Sunday, August 31, 2008

GOP VP T&A

When I looked at the picture of McCain standing next to a pouty-lipped brunette last week, for a second I thought that I was looking at his campaign’s “Bring Your Granddaughter to Work Day” photo op.

For a moment, I considered adding this chestnut-haired beauty to the gallery of Presidential-candidate-family-masturbation-fodder, to serve in rotation along with the 2000-vintage Gore girls, 2004-period Bush Twins and the circa-2008 Chelsea. Scanning the caption of the photo for a name to moan to myself while imagining my nutsack resting on those angular cheekbones, I saw that this was no mere familial bimbo. Not at all. This was The Bimbo, the Bimbo Who Would Be Veep, the Bimbo a Single 72-Year-Old, Stroke-Having, Tantrum-Throwing Heartbeat Away from the Presidency.

I immediately took myself to wikipedia, where I absorbed the pertinent facts about this Sarah Palin person. New Governor of Alaska. Former Mayor of some frozen shithole village of 6,000 backward souls. Mother of five, including a Downs Syndrome baby. Former High School Basketball star, Beauty Pageant winner, and Newscaster.

McCain had picked this hardbody, er, nobody for his VP? Where’s the experience? The gravitas? The credentials to contribute to his Presidency and --- if actuarial charts have any legitimacy --- finish it?

Like many Democrats, I initially saw this as a pathetic, desperate Hail Mary move to court the female vote. Surely, I thought, they can’t believe that this transparent ploy will work, can they? Just how stupid do they think American women are? Even in my most cynical, I don’t believe that American women are so dim-witted as to view all vaginas as interchangeable when it’s time to vote. American men, yes. But even then only for sexual purposes.

For a second I almost felt sorry for the Republicans, to see their once-mighty Presidential-electing machinery in such disrepair.

Then I remembered. The Republicans do not make stupid mistakes before an election. They wait until afterwards, when they can be sure that someone else will suffer the consequences.

Though picking Titsy McHotAss for the 2nd Banana spot might be a bold move, even a risky one, you can be sure that it was a well-thought-out, scenario-crunched, focus-grouped, strategic risky move.

Upon further thought, I realized that the Smart & Nice Quadrant Democrats were ridiculing the choice because they were looking at it intellectually and logically… with their heads. A perspective in which it was a profoundly wrong, even laughable, move.

Looking at the choice of BubbleLips McBedroomEyes from the perspective of the other three Quadrants --- Nice & Dumb, Dumb & Mean and Smart & Mean --- however, it’s a genius stroke on several levels.

For most people in this country, smarts don’t mean so much in making decisions, even --- no, especially --- voting decisions. It’s about the gut, the emotions, how someone feels. Do they like or dislike someone? Fear or identify with? Want to choke or want to fuck? On these questions --- especially that last one --- GlamourPuss McCamelToe lifts --- no, Space-Shuttle-booster-rockets… McCain’s campaign to a higher level.

1. She engorges a previously limp and flaccid campaign.

Let’s dispense with the tissue-thin fiction that this was anything like a substantive, experience-driven, qualifications-motivated pick. This is a casting based on image and identity, nothing else. Though I’m sure Sarah Palin is a nice woman, she has not done anything in her life that would qualify her for consideration for the office of Vice President of the United States of America.*

She’s cheesecake. T&A. Eye Candy. The Republican’s primary problem this election is fatigue. And Nipples McMonsVenus provides instant stimulation. After all, is anyone ever too tired for porn? Because that’s what this 40-something GILF** is. A political centerfold, chosen for the same reasons 19-year olds named Brandi get put into men’s magazines wearing (briefly) nurse outfits.

She is not pornography just on the superficial, physical level either, though that is why she will soak up TV coverage like a fresh Tampax. As she will be presented to us, Palin’s whole life is a graphic, visual, multi-page photo spread of all the fantasies that put the lead in the Conservative pencil. Rugged individualism, as expressed by the wilderness of Alaska. Shooting guns. Using an internal combustion engine outdoors. Going to church. Having babies. Lot and lots of babies.***

To a tired and demoralized population of Dumb & Mean Americans, these images will be like a Viagra IV drip, raising them from their inert state to a condition of turgid, inflamed readiness.

