Howard Smead for President October 31, 2006
Posted by rosolio in Genius, Immigration, Politics.add a comment
I always do my best to remain as nonpartisan as possible when discussing election tactics because I personally believe that it’s a ridiuclous dog and pony show fought ferociously unfairly by both sides. Unfortunately, I was a student of Howard Smead.
I expect various campaign extremists to jump on their podiums, soap-boxes, and stationary tractors to cry blasphemy and paint the opposition as a satan-worshipping, cattle-raping lush. But not the president of the United States, especially not while China is stepping up to the plate with North Korea, a proposed border wall has made people very unhappy and, oh yeah, the bloodiest month in a four year old war is about to come to a close.
So strike number one was that the man has better things to do than to stump for his frat brothers and golf buddies. The real problem ties back to Smead’s Culture Wars, which this president is intentionally trying to incite. In recent campaign stops in Georgia and Texas, the president made the following remarks, as reported by the BBC:
“President George W Bush used campaign stops in Georgia and Texas to warn that election victory for the Democrats would mean “terrorists win and America loses”. Meanwhile, Vice-President Dick Cheney said insurgents in Iraq were increasing their attacks in order to influence the mid-term vote.” Voting against Bush’s team means you support Al-Qaeda and have a big, celebratory barbeque every year on 9/11, that’s basically what Bush is getting at. He’s using the “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” catchphrase to divide our own nation as well. Dick Cheney’s jaundiced remarks are less hateful, just more oblivious (for the record, I don’t believe for a second that Cheney believes what he says here; he’s way to smart of a man). This makes sense considering his party’s base is the uneducated and oblivious. To think that the insurgents in Iraq give a flying fuck about our elections is complete narcissistic insanity. Believe it or not, Al-Qaeda is not tuning in to The O’Reilly Factor for updates. In case you haven’t been following the war, or the history of islamist jihad, or even the history of fanatical religion in general, you’d understand that their mentality is even more “with us or against us” than our own leadership. There is only one true god, Allah, and all who follow false prophets will be destroyed. That’s the tagline for any fundamentalist religion; sub Jesus for Allah and you’ve got yourself the Westboro Baptist Church. Using the war to paint the democrats as terrorists is exploitative, and I wouldn’t be so pissed about it if I didn’t know that a few million people will vote next week with this exact message in mind, believing it wholeheartedly as they fumble with their TiVos to make sure they catch the finale of Blue Collar Tv.
Another great quote from the president: “If you listen carefully for a Democrat plan for success, they don’t have one. Iraq is the central front in the war on terror, yet they don’t have a plan for victory.” And what’s yours, Mr. President? Or are you still living in the fantasy world aboard that carrier where you so famously and prematurely declared “Mission Accomplished”?
It is an impeachable offense to deliberately try to divide the country. The last man to do that was Jefferson Davis. For the religiously minded, check out Caina in the Inferno to see where that crime stacks up against embezzlement, insider trading, and illegal wire-tapping.
Considering the alternative currently sitting in office has said that “When it comes to evolution, the jury’s still out”, maybe a satan-worshipping, cattle-rapist lush is just what we need.
Candidacy in Question October 23, 2006
Posted by rosolio in Obama, Politics, Racism.add a comment
The title character in Warren Beatty’s ‘Bulworth’ kicked off his campaign speeches with the easily digestible line: “We stand on the doorstep of a new millenium.” A lot of people saw the turn of the century that way, expecting everything to change. It is arguable that the terrorist attacks on September 11 did in fact change the world, but it didn’t really change America at all. If you want to argue it quantitative or qualitatively, the day-to-day in this country is exactly the same as it was in 1999. Sure, you can’t bring shampoo on a plane anymore (which is ridiculous), but once you reach your destination, the world is pretty much the same. The government has always been using illegal wiretaps and has always been viewed as corrupt or directionless. That’s just part of the deal. It doesn’t help exactly that the last two presidents have been textbook embodiments of everything their parties stand for: Clinton being the affirmative action, welfare state saxaphone playing smooth as cream cheese operator and George W. Bush being the money grubbing, one nation under god, anti-abortion good ole boy. These are of course exaggerations in terms, but not really in action. It is the stark polarity of these two men that have launched what acclaimed historian Howard Smead labled “a dangerously sectarian culture war.” We have red states, we have blue states, and each side thinks the other is stupid. Democracy in action.
The funny thing about the people who carry the placards and wear the buttons and write the letters and shout the slogans is that Clinton and Bush are incredibly similar. Both are old, rich white guys from Yale. Both subscribed to the country club law of taking care of their backers and special interest groups. They are the face of a nation that went from being the most socially progressive to the most culturally stilted. When you look at the politics of nations like England, Germany, China, and India, it almost looks like they’re in the future, like they have flying cars or something.
