)
The GOP dilemma
All of this seems to leave the Republican Party in a quandary -- some conservatives are calling on their peers to unite behind one candidate, namely Romney, if they are to have a good chance of voting President Barack Obama out of office. But the stalwarts on the far right aren't buying that.
They keep bolting to Gingrich and Santorum. There's a sentiment among them of anybody-but-Romney, as Romney is widely perceived as much too "moderate" for them to stomach.
Also, the questions about the money Romney has squirreled away in the Cayman Islands are likely to come back to haunt him for the duration. As one all-too-representative of the 1 percent of the superrich who've been getting ever richer at the expense of the rest of us, he has little appeal to the working-class redneck element in which the GOP has made such powerful inroads since 1980.
Santorum doesn't seem terribly sullied, but that sweetheart real estate deal will come back to haunt him, too. And then there's all the quid he's made as a lobbyist since leaving the Senate. It's not exactly the resume of a Washington outsider.
Gingrich isn't exactly a Washington outsider, either, but his reign as House bad boy began 17 years ago, and he's been out of elective office for over 13 years. His sins may be the most forgivable of the GOP contenders.
The worst of it, for evangelical types, is that he's a serial adulterer. Yes, many Americans forgave Bill Clinton for that, over and over. But there are a few differences. Clinton, for all his indiscretions, has had only one wife for decades. Boss Hogg goes through them like cars, trading in the old one for a new model after 100,000 miles and repair bills.
First he married one of his high school teachers, a woman 7 years his senior, after he graduated and became eligible. There's nothing very unusual about that age difference anymore, but one can expect a woman with a 7-year head start to show some age eventually. Boss Hogg's first wife, I've read, was hospitalized with breast cancer when he served her with divorce papers.
Then he married his second wife, erstwhile his mistress during the first divorce. Years later, he became involved with an aide who is now the current Mrs. Gingrich. Wife No. 2 now alleges publicly that Boss Hogg asked her for an "open marriage" so that he could have both her and the mistress. Eventually he asked her for a divorce -- by telephone.
It turned out that Wife No. 2 came down with some nasty illness like multiple sclerosis, which she says was exacerbated by the stress of the divorce. Seems like Boss Hogg dumps 'em just as soon as there's a problem like that.
It's the big head that's the problem, not the little one
As cold-blooded as Boss Hogg's behavior has been, that's not what personally bothers me most about him. Having a philanderer for a president doesn't disturb me much -- a few presidents regarded as "good" or "great," namely JFK and FDR, are now almost as well-known for their extramarital affairs as for their performance in office.
It's the schmuck stuff that comes out of Boss Hogg's mouth, like wanting to replace union school janitors with part-time underage kids, that I find far more disturbing. As president, I suspect that he would try to get batshit insanity like that written into law.
There's also the hypocrisy problem. Boss Hogg was going around the country giving speeches on traditional morality and family values at the time he was alleged to be pursuing an open marriage and/or divorce from Wife No. 2. And, after leading the charge to chase House Speaker Jim Wright out of office on an ethics rap over some petty book deal, Boss Hogg later gets hit with a monumental ethics judgment over -- guess what, a much bigger book deal!
In any case, Boss Hogg seems to be largely forgiven and very much back in the fray. But it's looking like anybody that the Republicans are looking over now will have a tough time taking out Obama. They've all got baggage that the president simply doesn't have.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
As South Carolina Nears: Just When You Think He's Found Bottom, Perry Digs Deeper
By Manifesto Joe
Texas Gov. Rick "El Pendejo" Perry is staying in the presidential race even though few people take him seriously anymore. With his latest ploy, it looks as though he's trying to outflank Romney by being a Republican Party bottom-feeder, scraping up as much of the right-wing Gothic vote as he can.
This time, El Pendejo seems to be defending the four Marines shown, in a widely circulated video, peeing on the corpses of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
These were just kids who made a mistake, he says. Here's a link to a story on the subject.
Well, at least the Marines in question didn't piss on these bodies until after the enemy fighters were dead. Perhaps in certain fraternities, this is a hazing practice that occurs while the freshman pledges are still very much alive.
El Pendejo saved his criticism for the Obama administration officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who condemned this asinine video. Their condemnations, he said, were "over-the-top" and show disdain for the military. While he seemed to stop short of endorsing urination on corpses as a display of patriotism, it seemed more than a bit twisted for him to direct his stream toward those condemning this sort of desecration.
On a mission from God?
Right before the Iowa caucuses in which he fared so poorly, El Pendejo told reporters that he would abandon his presidential bid if God tells him to do so. I suppose we are to gather from this that he and God are on regular speaking terms.
