Happy New Year. We sit tonight waiting for the first official tally of the 2012 Presidential election.
Watching the numbers, it looks like a Paul and Santorum one/two or vice versa is a real possibility in Iowa tomorrow night, with Mitt Romney coming in third.
Here's hoping.
If Romney comes in third, a new narrative will have to be created. The Republican party will have to sabotage Ron Paul. Santorum will implode rapidly, leaving the party with a task not unlike the last election when the failed candidate, John McCain, had to be quickly rehabilitated and minted as a standard bearer. Romney's campaign will similarly be salvaged
The difference this time is Paul, who could fragment the Republicans and likely will after the party flacks turn on him after Iowa. Ron Paul's third party run will draw from the Dem side too, but his candidacy would throw the Repugs into an instant state of existential crisis- -and Mittens ain't the kind of leader to pull the party out of its resulting doldrums.
Let me be clear, I think that Ron Paul is a miserable racist bastard, and I never would vote for him. But as Glenn Greenwald and others have pointed out, he is really good on some issues, particularly on issues where Obama has sucked. Paul could make some noise, and I saw him tonight on the tube with his smirking fuck head son, Rand--an indication, I think, that the Pauls may have a plan.
I digress. We'll see how it goes. Here's my prediction.
Paul 23%
Santorum 23%
Romney 21%
Perry 13%
Bachmann 10%
Gingrich 9%
Huntsman etc. 1%
Gingrich will drop out. Perry has money and will hang around until South Carolina. Who the hell knows what Bachmann will do.
--Loosestrife
Watching the numbers, it looks like a Paul and Santorum one/two or vice versa is a real possibility in Iowa tomorrow night, with Mitt Romney coming in third.
Here's hoping.
If Romney comes in third, a new narrative will have to be created. The Republican party will have to sabotage Ron Paul. Santorum will implode rapidly, leaving the party with a task not unlike the last election when the failed candidate, John McCain, had to be quickly rehabilitated and minted as a standard bearer. Romney's campaign will similarly be salvaged
The difference this time is Paul, who could fragment the Republicans and likely will after the party flacks turn on him after Iowa. Ron Paul's third party run will draw from the Dem side too, but his candidacy would throw the Repugs into an instant state of existential crisis- -and Mittens ain't the kind of leader to pull the party out of its resulting doldrums.
Let me be clear, I think that Ron Paul is a miserable racist bastard, and I never would vote for him. But as Glenn Greenwald and others have pointed out, he is really good on some issues, particularly on issues where Obama has sucked. Paul could make some noise, and I saw him tonight on the tube with his smirking fuck head son, Rand--an indication, I think, that the Pauls may have a plan.
I digress. We'll see how it goes. Here's my prediction.
Paul 23%
Santorum 23%
Romney 21%
Perry 13%
Bachmann 10%
Gingrich 9%
Huntsman etc. 1%
Gingrich will drop out. Perry has money and will hang around until South Carolina. Who the hell knows what Bachmann will do.
--Loosestrife
Couldn't happen to a nicer guy
0 Comments Published by Loosestrife on Wednesday, November 09, 2011 at 7:48 AM.
There are political figures that are inherently irritating to me. John Kasich fits that category. To be bipartisan about it, outgoing Democratic State Senator Larry Pogemiller and R.T. Rybak do too. In pursuit of gender equity, let's not forget Michele Bachmann and Diane Feinstein.
I am not talking politics here but something more fundamental--the immediate sense that a politician is a jerk. I don't remember when I became aware of Kasich, but I know my reaction is always has been immediate. Here was a guy who defined overreach, convinced of his innate superiority and having the bearing of a smug frat boy stamped into his very soul.
Politically he wasn't the worst when he was in U.S. House, able to be bipartisan to the point of working with real socialist Ron Dellums of California to trim Pentagon waste. Still he was a classic asshole, and his worst political tendencies were amplified by his growing self-satisfaction. He even was a stand in asshole for Bill O'Reilly, lest we forget, before becoming governor of Ohio. Always retrograde, Kasich now is a shill for corrosive business interests running the country into the ground.
So it was with great joy that I followed the results last night, a repudiation of Kasich that will ultimately drive him back to Fox News, where sycophants can feed his ego well into his dotage.