2. By use of the “I’m rubber and you’re glue” gambit, she will be the vehicle for the continuing attack on Barrack Obama’s readiness for office.

Get ready to see and hear a concerted, unified effort to equate and conflate her level of experience with Barrack Obama’s. In rough terms, this effort will equate her experience as mayor of Mayberry, Alaska to Obama’s Illinois state legislature. And her two years as Governor with his two years in the U.S. Senate.

Though this message is so egregiously bullshit that nobody should be able to entertain it --- much less repeat it --- without breaking into snickers of disbelief, it will get repeated many, many times. For the Dumb people who it is aimed at, this continuous debate and repetition will validate this equivalency. In this way, attacks that discredit Palin will have a kind of jiu-jitsu effect on weakening Obama with America’s more bovine Sweet & Dumb voters.

3. Palin gives the Right a chance to give Hillary Clinton a final, gratuitous, vicious kick in the pantsuit-crotch while she’s down.

One woman left the race. Another woman entered. It’s natural that people will compare the two. And even if it’s not, FOX News is going to be sure to do it anyway.

And in the comparison, Palin is going to be portrayed as the infinitely less threatening and more likable. Instead of elite universities and a law career, Palin went for a state school and being a prettyface news anchor. Instead of one kid who went to Stanford, Palin has had five, including one now joining the Army. And instead of a hideous coven of lesbian, feminist, communist, Nazi, flag-burning, blood-drinking, Bible-desecrating witches, Palin has gone to a regular Christian church.

-

Judging from these criteria, LabiaLips McSugarClit is a brilliant addition to the campaign. It just makes me wonder how the Republican machine finds people like her, people who can match the required, retarded Republican ideology with whatever combination of skin tone, family history and genitalia needed for the role they will play.

After all, though Liberals often get accused of playing identity politics --- and putting people into undeserved positions based on race and gender quotas --- it’s really the Republicans who have truly mastered the art of this kind of appearance-based casting. Republicans found the one black judge in America who hates Affirmative Action worse than any white person alive, and put him on the Supreme Court. Republicans found the only black woman in the world who loves George W. Bush --- loves him to the point of calling him “my husband” by accident --- to put in charge of the National Security Agency, then State Department.****

They must have a talent scouting organization that makes Major League Baseball’s look like whoever’s been in charge of looking for Bin Ladin the last seven years.

I mean, come on. Just how many good-looking women politicians are there in the nation who just happen to love God, guns, family and the Oil Industry --- while hating taxes, the environment and abortion?

Just one. And they found her. If she doesn’t create a big bounce for McCain --- and not just the one in his pants, or as he probably calls them “dungarees” --- then I don’t know my America.

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* It is hardly an accomplishment to be deemed slightly less corrupt, incompetent and repugnant than the other Alaskan GOP politicians. That is, after all, a group that shows the predictable rampant criminality and dimwittedness that you would expect to see when you combine isolated rednecks, the Republican model of governance and oil revenues.

** The “G” stands for “Governor.”

***While pregnant with her 5th child, a test showed that her fetus had Downs Syndrome. Because of her opposition to abortion, she had the child anyway, and named him “Trig.”

It strikes the fbomber as cruel to name a child after an academic subject he will be too stupid to ever master. The fbomber wonders if the baby had been born paralyzed, she would have named him “PhysEd.”

**** One might even suspect that these wholly undeserved appointments serve auxiliary Republican goals of making Affirmative Action --- and black people in general --- look bad. After all, even the most impartial critics of Thomas’s surly, lazy, Scalia-parroting tenure in the Supreme Court can only with great generosity call it “undistinguished.”

As for Condoleezza Rice. Jesus. Though the fbomber is perpetually unemployed and lives on a boat, at least his record of failure does not include responsibility for American security before 9/11 and American diplomacy after it.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Obama Can't Win, But McCain Just Might Lose

For most of his adult life, the fbomber has been in an emotional state that could best be described as “bitter, caustic, life-sapping, despairing cynicism” in regards to matters of politics.