Come off it, El Pendejo. Some key Religious Right figures recently met here in Texas and voted to endorse Rick Santorum for president. Evidently, God whispered to these holier-than-thou types that a sleaze bucket with a brain is better than a sleaze bucket without one.
Anyway, it looks like God told him to forge ahead, and his utterances seem to reek more of desperation with each new one. It looks like one more hammering, in South Carolina, will be needed for El Pendejo to finally hear "the Voice."
I can't say whether God is talking, but I am, and so are a lot of other embarrassed Texans. El Pendejo -- please, please quit.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Texas Gov. Rick "El Pendejo" Perry is staying in the presidential race even though few people take him seriously anymore. With his latest ploy, it looks as though he's trying to outflank Romney by being a Republican Party bottom-feeder, scraping up as much of the right-wing Gothic vote as he can.
This time, El Pendejo seems to be defending the four Marines shown, in a widely circulated video, peeing on the corpses of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
These were just kids who made a mistake, he says. Here's a link to a story on the subject.
Well, at least the Marines in question didn't piss on these bodies until after the enemy fighters were dead. Perhaps in certain fraternities, this is a hazing practice that occurs while the freshman pledges are still very much alive.
El Pendejo saved his criticism for the Obama administration officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who condemned this asinine video. Their condemnations, he said, were "over-the-top" and show disdain for the military. While he seemed to stop short of endorsing urination on corpses as a display of patriotism, it seemed more than a bit twisted for him to direct his stream toward those condemning this sort of desecration.
On a mission from God?
Right before the Iowa caucuses in which he fared so poorly, El Pendejo told reporters that he would abandon his presidential bid if God tells him to do so. I suppose we are to gather from this that he and God are on regular speaking terms.
Come off it, El Pendejo. Some key Religious Right figures recently met here in Texas and voted to endorse Rick Santorum for president. Evidently, God whispered to these holier-than-thou types that a sleaze bucket with a brain is better than a sleaze bucket without one.
Anyway, it looks like God told him to forge ahead, and his utterances seem to reek more of desperation with each new one. It looks like one more hammering, in South Carolina, will be needed for El Pendejo to finally hear "the Voice."
I can't say whether God is talking, but I am, and so are a lot of other embarrassed Texans. El Pendejo -- please, please quit.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, January 9, 2012
You're Embarrassing Texans: Time For Rick "El Pendejo" Perry To Quit The Race
By Manifesto Joe
I'm very embarrassed that "we" even elected him governor. (I use the editorial "we," because I would never have voted for him even for dogcatcher.) Rick "El Pendejo" Perry has regularly and predictably embarrassed himself in debate after debate, against competitors who -- let's face it, there are probably no Mensans among these dolts. No, not even Gingrich. (He's been aptly described as a stupid person's idea of what a smart person sounds like.)
Rick Perry didn't make quite as gaping an asshole of himself as usual in Saturday night's debate, from all accounts. But he still managed to look the most stupid among a rather dim group.
Calls Obama "a socialist"
I can see now why this fool made a D in intro-level economics at Texas A&M. He doesn't appear to know what a socialist is.
The dictionary definition of socialism is: "any of the various theories or systems of the ownership and operation of the means of production and distribution by society or the community rather than by private individuals, with all members of the society or the community sharing in the work and the products."
What Governor Goodhair seems to base this on is that Obama advocates a system of progressive taxation at the federal level, and the idea that "Obamacare" entails a sort of government takeover of the U.S. health-care system.
Regarding progressive taxation, Obama is on record as advocating a return to the Clinton-era rates of income tax, which featured a marginal rate of 39.6% at the very top bracket for the richest Americans.
If this makes Obama a "socialist," then Dwight Eisenhower must have been a Maoist revolutionary. There was a marginal rate of 91% during his very staid 1950s Republican administration. And Dick Nixon must certainly have been a Marxist-Leninist of some sort. There was a 70% marginal rate while he was president, and he actually had some good words for the idea of a guaranteed annual income for Americans.
Redistribution of income is a trend that works in more than one way, you see, with the rich usually faring much better at it, especially at the state and local levels. It does not define socialism, not in the least.
And "Obamacare" is essentially "Romneycare" implemented at the national level. Private insurers, and private, self-employed doctors and other health professionals, are at the core of such a system. The House of Representatives, then Democratic-controlled, actually voted narrowly for a "public option," but that couldn't get through the Senate, thanks to the faux Democrats who held the balance of that "majority" at the time. Single-payer, the closest thing to "socialism" that has ever been discussed, wasn't even on the table. And even if it had been, doctors would have remained private and self-employed, not government employees as one finds in certain national health-care systems in other developed countries.