The voters in Ohio sent a clear message. Not only was the Republican assaultive bill limiting public sector bargaining rights defeated soundly, the final totals appear to exceed pre-election polling margins, 62 % voting against the bill.
Surely someone told Kasich that his brand was rancid, his approval rating consistently in the 30s and that he was a detriment to the campaign to sustain SB 5, as the anti-worker law passed by the Ohio legislature and signed by Kasich came to be known. Kasich probably called him or her an idiot, like he did the cop who made a legitimate traffic stop of the Governor for passing too close to an emergency vehicle.
The association of the bill with Kasich probably added a few percentage points to its defeat, but even without the Kasich asshole factor, the bill would have probably gone down. The Repugs have openly demonstrated that their agenda is being written by business interests who have no interest in your personal welfare. The GOP message discipline is beginning to work against them, as brainless repetition does tend to rankle over time.
I see that the Democrats are trying to claim this as their victory, and they have reason to be happy. But what might be more significant is that this victory is organized labor's and that Richard Trumka's leadership of the AFL-CIO is burnishing labor's image as a progressive force in American society. It was not long ago that Trumka put the Democrats on notice that they can't take labor support for granted.
After they celebrate this victory with their union sisters and brothers, the Dems would be wise to take his counsel.
--Loosestrife
I am not talking politics here but something more fundamental--the immediate sense that a politician is a jerk. I don't remember when I became aware of Kasich, but I know my reaction is always has been immediate. Here was a guy who defined overreach, convinced of his innate superiority and having the bearing of a smug frat boy stamped into his very soul.
Politically he wasn't the worst when he was in U.S. House, able to be bipartisan to the point of working with real socialist Ron Dellums of California to trim Pentagon waste. Still he was a classic asshole, and his worst political tendencies were amplified by his growing self-satisfaction. He even was a stand in asshole for Bill O'Reilly, lest we forget, before becoming governor of Ohio. Always retrograde, Kasich now is a shill for corrosive business interests running the country into the ground.
So it was with great joy that I followed the results last night, a repudiation of Kasich that will ultimately drive him back to Fox News, where sycophants can feed his ego well into his dotage.
The voters in Ohio sent a clear message. Not only was the Republican assaultive bill limiting public sector bargaining rights defeated soundly, the final totals appear to exceed pre-election polling margins, 62 % voting against the bill.
Surely someone told Kasich that his brand was rancid, his approval rating consistently in the 30s and that he was a detriment to the campaign to sustain SB 5, as the anti-worker law passed by the Ohio legislature and signed by Kasich came to be known. Kasich probably called him or her an idiot, like he did the cop who made a legitimate traffic stop of the Governor for passing too close to an emergency vehicle.
The association of the bill with Kasich probably added a few percentage points to its defeat, but even without the Kasich asshole factor, the bill would have probably gone down. The Repugs have openly demonstrated that their agenda is being written by business interests who have no interest in your personal welfare. The GOP message discipline is beginning to work against them, as brainless repetition does tend to rankle over time.
I see that the Democrats are trying to claim this as their victory, and they have reason to be happy. But what might be more significant is that this victory is organized labor's and that Richard Trumka's leadership of the AFL-CIO is burnishing labor's image as a progressive force in American society. It was not long ago that Trumka put the Democrats on notice that they can't take labor support for granted.
After they celebrate this victory with their union sisters and brothers, the Dems would be wise to take his counsel.
--Loosestrife
I am going to wade back in and at least get my ankles wet.
Where to start?
--Loosestrife
To improve Gabrielle Giffords' chances of recovery, surgeons removed part of her skull so that the swelling of her brain doesn't increase the pressure in her head to damaging or lethal levels.
Maybe we should do the same for the nation as a whole.
Jared Loughner remains a cipher, and his mug shot,while having a disturbing quality, doesn't grant any insight into his motivation . He ain't talking.
The details trickling out from the investigation are balanced enough to give "both sides" opportunity to make hay. Didn't belong to a political party, liked the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf, loved his community college but thought it unconstitutional, big pothead and drinker who went sober in 2008 and got crazier etc.
I'll predict that we will never get a full understanding of Loughner's "motivation." We may find out that he is schizophrenic, perhaps too find out that he has aspergers. Hell, what if he has a brain tumor?