Generally, this stance of expecting the absolute worst foreseeable disaster --- immediately followed by an even more terrible and unforeseeable catastrophe --- has paid off.

Because of this pessimistic mindset, despite all the twists and turns this great nation has made as it determinedly burrows ever deeper into the shit, the fbomber has often been surprised --- but rarely disappointed.

After all, the fbomber believes that no matter how gross and systemic the American people’s flaws may be, they will at least be consistent. No matter what, they will always let him down.

But lately, the fbomber has felt the tiny flutterings of a long-lost and presumed-dead emotion inside the empty, dusty ribcage that once housed his live and beating heart. That emotion? Hope.

This emotion was most recently felt while listening to Barack Obama speaking on National Public Radio. Though congenitally immune from Obamamania*, the fbomber noted that at the very least Obama does not sound like an intolerable prick when he speaks. To the contrary, in fact. He actually sounds smart, thoughtful and even --- dare I say it? --- cool.** It shows how expectations have fallen when someone becomes giddily excited at the prospect of a President who is, at minimum, not a total tool. But there it is.

This fluttering grew into a veritable flapping when the fbomber considered that Obama might actually have a chance to get elected this year. Though the fbomber firmly believes that the Democrats can never win an election, he knows that from time to time the Republicans can lose one. And that this year might be one of those times.


Political Party is Not a Choice
The fbomber believes that political party affiliation is not a product of intellectual choice, or a product of environment, or indoctrination or any other exogenous factor. It is an internally generated expression of the way that people view the world. And that the way people view the world is a result of hard-wired psychological tendencies.

Think about it. Could any of you reading conceivably vote for the other party? According to my theory, about 75% of people reading this could not. That's because you just ARE Liberal/Democratic or Conservative/Republican because of the way your brain works from birth.

The fbomber did not come up with this theory on his own. He read something like it in a book Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think by George Lakoff. Then he perverted and twisted it to fit his own misanthropic mindset, aided in large part by his complete lack of training in psychology, sociology, statistics or anything else, for that matter.

To the fbomber, the division between Republicans and Democrats is a function of where they fall on one specific, particular line of attitude. This line measures how they view their relations between themselves and other people.

At one end, someone sees himself as part of a community, with a strong and complex web of responsibilities to everyone in that community. At the other end of the line, someone sees himself as essentially autonomous, in competition with every other person and with no responsibilities towards them --- unless that person explicitly chooses to take on those responsibilities.

These two mindsets have been described in various ways:
Left vs. Right
Hippy vs. Nazi
Magnanimous vs. Selfish
Community vs. Individual
We vs. Me
Pussy vs. Dick
Share vs. Hoard
Nurturing Family vs. Strict Family
Mommy vs. Daddy

For the purposes of this essay, the fbomber will call this line the Nice vs. Mean line.

Assuming a bell-curve distribution, very few people will fall at the extreme ends of this line. Most will be in the center, with half nicer than average, and half meaner. Because of its let’s-share-the-wealth, lets-help-one-another, let’s-get-along, your-hair-looks-very-nice values, the Democratic party is the natural home of the nicer half.

Conversely, due to its leave-me-alone, this-money-is-mine, fuck-the-world, do-what-I-tell-you, look-how-big-my-gun-is values, the Republican party is the natural home of the meaner half.

At the same time, there is another line measuring intelligence, also split into the smarter-than-average and dumber-than-average halves.

So we can draw up a graph to represent the total electorate.



Republicans naturally make up the Smart & Mean, and Dumb & Mean quarters. And they are locked in there tighter than Mark Foley's eyeballs onto an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog.

The Smart & Mean quadrant ARE the Republican party, the rich, white shareholder and CEO class. The Dumb & Mean quadrant --- the Rednecks, the Evangelicals, the NASCAR fans, the Chickenhawks supporting a war they won't fight --- are equally locked in. They are the Smart & Mean people’s loyal foot-soldiers, held in thrall to the prospect of becoming like the Smart & Mean guys some lucky day if they do enough dirty work to earn that promotion.