So, this falls vastly short of any reasonable definition of "socialism" as well.
It's a huge embarrassment to Texans to have such a drooling Aggie boob attempting to grab some of the limelight at the national level. Come home, El Pendejo -- things are going to go badly enough for you over the next three years.
Wants to send U.S. troops back to Iraq? Why don't we just send his moronic ass there?
He has often seemed to want to be president of his own little separate fiefdom of a country. Let's send his ass over there and let him run for office! When thanking the voters of that unfortunate country, I suspect it would go like, "I'd like to thank the voters here who cast ballots for me -- the Shiites, the Christians, and -- oh, what's that other bunch?"
I don't know what he's hanging on for over here, other than that he might want to be named secretary of one of those federal departments he wants to eliminate. Maybe then he could remember all three.
Give it up, El Pendejo, and just come home and serve out your term, if the courts will let you. You've brought enough shame to a state that already has far too much imbecility to answer for. Quit now, and come home.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
I'm very embarrassed that "we" even elected him governor. (I use the editorial "we," because I would never have voted for him even for dogcatcher.) Rick "El Pendejo" Perry has regularly and predictably embarrassed himself in debate after debate, against competitors who -- let's face it, there are probably no Mensans among these dolts. No, not even Gingrich. (He's been aptly described as a stupid person's idea of what a smart person sounds like.)
Rick Perry didn't make quite as gaping an asshole of himself as usual in Saturday night's debate, from all accounts. But he still managed to look the most stupid among a rather dim group.
Calls Obama "a socialist"
I can see now why this fool made a D in intro-level economics at Texas A&M. He doesn't appear to know what a socialist is.
The dictionary definition of socialism is: "any of the various theories or systems of the ownership and operation of the means of production and distribution by society or the community rather than by private individuals, with all members of the society or the community sharing in the work and the products."
What Governor Goodhair seems to base this on is that Obama advocates a system of progressive taxation at the federal level, and the idea that "Obamacare" entails a sort of government takeover of the U.S. health-care system.
Regarding progressive taxation, Obama is on record as advocating a return to the Clinton-era rates of income tax, which featured a marginal rate of 39.6% at the very top bracket for the richest Americans.
If this makes Obama a "socialist," then Dwight Eisenhower must have been a Maoist revolutionary. There was a marginal rate of 91% during his very staid 1950s Republican administration. And Dick Nixon must certainly have been a Marxist-Leninist of some sort. There was a 70% marginal rate while he was president, and he actually had some good words for the idea of a guaranteed annual income for Americans.
Redistribution of income is a trend that works in more than one way, you see, with the rich usually faring much better at it, especially at the state and local levels. It does not define socialism, not in the least.
And "Obamacare" is essentially "Romneycare" implemented at the national level. Private insurers, and private, self-employed doctors and other health professionals, are at the core of such a system. The House of Representatives, then Democratic-controlled, actually voted narrowly for a "public option," but that couldn't get through the Senate, thanks to the faux Democrats who held the balance of that "majority" at the time. Single-payer, the closest thing to "socialism" that has ever been discussed, wasn't even on the table. And even if it had been, doctors would have remained private and self-employed, not government employees as one finds in certain national health-care systems in other developed countries.
So, this falls vastly short of any reasonable definition of "socialism" as well.
It's a huge embarrassment to Texans to have such a drooling Aggie boob attempting to grab some of the limelight at the national level. Come home, El Pendejo -- things are going to go badly enough for you over the next three years.
Wants to send U.S. troops back to Iraq? Why don't we just send his moronic ass there?
He has often seemed to want to be president of his own little separate fiefdom of a country. Let's send his ass over there and let him run for office! When thanking the voters of that unfortunate country, I suspect it would go like, "I'd like to thank the voters here who cast ballots for me -- the Shiites, the Christians, and -- oh, what's that other bunch?"
I don't know what he's hanging on for over here, other than that he might want to be named secretary of one of those federal departments he wants to eliminate. Maybe then he could remember all three.
Give it up, El Pendejo, and just come home and serve out your term, if the courts will let you. You've brought enough shame to a state that already has far too much imbecility to answer for. Quit now, and come home.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Thoughts On The New Year: How Quickly Libertarians Forget
By Manifesto Joe
Ironically, they got bailed out, too
It's been three years, two months and five days since Jacob Weisberg's essay "The Libertarians' Lament" appeared in Newsweek magazine's edition of that date. On that day -- Oct. 27, 2008 -- the country had gone into an economic recession that could easily have been a worldwide depression, but for the meddling of the federal government.