As the rhetoric heats up, the pressure in the national head grows.
Within hours if not minutes of the shooter's identity being revealed, evil clowns were on Facebook creating fake profiles for Loughner--both as an Obama supporter and a Teabagger.
Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church asshole squad says that Loughner was sent by God and that they will attempt to protest the victims' funerals.
Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are sharing their private emails to demonstrate their suffering at the hands of those nasty liberals.
The right is having a hard time maintaining the caring stance, overwhelmed by the urge to kick people while they are down. The liberal left has had to endure years of the Ann Coulter smirk and the Rush Limbaugh bluster as the right punditocracy barely conceals--if it is concealed at all-- its desire for the execution of liberals. The liberal left's justifiable rage is spilling over.
Those truly to the left will catch shit from "both sides," but you know, we are used to it. While those in the mainstream, good Americans all, try to reduce this tragedy to easy explanations and attempt to place blame, we might just consider getting our own shit together and coming up with some solutions for the formidable challenges before us.
--Loosestrife
The aftermath of Arizona Safeway shootings has become an erratic and impulsive ritual of poorly thought out explanations.
I don't grant graphic art the power to single-handedly drive a young man to go purchase a 9 mm and shoot a congressperson and those in her vicinity. Sarah Palin's website usage of a gun sight metaphor, while ill-advised, does not explain this shooting. Her people pulled it because they knew it would be a PR disaster not because they regret it. Her aide's claim that they weren't gun sights but surveyor stakes was laughable, but the "left" would be wise to let Palin be her own undoing on this. She has already offered condolences to a family whose loved-one hadn't died. Let Sarah be Sarah.
I don't grant graphic art the power to single-handedly drive a young man to go purchase a 9 mm and shoot a congressperson and those in her vicinity. Sarah Palin's website usage of a gun sight metaphor, while ill-advised, does not explain this shooting. Her people pulled it because they knew it would be a PR disaster not because they regret it. Her aide's claim that they weren't gun sights but surveyor stakes was laughable, but the "left" would be wise to let Palin be her own undoing on this. She has already offered condolences to a family whose loved-one hadn't died. Let Sarah be Sarah.
Bill O'Reilly is a pinhead, but nothing in his xenophobic rantings leads me to say that Jared Loughner's Saturday gore fest resulted from Billo's obsession with running down each and everything that doesn't look and sound like him.
Glenn Beck, on the other hand, shares the cadence of Loughner's tortured syllogisms, and my hunch is that if any of the right's bête noires directly influenced our young shooter, it is Beck, but not necessarily in terms of ideology. It's more a matter of method--getting out the metaphorical chalk board and drawing arrows that connects Gabrielle Giffords to a perceived threat by virtue of arrows that have mysteriously appeared on the chalk board.
That said, there is the stench not so much of tea bags but of pot smoke, Birch, and testosterone around this thing. Giffords is a motorcyle-riding attractive Jewish woman, unapologetic in her support for immigrant, GLBT, and gun rights--not a leftist to be sure, but an assured woman who won her seat in the cesspool of right-wing bigotry that is Arizona. She doesn't fit a model for proper womanly behavior and ideological identification. She apparently likes non-white people on some level. Thus, was she a threat to an emotionally stunted young white male with mental illness and a fine American tradition of paranoia and violence into which to tap?
Charles Manson famously believed that he was connected directly to the Beatles, who sent him messages through their music. He is also very smart, with real musical talent and, in the past at least, a talent for compelling weaker personalities to act on his analysis and beliefs. Loughner strikes me as someone who could have been a hanger-on at Spahn's ranch.
The only question to my mind at this point is whether Loughner was influenced by a stronger personality who compelled him to act, either intentionally or unintentionally. Ever seen American History X?
In the mean time, the mainstream press cries for quiet-ism while our government attempts to squelch Wikileaks by any means necessary. The Democrats go after Palin. The Repugs demonstrate their sensitive side. And our country lurches forward, a self-perpetuating war machine.
--Loosestrife
Whatever the result of the 2010 midterm elections, one thing is assured. The national elected government will no more be able to make substantiative progress towards solving any of our collective problems.
Sorry tea partiers, you'll rise to your level of incompetence and true influence, meanwhile undercutting the mainstream Republican party--the result being politically nil.