Democrats naturally get the Smart & Nice quadrant. The well-educated, the artists, the creatives, the wordy, egghead types. The bourgeouis bohemians. The latte liberals. The Jews. The Volvo drivers. The women. The students. Hollywood.

The Nice & Stupid quadrant? They should be Democrats. But they are not.

Those are the Swing Voters.

How else could you describe the kind of person that looks at Gore vs. Bush, Kerry vs. Bush or Obama vs. McCain and says “I don’t know… I can’t make up my mind… they both seem a lot alike to me”?

These are the people too stupid to realize the difference between a failed cokehead oil executive and a Nobel Prize winner. Or too nice to come out and admit that one of the candidates is a huge asshole and the other is --- at worst --- a medium-sized asshole.

Why Republicans Win, Unless They Lose
In a normal election, the Republicans handily win because they have their half of the electorate and can trick enough Nice & Stupid voters come in at over 50.1% And in normal circumstances, it is easy. For starters, the Smart & Mean people have the most money, plus the rabid shock troops of the Dumb & Mean (aka the Fox News audience) to do it with.

Most of all, the people they are targeting, are --- after all --- Nice & Stupid. Stupid enough to believe that giving the top .001% of the economic elite tax breaks will pump up their Wal-Mart cashier paychecks. Stupid enough to believe that John Kerry is backed by Al Queda. Nice enough to want to stop sweet innocent blastocysts and coma victims from being murdered by those evil, evil doctors.

Here’s the kicker. The Republicans don’t even have to convince the Nice & Stupid crowd to vote Republican. That’s a bonus, but all they really have to do to win is to confuse them enough to keep them from voting at all. That’s what the Swift-Boating and other dirty, last-minute personal attacks are good for. To get the Nice & Stupid crew to throw their hands up and say “Gosh almighty! They’re BOTH awful! Is ‘Idol on?’”

On the other hand, the Democrats can never win an election outright, because the Democrat’s natural, guaranteed constituency is only 25% of the electorate and they have to split their other 25% with the Republicans.


Why This Year is Different
To win, the Democrats have to get all the Nice & Smart voters, hold onto the Nice & Dumb voters and hope that something prevents the Smart & Mean and Dumb & Mean people from voting Republican in maximum numbers.

Well, that could be happening this year.

Assuming the Smart & Nice crowd maxes out support for Obama and the Democrats, three fatigue factors should keep the other three quadrants from turning out in support of McCain and the Republicans.

1. Failure Fatigue.
As pointed out elsewhere, the Republican’s policies have been such an abject failure that even the stupidest person cannot sign up for more of them. This should minimize Republican poaching of the Stupid & Nice quadrant.

2. Gluttony Fatigue
After eight years of unrestrained bingeing, the Smart & Mean quadrant should be well and truly glutted with undeserved riches at this point. Glutted, apparently, to the point of immobility this election.

The tax cuts have given the richest Americans an extra couple hundreds of billions into their already-bulging pockets over the last seven years. An orgy of spending increases and misguided policy choices by the Republican-controlled government has handed the well-connected Smart & Mean crowd --- think defense contractors and energy companies --- yet more trillions of U.S. citizens’ cash.

After all this engorgement, these folks just don’t have the hunger for power that they did back in 1999 and 2000. They are ready to take a bit of a nap to digest their meal, like a boa constrictor just back from a good grazing session at the local pre-school. Consequently, they look to be sitting out this political fight and holing up in Palm Beach, La Jolla and Jackson Hole with their trophy wives and ungrateful children for a couple of years.

And why shouldn’t they kick back? After all, they’ve already done the fun part. They ran into a clean, well-stocked store in 2001 and proceeded to ransack and loot it for the last seven years. Now the shelves are all bare and there are broken dreams all over the floor. It’s time for them to go home and let the suckers who work for minimum wage come in and sweep up, repair the damage, and restock the shelves in preparation for 2012 or 2016’s smash-and-grab raid.