But on November 7th, we’ll know if we are indeed standing on the doorstep of change. On November 7th, Barack Obama will decide whether he’s going to make a run at the presidency in 2008.
The first effect of this is that the democrats won’t be forced to roll out Hillary Clinton to challenge the republicans, who will likely pass on too-secular John McCain and too-inexperienced Rudi Giuliani to wheel out another faceless republican clone like Bill Frist or George “Let’s Mock Some Indians” Allen. I honestly have not seen enough of Hillary to make an assessment of her capablities as a leader, and I refuse to jump on the bandwagon that claims it’ll just be a third term for Bill. The part that troubles me about Mrs. Rodham is that she’s a carpetbagger, having moved to New York to claim the Senate. I think she wants to be President, but doesn’t want any of the control or responsibility.
The second effect is that Barack Obama is a downright impressive guy. His speeches are empassioned and nonmechanical. He doesn’t come across as a politician, he comes across as a leader. And while the die-hards will say that we don’t care what the world thinks, the world will like us a lot more with someone like him in office.
Now, it’s not all peaches and cream on the way to the white house, especially for a black politican (he’s actually only half black, but the ignorant among us fail to see the other half; these are the people who came up with the term ‘octaroon’). Forget the fact that he doesn’t have an anglican name (and you KNOW someone will try to make a connection between Obama and Osama…just wait on that). The man is the wrong color for a lot of people in this country, far more than we would care to believe. And in all likelihood, somewhere on the campaign trail or during his term, some racist Sum’bitch is going to try to shoot him. Colin Powell’s wife talked him out of a presidential bid for this exact reason. As progressive as we like to think we are, the confederate flag is still a major part of the Southern culture, and the “they’re takin’ over!” mentality will only be goaded further by a black candidate or president.
Personally, I think there is a visibly important component to Obama as a president and it’s not his skin color. It’s his age. America has only been around for 230 years, yet we have this image of being archaic already. A little revolution every now and then is a good thing, and I’ll betcha Obama can provide it. Here’s hoping he goes for it.
It Puts the Lotion in the Basket October 4, 2006
Posted by rosolio in Common Sense, Politics, World.add a comment
It’s been a long time – a good sixty years or so – since we’ve really encountered a crazy person with his finger on the button. In defense of foreign policies, the governments of both the United States and Soviet Union have tossed the ‘madman’ label out there. Saddam Hussein was given that label quite recently, but there’s a difference between ‘evil’ and ‘crazy.’ Sure, Hussein gassed boatloads of Kurds, but he wasn’t doing so indiscriminately. If he was really as out of his mind as we’d like to believe, he would have brought the genocide out into the streets and made no effort whatsoever to hide it. And as off-his-ass nuts as Hitler was, he had a cadre of handlers (re: sane people) who kept all of his crimes against humanity on the downlow. This stems from Bond movies: every bad guy who sits across the justice scale from 007 is both evil and out of his mind. We fused them together in the 1960s and like chocolate covered pretzels, we prefer to have them together. It’s much less disconcerting when the bad guy is maniacal. We can separate ourselves from them by turning them into a sub-human beast. It’s the ones who are calm and composed and so very…human…that we have trouble with. The Silence of the Lambs is a great example. We like our adversaries to be closer to Buffalo Bill than Hannibal Lecter; we’d prefer to see Hussein stumbling around in front of a camera with a wig on sporting the Full Tuck. The problem is that years of assigning Crazy to Merely Bad people has left us totally unprepared for Real Deal Crazy.
Kim Jong Il is textbook crazy. We were concerned that Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction, but KJI flaunts his efforts to get them. We’re nervous about nomadic Al-Qaeda wannabes sneaking a dirty bomb into a subway car, and KJI announces his plans to test a nuclear weapon that could have horrible environmental effects on the East Asian Region. We’re so nervous about our image in the world that we don’t have the stones any longer to handle this the way we need to. If North Korea, a nation duped into believing that their humunculous bespectacled leader created the goddamn world, obtains nuclear capabilities, there is no reason NOT to believe that they won’t take a potshot at Juneau or San Francisco or Los Angeles. They have nothing to lose, with the fuckin messiah in their corner. I’m not necessarily saying we should flatten North Korea now, but there’s going to be a time in the not too distant future where the people we trust with our national decisions are going to have a doozy on their dockets. Humanitarianism aside, this could very possibly reach Us or Them territory. We’ll see how we react when we get there. Until then, we can continue to make fun of the tiny Dr. No of the 47th parallel and hope to high hell he can’t get the recipe right.