Now, as 2012 is dawning, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, the Libertarian Party nominee for president in 1988, appears to have a good chance of at least placing second in the Republican Iowa caucuses. And, his ideology of "free markets" and absolutely minimal government seems to have as many adherents as ever.
Not much more than three years ago, Weisberg mordantly commented:
The best thing you can say about libertarians is that, because their views derive from abstract theory, they tend to be principled and rigorous in their logic. ... "Let failed banks fail" is the purist line. This approach would be a wonderful lesson in personal responsibility, creating thousands of new jobs in the soup kitchen and food-pantry industry.
Here's a link to the entire Weisberg article. The Daily Beast got it early and ran it online on Oct. 17.
I was agreeing wholeheartedly with everything Weisberg wrote as I first read this piece. Now, unfortunately, it's clear that he was wrong in his last paragraph:
The worst thing you can say about libertarians is that they are intellectually immature, frozen in the worldview many of them absorbed from Ayn Rand. Like other ideologues, libertarians react to the world failing to conform to their model by asking where the world went wrong. Their heroic view of capitalism makes it difficult for them to accept that markets can be irrational, misunderstand risk and misallocate resources — or that financial systems without vigorous government oversight constitute a recipe for disaster. They are bankrupt, and this time, there will be no bailout.
I wouldn't say he was wrong at all in his assessment of libertarians. It was actually his last sentence in which he erred.
The federal bailout of the big, floundering banks was not, as it turned out, merely that. It was also a bailout of "free market" ideology, even as the government's action belied that worldview.
We didn't get to see the reality of what would have happened had the "free market" been left to its own devices, as the Hoover administration did in 1932. Not that things didn't go badly for a lot of people -- but we didn't see 25% unemployment, mass evictions, soup kitchens, widespread hunger, food riots, or any of the other symptoms of economic disaster on the scale that Americans saw back then.
It now looks as though it will be necessary for people to see such things, yet again, for the lesson to be learned, at least for another 75 years. Talk to many Americans now, and it's as though the events of the past few years never really happened.
Ideologues tend to shape their worldview based on preconceived ideas, rather than on observable facts. The world can behave as it will -- no matter to libertarians. I'm reminded of a scene from the movie Citizen Kane, in which Kane is being told off by Boss Jim W. Gettys. "You're going to need more than one lesson," Gettys tells Kane. "And you're going to get more than one lesson."
Sadly, this time the libertarians didn't endure the lesson they so richly deserved. And the reason they didn't get it is that too many other people throughout the world would have suffered at least equally, and probably worse, for libertarian follies. It was their insistence upon deregulation of financial markets that pretty clearly caused the debacle of 2007-08.
But, how soon most people forget, especially the victims of ideology. Markets do not regulate themselves, yet Americans are once more being implored to let them do that voodoo that markets are alleged to do so well. Many are buying it, despite the repeated lessons of history.
There are some simple reasons for this. The financial industry is very powerful, and certain people are making as much money as ever off a relatively unregulated system. For obvious reasons, they want to keep it that way, and will twist the necessary arms.
But perhaps the most frustrating reason is that, generally, a full-fledged disaster has to happen before people will modify their worldview. That happened to many Americans in the 1930s, but this time the debacle wasn't profound enough to have that effect on enough people, and certainly not on economic libertarians. Bailouts gave them the opportunity to rewrite history in their own way.
Once more, the mixed system of regulated welfare capitalism appears to have become a victim of its own success. Shielding people from the worst excesses of "free-market" capitalism has ironically worked against the mixed system, not in its favor.
The libertarians were due for a lesson that they didn't get. Apparently, it's going to take a far more profound disaster than the Great Recession to make realists out of ideologues. The Great Depression II?
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Ironically, they got bailed out, too
It's been three years, two months and five days since Jacob Weisberg's essay "The Libertarians' Lament" appeared in Newsweek magazine's edition of that date. On that day -- Oct. 27, 2008 -- the country had gone into an economic recession that could easily have been a worldwide depression, but for the meddling of the federal government.
Now, as 2012 is dawning, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, the Libertarian Party nominee for president in 1988, appears to have a good chance of at least placing second in the Republican Iowa caucuses. And, his ideology of "free markets" and absolutely minimal government seems to have as many adherents as ever.
Not much more than three years ago, Weisberg mordantly commented:
The best thing you can say about libertarians is that, because their views derive from abstract theory, they tend to be principled and rigorous in their logic. ... "Let failed banks fail" is the purist line. This approach would be a wonderful lesson in personal responsibility, creating thousands of new jobs in the soup kitchen and food-pantry industry.
Here's a link to the entire Weisberg article. The Daily Beast got it early and ran it online on Oct. 17.