Proof of the Smart & Meanie’s absence this year can be seen in the inept and bumbling McCain campaign. Where are Rove and the other evil ninjas? Where are W’s “Rangers” ponying up $250k apiece for the campaign? Not in McCain’s bus, that’s for sure. The true, stone-cold pimps have made themselves scarce this go-round, putting the B-team in charge, with obvious results.

3. Hatred Fatigue.
Just since 2000, the Dumb & Mean quadrant has engaged in a ferocious and endless campaign of slavering, foaming, raging hatred at a dizzying variety of targets, including, but not limited to:

Bill Clinton
Blow Jobs
Hilary Clinton
International Law
Al Gore
Reality
Gays
Liberals
The French
Habeas Corpus
Islam
Immigrants
Brown-skinned people, generally
Education
Hilary Clinton
The U.N.
Charles Darwin
Federal Judges
Dan Rather
The Geneva Convention
Science
Doctors
Separation of Church and State
John Kerry
The Truth
Hilary Clinton
The U.S. Constitution
American Cities
Hilary Clinton

Though the Dumb & Mean’s capacity for hatred is endless, apparently it is not tireless.

Like a vicious, retarded, pit bull who has been throwing itself frenziedly against the bars of its cage in a prolonged tantrum of pure, senseless rage for weeks, these idiot fuckers appear to be spent at last. They now lay on the floor, panting and covered with their own stinking slobber, stupefied by exhaustion. So they’re neutralized for a while at least.

So to sum it up --- if anything could be called summing it up after 1,700 words --- yeah, despite my pessimistic, humanity-hating, leanings I believe that Obama does actually have a shot. Not a lock, like some people are saying. But a shot.

After all, the fbomber only knows two sure things about politics.

1. Democrats can only win the Presidency after the Republicans royally shit the bed.
2. Republicans always, always, always shit the bed.

---

*I have tried. Really.

** Even the most vitriolic Obama Hater-ade slinger has to acknowledge that the man is fucking unflappable under pressure. He’s calmly, cold-bloodedly, and precisely sprinted a high-wire from Illinois State Rep to Democratic Presidential candidate --- under intense fire from all sides --- without a stumble, misstep or loss of composure. Cucumber doesn’t even touch it. Other side of pillow isn’t even close. Ice is feverish by comparison. Dude is cooler than the lakes of liquid ammonia on Saturn’s moon, Titan. That’s 300 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, sucka.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Goodbye - Finally - To All That

No matter who* is elected this November, the fbomber is gratified to see that some of the worst elements of the Bush-Cheney Era will at long last be left behind, consigned to the same dustbin of history where America’s manufacturing base, international goodwill and military capacity now decompose.

Looking at America’s current economic and military disaster, many might view the last seven years as a complete debacle. But the fbomber --- ever a toilet-half-flushed kind of person --- prefers to find the positive aspects of this period of unfettered Republican rule.

To the fbomber, the years between 2000-2008 are valuable as a sort of social experiment in what happens when conservatives are allowed to exert their influence on this country, with Washington D.C. serving as a cross between a laboratory and the adult-less island in “Lord of the Flies.”

The ensuing disaster appears to have made an impression on even the most dull-witted and complacent members of America’s clueless citizenry. Just as even the stupidest cows eventually learn to avoid touching the electric fence, it looks like America’s cow-people are learning to avoid some specific, telltale signs of the most harmful strand of conservatism.

If the two remaining candidates of Barrack Obama and John McCain are any indicator of the preferences of the majority of voting Americans, both Democrat and Republican, the following elements of Republicanism are --- at least temporarily --- out of favor.

1. Crazy Christianity.
Unlike Bush, who practically billed himself as Yahweh’s running mate, neither John McCain nor Barrack Obama falls into creationist, speaking-in-tongues, praying-out-loud-at-Cracker-Barrel camp. And for that, we can all be grateful to the deity of our choice. Because - in my experience - any time someone is “born again,” the second birthing tends to result in massive brain damage.