And before you Dems start snickering, your influence will be diminished under any scenario, when, when, you can't hold your own now--except when it comes to fund raising.
The Repugs have a chance, simply because they won't take over after this election. They'll gain legitimacy without power, the Dems barely holding majorities in both the house and the senate and the presidency while the Repugs get even shriller and more annoying. The resulting gridlock will make a Obama vulnerable in 2012.
Except that he's not. What Obama proved in 2008 was that he was Bill Clinton's election juggernaut equal, and the repugs will have to find a candidate who can realistically go with Obama.
Palin? Pawlenty? Romney? Huckabee? uh who is that guy that won the Value Voters poll?
This would all be amusing in that Will Rogers' sort of way except that we are at a crossroads of economic, ecological, and ethical defeat. And while Christine O'Donnell warms my diabolical heart, her idiocy is no consolation when one mulls over the planet's fate.
That all said, I am getting poked and prodded to have a little more to say as the election nears. Maybe.
--Loosestrife
Sorry tea partiers, you'll rise to your level of incompetence and true influence, meanwhile undercutting the mainstream Republican party--the result being politically nil.
And before you Dems start snickering, your influence will be diminished under any scenario, when, when, you can't hold your own now--except when it comes to fund raising.
The Repugs have a chance, simply because they won't take over after this election. They'll gain legitimacy without power, the Dems barely holding majorities in both the house and the senate and the presidency while the Repugs get even shriller and more annoying. The resulting gridlock will make a Obama vulnerable in 2012.
Except that he's not. What Obama proved in 2008 was that he was Bill Clinton's election juggernaut equal, and the repugs will have to find a candidate who can realistically go with Obama.
Palin? Pawlenty? Romney? Huckabee? uh who is that guy that won the Value Voters poll?
This would all be amusing in that Will Rogers' sort of way except that we are at a crossroads of economic, ecological, and ethical defeat. And while Christine O'Donnell warms my diabolical heart, her idiocy is no consolation when one mulls over the planet's fate.
That all said, I am getting poked and prodded to have a little more to say as the election nears. Maybe.
--Loosestrife
Bad week for Minnesota Republicans. A trifecta of arrogance that moved the political climate ever so slightly to the DFL's advantage.
Over in Bachmannistan, something's wrong, with staffers slipping across the border in search of plausible deniablity. It may be the dawning realization that Bachmann is in for the fight of her life, as Taryl Clark bounces into the national consciousness off Bachmann's own notoriety. That means big money in the stretch for Ms. Clark, and her campaign shows much more tenacity so far than Patty Wetterling's depressive fugue or Elwin Tinklenberg's smiling nice guy routine.
Tom Emmer emerged once and for all as an assclown. That ill-conceived "town hall" with a bunch of cranky restaurant workers was fine theater, but it made Emmer look like a total chump, as Michele might say.
And that unmanly flinch when a little alt guy threw a bunch of pennies on the table in front of him and his shrill and awkward attempt to make light of it by mentioning that he was a hockey player will be Tom's "Dean scream." Without the irony.
And that unmanly flinch when a little alt guy threw a bunch of pennies on the table in front of him and his shrill and awkward attempt to make light of it by mentioning that he was a hockey player will be Tom's "Dean scream." Without the irony.
Meanwhile, Tim Pawlenty drove Emmer's numbers down even more with this Fox j'accuse performance art piece wherein he asked whether Al Franken was made a senator by a conspiracy of felons, presumably black, since they apparently vote Democrat. He doesn't know, he's just sayin'. By the way, classic Fox noise, referring to a controversy that didn't exist prior to the questionI don't know that, but if that turned out to be true, then I'd be right, at Tim might say.
Maybe former Minnesota Republican Chair, Ron Carey, who resigned as Bachmann chief of staff, and Zandra Wolcott, her former campaign finance director, thought they'd landed an easy gig and realized that the next few months were really going to be the moral equivalent of war. Maybe the internal polling numbers scared them away.
And then it could be this, the burgeoning investigation of major Bachmann campaign contributor, Floridian Bobby Thompson, founder of the shady U.S. Navy Veterans Association. I don't know that, but if that turned out to be true then it might mean that an investigation of Bachmann herself is in the offing or has already begun.
--Loosestrife