I was agreeing wholeheartedly with everything Weisberg wrote as I first read this piece. Now, unfortunately, it's clear that he was wrong in his last paragraph:
The worst thing you can say about libertarians is that they are intellectually immature, frozen in the worldview many of them absorbed from Ayn Rand. Like other ideologues, libertarians react to the world failing to conform to their model by asking where the world went wrong. Their heroic view of capitalism makes it difficult for them to accept that markets can be irrational, misunderstand risk and misallocate resources — or that financial systems without vigorous government oversight constitute a recipe for disaster. They are bankrupt, and this time, there will be no bailout.
I wouldn't say he was wrong at all in his assessment of libertarians. It was actually his last sentence in which he erred.
The federal bailout of the big, floundering banks was not, as it turned out, merely that. It was also a bailout of "free market" ideology, even as the government's action belied that worldview.
We didn't get to see the reality of what would have happened had the "free market" been left to its own devices, as the Hoover administration did in 1932. Not that things didn't go badly for a lot of people -- but we didn't see 25% unemployment, mass evictions, soup kitchens, widespread hunger, food riots, or any of the other symptoms of economic disaster on the scale that Americans saw back then.
It now looks as though it will be necessary for people to see such things, yet again, for the lesson to be learned, at least for another 75 years. Talk to many Americans now, and it's as though the events of the past few years never really happened.
Ideologues tend to shape their worldview based on preconceived ideas, rather than on observable facts. The world can behave as it will -- no matter to libertarians. I'm reminded of a scene from the movie Citizen Kane, in which Kane is being told off by Boss Jim W. Gettys. "You're going to need more than one lesson," Gettys tells Kane. "And you're going to get more than one lesson."
Sadly, this time the libertarians didn't endure the lesson they so richly deserved. And the reason they didn't get it is that too many other people throughout the world would have suffered at least equally, and probably worse, for libertarian follies. It was their insistence upon deregulation of financial markets that pretty clearly caused the debacle of 2007-08.
But, how soon most people forget, especially the victims of ideology. Markets do not regulate themselves, yet Americans are once more being implored to let them do that voodoo that markets are alleged to do so well. Many are buying it, despite the repeated lessons of history.
There are some simple reasons for this. The financial industry is very powerful, and certain people are making as much money as ever off a relatively unregulated system. For obvious reasons, they want to keep it that way, and will twist the necessary arms.
But perhaps the most frustrating reason is that, generally, a full-fledged disaster has to happen before people will modify their worldview. That happened to many Americans in the 1930s, but this time the debacle wasn't profound enough to have that effect on enough people, and certainly not on economic libertarians. Bailouts gave them the opportunity to rewrite history in their own way.
Once more, the mixed system of regulated welfare capitalism appears to have become a victim of its own success. Shielding people from the worst excesses of "free-market" capitalism has ironically worked against the mixed system, not in its favor.
The libertarians were due for a lesson that they didn't get. Apparently, it's going to take a far more profound disaster than the Great Recession to make realists out of ideologues. The Great Depression II?
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Are The Holidays A Bad Time To Remind People That The Iraq War Was A Hideously Bad Idea?
By Manifesto Joe
Tact was never one of my strong suits, so I'm going to go ahead with this. It isn't that the U.S. has never "invaded" another country -- I think the Vietnamese can attest to that. But at least the anti-communist crusade of the later 20th century was a somewhat better reason for that adventure, ill-fated though it clearly was.
This time, it was so transparent, I can't see how the Il Doofus administration got a majority of the Senate, including Sens. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, to more or less vote for this fiasco.
It didn't turn out to be quite as expensive as Vietnam, at least from the U.S. standpoint. There were a lot more amputees and nonfatal casualties, thanks to better medicine and equipment. U.S. deaths numbered less than 4,500, compared with about 58,000 in Vietnam. The proportion of wounded and permanently maimed, relatively weighed, was larger.
But a sad thing is that brown-skinned people don't seem to count in the eyes of many Americans. It's estimated that well over 1.4 million Iraqis died as a result of the war of 2003-2011. And, if you check the news posts of recent days, they are still dying. Apparently it isn't over yet.
I never believed any of the administration's bullshit, not from day one. They had no "weapons of mass destruction" credibly documented, and as it turns out, they never did. The administration basically forced Colin Powell to lie to the U.N. to engineer some kind of credibility for this invasion. And it's not hard to see what the true motives were.
It's certainly true that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, one who largely modeled himself and his methods after Josef Stalin. But, Saddam was being very effectively contained. And, the U.S. has not merely tolerated, but has actually supported, many dictators just as bad. Those despots just happened to be rancid butter on the right side of the bread.