Hopefully, this means that God has lost interest in interfering in U.S. political races and will now concentrate on the things He is best at: earthquakes, hurricanes and killing babies with malaria.

2. Corporate Executives Writing Legislation Affecting Their Industry.
In 2001, Cheney secretly invited the heads of America’s biggest oil companies to come set America’s energy policy. A policy that unsurprisingly included lots of subsidies and tax breaks, but little conservation or environmental regulation. Over the next seven years, America consumers paid record prices for gasoline while these oil companies posted record profits and air, water and land pollution increased.

In an equally shocking development, Bush’s decision to place Lindsey Lohan in charge of America’s strategic pharmaceutical-grade cocaine stockpile didn’t turn out well either.

3. A Foreign Policy Based on the Philosophy of the Cobra Kai Karate School.

4. Teetotaling.
George W. Bush has effectively ruined Presidential aspirations for sober people, forever. At this point, I think America might finally realize that if someone is compulsively driven to drink and drug themselves to the brink of death three times a week, they probably have a design flaw too severe to fix by just laying off the sauce. Tough luck there, Robert Downey Jr.

5. Visibly Evil People in the White House.
Unless the malignant spirit inhabiting Dick Cheney’s body can pass from host to host like the demon in “Fallen,” it seems unlikely that we will ever have anyone quite as malevolently destructive in the Executive Branch ever again. Though, again, in the spirit of looking for the positive side of things, I will point out that Cheney’s insatiable thirst for fresh blood has virtually eliminated metropolitan D.C.’s population of stray cats.

6. Incompetence + Arrogance.
Obama may be arrogant, but at least he is able to do things, and even do some of them exceptionally well. McCain is clearly incompetent**, but is at least humble about it, cheerfully admitting that he knows nothing about a confusing little subject called economics as he makes his bid to head up the largest economy in the world.

7. Stubbornness In the Face of Contradictory Facts.
Both Obama and McCain have flip-flopped, backtracked, reversed course and changed their message as events, goals and circumstances warranted. Compared to President One-Track-Mind, this is a Very Good Thing.

8. Republicanism Itself.
In 2001, the Republicans had everything that they could possibly want:
Complete control over the Legislative and Executive Branches.
A healthy economy.
A balanced budget.
A legitimately scary, dark-skinned enemy to whip up fear about.
A gay male hooker in the White House Press Corps.

The ball was finally, indubitably, irrefutably in their court to do with whatever they wanted. And they did, starting wars, ignoring civil rights, mocking international law, reducing taxes, increasing spending, and every other thing on their eight-years-in-the-writing To Do List.

Seven years later, we’re mired in two losing wars, our national honor has been lost, the deficit is enormous, the jobless rate is rising, the dollar is worthless, gasoline and food prices are spiraling upward, and vast portions of our economy are rotting, smoldering carcasses.

The experiment is over. The results are in. Republicans suck. Not just in the relative privacy of airport restrooms either. Every place. In every way. Morally. Ethically. Economically. Fiscally. Administratively. Personally. Militarily. Spiritually. Even physically. Just try to imagine a nude GOP convention, if you ever want to semi-permanently quash your sex drive.

Even the Republicans finally realize how repugnant they are, like a drunkard slowly coming to consciousness and realizing that the bad smell that's been giving him nightmares is coming from his own soiled underwear. That’s why they nominated someone who has --- superficially and sporadically --- butted heads with the Republican Party during his political career.

Again, this is a Very Good Thing. Let’s enjoy this repugnance while it lasts. Which if history is any indicator, should be about three years, maybe seven.

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*Of course it’s going to be McCain. Quit kidding yourself. He’s white, and this is a nation that didn’t even like Muhammad Ali until he couldn’t freaking talk anymore.

** Someone much more cynical and disrespectful than the fbomber might say that McCain was by his own admission a horrible student, obviously a substandard pilot, and no great shakes as a Senator. This person might go on to make the argument that McCain’s high water mark of personal achievement was as a captive prisoner in a losing war. But the fbomber would not go that far.