The widespread political ignorance of the American people was largely exposed during this farce. If you went out onto the streets and asked many Americans about this war -- to this day, many would mistakenly say that Saddam was allied with Al Qaeda, that he actually did have "weapons of mass destruction," that he was linked to the 9/11 attacks, and so forth. The Il Doofus administration eventually had to admit that none of the above was true. But the propagandists had worked the damage long before that, and lastingly.
Now, as I understand it, the U.S. has basically put the Iraqi government du jour on notice that no more military intervention is forthcoming. There will be diplomatic missions, but even if Iraq erupts into civil war in coming months -- which looks entirely possible -- no more American troops will be sent in.
The rotten motive for this war is not hard to see, and never really was. If this place hadn't had oil, and lots of it, no one in the Western world would have considered them worth a second thought.
Problem was, how to get it out. Pipelines would get blown up. There were never enough workers to get it out of the fields, anyway. A place with so much turmoil isn't a place that can be a reliable supplier of cheap oil to a dominating Western nation.
So, it turned out to be, as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi phrased it, "a grotesque mistake."
A lot of people thought that Barack Obama, once in the presidency, should have hastened U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. After all, he'd opposed the invasion from the start, to his credit. But Obama apparently felt that he had to take the advice of experienced military minds, and then proceed with a withdrawal slowly. After nearly three years, it has only recently been concluded. (Well, sort of. There are still a hell of a lot of "advisers" there.)
A sad thing for Obama is that, if civil war does indeed erupt in Iraq in coming months, Obama's Republican rivals will probably depict him as weak, that he pulled the troops out too soon, and that he shouldn't have announced a specific timetable. But if he decides to be a "hawk" and send U.S. troops back there, then he'd be a reckless warmonger. You can't win when confronted with fools.
Something I ran into along the way, as a center-left blogger, is the argument that the "surge" worked. What the "surge" appears to have done was to simply drive the Iraqi insurgency into hiding, with them waiting for the U.S. exit, then to re-emerge. Now, absent a U.S. occupation, it looks like they're coming back out. And they were always going to, no matter how long it took. When it's your country, you're usually willing to wait.
I am profoundly sad, not only for those Americans who died in this nasty desert, but also for those who left arms, legs and minds behind in the horrific slaughter. And I have numerically more sorrow for the many, many more Iraqis who died and were exiled, some perhaps never to return.
I am reminded of an old U.S. literary debate between poet and playwright Archibald MacLeish and poet and literary critic Malcolm Cowley.
MacLeish, who served as an officer in World War I, argued that there was a just cause that Americans died for during that war. But looking back, how much difference was there, essentially, between the Britain-France alliance, and the Kaiser's Germany?
Cowley was with the American Field Service during the war. His argument back was, basically, that they (Americans) died for nothing. I fear that he was right.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Tact was never one of my strong suits, so I'm going to go ahead with this. It isn't that the U.S. has never "invaded" another country -- I think the Vietnamese can attest to that. But at least the anti-communist crusade of the later 20th century was a somewhat better reason for that adventure, ill-fated though it clearly was.
This time, it was so transparent, I can't see how the Il Doofus administration got a majority of the Senate, including Sens. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, to more or less vote for this fiasco.
It didn't turn out to be quite as expensive as Vietnam, at least from the U.S. standpoint. There were a lot more amputees and nonfatal casualties, thanks to better medicine and equipment. U.S. deaths numbered less than 4,500, compared with about 58,000 in Vietnam. The proportion of wounded and permanently maimed, relatively weighed, was larger.
But a sad thing is that brown-skinned people don't seem to count in the eyes of many Americans. It's estimated that well over 1.4 million Iraqis died as a result of the war of 2003-2011. And, if you check the news posts of recent days, they are still dying. Apparently it isn't over yet.
I never believed any of the administration's bullshit, not from day one. They had no "weapons of mass destruction" credibly documented, and as it turns out, they never did. The administration basically forced Colin Powell to lie to the U.N. to engineer some kind of credibility for this invasion. And it's not hard to see what the true motives were.
It's certainly true that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, one who largely modeled himself and his methods after Josef Stalin. But, Saddam was being very effectively contained. And, the U.S. has not merely tolerated, but has actually supported, many dictators just as bad. Those despots just happened to be rancid butter on the right side of the bread.
The widespread political ignorance of the American people was largely exposed during this farce. If you went out onto the streets and asked many Americans about this war -- to this day, many would mistakenly say that Saddam was allied with Al Qaeda, that he actually did have "weapons of mass destruction," that he was linked to the 9/11 attacks, and so forth. The Il Doofus administration eventually had to admit that none of the above was true. But the propagandists had worked the damage long before that, and lastingly.
Now, as I understand it, the U.S. has basically put the Iraqi government du jour on notice that no more military intervention is forthcoming. There will be diplomatic missions, but even if Iraq erupts into civil war in coming months -- which looks entirely possible -- no more American troops will be sent in.
The rotten motive for this war is not hard to see, and never really was. If this place hadn't had oil, and lots of it, no one in the Western world would have considered them worth a second thought.
Problem was, how to get it out. Pipelines would get blown up. There were never enough workers to get it out of the fields, anyway. A place with so much turmoil isn't a place that can be a reliable supplier of cheap oil to a dominating Western nation.
So, it turned out to be, as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi phrased it, "a grotesque mistake."
A lot of people thought that Barack Obama, once in the presidency, should have hastened U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. After all, he'd opposed the invasion from the start, to his credit. But Obama apparently felt that he had to take the advice of experienced military minds, and then proceed with a withdrawal slowly. After nearly three years, it has only recently been concluded. (Well, sort of. There are still a hell of a lot of "advisers" there.)
A sad thing for Obama is that, if civil war does indeed erupt in Iraq in coming months, Obama's Republican rivals will probably depict him as weak, that he pulled the troops out too soon, and that he shouldn't have announced a specific timetable. But if he decides to be a "hawk" and send U.S. troops back there, then he'd be a reckless warmonger. You can't win when confronted with fools.
Something I ran into along the way, as a center-left blogger, is the argument that the "surge" worked. What the "surge" appears to have done was to simply drive the Iraqi insurgency into hiding, with them waiting for the U.S. exit, then to re-emerge. Now, absent a U.S. occupation, it looks like they're coming back out. And they were always going to, no matter how long it took. When it's your country, you're usually willing to wait.
I am profoundly sad, not only for those Americans who died in this nasty desert, but also for those who left arms, legs and minds behind in the horrific slaughter. And I have numerically more sorrow for the many, many more Iraqis who died and were exiled, some perhaps never to return.
I am reminded of an old U.S. literary debate between poet and playwright Archibald MacLeish and poet and literary critic Malcolm Cowley.
MacLeish, who served as an officer in World War I, argued that there was a just cause that Americans died for during that war. But looking back, how much difference was there, essentially, between the Britain-France alliance, and the Kaiser's Germany?
Cowley was with the American Field Service during the war. His argument back was, basically, that they (Americans) died for nothing. I fear that he was right.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Time For Double-Dipping Governor Goodhair To Play Texas Fold 'Em
By Manifesto Joe
It would appear that his greed overwhelmed everything else, including his own very marginal intellect. Nationally, Gov. Rick "Goodhair" Perry has not only shown himself to be a fool, but a hypocrite as well. He should quit his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, come back home and "lawyer up" for a fight simply to remain in office here in Texas.
There appears to be an ongoing debate about the legality of Perry drawing $92,000 a year in state retirement pension at the same time that he's still being paid $150,000 a year as sitting governor of Texas. Here's a link to a Texas Tribune story about the legal pros and cons.
However this ends up at the state level, not even Republicans are likely to take him seriously at the national level, ever again. This is a guy who kept retired Texas teachers from being rehired and still draw their retirement benefits. Yet he's drawing enough "retirement" pay to cover most of the rent of the $9,900-a-month digs he's living in while the Texas Governor's Mansion is being restored. (Oh, and he doesn't pay for that, either -- the taxpayers of Texas do.)
And, this is a guy who had the nerve to bogusly compare Social Security to a Ponzi scheme, in a cheap attempt to swindle people in their prime working years out of benefits after they reach retirement age.
To our collective shame (not mine individually), Texas voters had multiple opportunities to turn this vapid opportunist out of office over the past decade. Sadly, they did not do it. Now he is bringing greater infamy to a state that already had Il Doofus (Bush 43) to answer for.
Goodhair, enough is enough. You're all through. Come home and talk to your lawyers. You're likely to need them.
Postscripts on the Republicans
The Republican field is likely to narrow a lot in coming weeks, as I anticipate that Goodhair is going to get trounced in Iowa.
Newt Gingrich, who seemed to emerge as a sort of front-runner for a while, has a talent for self-destruction. He sticks his foot in his mouth about every other time he opens it.
At the most recent debate, Gingrich said something to the effect that Palestinian school textbooks promote terrorism, and that they offer passages that go something like, "If you have 13 Jews, and nine of them are killed, how many Jews are left?"
Researchers looked into this and could find little or nothing to substantiate it. It was, at best, an exaggeration. At worst? ... well, as Mitt Romney phrased it -- "zany."
With Perry and Gingrich likely disposed of, it looks as though Mitt Romney's only real competition in the long haul is going to be -- Ron Paul, Congressman Clueless. This is a 76-year-old man whose answer to the problems of a country that's in the throes of a Second Gilded Age is to steer us passionately back to the legal and economic system that characterized the First Gilded Age, back around 1880. Even Republicans are likely to deem him far too crazy to have the nomination.
Even though Romney isn't beloved among the Republican right wing, it looks like he's going to be what they've got. I think by now it's mostly going to be a question of whom he chooses as a running mate.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
It would appear that his greed overwhelmed everything else, including his own very marginal intellect. Nationally, Gov. Rick "Goodhair" Perry has not only shown himself to be a fool, but a hypocrite as well. He should quit his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, come back home and "lawyer up" for a fight simply to remain in office here in Texas.
There appears to be an ongoing debate about the legality of Perry drawing $92,000 a year in state retirement pension at the same time that he's still being paid $150,000 a year as sitting governor of Texas. Here's a link to a Texas Tribune story about the legal pros and cons.
However this ends up at the state level, not even Republicans are likely to take him seriously at the national level, ever again. This is a guy who kept retired Texas teachers from being rehired and still draw their retirement benefits. Yet he's drawing enough "retirement" pay to cover most of the rent of the $9,900-a-month digs he's living in while the Texas Governor's Mansion is being restored. (Oh, and he doesn't pay for that, either -- the taxpayers of Texas do.)
And, this is a guy who had the nerve to bogusly compare Social Security to a Ponzi scheme, in a cheap attempt to swindle people in their prime working years out of benefits after they reach retirement age.
To our collective shame (not mine individually), Texas voters had multiple opportunities to turn this vapid opportunist out of office over the past decade. Sadly, they did not do it. Now he is bringing greater infamy to a state that already had Il Doofus (Bush 43) to answer for.
Goodhair, enough is enough. You're all through. Come home and talk to your lawyers. You're likely to need them.
Postscripts on the Republicans
The Republican field is likely to narrow a lot in coming weeks, as I anticipate that Goodhair is going to get trounced in Iowa.
Newt Gingrich, who seemed to emerge as a sort of front-runner for a while, has a talent for self-destruction. He sticks his foot in his mouth about every other time he opens it.
At the most recent debate, Gingrich said something to the effect that Palestinian school textbooks promote terrorism, and that they offer passages that go something like, "If you have 13 Jews, and nine of them are killed, how many Jews are left?"
Researchers looked into this and could find little or nothing to substantiate it. It was, at best, an exaggeration. At worst? ... well, as Mitt Romney phrased it -- "zany."
With Perry and Gingrich likely disposed of, it looks as though Mitt Romney's only real competition in the long haul is going to be -- Ron Paul, Congressman Clueless. This is a 76-year-old man whose answer to the problems of a country that's in the throes of a Second Gilded Age is to steer us passionately back to the legal and economic system that characterized the First Gilded Age, back around 1880. Even Republicans are likely to deem him far too crazy to have the nomination.
Even though Romney isn't beloved among the Republican right wing, it looks like he's going to be what they've got. I think by now it's mostly going to be a question of whom he chooses as a running mate.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Farewell To Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011: He Was Nobody's Bitch
By Manifesto Joe
I seriously disagreed with him more than occasionally, but I have to take my hat off at least briefly to this man. He was a toady to no one.
To his credit, he cut his own intellectual path through life, without regard for what anybody else was thinking. I thought he went seriously wrong after the 9/11 attacks -- I think he got the wrong idea from that. But I can sort of understand what was happening there. He despised all fundamentalist religion, not excepting Islamic extremists from the mix. I'd say he just got a little bit detoured by them, and a bit blinded by their "opponents."
He was always his own man, first and foremost, and I have to respect that. So, Chris, maybe God isn't great. But if God is there, I hope he (or she) cuts you a decent deal. I wish you great debates in what afterlife may be. Absent that -- peace.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
I seriously disagreed with him more than occasionally, but I have to take my hat off at least briefly to this man. He was a toady to no one.
To his credit, he cut his own intellectual path through life, without regard for what anybody else was thinking. I thought he went seriously wrong after the 9/11 attacks -- I think he got the wrong idea from that. But I can sort of understand what was happening there. He despised all fundamentalist religion, not excepting Islamic extremists from the mix. I'd say he just got a little bit detoured by them, and a bit blinded by their "opponents."
He was always his own man, first and foremost, and I have to respect that. So, Chris, maybe God isn't great. But if God is there, I hope he (or she) cuts you a decent deal. I wish you great debates in what afterlife may be. Absent that -- peace.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
